Is this how you treat your children?

[rodgertutt]

When I was seven my stepmother lit a fire in a beaker and said to me, "If you don't open your heart's door to Jesus and invite Him in, God is going to put you into a fire much bigger and hotter than that after you die and He will never ever let you get out of it.”
So in my heart I prayed the way she said that I had to.

Awhile later she said it's obvious that you still are not saved because you are still such a bad boy.
At that point in time I felt totally hopeless, and I was sure that God had given up on me.

My Dad used to beat me with a bamboo cane repeatedly shouting "In Jesus Name, in Jesus Name," until the welts on my legs would bleed. He told me that it was easy to tell at an early age that I was going to go to hell.

Then they both sent me away to a foster home because they could no longer cope with my bad behavior. My real mother had died giving birth to me. My Dad's second wife had died at child birth too but the child did not live either.

So at the age of seven I became convinced that everyone had given up on me, including God.

Later, at the age of 28 (I'm 68 now) I began a twelve year nervous breakdown over my inability to successfully emotionally cope with the idea that God lets any creature suffer forever. I was only able to recover by gradually learning that there are no verses in the Bible that teach endless suffering in hell for anyone. See

http://www.tentmaker.org/books/BibleThreateningsExplained.html

From Rodger Tutt in Toronto, Canada
“That God may be All in all” 1Cor.15:28

[SpinningHead]

I don't even know where to begin. :(

I don't know if you've made peace w/ your father/s-mother...but I'm sorry...They are evil! And they did evil in the name of their religion but not in the name of God!

Welcome to this forum! I'm glad you found us!!

[jane]

I don't know if there is a hell or not...
after this life that is......

and I don't know if your site answers all of our problems.....
I highly doubt it.

but what your parents did is nasty and mean...

certainly spiritually abusive..

welcome to our site.

jane

[Anna Marta]

Dear Roger,
My heart aches for all you have been through. I wish a hug could be sent to you through this sight that you could actually receive. I am 60 years old so I understand how age makes no difference when it comes to needing to experience and feel the REAL love of a Father God. Psalm 68:5 has always been a great comfort to me.

You were terribly abused at such a young age by parents who it appears are/were seriously personality disordered to the point of dare I say it - evil? No child should be treated as you were, but sadly you are not the only one to share having been so.

I pray continued healing and blessings and shalom over your life and memories and I also pray that you will continue to grow closer to your "real" Father God.

Anna Marta
Kristiansand, Norway

[Jerry]

Dear Rodger,,,
What can possibly be said of twisted minds ???? Welcome to the Forum ;)
Love Jerry

[DiligentLily]

Dear Roger, my father was treated like that, too, by His parents. His dad was a Methodist minister, and each of my dad's siblings, when they were kids, had wooden crosses on the wall into which Grandpa would hammer a nail every time they misbehaved. Then at the end of the week, Grandpa would give them a spanking for each nail in the cross. My dad's cross usually had the most nails, for some reason.

Dad would be about your age now if he had not driven himself to an early grave with depression, diabetes and drinking at 45. You give me hope that you still believe in God after what you've been through because my dad gave up believing and I don't know how he is now.

[Voyager]

I believe that many of the religious traditions that people embrace are barbaric and cruel. The idea that a loving father would burn his children for disobedience is very sadistic. I cannot imagine pouring gasoline on my daughters and lighting a match just because they disobeyed me. If God loves us more than I love my children, how much more compassionate and loving would He treat us?

Religion can be so damaging. I am glad you found this forum Rodger. I hope you stick around.

:cool:

[abbey]

I believe I have read your story before????

Well, whats there to say my freind? Its tragic and I can imagine how difficult your whole concept of God is. Im certain you have read and reread the Bible trying to figure it all out.

We here were all abused by religious fanatics, churches, groups or cults. We UNDERSTAND how using fear can damage.

Stick around, Ive gotten some great help here.:)

[Ladybug]

Hi,

Glad you found this group, Rodger. :)

[Elisabeth]

That is definately not how to treat children. I'm glad that through the course of life, you have experienced some healing. May you come to know more and more healing!

[Cataract]

Hi and welcome :)

Great link you gave.

[mary]

When I was seven my stepmother lit a fire in a beaker and said to me, "If you don't open your heart's door to Jesus and invite Him in, God is going to put you into a fire much bigger and hotter than that after you die and He will never ever let you get out of it.”
So in my heart I prayed the way she said that I had to.

Awhile later she said it's obvious that you still are not saved because you are still such a bad boy.
At that point in time I felt totally hopeless, and I was sure that God had given up on me.

My Dad used to beat me with a bamboo cane repeatedly shouting "In Jesus Name, in Jesus Name," until the welts on my legs would bleed. He told me that it was easy to tell at an early age that I was going to go to hell.

Then they both sent me away to a foster home because they could no longer cope with my bad behavior. My real mother had died giving birth to me. My Dad's second wife had died at child birth too but the child did not live either.

So at the age of seven I became convinced that everyone had given up on me, including God.

Later, at the age of 28 (I'm 68 now) I began a twelve year nervous breakdown over my inability to successfully emotionally cope with the idea that God lets any creature suffer forever. I was only able to recover by gradually learning that there are no verses in the Bible that teach endless suffering in hell for anyone. See

http://www.tentmaker.org/books/BibleThreateningsExplained.html

From Rodger Tutt in Toronto, Canada
“That God may be All in all” 1Cor.15:28

Dear Rodger,

My heart breaks over what you went through as a child and young man... What horrible people you were subjected to! Prayers, empathy, sympathy all go out for and to you, dear brother in Christ.

I too was subjected to extreme abuse, both at home and at school. Sometimes it's hard to say which was worse (probably home, because there was nowhere to escape there).

The people who treated you like that were not acting for the Lord; they had nothing to do with Christianity and they were evil. They were acting for and on behalf of "the other guy." They will be punished for what they did to you, whether here or in the next life. You are God's precious child, Rodger; He laid down the life of His only begotten Son for YOU. Do you think that He doesn't care that you were mistreated? Of course He does - and He will exact retribution. He is sheer and pure holiness Himself and He will not abide that which is evil. That's why He says that vengeance is His; we must leave room for God to take care of those who have hurt us - and Him, for when they hurt us, His children, they hurt Him immeasurably more. Whether He does this by saving them and therefore, they, like us, will be able to point to Christ as their Savior and enjoy heaven for eternity, or whether He does not save them and leaves them to the eternity that they have created for themselves is His business - and I leave it to Him.

Because of things like that, I can't believe in universalism. See http://www.carm.org/universalism.htm. See Matthew 10:28, Luke 16, etc. I don't believe a loving God torments people forever; I do believe that eventually, those not saved - and you are not among them, not as far as I can see - will simply cease to exist.

Our loving and holy God will not reward pure evil with eternal bliss with Him in heaven.

My "father" was an evil man. He beat the daylights out of me from the time that I was a newborn until I grew up and left home for good. One day, long after I was married, he came home from work and beat my mother (she was then suffering from organic brain damage due to alcoholism) so severely that she developed a subdural hematoma. He refused to allow her to be treated. Eventually, the hematoma moved to a location where it destroyed everything above her cerebral cortex - and she died. My father got away with everything he did in this life. He never suffered a moment's pain or retribution or slightest payback, not even when he told me that I was "dumber than a stone" for believing in God. The fourth anniversary of his death has just passed and I simply remembered it - but I felt nothing. No grief, no sense of loss. My only thought on that day was, "I'm glad I never have to see him again, for when I die, I will be with my Lord and Savior, and he is likely somewhere else." That's probably a terrible thing to say about one of one's parents, but I look at him as, well, the Lord wanted me here somehow and a male individual was required in the act of getting me here. I had a mother, such as she was, but I did not have a father. "Honor thy father and mother?" Believe it or not, I "honored" him when I witnessed to him about the Lord Jesus Christ in the several weeks before he died, when he could barely speak and therefore cuss me out for talking about Him. I still owed my "father" "honor" because the Lord commands it, but that's the only kind he ever permitted me to give him. I was blessed by the Lord in that He allowed me to see that it was my duty. I don't know if my "father" was also blessed, though. That's up to God.

I do hope I haven't offended you with any of the above; if I have, please, please accept my apologies. The last thing I would ever want to do, as I've said in other threads in this forum, is to add to the burdens of those dear ones (that means everyone here) who've been hurt by others, whether at home, at work or in rotten churches. But our first duty is always to an infinitely holy God. Are we worth anything? Oh, yes: to the Father, we were worth an unimaginable Sacrifice! Wrongs done against us will be redressed - by Him. Will the wrong done against you be redressed? Yes, indeed!

Rodger, may you rest in the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who gives us His peace, not as the world gives... (John 14:27.)

Love in our precious Lord, Savior, Prophet, Priest and King,

mary

[underthemercy]

Later, at the age of 28 (I'm 68 now) I began a twelve year nervous breakdown over my inability to successfully emotionally cope with the idea that God lets any creature suffer forever. I was only able to recover by gradually learning that there are no verses in the Bible that teach endless suffering in hell for anyone. See

http://www.tentmaker.org/books/BibleThreateningsExplained.html

From Rodger Tutt in Toronto, Canada
“That God may be All in all” 1Cor.15:28

Oh, Roger, I offer my deepest sighs and sorrow that you had to endure such suffering. God has something so special designed for you to know and do since He allowed the crucible in your life. I am horrified at the thought of yourself at 7 feeling so abandonded, so lied to, so cruelly abused. This was not your doing. You had very sick people acting out their own miserable pain and cruelty upon you. It is their fault---Vengence is mine sayeth the Lord. I have had to let go of the desire to make my own abusers pay. They paid by the misery of their own lives, hopefully not eternally.

Whatever they told you about God or inimated about God was a lie. God chose to give us free will so that we would choose to receive Him and love Him. As far as I am concerned Hell is a place reserved for the devil and his angels and for any human being who choses to reject Gods' rememdy for the fall of mankind into sin and death. God took it upon Himself to provide a way back into His fellowship and it cost Him the ultimate. He sacrifice His Son. The Son sacrificed His life, His human life when He chose to become human to bear our sin. The doorway to hell is closed to those who receive the Lord Jesus Christ. "He came unto His own and His own received Him not ( you felt something of what our Lord suffered in His rejection), BUT to as many as received Him, He gave the power to become the children of God.

God loves us. This has been the hardest thing for me to embrace. I am really, truly loved. Not for what I can do, or who I am, but because God is love. He proved it at the cross. He proves is moment by moment with grace we can't count, being so immersed in looking at other things besides seeking His lovely face. God is also Holy. He cannot let sin go unjudged. He didn't. He took the judgement onto Himself. Think about the Suffering Man on the cross. That was the pain (physical, emotional,mental,spiritual), grief, guilt, fear, rejection, embarassment, we all deserved, but now don't have to suffer. Through faith in Jesus Christ, that He suffered in my place. the miracle of justification occurs--all guilt is gone---our sins put as far away as the east is from the west, never to be counted against us-ever---. Though your sins be as scarlett, they shall be white as snow. God remembers ours sins no more. He sees us through the beloved Son into Who we are baptized. Justified----Just-as-if-I-had-never-sinned!!!!

The Man of Sorrows is acquainted with grief. We have mabe been privileged to taste a tiny instance of His suffering and can be grateful that the full brunt did not drag us down to Hell. Instead he makes our grief a sacrament. A path to stronger faith and better character.

O dear grief stricken man, look into the face of the Man of Sorrows who is acquainted with grief and see His compassion. There is healing in His wings. Let us all nestle beneath these wings.

Thankful to be Under the MERCY,

May we of the fellowship of suffering be repairers of the breach, restorers of the paths to dwell in.

[underthemercy]

[QUOTE=rodgertutt;46556]
At that point in time I felt totally hopeless, and I was sure that God had given up on me.

I wanted to say one other thing. Your parents gave up trying to mould you into thier own image. God never gives up. He never slumbers, He never sleeps. He never coerces. He woos us like a lover. He draws us with cords of love and thus He binds us to Him. He is a gentleman...Behold, I stand at the door and knock, if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and have fellowship with Him.

Jesus, lover of my soul, let me to Thy bosom fly.

He could have called ten thousand angels to destroy the world and set Him free, but He chose to die, for the joy of the new race that would be newly created through faith in Him and His Blood Sacrifice.

Under this (the only) MERCY,

God grant us all the miracles of understanding Him more and more.