TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

A LETTER OF PAIN

I wish to emphasize that this factual account is not written in any spirit of revenge or vindictiveness against the Exclusive Brethren. In the spirit of Christ I have refrained from exposing those who were once my friends and associates and who through fear and ignorance were led astray by their leaders who demanded complete obedience and subservience. Apart from one letter to the Minister of Justice at the request of a Member of Parliament I have never taken steps to publicly expose or condemn those who have so ruined my life and the lives of others, but now I feel the time has come to speak out, as others are beginning to do, in order that more lives may not be destroyed.

I am now on my own and 76 years old. Nothing can ever make up for the misery I suffered, and am still suffering, from the cruel and heartless actions of The Exclusive Brethren. The time has come to speak out and have their alleged malpractices investigated. I would be the first to admit the some who have left the Exclusive Brethren appear to have done so for wrong reasons and in so doing have brought into disrepute those who have had a genuine exercise as to the unscriptural teachings and practices that have come into vogue particularly in the last fifty years. A small, very vocal, minority has attacked the very foundations of Biblical Christianity, truths that are held by evangelical Christians with no connection to Brethren of any party. Separation of God’s people from the world and from false doctrine is found in the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, ever since God divided light from darkness, and this truth is held today, not only by Brethren but, by evangelical Christians of many denominations. Those who speak loudest about separation being the cause of all the misery handed out by Exclusive Brethren should read the sermons and writings of men like Spurgeon and McCheyne and see for themselves that godly men of different denominations have taught separation as an essential element of Christian walk. The difference is that those men knew how to apply it but the Exclusive Brethren do not.

My upbringing in the Exclusive Brethren in England was relatively happy until, in my early twenties I began to question some of their new doctrines and practices. Despite this I remained in the fellowship at the time of migrating to New Zealand in 1959 where, two years later, I married a girl in the fellowship. During our courtship I demurred over a proposed action by the Brethren on the grounds of conscience, and was told in no uncertain terms that I had no right to an individual conscience but only “an assembly conscience”, meaning that I was bound to abide by every whim and fancy of the assembly. This should have been a warning to me that I should have discussed in depth with my fiancée, but did not do so, being intent on going through with the marriage which took place in 1961, and in 1962 our first child was born. In the next five years, during which three more children were born, I lived through what became known as The System. At the head of this system were John and Bruce Hales, father and uncle respectively of the present world leader Bruce Hales. During this period these two men with others in their wake, brought many Brethren’s businesses close to financial ruin by their hare-brained manufacturing practices. Both were in reality clever operators who could have risen high in the business world. I remember at one meeting in Motueka with Bruce Hales Snr, he was giving a rundown on all his qualifications and opportunities when he said, to the shock of many, “..and I gave it all up to serve you scum!” Such was his estimate of those who were under his power and leadership. When I was still a teenager at home Bruce Hales came to work for a while in the city where we lived and he had board just round the corner from our home. On nights when there was no meeting he would come round and spend hours with my father (a keen J.T. supporter) to pick his brains regarding J.T’s ministry.

This Bruce Hales’ father-in-law was Jim Taylor, the then world leader, and he, seeing his position threatened, spoke out against the Hales brothers and the two were excommunicated by the Sydney assembly. Bruce was reduced to driving a taxi for two years, but I’m not sure what John was doing. John was in and out of fellowship two or three times before eventually becoming world leader in succession to Jim Symington. I understand Bruce was also taken back but never came again to prominence. Bruce Jnr, John’s son, became ‘the elect vessel’, i.e. world leader, on the death of his father about seven years ago and it appears to me that he is wanting to continue and extend the schemes that his Uncle Bruce set in train forty years ago.

Now to get back to my own story. In 1967 I had had enough of all the new regulations, e.g. compulsory kissing instead of handshakes between the men; keeping of Saturday as the Sabbath in addition to Sunday; separation of spouses where one was not in fellowship; the compulsory observance of the hours of 9, 12, and 3 for the Sunday meetings. In April of that year I gave notice of withdrawal from the fellowship and the Brethren firm I was working for took instant action against me. I was no longer allowed to eat my morning and afternoon tea either with other Brethren or the non-Brethren workers. My work was criticized because I had spent part of one Saturday morning helping to prepare a small exhibition planned by the firm, and six months later I was dismissed. Two other non-Brethren staff members were so disgusted at my treatment that they too left the firm.

During these six months I was subjected to the usual relentless visiting by ‘the priests’ in an effort to persuade me to change my mind. Just at this time J.T.Jnr was teaching that children should be allowed to break bread as soon as they were old enough to reach out for the elements and I was being pressured into allowing my children to break bread. This teaching is a serious denial of Scripture that teaches plainly that the Lord’s Supper is to be partaken of by those who, in the unity of the Spirit, belong to the One Body of which the loaf is the emblem. Children of two years old or less are still unregenerate and while they may, arguably, be baptized, they should not be given the bread and the wine until they have reached the age of responsibility and made a commitment to the Lord Jesus as Lord and found peace with God as to their sins. This lays the foundation for their reception of The Holy Spirit who is given by God to those who obey Him. (Acts 5:32)                  The unhappy result of this teaching has been that hundreds of unregenerate, and therefore unrepentant, children have been partaking unworthily and thereby eating and drinking judgment to themselves. (1Corinthians 11:29) From time to time one comes across one of these young people who, by their language and their life, show clearly that they have no spiritual life. What a heavy responsibility lies on those who promulgated this wrong teaching. But this was only the beginning of a long line of false teachings that followed after I had left; these I will deal with later.

No sooner had I left the fellowship than my wife refused to live any longer as my wife. She would not eat at the same table or the same time; she refused all sexual relations; she carefully locked the door when she went for a bath. During this period our youngest son was born. In 1969, on the pretext of going to her parents for a holiday, and with a promise to return at the end of three months, she left me for good and while I was away for a weekend she came with a lawyer and a removal truck and emptied the house of every single thing, leaving me nothing to sit or sleep on, nothing to eat or to eat it with. Months later the things she didn’t want were placed outside her parents’ home for me to collect. There was nothing with which to furnish a home and I was left to buy a very inferior house with the money that came to me from the sale of our house, and to furnish it as best I could. By court order, which my wife strongly opposed, the children came to me for half of each school holidays and I was allowed to take them out every other Saturday. These were usually not happy occasions as the children had been brain-washed about me. They had even been instructed not to sing the hymns at the meeting I attended and to which I took them. She later had this access order quashed on the grounds that the children didn’t want to come to me. Previously the judge had warned her against poisoning their minds against me, something evident to him from questioning them in private, and said he would grant custody to me if the poisoning continued, which it undoubtedly did.

About six years after my departure from the sect [relationship to writer removed*] committed suicide after finding himself in a similar position to mine. He had protested about the drunken and loutish behaviour of young exclusives on the buses that conveyed them away regularly to visit assemblies in other towns. Either he was excommunicated for his protest or he left voluntarily in disgust (I’m not sure which) but his wife and children left him and went to her parents. One day he received a letter from his wife assuring him of her continued love for him etc., etc., and not long afterwards he received another letter in a very different vein informing him she would not be coming back to him. The poor fellow’s mind was turned and he took his life by carbon monoxide poisoning. He had been a respected businessman in the town and this led to a well publicized coroner’s inquest in which the coroner was outspoken as to the cause of death and subsequently was made to retract his remarks. To this day I am convinced his first finding was just.

In due course my five children have all grown up and married within the sect and I have at least 24 grandchildren and almost certainly at least one great-grandchild. Three and a half years ago, under directions from headquarters, my two older sons came to see me on two occasions to apologise for their treatment of me and to assure me it would never happen again. I asked them how long this new attitude would last and they assured me it would be until the Rapture. They lied to me .They wouldn’t have a cup of tea with me but they gave me photographs of their children and we discussed the possibility of their bringing wives and children to see me. This never happened. Later I met one of my sons-in-law in the street and he shook hands and was very friendly. He too promised to arrange a meeting with my daughter but this too never took place.

Their ploy was to get me back into the fold but when it became obvious that I had no intention of returning, they simply cut me off again and I have not seen them again to this day. This was all done under directions from headquarters as can be seen from identical things happening simultaneously all over the world. 

In 2006 we had the heaviest snowfall in 45 years and I was housebound for days, without power for 36 hours, and during this time not one of my children phoned to see if I was all right even though the conditions had been in the news all over New Zealand.

Many unscriptural doctrines and practices have come in since I left the sect. One of the first was that the responsibility of giving out hymns in the meetings lay with the women and girls. Now this is a flagrant refusal of the clear teaching of Scripture: 1. That women are to be silent in the assembly (1 Corinthians 14:34-37) and women are not to have authority over a man but to be in silence (1 Timothy 2:11-12). Clearly the giving out of a hymn in the presence of men is to take a lead and thus exercise authority over the men present; and many, probably most, of the young girls present are not yet converted. What confusion when the ideas of man prevail over the Word of God.

The Exclusive Brethren’s venture into politics is another refusal of the teaching of Scripture and the truth held by the early Brethren of all varieties. And the reason they give for not voting (that God decrees what government we have) is not the reason given by those early brethren. Of course God decrees the government: He sets up and puts down rulers as Nebuchadnezzar had to learn so it is not for the Exclusive Brethren or any other group to actively campaign against the government in power as the Exclusives did in New Zealand and Australia. We are to pray for governments so that we may live peaceful and godly lives and insurrection be put down. The reason many Christians do not vote is that our commonwealth is not on earth but in heaven where our home is also. We are strangers and foreigners in this world and we are seeking the world to come. If I travel as a visitor in a foreign land I have no right of franchise in that country, I am the citizen of a foreign land with no right to vote. When I observe the lifestyle of most Exclusive Brethren I see anything but pilgrims and strangers. Jesus would Himself be an outcast and stranger among them.

It saddens me that very few, if any, of those who have left the sect try to present the truth in a positive way to offset the evil; instead there is any amount of negative criticism, perhaps justified in its place, and condemnation of some of the cardinal truths of Christianity alongside it. People who forever feed on the negative will never grow in their souls; the thing is to be occupied with Christ and the positive truths of Holy Scripture so that we may become more like the One we follow and show by our lives the folly and destructiveness of error. I could write about the ridiculous teaching of Apostolic Succession (Paul up until BDH) which is the very soul of popery; I could write about their meeting halls and the way they hoodwink the local authorities; I could write about their leader and his private jet, but to do so would be unproductive. I could write about the disgrace of Aberdeen with all its filth, abusiveness, blasphemy and immorality but enough has been written about that to convince all but the deliberately blind and prejudiced. I would just ask the question: When did the prophets of the Old Testament or the Lord Jesus and His apostles in the New ever use immorality or abusive language and blasphemy to lay an ambush for their opposers? I shrink from even asking the question. The supposedly ‘pure’ man was, and had been before Aberdeen, as impure as a person might be. All the reasons for excommunicating a person, listed in 1 Corinthians 5:11, were evident in Taylor’s behaviour before Aberdeen, at Aberdeen, and after Aberdeen. Even to be occupied with those events is defiling in itself. I would rather dwell on the personal glories and perfections of our Saviour and the satisfaction that comes from a close walk with Him. By all means have a sound judgment of what is wrong but don’t be swallowed up by it. See it for what it is – false – but be occupied with the truth as it is in Jesus.

I am now on my own and 76 years old. Nothing can ever make up for the misery I suffered, and am still suffering, from the cruel and heartless actions of The Exclusive Brethren. But the Lord has been faithful and though I may not always have been faithful from my side, yet I know that He is mine and I am His – for ever!

13 October 2006 – revised 7 April 2009

[Name removed at author request]

[* The Exclusive Brethren, far from acting like Christians who wish to resolve harm they may have caused, resort to threats, intimidation and increasingly, litigation. The leadership reacts like the board of a huge international corporation, complete with full-time lawyers and a professional Public Relations company - Jackson Wells.

Due to the way the Exclusive Brethren intimidate, this site offers full anonymity to all who seek it. The writer of this article may be contacted via the Site Administrators:

Email: info@peebs.net
Subject: To Whom it may concern - April 4th, 2009

We will forward email to the writer providing contact information is supplied.]

Note from Author:

I would suggest to you that the case of Ted McGaveston of Motueka is well worth having a long and careful look at.

The story of Ted McGaveston can be read in the Peebs.Net Community Memorial Pages:
Web: http://peebs.net/In_Memoriam/
Blog: http://peebs.net/blog/category/edward-mcgaveston/

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