From Tom Schroeder – 11-21-03
Hello Again,
Now, the last few days, there has been different things written here about homosexuals, lesbians and gays, etc. I am sure some people are very cautious to state their opinions on this subject, just as some gays I know that are cautious about stating their opinions.
I will tell you what took place 10 years ago. After Sunday meeting, I was invited to stay for dinner with about 10 other people and my sister-in-law asked me, “What's new, Tom?”
“Well, I have been invited to a wedding and a reception,” I said.
“Are they professing and someone we know?” she asked.
I said, “No, they don't go to the meetings so you don't know them.”
“Is it a church wedding?” she asked.
“Yes, it's two gay women having a church wedding here in Chicago.”
WOW, did that conversation ever spring alive around that dinner table.
Now, you all know that you can't get truther's around the dinner table to discuss what they heard in the fellowship meeting just an hour before, or if they have any doubts if they are going to go to heaven when they die.
But this was different!!
“You are not going to a gay wedding,” they said. Why, “they” wouldn't be seen near a place like that and they didn't think it was right for me to go.
Now, let me tell you something, this was in 1993 and I had just read “The Secret Sect” book over several times before 1993 and I knew there was something wrong with “the truth” system we believed in. But here we were, sitting around the dinner table and my relatives and friends were filling my “guilt bag” and making me feel uncomfortable about going to a gay wedding.
Jim Brown
used to preach for years, that the job of the comforter was to make us feel uncomfortable in our lives. But it was always hard for me to sort that out, as I always felt it was “the workers' that continued to fill our 'guilt bag' we carried and make us feel uncomfortable when we didn't follow “their” rules and regulations.
Oh yes, I had meeting in my home over 20 years and often after meeting, a worker would take me into the bedroom, shut the door and tell me what I was doing wrong. I wasn't demanding that my teenage daughter's wear their hair in a round pug on top of their head, and Alan Anderson, a worker, told my son, 16, and my daughter, 18, that if they wanted to be baptized, that after being baptized, they could not go on any more ski trips,.......yes, this was in the '70's, just 30 years ago.
My wife was going to have a graduation party and Weldon Burgess, a worker, heard about it and came to our door and asked if this was true, and my wife said, “Yes.”
“Well, we are against that,” he said, and my wife said, “We didn't know that.”
“How many people are you having at the party?” he asked, and my wife said she didn't know yet, and then he said, “If you keep it below 15, we will let you have it.”
Sometimes, I think the workers are down right miserable in their teaching for doctrine the commandments of men.
Yes, truthers tell us that workers spend 50 percent of their time helping the already saved professing people.
Oh YES, that's right, we needed to be reassured of the things that we were already sure of. I think Jesus said “HIS” Father would send the comforter, the Holy Ghost,........”HE” would teach us all things and bring to remembrance what Jesus had spoken.
Well, I had better finish this gay wedding story. One of them is an executive in a large corporation in the Chicago area and the other one is a registered nurse, helping sick people get well again in a large hospital here in Chicago, and I know the parents of both of them very well...........and yes, I went to the wedding.
Now, there is space here for one more homosexual story, but it could make you sick......but then, I think 'the truth' system is a sickness and it effects the mind more than any other part of the body. It's easier for your worldly relatives to get the “sickness,” than worldly strangers.
Peter Hunter (on right in picture) came to Wisconsin in 1954. Speaking at his first convention, he said he learned one thing quickly.........not to be gossiping to truthers in one area of the state about truthers in another area of the state as he found out that most of the people in the state are related to one another. Does it take deep thinking to figure out why God would be more interested in the soul's of truther's worldly relatives that are still outside of the cult system, than those of the worldly people we know out there?
When I was 19......... that's a long time ago, there was a worker and a friend of mine, and I am changing their names to Barney and Orley in the story I am going to tell you.
Barney started to write to me, he was in the work about 15 years and he wanted to get to know me better so he could be a help to me, but I never answered Barney's letters, as I didn't need his help. But one day, my friend, Orley, just 17 years old, called me to come over and see his project. He had sheets of leather and a sewing kit and he was making leather Bible cases, and doing all this in his bedroom upstairs.
“Well, how did you get started with all this and why this production,” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, “Barney got this for me and told me he could sell these Bible cases to the friends and make some money.”
He said Barney comes back to the house a lot after gospel meetings and helps him sew until bedtime. Then Orley said he had to tell me something that he couldn't tell his parents. He said that Barney goes to this room, gets into his pajamas and comes back and gets in bed with him to have sexual encounters for several hours.
“Where is his companion,” I asked.
Orley said they don't get along too well so his companion stays the night at other people's homes.
Then Orley said that one night he told Barney, “Don't you think we should stop doing this, don't you feel this is wrong what we are doing together", and Barney said to Orley, “Don't worry, this is all right what we are doing as the Bible is full of stories of people with their sexual encounters and God sanctions this what you and I are doing.”
Now, didn't we all think that workers were in their rooms all day reading their Bibles and praying........getting ready for the gospel meeting as some of the friends just might bring some outsiders for them to preach to??
Oh, YES, all my life, I heard that workers have the hardest job in the world and that is why so many get nerve problems and have to quit and go home. I wonder if Barney ever had to pray for strength when he was getting ready for the gospel meeting, and to stand there and preach for half an hour and tell people how they should get saved, and how he felt the call to give his life in the great harvest field.
Oh, YES, Barney was born that way......it was in his genes.
I never told this story about Barney to anyone until six years later. Some workers came to a home I was at and asked me what I knew about Barney because his career had come to an end. YES, for six more years, Barney had preached, standing on those machine shed platforms, and told people how to get into “the truth” system............how to cross the worker's paths and to be “fortunate” that of all the religions in the world, ...........YES, thousands of them, you have the opportunity to get into “the truth,”........the only true, right way that will take you to heaven, and you better not pass it by.
The workers asked me why I didn't say something six years before. “I was afraid and I didn't want to embarrass Orley,” I said. They told me that more boys had their lives and minds messed up during those six years until finally a teenage son told his father.
Someone wrote on this list some time ago, and said, “I see the responsibilities of workers this way. Keeping themselves right with God..........and help keep their fellow workers and the ministry right with God.”
Hey, the workers teach, “Let not your right hand know what your left hand is doing.” What did Jesus say, “If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch.” YES, Jesus said that “HE” was the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE.
Did Jesus ever intend that those three words that “HE” used to describe himself should be used around 1900 for a start-up cult system that the workers named “the truth?”
Why didn't they name it “the life?”
Try using that for a year or so, and when people ask you what the name of your religion is, just tell them it's called “the life” started by Jesus, and then you explain to them all the rules and regulations, and that you firmly believe that you are the only ones on earth that bring joy to God.
Well, you know what I think they will tell you. GO GET A LIFE. I think our founder, William Irvine, set the example for worker's behavior when he started 'the truth” system back in 1897 because I read in “The Secret Sect” book that a different woman worker would wash his back every night before he went to bed. Well, he didn't believe in the same gender doing that chore.
YES, my ex-worker friend said if he told me what goes on among the workers, it would SHOCK me!
I could keep on writing but I have to stop here, and I am sure some readers will get very angry at me for writing this today, but I have endured many storms in “the truth” system during my 75 years on this earth, and the time came that I knew I would have to sort things out about this religion I was in,........and that's not easy with a warped brain, and I knew I needed help.
Now, I look at it this way..........if I see a fire in my neighbor's basement across the street in the middle of the night, and they are sleeping upstairs, ........well, I am involved now and I have two choices to make. I love my neighbors deeply and they are pillars in this neighborhood. I can say, “Well, when that fire gets going up that stairway and gets hot enough, they will wake up..........if they get out, fine, if not, it's not my problem and I turn over in my bed and go back to sleep.
BUT, what do I do,.......I call the fire department and I run over to the burning house.......I pound on the door and I yell, GET OUT, GET OUT, you are going to perish..........and I disturb the rest of my loving neighbors and we help the people out of the burning house to escape the heat of the night.
All for now,
Tom
