Holdeman

People in the community often see the Holdemans as just another

Christian group. They're kind, simple, plain people, and the community tends to see them in a positive light.

I believe I came to Christ as a 12 -year -old lad in that structure. I've never doubted that. One beautiful thing about the

Holdeman culture is the camaraderie is awesome. As long as you're in the system.

Everybody's watching everybody. And no matter where you are in the system, there's somebody you need to please.

So you're trying to satisfy, and especially as a young man when I was coming up in this, I wanted to be approved of.

I wanted the approval of those older ministers. And I was under older ministers. So they would be telling me, you know, how we do things.

When you would like to show grace and mercy, it wasn't allowed.

We know what happens when someone leaves the Holdeman denomination.

The shunning of the families, that does to you. Your friends, your whole culture that you grew up in.

Uncovering, you know, the doctrines that they grew up with in that church. I was really shocked. What Holdeman Mennonites need to understand,

John Holdeman, he's not the only one who has made this claim throughout church history that his group is the only one with the secret knowledge.

When people would talk to me, I would be like, but they're wrong about this. And this matters.

And I had people kind of like, I don't see why that matters. That's just confusing to me because whether you get your savior right or not, it's everything.

There's many people that claim to believe in Christ, like the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, other cults. Yeah, we believe in Christ.

Which Christ? The Christ of the scriptures? I thought

I was converted at probably 11 -ish. And it didn't work very well for me.

Because I would try. I would fail. I would give up.

I'd eventually quit trying. So I would just keep kind of going through that cycle over and over. That just continued on.

Every revival was scary because I never knew if I was saved or if I wasn't.

I figured that the end of the world would have to come pretty much right after we had communion because otherwise

I didn't think that there was really hope for me. As time went on through the years, I developed a lot of anxiety.

I just lived in that place, kind of back and forth and trying, eventually giving up, just living kind of how

I wanted. Then getting back into fear and trying really hard. Whenever I was trying was actually when

I had more anxiety and more fear. So then I just wanted to give up because I could just live then.

But there was always the underlying guilt the whole time. And I didn't know what was wrong with me because I had no power.

I did not have power to live victoriously. I was always concerned as a minister about all these young people being baptized into the church and very few of them knew anything at all about Jesus.

Very little was being said. We wanted to be in the church. We wanted to be baptized to have the approval of the people.

That was what we were looking for. So a lot of my first experience was getting that approval.

But my conversion, I believe, was clear in what I understood at that time. When I came to know

Christ alone, where I had the peace in my heart, was probably, it was after I was expelled, sometimes where I would say that I could look up and I knew without a doubt

I was accepted and at rest seven, eight years ago. When I first heard about the

Holdemans, it was in a negative light because certain doctrines were lifted out as being false.

And so I knew ahead of time there were some issues there. But I didn't know how serious those issues were until I studied their own documents myself.

So the Holdemans began around the 1850s. John Holdeman, a 26 -year -old young man, broke away from the

Mennonites believing that they were bringing the truth with them. And so from that point, he believed and taught that the only truth is found in the church, the

Holdeman church, which is officially called the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite. And so from there, they've spread to different states and Canada.

He departed the old Mennonite church on a couple of points. One of them was that he felt like they weren't raising their children in godly ways and they were accepting unconverted people into the church, in his view.

One thing that I recall being driven home as a young adult, that John Holdeman, when he left the old

Mennonite church, that he took the candlestick of truth with him. We might say he saw himself as somewhat of a mini -reformer.

True doctrine, true understanding of doctrine, continued with him into a new environment, a new setting.

The truth of the Church of God, the New Testament church, made it through history and all the way into the

Holdeman structure, which we know as the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite. The theology in the

Holdeman Mennonites is not orthodox. Even at the gospel, they pervert who

Christ is. When you hear the testimonies of the people in the church, and then the bondage that these people in this group are under, they feel like they've been living on a treadmill and they can't keep up with it.

And then finally, the ones that come to Christ end up stepping off the treadmill and understanding the gospel and then just trusting in Christ.

My brother, he was planning to leave. Well, I told him all the things that people say.

Well, the church isn't perfect, but it's the truth. You're expecting it to be perfect, and it's not.

Basically, that's not fair to expect it to be perfect. He kept telling me, giving me facts.

And as I started looking into it, studying the church doctrines versus what the

Bible had to say about it, I realized it wasn't the same thing. I actually couldn't argue because it wasn't.

He was right. It was not the same thing. It wasn't what I had been taught.

So one day, it was kind of out of the blue, we didn't talk about things very much back then.

In our relationship, we really almost never did talk about spiritual things or we just didn't communicate a lot about anything beyond daily life.

And one day he asked me, If you could do anything you wanted to do with your life, what would you do?

And I remember I just felt like I went lightheaded and whatever, and I said

I would leave the church. And he's like, I was scared you would say that. So that's when we started really discussing it.

I was against it. I wanted to stay. I was just, don't worry about it.

It'll be all done. Out of sight, out of mind. It got to where for the first time in my life,

I pulled out my Bible and started studying and digging into it.

I think that was probably the first time in my life on my own I've done something like that. You wrote up papers.

I had papers and was writing notes. They wanted to have a visit with us, and I sat there and told them, crying basically, that look,

I wasn't going to leave at that point. Look, I need help. We need answers.

We want help with this stuff. I remember the one line for sure that was told a couple times, is they would just be like, you have a beef with the church.

I'm like, no, I'm here begging you for answers. And they never once,

I think there was one or two of them, that had brought their Bibles and never once opened them.

That's actually called an ad hominem argument, which is a logical fallacy.

You went in with a specific subject. You said, I need help. So they ignore the subject, and they attack your character.

And that happens all the time. I find that many of the Holdeman people cannot recognize logical fallacies.

Partly because they don't allow them to be educated beyond the 8th grade. There's no training in logic.

There's no training in fallacies. They don't train them to think critically at all.

I have a question. He's given us an indication there. What happens, like 1

John 4 .1 says, test the spirits. Paul commends the Brians in Acts 17 .11

as being more noble than the Thessalonians because they tested everything the Apostle Paul said.

Here's the Apostle Paul teaching. And they're like examining everything he's saying with the

Scriptures. Search the Scriptures daily. Exactly. So can you do that? Can you do that with the

Holdeman preaching and ministry and counseling? Can you do that with the Holdeman church?

You can if you want to see the exit door. My understanding, most of those who leave end up coming back, largely because of the fear that they've stepped outside of grace.

They're no longer saved. There is a formal excommunication, and they may not eat closely together.

It does create a lot of fear, fear of spiritual death. In Hebrews it says that Jesus became one of us, that he might destroy this fear of death that keeps us subject to bondage.

And fear of being separated from God is fear of death. It's a fear of spiritual death. And so many are held in that fear that if I do the wrong things, then

I'm out of step with the church. So there is a lot of people that are depressed, fearful, and anxious.

I know of, I think, at least one person who is, personally who's on antidepressants.

That's a common thing. Antidepressants is a common thing historically in the church.

They just, a lot of depression. I think their fear comes from not putting their faith in Christ and rather trying to keep up with man's rules and expectations, which always, that's just bondage.

The head council of the church makes decisions that are binding, and to go against it is sin. So they've set themselves up in a way that they're almost

Christ. They've taken the headship of the church, but they claim to be doing it under Christ, of course.

So there's written rules, but then there's understood rules of how you dress that may not be written down, but you feel the pressure and anxiety, and you'll know if the cold shoulder is being given to you.

You'll sense that you're not right in there with the click. I was young, got married, and really didn't put much, just basically lived my life to maintain membership, just trying to keep under that radar and it never really worked.

I wasn't chasing after Jesus, but I knew I wanted to be saved.

You know, the culture of saying that if you ever left this church, you're lost, so that held over my head.

Like, okay, I'll do whatever it takes to stay in just so I can be saved.

Well, that's not the gospel, that's not Jesus saving me.

That's not His blood covering me. I didn't know that. I was like, okay,

I'm going to study the Bible, and then I went through the

New Testament again and again, and I kept saying, something isn't lining up with our belief system that we're in and what

I'm getting from the Bible. Something's not lining up. You go then to church and you start to bring this out and you start to get the looks.

Like, hold on, we don't do this. And it bothered me.

When I used to have hair, they said, your hairstyle, you need to change it.

Okay, so I changed it. And then, your hairstyle, you need to change it.

So I cut it really short. So they said, your hairstyle, it's too sharp.

And I told them, I can't wait because my dad is bald. I can't wait until I can go bald so I can be done with that issue.

I would get to a point where I was just ready to throw it all out, even

God, just throw it out. I'm done. I can't handle it. I can't live perfect enough.

I can't drive the right, exactly the right vehicles. It didn't matter. I would change.

They would say, change this. I would change it. And then they would say, change this. I didn't gasp that, any of that.

So that turmoil is going on. I can't do this. I just can't do it.

There's a long distance between the leadership and the laity. It's a performance -based religion, so if you're performing and you can maintain your performance, you feel fairly good about yourself, and you feel like everything's going pretty good.

But when your runner runs out, you can't do it anymore. You can't pedal your own boat.

It's a way of life that people accept, but there's really, a lot of it, there's no blessing.

There's not the blessing of complete peace and rest. I grew up having a good time.

I had a lot of friends because of the way I'm wired and put together. I was part of the Holden structure for 32 years, having been born there and raised in the home of a pastor or a minister, as they call it.

It felt generally warm, and I knew that people cared for me and loved me, and I grew up knowing that from my parents as well.

I left my home area, Kansas, and went to California in 1965 and got married to my wife in 1966.

Grace and I had moved to a church plant by her uncle. We were encouraged to have home

Bible study groups, which we did for many years, actually, in our home. It was in that process initially that, as we studied the

Scriptures, we came to discover that we couldn't accept the traditional understanding that we had actually grown up with as a result of having studied the

Scriptures carefully. It was in 1976 when we were disfellowshipped from the Holden Church.

They said we were an error, and we felt like we couldn't recant. We had come to understand and know, based on Scripture and the freedom we have in Christ, knowing and believing that we were accepted in Him through faith alone, not having to belong to a certain group of fellowship people or Christian people or a certain church.

And, of course, that resulted in our excommunication. They tried to be gracious.

They tried to be kind about it. But it was a very difficult time, emotionally and psychologically, as well as spiritually, because of the negative emotions that rose out of that experience.

Certainly, it put our relationship with our parents and our siblings in a difficult spot.

They were very intent on observing what they called avoidance, like putting you aside, not sitting at the same table with them, reaching out, greeting of a handshake.

That represented fellowship to them, and now that fellowship has been broken by them, it puts you in a hard spot with your family.

And so some of that has mellowed at this point, after 40 -some years, as far as that goes.

I give praise to God for the work of Christ on our behalf, and He helps us through these times.

But it was very difficult, and it was difficult for them too, for my parents and my father in particular.

We have been alongside a couple families that came out of the Haldeman Church through excommunication.

The two husbands of the families that were coming out actually spoke at the council meeting and gave testimony, and one of them was delineating the errors of the church in front of the whole congregation when they were basically on trial.

It was a council meeting. They decided whether to put them on repentance, which is one step before excommunication, so you know you're in trouble if you're on repentance.

And so the one brother, he testified, spoke against the false doctrines of the church, and right when he sat down, the head minister stood up and said, this is the spirit we're against.

Like a typical group that's not in line with orthodoxy, you don't ask questions, you don't doubt, you don't question.

People that bring up questionable things about your doctrine, it's shaking the foundation of their hope.

It was difficult because I've watched this, I watched it enough times to know exactly what it was going to do to my family and to my husband's family and my friends.

I knew what it was going to do to them. I knew it was going to be very, very hard on them, and it was going to, they were going to be very afraid for me and for us, for our children, and I had started to question

God's existence. Like I was at the point where I couldn't get anywhere. So I was finally like, is there a

God? Like that's where I was at. For years, I had to went back and forth between this.

So then I, I just, that night I remember, it was just dark and quiet and I just prayed,

I believe you died for me. And I just had this instant wash of peace. And I would say after that I started to understand why it was so discouraging before.

Because after that I had a power that wasn't for me, and I knew it wasn't for me because I had tried and I couldn't do it.

I can't live something that's not biblical.

You start studying their literature and they'll use a verse to support what they're saying.

You look up that verse, you look at the context of the verse, there's too many times where it'll be the complete opposite of how they're using it.

You can't misuse scripture. Their doctrine of one true church, that's not in the

Bible. Menno Simmons had a very different view of the church than John Haldeman did.

Menno Simmons believed in a view of the church just like we would. And I'm paraphrasing, but he says this,

A church is a communion of believers who have been rightly baptized, who have covenanted together to follow

Christ. And it's a very simple definition. Well, John Haldeman comes along and he invents this radically different view of the church.

John Haldeman comes along and he claims that with him, he's starting a one true visible church.

John Haldeman said this, God made no covenant with any other church.

And it was only them that were given to unite all regenerated children of God in one organized visible church of God.

Now there's a distinction within Haldeman doctrine between the church and the kingdom where there's many believers outside of the church who are part of the kingdom.

So he used two concentric circles to describe this. And this is in their official doctrinal book. Two concentric circles.

One, the inner one, is the church. The outer one is the kingdom. And those believers who are not part of the church are only part of the kingdom.

They're not part of the bride of Christ, the body of Christ, the church. They're just believers. And one of the main scriptures they would use is from John 10 verse 16 where Jesus says,

Other sheep have I that are not a part of this fold, them I must bring. So they consider those outside of the church.

There are other Christians that need to be brought into the fold of the church. The scripture only talks about one group of believers.

Throughout scripture you don't see a division between this kind of believer and that kind of believer. The Christians are

Christians and they're part of the body of Christ. So that alone, just the whole picture of the

New Testament speaks of the body of Christ which is everyone who's been joined to Christ.

And we look at the book of Revelation as well. There's seven different churches. They're all called churches.

And yet we see each had different problems, different beliefs. And so the church is not just one visible group as they claim.

I think that Holdom and Mennonites need to understand that their group holds a view of the church that is very different from Menno -Simmons, very different from the

Waldensians, very different from any Orthodox group throughout church history. Matter of fact, this view of the church is more in line with Jehovah Witnesses or Mormons or any other cult group.

This view of the church that you're the only group in the world, that God is, you're the only church, that is a feature of a cult.

John Holdman said this, Outside the true organized church of God, the whole truth has never been found and neither will ever be found outside of it.

He will never reveal the whole truth to any other church. Now what is he saying here?

Well, what he's saying here is that that his group, the Holdoman church, has the whole truth.

And no other church, he uses the word church there lowercase, no other group has the whole truth.

Well, he's not talking about the scriptures because, you know, we have the scriptures, we have the same Bible. He's not talking about general revelation.

How are we in fact saved then? Are we saved by justification by faith alone? Or are we saved by belonging to the correct church?

Your trust and faith is shifted from I'm clinging to Christ, I'm believing in Christ by faith to I'm trying to keep my membership in this church and keeping good standing with the elders and everyone else.

And if I leave, I'm in trouble, so there's fear there. The one truth church issue is one thing they won't talk to you about.

And even when I was in there, I wouldn't talk about it. We didn't want to talk about it.

In fact, in our community, we've had a couple of other people that, you know, were acquainted with some of the

Haldeman group. And they would like to challenge us about the one true church teaching.

They would start having Bible studies. The Haldemans were thinking they were getting these people to come to the

Haldeman church. But then they were always asking about the one true church teaching. And it wouldn't be very long, they'd be upset, and they'd say, we don't need to have that Bible study anymore, that ain't working.

And it'd be all dismissed. And any time, since I've been out, tried to talk to them about it, there's no open door to talk about it because there is, they don't want to discuss it.

After being raised in that and always looking up to those ministers, those ministers that come for revivals and always watching that,

I was elected. I never went to seminary. I'd studied the Bible some, but supposedly by inspiration, you're supposed to just automatically know how to preach.

Well, I did the best I could. And some of the things that I studied and the things that really meant something to me were a lot about who

Jesus was. And that was a lot of what started the process for me of coming to where I am today because many a night

I would sit and study different books and different old preachers.

Spurgeon was one of them that really impressed me. I would read them sermons and we'd sit there, and my wife would sit there with me and we'd just cry because this is the gospel and we had never really heard it before.

So it was so impactful. We would just sit there and cry. So when

I'd get up and preach and everything would just be dead, I'd walk off the rostrum and nobody would say a word because He wasn't precious to them, it didn't seem like.

They wanted to hear more about submission to the church, getting our clothes right, having the right car, and a lot of those kind of things.

And it was very disappointing. They definitely want you to go to these annual meetings every year, which

I wanted to go. I was an eager beaver preacher and I wanted to get up there. So after starting going to those meetings, it was all about regulations.

And I've got a whole stack of minutes over there. I could get them out and just start going through it. Every talk, it's about big collars on dresses or the head covering being too small or young people wanting to play ball too much or the weddings are too big or they can't be driving the wrong car or they can't be wearing the wrong shoes.

Most of the time, we'd be there three days or longer and not ever a word being said about who

Jesus is and our faith in Christ and getting people to come to understand who He really is.

And I'd start talking to my wife on the way home. I'd say, I don't know what the deal is. The only answer we have, we don't talk about.

The only answer to people's real heart need, what really changes the inside, we say nothing about.

We just talk about getting everybody in this little box and corralling them enough that they'll all be good church members.

A couple of our really good friends got into trouble with the church over this one church doctrine.

We go, what is going on? Because these people, we know they're

Christians. They follow Jesus. We know that. And we really hadn't had this conversation.

A lot of this stuff is kind of hush -hush. So we went back to the Bible to study this and it's not in there.

One true church, visible church. We said, this isn't right. This is, this is, this is false.

And that really got us going on this journey. There had been a few times when

I was in the Mennonites where I would think, what if this isn't quite the right church?

What if we're wrong? So I had a few of those thoughts and when

I did, it was, I'd say beyond fear.

I was terrified of that question. I did not want to ask that. So I just shoved it down.

Didn't deal with it. When I came out, I was just so amazed by the praise that people can show

God and just be so intimate. I got involved with a Bible study group. That's where I found

Jesus and it was just full of life. There was around 20 members right at first.

Then it, it grew so fast. Every week, there was probably one or two new members.

The intensity of it just brought true

Christianity to me. It's that community of different believers out there that are so intimate with the

Lord that are really pulling you through. And me being 19, it's like so important for me.

At the church we go to now, I came in and I sat down beside an older gentleman and I looked over at his

Bible and I saw it full of highlights and notes and post -its.

And he spoke and the word just flowed from him. And I thought,

I'm going to sit here and I'm going to listen because I don't have anything. But here you came from the group.

Here I came from the group. The only group. And none of us have been to seminary.

None of us have really been into very clear Bible study. We've studied the Bible through our childhood but not, not with somebody that understood

Scripture and context and all of these things to actually help you come to a clear understanding of how to use

Scripture and how to, where we just put in, so we're just plopped into this. Therefore the system is set up for people to fail.

It's set up for ministers because I think many of them go into, they arrive at that place and they're well -meaning.

They want to see people come to God but they really don't know about the

Gospel very clearly. They know a little bit. They've heard talk about Jesus but it's mixed in with the system.

It's not a clear teaching of Christ being first in everything and my trust being completely in Him.

These little kids growing up in this church, every Sunday they come to church one way or another, they hear that we are the only ones.

Every other church is part of the world and so in order to get the approval, which the whole system is built on the approval of one another and of the higher ups, so these little children, they, when they're growing up, the little girls want to wear that head covering.

It's not hard to make them wear it. They can't wait until they can put that on because that gets the approval and this was something

I was very concerned about. It really bothered me a lot and I couldn't get through it. They can't make up their own mind.

They have to have the approval of their brethren. I can't, as a Holdeman Mennonite, I wouldn't be able to say, this is my conviction, this is what

God wants me to do. I would have to pass all of your proving. We was focused on the system but not on Christ.

Christ was over here on the side. We focused on all this other stuff and then added

Christ to it. So I grew up in the Holdeman Mennonite Church and that's all

I knew. So I got baptized when I was 13. It was after revival meetings and I felt convicted, felt like I was a sinner.

I went outside and stood on the top steps of the church and just kind of sighed a prayer and I felt relieved and so that's what

I was baptized on but nothing changed in my life. I mean, I didn't read the

Bible, I didn't pray. Nothing changed at all. At 18, I had what they call the death sin so I was excommunicated and got re -accepted.

You know, you're just desperately trying as hard as you can to fit into the mold because this is the only life you know.

And so then I got married at 20. One child. And then I got excommunicated again.

All this time, I didn't know it at the time but I was self -medicating. Deep emotional pain.

And so after that, when I got re -accepted, I just, I call it swimming.

I learned how to swim. From then on, I didn't give out as much information about myself. Finally, I've accepted this is just Christian life.

I don't know anything any different. And you know, you talk to people and they say this is, I mean, this is it.

So I just thought, well, okay. You know, I'll just ride it on out.

So then at 49, I got called in that revival and that was the year they told me it appeared like I was born again and never converted.

Which means I possibly had found forgiveness of sins at 13 but then

I never converted from the old life to the new. Well, it kind of made sense a little bit because,

I mean, if I found forgiveness of sins, I knew I never converted from the old life to the new.

All right? But it only made sense because I didn't know any better. So then at 49,

I was excommunicated. I tried to get back into the church. Couldn't seem to make it work. And at 53, on 4th of July, we had all the children over.

By then they're all married, got grandchildren, had a great time together. And the 5th of July, her phone rang and she said, oh, the children want to come over.

And I said, what the world? They were just over yesterday. You know? She said, oh, they just want to come over.

I said, okay, fine. So they come filing in the house, sober as drudges. I don't know if they met somewhere, all four vehicles, and drove in together or what.

Hand me a piece of paper. So I'm reading it and I knew immediately that they hadn't wrote it.

It wasn't their phraseology. It wasn't their terminology. It was a word curse. I mean, no hope.

Zero hope. And said, because you were verbally, emotionally abusive, we think mom should be taken out of the home.

And I mean, I just kind of went into shock, you know, because this is out of the blue. I had no clue this was coming. And then she walked back to the bedroom and I went back there and she gave me a hug and she said, this isn't my idea.

And I'm just in shock. And so she left and I went and talked to the preacher and I said,

I don't know what to do. He said, yeah, we've talked about this. I said, I don't know what you're talking about. I said, what do

I do to get her to come back? And he wouldn't tell me. Of course, it was August by then and extremely hot.

I mean, I was mowing five acres twice a week and getting behind and doing my own laundry, doing my own cooking and trying to keep the house clean and trying to run the business.

And I said, I think I'm just overwhelmed. That was an incredibly dark time in my life. But I was telling the preacher, well,

I'll try to do whatever I have to do to make it work. And I started getting frustrated because I didn't know what to do.

Nobody would tell me what to do. I didn't know what to find. And so I kept going up the food chain, you know.

I said, well, I started putting some pressure on him. I said, look, I'm not sure that this is of the

Lord. Well, you know, we didn't do it on our own. When we were helping a couple families that were trying to leave the church, there was a council meeting.

And before the council meeting, where they discuss whether to put this person on repentance or excommunicate them, they go and they talk to those who are in trouble, who are maybe in sin.

And they asked this one couple, and I was there in the room, whether each of them stood together.

Like, did they take their stand to leave the church against the One True Church doctrine or whatever it was.

And the wife specifically said that she stood 100 % with her husband. When it came to the council meeting, the elder, one of the elders, said she said she stood with her husband, but I could sense

I don't think she really did. And so they got put in two different categories of church discipline or one was put in church discipline and the other wasn't, which creates this separation, this attempted divide.

And we've seen this with couples. They're not afraid to separate them to a degree in order to keep one.

They'll definitely keep one in the church. They won't encourage them. Well, you need to be united. You need to worship in the same place and be in the same place.

They'll bring some separation between the couple spiritually if they can, just to keep one of them in the church.

Everybody knew basically that when they took my wife away from me, it was a terrible thing. It was completely unfounded, unjustified.

But nobody dared to say anything about it because if they did, they'd be the next one on the chopping block.

So I called this preacher and I said, what do I gotta do to get my wife back? And he said, well, don't you think it'd be nice if you had an experience with God?

And it clicked. This is manipulation because I'm not under their jurisdiction.

I've been out of the church for four years and they're forcing me by taking her away for me to have an experience with the

Lord and come back to the church. Right? And so then I started to push back pretty hard.

I said, if this is such a good idea, why don't you go to the mission field, separate all the men and the women, tell the men when they get right with God, they can have their wives back.

I mean, that'd be a great idea, right? They got really, really worried that I was gonna sue them.

And I said, I'm not gonna sue you, but they got just fierce worried. And so a local preacher come over one day and he said, sir, what do you think about having your wife coming home?

I said, do whatever you want because that's what you're gonna do anyway. So they sent her home.

She lost a bunch of weight. She didn't, I mean, she was stressed out too. You know, this is hard on both of us.

And, but it didn't go very good. The marriage trust was broken because now

I know I don't have first place in her life. All these mother men do. She's gonna follow them.

And she told me, she said, I knew it would never work for me to leave you. But she said, they just kept saying, well, you just keep praying about it.

You keep praying about it. This is all behind my back. Okay. And so how do you have a relationship if there's no trust?

Well, you don't. It's not a very good one. When she was still gone, I read a little book and the light switch come on.

All you have to do is accept Jesus. I thought, where in the world have I been all my life?

I didn't know it was that easy. I had no idea. So I knelt down that night and prayed and I said,

I accept Jesus. I'm a sinner. I can't save myself. I accept the blood of Jesus. And I felt tremendous relief.

I mean, I just like, everything was changed, you know? And so from then on, everything was changed.

It was like I got a new wanter. I didn't have all this pressure inside. I didn't want to sin.

If I sinned, I just said, God, I'm sorry I sinned. I'll try to do better, you know? Understanding the grace of God and the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ, how totally free that is to us, and how that Jesus as our high priest now, he always applies that to us in the life of sanctification.

There's freedom in Christ. Where the Spirit is, there's liberty. We started digging into the incarnation.

We were told we weren't supposed to look at certain websites, like there's one called The Holdemans, and I started going there and reading things.

And it started making sense to me why I didn't understand what the gospel was. I didn't know.

I knew Jesus died for my sins, but I didn't know why that mattered. Like, okay, he died and that saved me, but why?

Without a human sacrifice in our place, we're left without a

Savior. And that's a big deal. With cults or false groups, one of the first things you look for is how do they speak about Christ?

What's their doctrine about Christ? Do they tamper with his deity or his humanity?

The Holdemans believe something false about the person of Jesus, specifically his humanity.

So we call this doctrine the incarnation. All doctrine, all teachings important from Scripture, but we have to hold to these doctrines.

So one of them is the incarnation of Christ, that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, came to earth, became a man, and he died as a man.

He rose as a man. He is the only way to salvation. It's through him. This doctrine of the

Holdemans, the Holdemans will not know about for the most part. Many of the leadership, I think, would know, but the lay people would not.

But it's in their official publications, whether it's the Bible Doctrine and Practice book, which is their doctrinal book, or the

Messenger of Truth, they say that the physical body of Jesus is an eternal product, was an eternal product from heaven.

Now that doesn't sound like a human body. Human bodies, they come from the lineage of Adam. They're not eternal products from heaven.

So there's this idea of a celestial flesh. It's confusing because some places it says he was fully human.

Other places it says God prepared a body of celestial flesh, or something about celestial material.

Some places it says he made sure he was not of Mary, he was just in Mary. He couldn't have been, he couldn't have been human because the fall of man was so great that he would have had sin, inherent sin.

Jesus took no flesh from Mary, so basically Jesus was just in the womb of Mary, incubated there.

No physical connection as far as humanity goes. Certainly not to Joseph, which we would hold to as well, but with Mary there's no human lineage.

They would say that Jesus was not a physical descendant of David and Abraham. And part of this comes from the teaching of Meadows Simons.

He was off, at least at some point in his life, he was off on this doctrine and taught that Jesus took no flesh from Mary.

So they would say things like Jesus was in Mary but not of Mary. First John 4 says,

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God.

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God.

Every spirit that does not confess that Jesus has come in the flesh is not of God. So this is a litmus test of the spirit of God in a group or in a person.

Can they confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh? And so when we look at the confession that Jesus came in the flesh, it needs to be defined biblically.

What flesh did Jesus come in? Scripture says he was a physical descendant of David and Abraham.

He was true man of true man, just fully human. So this is, once again, one of those essential doctrines and the

Holoman Church speaks about the human body being corrupted. Morally corrupted.

Not just the heart, but the human body being morally corrupted so that, they say, it is not fit for a sacrifice for sin.

So it's actually a resurrection of Gnostic doctrine, which is a heresy in the early church where the physical things, not just in the heart, but actual physical objects, including the body, are corrupted.

They're morally corrupted. They're sinful. But the scripture does not teach that.

In Romans chapter 8, Paul says the carnal mind is enmity against God. They that are in the flesh cannot please

God. But then he goes on and says, but ye are not in the flesh. If you have the spirit of God in you, ye are not in the flesh.

But he's speaking to people in physical bodies like we have. So obviously, the flesh is referring to something, a corruption within, not the physical body.

And we know in 2 John, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh, such a one is a deceiver in the

Antichrist. Now what John is talking about is Jesus must take our human nature to save us.

The Haldomans teach, speaking of Jesus, he did not take his flesh from Mary.

His flesh or body became flesh, not of Mary or of any created substance, but only of the word of life which is come down from heaven.

This makes their view very clear on the Incarnation, that Jesus did not really take our flesh.

I think this is very clear that John is saying this is a huge problem.

He's calling it Antichrist. The early church picked up on this very early, and Tertullian, who was a church father, here's what he said about it.

The heretics contend that he took no flesh from the virgin mother. Arrhenius said something very similar.

Paraphrasing, he said he could not redeem us if he did not take our flesh. Starting with the prophecy back in Genesis 3,

God promises that the seed of Eve would crush the head of Satan. And Menno Simons would have taught that was a spiritual seed, but we go on through Scripture and we see that God promised to David, from your loins will come the

King, will come the Messiah. And then Peter, on the day of Pentecost, he echoes that prophecy and he says that the seed of David according to the flesh, so this is a physical descendant of David, would come.

And then in Romans 1, verse 3, it says that Jesus was of the seed of David according to the flesh.

Now Paul's making it so clear, he could have said Jesus was the seed of Abraham, the seed of David, but he's very clear in saying according to the flesh, it's a physical descendant.

Now in regard to what they say about Jesus being in Mary but not of Mary, we have

Galatians 4, for in the fullness of time God sent forth his Son made of a woman, made under the law.

This is clearly talking about someone who has humanity. He came from a woman and if you think of the terminology that's used in Matthew 1,

Mary was with child. In any other context, this kind of language when it talks about Mary's pregnancy, it's a pregnancy.

It's a human being inside of her. It's not some celestial flesh or something different.

So we go on to Hebrews 2 where it says that since the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he himself also became partaker of the same.

So Jesus was partaker of the same flesh and blood as us. As I said, many holomans that are just lay people within the church don't know about this doctrine and I brought it up to someone and they said,

I don't know. I'll have to check. So he went and got his doctrinal book and he came back later and said, yeah, that's what we believe.

So even there, I'm not sure how much that person really believes it. I would be harder on a leadership position that taught this.

I do believe that there are true Christians within the holomans that in spite of the system of belief and leadership that there are believers maybe that came in as believers, didn't know what they were getting into.

And so I try to be careful and gentle in sharing with them, not knowing where they're at, but helping them see the errors in the church and that this is not a healthy system to be worshiping in.

When you start understanding who Jesus is and you start showing grace, that doesn't work in that system.

As I became more enlightened about who Jesus really was and who he really is and as he began to have more effect on my life and the more

I seen about that and I seen how we were treating people, the more convicted

I was. So I started talking about that and that run me into a lot of trouble because at one point in time they had already set me down and said

I was not supposed to preach anymore and they took all my responsibilities, my conference.

I don't think any of them could tell me anything I'd done wrong. I don't think they knew what I did wrong.

So anyway, at one point in time in that process, it took about five years before I was expelled.

They said some nice things about me and then had a ballot vote by the whole church about their confidence of whether I should be restored as a minister.

The ballot vote came back 100 % that I should be restored. 100%.

That was the most discouraging thing that I'd ever seen because now I knew for positive there's nothing to none of it.

They had this great big concern. They took me off all these committees. They wouldn't let me preach and nothing changed.

My opinion was just the same or stronger and now everything was fine.

So now they were saying okay, now go on, continue preaching. Well here

I came. They were discussing a certain situation with a certain person that was from the community there and they were getting ready to expel him.

One of the older ministers said you know, I think we've done everything we can for him. Well I knew about the situation.

I looked at him, I said well I don't think we've done anything. We've never talked to him about Jesus. I said when are we going to start that?

I said if we ain't talked to him about Jesus and who he really is and how he cares about him, I said how are we going to help him?

It got real quiet when I said that. About a week later, the big dogs, the counseling committee showed back up and I was on repentance then.

Of course I wasn't backing up on those kind of statements. I believed that with all my heart. I knew people needed

Jesus. They don't need these regulations. They need Jesus is who they need. They didn't want me saying that kind of stuff because this guy didn't look right in their church.

See he probably had some actions and some things he was saying that didn't fit in.

So instead of coming to him in a gospel way, better to get rid of him.

Menno Simons, he would have been adamantly opposed to this group.

Yes he would have. Because he was a solo scriptura guy in principle,

Bible alone. When groups came along,

Anabaptist group came along. He was very hard on men who started sex with supposed revelations adding to the

Bible. He called them corrupt sex. Here's what he says at one point.

Quote, I am no prophet who can teach or prophesy otherwise than what is written in the word of God and understood in the spirit.

Once more, I have no visions nor angelic inspirations nor do

I desire such lest I be deceived. The word of Christ alone is sufficient for me.

This sect would draw the rage of Menno. Menno Simons. Because they add to scripture regulations and rules that God has not imposed upon the consciences of men.

And he was absolutely opposed to that sort of thing. And so then to call yourself a Mennonite is radically dishonest.

Yeah. And especially when they use Menno's belief system to promote

John Holden's ideology. Yeah. That is incredibly dishonest. I don't feel like people are intentionally unkind.

I feel like they're genuinely they're operating out of their belief system that they have been taught.

And they genuinely are concerned. And some of the way that maybe the things that have been said it's not it hasn't been to be mean or anything.

And I don't feel offended about it. So I know that that's something that people think is you get offended.

You're offended. One of the things they'll do to disregard what you have to say is to say you're just offended.

And then they feel that's such a common thing for them to say. You're offended or you're proud. But just to alleviate that and say look we have nothing against the church.

We're not trying to attack anyone. We're here to share the truth with you. We love you.

And we want to share the truth of the gospel with you. And our motive is love. And the truth is the truth.

And we need to love the truth above all other things whether it's our social connections our church our works.

We need to love the truth. As 2 Thessalonians says loving the truth so as to be saved.

Otherwise those who don't love the truth are setting themselves up for further deception. There's a lot of things that we are told as we grow up in that culture that are meant to make you afraid of thinking of leaving.

And one of those would be you will never find anyone. You will never find other people who care about you.

You'll never find community like this. You'll never find other people who care about you like this. If you can go to any

Holden and Mennonite church anywhere and you're going to hear the same things it's all, you know where else would you have that?

The answer to that is a lot of places. I would say where you're going to have that is any church that teaches the

Bible. You can find people in very unexpected places that are just as passionate about Christ as you are.

It's not true that you're never going to find anyone or that you're never going to have community again. That's just, it's not true.

If you want it, you can find it. Start looking for a church. Pull up their website and their belief statement.

What do they believe? Start there. Go. Like it.

Go again. Personally, I just have a great empathy for anyone that's going through the experience of being disfellowshipped and yeah, you know,

I just do and I pray for them when I hear about them. The grace of God is so immense.

There is life after the Haldeman experience. There is life, real life. I know our family think how can we do this to them and like our parents, their grandchildren and how

I see it is it's the better thing. Let them grow up where they learn and know that our girls are ready at four and six, no more than I did when

I was their age, by far. And you were. When I was way older. Up until 28 years old,

I don't know, like I didn't know what my purpose in life was as in spiritually and I can ask my four year old now, why did

God make you? And she can answer for his own glory. We are on earth to glorify

God. We need a Jesus that saves and a Jesus that raises us in the last day.

Jesus, a Jesus that had celestial flesh, that had a different flesh than ours. He couldn't die in our place.

He couldn't take our place under the wrath of God. And secondly, a Jesus who rose from the dead.

Paul says that if there was no physical resurrection of a human body, Jesus' body, then there's no hope of our resurrection.

He received a glorified body. He is our forerunner. We identify with his death, with his resurrection, and someday we'll be raised with him.