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What compelled me to believe in COBU
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Reasons:
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1. I was born there (spiritually)
2. No man ever spoke like this man (or so I thought. When you're young and impressionable and still a bit naive, it's easy to be sucked into the hype)
3. Our witnessing - how many times did I "open my mouth and he filled it?" You know people would ask, why did you ask that question when it had nothing to do with my "brilliance" but everything to do with God's spirit
4. Our unity
5. The comradery
6. The story about Jay Edelman getting stabbed in the stomache: the fellow withdrew the blade and seeing no blood dropped it in horror.
That was during the heyday of the New York Center. I was not there, but heard that story.
7. The bus that flipped over three times and no one was hurt except for the girl who was "not doing well with Jesus"
8. When I left COBU, all I did was pursue sin and only felt good when I was back home
9. the Bible studies. Where else did you hear stuff like this?
10. Where else would you meet someone like Richard Wurmbrand or Haralan Poppov?
11. What other fellowship read Matryrs Mirrors
12. Or Flavious Josephus?
13. We were it, weren't we?!
14. When I first got to the MTC, what I was thinking about that day, Stewart would address in the Bible study that night. (this stopped after a year)
15. What bad place would have its own orphanage?
16. I loved driving a van. COBU was a place I could do that
17. Jesus used to speak through a couple brothers to the fellowship. I was never ever present for one of these, but everyone, including myself, was always very excited
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We
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lived together like the early church in the book af Acts.
or so we thought. they met in living rooms. they didn't necessarily live
together,
but it spoke of sharing,
and therefore we did a lot of that
and you had to go against your flesh
to do that!
But then I started finding out about the creature comforts of those higher up in the hierarchy.
The sisters would come into the kitchen at the Church Home and get their ice cream. Sometimes I had to pick it up. And I was pretty sure, as I ran the food up at Woodruff for a while too, that the siters weren't privy to ice cream up there.
The "Stewart" sister know they're priveleged and they know it's unfair.
But they have a way to work off their guilt now: they go recruiting new people for the business on South Street three nights a week.
Stewart himself has been seen at the "Better Way Cafe".
A brother said it's the "Better Get Away Cafe".
That's more appropriate. Oh no, that's not Stewart, that's Howie Layton.
Oh, but a brother did try to talk with Stewart for two hours one night at the cafe.
Stewart was doing his usual numbers. There's no arguing with a sick mind.
Directing his questions through Reggie.
When was the last time someone was treated like a person?
Decades for this too, I'll bet.
One of Lifton's red flags: doctrine over person.
Hey, what doctrine? Forget about doctrine. That was just out and out belligerence!
"Where's that in the New Testemant, Reggie?" Stewart would ask.
The brother said well what about a hireling and beating your fellow servants? That's in the New Testemant.
Stewart was silenced.
But trying to talk doctrine with them is like trying to get a doctrinal point across to a Jehovah's Witness.
It has to be filtered through all the propaganda they've been fed. Their loyalty is to another place.
And even in our own fellowship - I was speaking with a brother once a few years ago and he said we've got to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. He was telling me how fearful he was, etc. They went through a phase and are probably still there where they don't presume they're saved and they fear God in the cowering way. They see something right about that. I guess it would feel good to the flesh.
Anyway, I replied, yes, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling - and what's next?
What?
What's next?
What.
What's right after that verse?
I don't know.
The brother didn't even know what followed that scripture. Another argument for not using proof texts.
Work out you own salvation with fear and trembling;
for God is at work in you -
God is the one doing the work
God gives the growth
both to will and to work for his good pleasure!
He's prepared the good works beforehand that we should walk in them.
It doesn't matter how much the Bible speaks of the finished work of Jesus Christ,
Stewart always has a way of putting it back on "U"
"U" - get it. They now have the gospel "U".
Which explains how it depends on you.
That is not the gospel.
No wonder it doesn't work.
Look at the fruit!
Belligerence.
Not the Spirit of Christ.
Sad.
Very sad.
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What got me out of COBU
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Boy, that's an involved subject.
I think just some survival mechanism in my innermost being drove me to sanity.
We all have it.
Our bodies are excellent machines. For instance, should you want to lose weight by starving (very unhealthy) you may do so.
But once your will power goes, and it will, the body protects itself with a vengeance.
It makes sure you eat plenty and put on even more weight, because hey, the brain deduces, this guy starves himself - we better put on more weight for self preservation. And thus the yo-yo "diet" syndrome goes.
I was in and out of COBU a lot. I thought I felt best when fully committed.
But it is impossible to maintain that standard without putting on a false front. I hate fakery.
So I always thought my not being there had something to do with my sin, which was quite often the case. And then to come back, you would have to confess to mommy and she would take you back in her arms and everything would be all right again.
But getting out for the last time. I was once again a fish out of water.
What now?
I remember one night over a brothers house some sisters started laughing. It was contagious. I was laughing, but I didn't know why.
I went home that night and was spiritually bouncing off the walls. (In Mike's testimony a brother was physically bouncing off the walls!)
I called the fellowship a few times and they told me that I knew where I had to be. And I wanted to be home safe and sound with mommy. But I knew I didn't want to be there.
In prayer, I was begging Jesus, tell me, do you want me to go back there or not? I was getting only silence. Then I stopped and I told Jesus, "Check that, I don't want to go back there".
And that seemed to settle it.
I felt settled in my spirit.
I had made up my mind. And a real peace came over me.
The biggest step of faith I had taken in a long while.
And now the slow process of healing could really begin!
I would wake up in the middle of the night and go over parts of Gene's book "Letters to a devastated Christian". I had been fighting out against the book finding fault with what it had to say.
Slowly but surely admitting that it was my view that was wrong.
What a life!
Ever hear of the Firesign's Theater album entitled: "Everything you know is wrong"?
It seems I've been there a few times.
The 1989 "grace" meeting was one point in time for many of us.
It's like being convinced there's no God and then getting a revelation of Christ.
A whole new universe opens up!
I remember voraciously reading the Bible and memorizing scripture so that I was just about a walking concordance.
When the brothers from the Center would see me from the MTC they would run Bible studies past me to get my take on it.
A memorable one was - they did some word studies in Proverbs and came up with a "wrong spirit" Bible study.
Words like sit, sat, slumber. Anything short of zeal and you were open to being a brother to him who destroys.
We drank coffee late into the night, our eyes being opened and amazed at what the Bible had to offer.
Yes, those were the days. The glory days. The former days.
Now, I have to stand on my own it seems. And it's shaky.
But you've read footsteps, haven't you? You know the one that ends with when there was one set of footprints, that was when I carried you.
I will admit to being carried a lot by Jesus.
Is there a better way to be carried? I know not any.
Getting out of COBU is tough.
An example of being carried that I can actually see:
The very last time I left in 1990, I went to a a girl friend's house. I had a few beers and I spent the night in the spare bedroom or on the couch. I remember thinking, I don't want to do this - that is drink and hang around these people.
The next day I was sitting on her front porch. A girl came out and approached me whining for money. She was trying to come on to me, but I was inwardly being repulsed. She went back into the house and I moved forward on the steps, closer to the street.
And from this vantage point, my sister-in-law saw me as she drove by. She stopped.
"Tom! What are you doing? Want to come have dinner with us?"
Her and the kids were going to meet my brother at the resaurant where he was manager. I went.
They are Jehovah's Witnesses and I felt ashamed that I had left fellowship, but I needed help and they provided it. They let me stay with them for a month or so.
Anyway, we're in the car going down 95. We get to the bottom of the ramp into Center City at Callowhill. I look over, and I step out of the car as we were stopped at the light.
And there in the sky was the widest, biggest, longest, most beuatiful rainbow I have ever seen!
So something in our innermost being cries to be free in a real way with Jesus. Not following Moses. No, no.
Did any one notice at the 1Jn3:9 Bible study where Stewart announced we weren't born again that he had 1st John written on two big white boards and he held them up and he looked just like Moses with the Ten Commandments.
Anyone notice that?
I don't think that was a coincidence.
Stewart loves getting over. But you knew that.
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