Interesting timing brother ...
I hesitate greatly but you are describing myself and situation to a "T".
This is the hard part...now there is a struggle in discerning with what I have been learning through SI, and reading "dead theologians". TO what the church looks like. I would think if many of these men would be around today, they would be floored and outraged!! Would the Lord call someone out of a fellowship for a season? I know this happened to Ray Comfort at onetime for about a year.
Just made mention in your other thread regarding David Wilkerson and this is redundant ... but the very message I linked was instrumental in my reasons for pulling out of the church as I knew it. To this date I have still not returned, I am "out of church" and I am really quite unsure just exactly where that puts me.
Though that particular message had been listened to half a dozen times prior and has nothing at all to do with the extraction, this line of yours summarises it completely; "[i]My conscience could not sit under this teaching any longer.[/i]" To back up a hair, first it was the realization of those things we were ... indoctrinated into under the whole sway of WOF and all that accompanies that. We shortly left that church, in fact I vowed never to again darken it's doors after they made a mockery of the terrible times shortly after 911. Interestingly, now that I notice it, both of these instances revolve around prayer. In the former, it was at a week day, special prayer meeting one or two days after the planes struck. I came after work broken and burdened over the entirety of it all, the madness, the sadness, the cruelty of the human condition ... so many things coursing through the thoughts. To cut the whole thing short, well that was the issue, it was cut short. Rather than allowing the mourning and mostly quiet, sobering aspects of prayer and petitioning unto God the scene changed dramatically with the Pastor 'sensing' they should carry on with what the preceding weeks subject matter was; Tongues.
From there my spirit was vexed as it turned into a mêlée of confusion and nonsense. Prompted to let go and 'open up your mind', to not 'quench the spirit' all of a sudden it was 30 people all speaking gibberish with no interpretation ... As bad as it was, as confused of spirit as I was, still I prayed and pointedly asked "Lord, if this is true, if you wish to speak through me than you will have to force open this mouth and do so, I will not go along nor fake my way through it." I was too much the coward to speak up, but my wife picked up on my body language and we had no small dispute over it all afterwards. The towers had fallen, thousands were dead, the eerie silence of sky's without planes and we were to just shift gears into speaking babble and be happy about it all. No. Never again. It was the end.
After a time, do not recall how long, a few months perhaps we went to another church, more subdued and the first time was to hear the father of the man who died after rushing the cockpit of the ill fated plane. It was an incredibly powerful expression and articulation, many tears .. it was more in his demeanor and disposition than anything that I recall him stating. We soon joined this church and even to this day, I harbor nothing but love ... However ...
It is still very modern and susceptible to the seeker\\purpose constructs, it's the whole mixed bag of things difficult to pin down into specifics. Which year I forget now but at the turn of it, New Years Eve they had set up a 24 hour prayer meeting which I had signed up for. Had it in mind to fulfill that obligation and then stay in the church all night quietly praying alone in the seats. On the way there had popped in Wilkerson's message once again and by the time I had arrived the sense of a shared burden had only been increased, was already of the same mind prior, the whole reason for going in the first place. To my disappointment, there was but the two organizers and myself. They had typed out the 'prayer requests' that were of a very generic sort, pray for this, pray for that. Very rote. It was all too structured and for my part ... forced, my spirit was again vexed and confused, it was all I could think but that the problem was with me, not them. Whatever the case again that same sense of [i]My conscience could not sit under this ...[/i] any longer. It wasn't a matter of blame necessarily, again felt I was the problem even with my sensibilities telling me otherwise, something was just wrong and I couldn't partake of it. I knew then as I decided not to stay, I couldn't stay, that I would never again return. I have been out of regular church ever since.
As you mentioned it is due in large part to all that has been absorbed through SI. I pray that is never taken the wrong way, it is in a sense neither here nor there, it is neither proof nor advice of anything. It may be almost paradoxical if all these dead men, these great men of God, (for they are, more than 'were') great in their articulation and expression of being used by God for His set purposes, the paradox would be how much they emphasized belonging to a local body if taken in total, in generalities.
Ultimately it is what is being taught that I cannot any longer tolerate, it is not a certain 'flavor' nor a personal preference nor even the fact that this is all constituted and rightly in my estimation as "old" that keeps me out of modern constructs and latching unto the past as it were. Frankly, I just do not know where or what I am supposed to do church wise. It's been a couple of years now, it is not a sort of conviction but it is also not something that has left me alone either.
Have gone to hear Zac Poonen and while he lived, Art Katz who could hold one spellbound if I could borrow that phrase loosely, for hours at time, tremendous how 4 hours of preaching could leave one thinking, but you have only just begun!
But even Zac seemed out of place where I heard him, I am sorry it is a difficult thing to explain and I would spare the criticism for something more alarming, like this confusion in Florida presently. The gathering of the saints from our lot at the conference last year in Canton ... The wonderful chills run up my arms as I write ... here was the church and if I am biased, so be it. Such a collection of ... 'oddities', the head covered and the not so, even the reference made to the fact from a unknown brother was a tremendous moment. Faces to names that have long tarried here, that strange thing of knowing them well that it made such little difference, it is knowing them in spirit and truth if there ever was evidence of it. It was the peace of the sanctuary upon arrival and all the load of this busy life and responsibilities and heart break and family and finance and ... falling off like a load of bricks crashing to the floor. It was the brother who sat down beside me from New York (or New Jersey perhaps it was) somewhat perplexed over "Who organized these men together?" He was not very fond of a certain representative and speaker that was present, having some theological as well as practical issues with their ministry, but had come to hear Carter Conlon. That, in itself was telling and spelling of it all. Different ministries with perhaps different emphasis but at the [i]core[/i] ... true believers anyway you sliced it and all still of one mind. It was as challenging in reality as it is here daily, a variety of perspective from a core that is ... sound.
And if anything that lone word is what may summarize where I am personally. I am just as ready to go back as stay out. It is a very difficult time and much confusion abounds, in fact this whole Florida business has me quite vexed and I cannot shake it though I am already well past weary of it, it keeps coming back to haunt me and I have written pages of expression that I keep returning to try and ... the thrust of it is over [i]confusion[/i] and it is full of confusion itself! Somethings wrong.
Brother it gives new meaning to "turning over in their graves". So many of these men saw this on the horizon in their day, just the likes of Tozer and Ravenhill, only some 40 to 50 years ago. Their 'prophetic' insight is a far cry from the nonsense of crystal ball like pronouncements that pass off as prophecy in our day.
I don't know what all this is saying as answer to your question, can only be as forthcoming as I ought. Something sound, something with pathos, from the gut, with guts, with courage and adamancy in love, something from the core of our being ... Just give me reality and truth and honesty, otherwise I cannot bare it any longer, cannot bare the false things and the falsity of spirit.
