Still In Denial

Welcome to De-Commissioned, a place for former members of the Great Commission movement (aka GCM, GCC, GCAC, GCI, the Blitz) to discuss problems they've experienced in the association's practices and theology.

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[IWishToRemainAnonymous]

https://strongdisciple.com/portfolio/edition-80-when-hope-is-gone

Mark Darling writes:

"I had just finished the 4th month of the most brutal, painful, devastating time in my entire life. It was the end of April now and I had just watched my life and life's work destroyed by the wicked, despicable, slanderous lies of other people. It is not an overstatement to say I felt the life and hope drain right out of me. I felt destroyed inside and out.

I had been forced to watch helplessly as others did nothing to stop the cruel, savage wrecking ball that had been unleashed against my life, month after month. I was at a point that it genuinely felt like I had no future, and I was watching as my life was being burned to the ground. I had been publicly shamed, humiliated, maliciously slandered, lied about, treacherously betrayed, and it had horrible, life-long consequences. It was all extremely traumatic and I was feeling hopeless..."

[Ghost]

         Amen

[Ghost]

You now walk in the destruction..devastation..the ruins of what once was...the walls crumbling..stifling dust suffocates you...you choke..the tears billow out of the corners of your eyes..you walk in the ruins of your own destruction and chaos and mayhem you created and thrived on.....yes there is a god...a loving god..yet at the same time..a vengeful god..one who rights wrongs and injustices and those who take his name in vain and who are arrogant and not remorseful for their actions here on earth...you wrought destruction..devastation on those who worshipped you as a graven image and idolater for they followed you blindly....yes ..yours is in the now and present....for you have been cut down.........god be the glory

[Ghost]

OMG...dude you are seriously delusional comparing yourself and your wife to biblical figures in the bible...get a life...you are on the lowest level...not even that....just take the money and quit talking..does nothing for your street cred or so called reputation...you just a online huckster of the marky mark chronicles..of my life now.....just try fading away...you need to be given a Mr. irrellevant award now...............never was....poor pitiful you....

[Ghost]

Mark...quit comparing you and your wife to figures in the bible..such audacity and recklessness will get you nowhere..pride..arrogance..denial..failure to accept responsibility for your actions...deeds....when we deny God's word...we always come out on the short end of the stick. We are woefully poor (poor of spirit) of any value, any quality or characteristic one might even begin to imagine. We fall so far short of His holiness that it knocks the props right out from under any idea we might have to take pride in what we are.

If we are striving to be like Him, to walk in His steps, to be in His image,...Mark you have failed big time...

Humility tends to be the flipside of faith, because where the confident—the faithful, the trusting—will push themselves forward, the humble has a tendency to hesitate. It is a matter of restraint.

In the humble, there is a consciousness of emptiness, of potential weakness, of helplessness, of worthlessness. However, we should never get the idea that the humble are weak. Paradoxically, they are among the strongest of all people on earth! It all depends on one's perspective. In God's perspective, these people are strong, while from a human perspective, it depends on whom they want to impress.

Humility is so important that God gave Paul some help to make sure that he would stay humble (II Corinthians 12:6-10). Yet, if we would evaluate that, from the time of Jesus on, no one was more spiritually powerful than Paul. It all depends on one's perspective. Who is the humble person being compared with? In comparison with other men, Paul did not appear very strong, but when God looked at him, He liked what He saw—a powerful, effective servant of God.

This is so important because humility's dominant thrust is its willingness to submit to God and to what is right and true. Some, of course, would submit willingly to death if it would glorify God. Our level of humility, therefore, pretty much sets the tone of our relationship with Him and with others. In both cases, that is, with God and man, the humble esteem the other better than themselves. This quality will guard the unity of the spirit (Ephesians 4:3).

Humility or lowliness goes hand-in-glove with meekness. Meekness is a rather complex subject requiring many items to describe it accurately. However, it contains an evident element of restraint. The meek are kind, gentle, and sensitive to others needs. They are thoughtful, agreeable people. They are not aggressive, assertive, insistent, or argumentative. They are easily approached and easy to get along with. Again, we should not be mistaken: The meek are not weak. Certainly, we would not classify Jesus and Moses as being weak, but meek they were. They were firm and uncompromising regarding following truth, but they did not feel constrained to overwhelm those who were aligned against them...............meekness and humility...you possess neither................Mark you failed in life...leave the young girls alone...accept the truth..be a man accept what you have done....pride and arrogance and denial...that is your mark in life...admit defeat...admit your sins......to many people now you are simply repulsive and make people sick to their stomach ..the mere thought of you..the monster in you....................Mark I have compassion..love in my heart..humility and grace and most of all peace....you have none...for you are a soul less being..that is the difference between you and me.....may God have mercy on you...Mark the question is...who on god's green earth are you trying to impress...sorry...the show's over...the diseased tree has been chopped down....god be the glory

[Ghost]

Mark you are not Abraham or Isaac or Jerimiah...so why to draw comparisons..similarities....for you are simply a fool..deceiver..deceiver of self.....Self-deceit is an inherent part of man's emotional, mental and spiritual makeup. We have a hard time seeing it in ourselves because we are experts in hiding reality from ourselves and trying to hide it from others. However, we fool ourselves if we think we can hide our true nature from God.................Our nature seeks to exalt itself above others, to esteem itself "holier than thou." We see this in those who esteem themselves , while deeming all those around and not part of their group as "beneath" them ......... God will abase those who seek to exalt themselves, for He does not pay attention to the spiritually proud but to the contrite and humble........................the arrogance of a fool named Mark Darling....pity the fool.......The Old Testament prophecies broaden the scope of this problem. In type, we find both Isaiah and Jeremiah castigating the end-time church for deceitfully dressing itself up to appear more spiritually beautiful than it is, competing as the "fairest in the land" through an artificial, untrue depiction of itself......Only by careful study of God's Word, the ultimate standard of thought, speech and conduct, can we know what is right and wrong. We must follow our study with honest and truthful comparison of those words with our own lives. If we read the words of God and walk away, forgetting what we saw, we deceive ourselves. None of us compares favorably with what we read in Scripture, so we must make changes. James says our religion—our practice of God's way of life—is vain if we omit either the positive instructions (visiting widows and orphans) or the negative ones (removing the spots from our character)..........................................James spells out our commission to care for the needs of others as a true test of our real—as opposed to our self-perceived—righteousness. Hebrews teaches us to exhort one another frequently to avoid becoming hardened by sin's deceitfulness and jeopardizing our salvation, just as so many Israelites failed to reach the Promised Land, their carcasses falling in the desert.

Deceiving ourselves about our own spirituality and running from the truth we see in God's Word are serious impediments to overcoming. If we remove our self-imposed blinders from our eyes, however, we will have taken the first step toward overcoming—and toward God's promise of eternal life in His Kingdom!........................................................god be the glory

[Ghost]

Submit unto god...Psalm 23 King James Version (KJV)
 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

[Ghost]

Johnny Cash..the man in black........almighty god spoke to john shortly before his mission finished here on earth....in this god told john..you tell  them this....god is going to cut you down....almost like he was conveying a message himself directly to the Tree... Mark Darling..Brent Knox and their blinded..misguided  followers................so true you become what you are molded and shaped to be...........  "You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God'll cut you down
Sooner or later God'll cut you down...Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down.........................Well my goodness gracious let me tell you the news
My head's been wet with the midnight dew
I've been down on bended knee talkin' to the man from Galilee
He spoke to me in the voice so sweet
I thought I heard the shuffle of the angel's feet
He called my name and my heart stood still
When he said, "John go do My will!"Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em down
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut 'em downYou can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God'll cut you down
Sooner or later God'll cut you down

Well you may throw your rock and hide your hand
Workin' in the dark against your fellow man
But as sure as God made black and white
What's down in the dark will be brought to the light you can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God'll cut you down
Sooner or later God'll cut you down
Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut you down
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut you down
Tell 'em that God's gonna cut you down "
..................Amen.....................................Johnny Cash 's words so true...prothetic...you will be cut down by your own doing...the tree that is no more....brought down right before your eyes...answer to god above..but there are still remnants lurking of the stain on the fabric of Jesus Christ....the stain upon a community..a stain left upon a people..a stain left upon a group of then young innocent naive women.....the vestiges of Mark Darling and the Evergreeen Experience....what fools were we of little substance..shame on us for not seeing through the deception of the deceiver..a devil in disguise..a demonic entity....................god be the glory

[Huldah]

https://strongdisciple.com/portfolio/edition-80-when-hope-is-gone

Mark Darling writes:

"I had just finished the 4th month of the most brutal, painful, devastating time in my entire life. It was the end of April now and I had just watched my life and life's work destroyed by the wicked, despicable, slanderous lies of other people. It is not an overstatement to say I felt the life and hope drain right out of me. I felt destroyed inside and out.

I had been forced to watch helplessly as others did nothing to stop the cruel, savage wrecking ball that had been unleashed against my life, month after month. I was at a point that it genuinely felt like I had no future, and I was watching as my life was being burned to the ground. I had been publicly shamed, humiliated, maliciously slandered, lied about, treacherously betrayed, and it had horrible, life-long consequences. It was all extremely traumatic and I was feeling hopeless..."

I've read several of Mark's commentaries on that site. Several of them sound angry and unforgiving, not just toward the victims and their supporters, or toward the people who failed to support him (more on that in a minute), but even toward the child of another family who accidentally injured one of Mark's kids many years ago. In the latter case, it seems that Mark is still harboring resentment toward that child and his entire family thirty-six years after the event. (https://strongdisciple.com/portfolio/edition-54-the-hardest-thing-god-ever-asked-of-me). Probably the strangest article on that website is the one where Mark tells a follower to use Mark's own sermons for a quiet time. (https://strongdisciple.com/portfolio/edition-81-a-personal-note)

Now about the alleged lack of support: "I had been forced to watch helplessly as others did nothing..." That's a really puzzling thing for him to say. Considering the number of people who submitted pro-Mark testimonies on the pastomarkdarling.com site, those who came to this website to harass the victims and their supporters, the people who left Evergreen to support Mark's new ministry, and the friend who provided legal support for him, it doesn't seem to me that Mark was abandoned. Maybe he didn't get the support he felt entitled to from specific individuals, but to overlook all the outpouring of support that he did get seems kind of ungrateful.

[IWishToRemainAnonymous]

From your link:

"Some years down the road, my kids were in a teen group. They were striving to live uprightly, trying to do the right things while being kind to others and trying hard to be a good example of Christ. One day I got a phone call from the youth leader at my church, whom I had led to Christ, helped disciple, and get this job. He called me on the phone to set up a meeting with him and another leader. When I arrived they proceeded to tell me how my kids were proud and self-righteous."

Two vivid memories involving interaction with the Darlings came to mind when I read this.

One. The first time one of my children attended the youth group was a youth group car wash activity. My child knew no-one in the youth group and walked up to a Darling child who was conversing with another member of the youth group. My child was asked to leave by the Darling child as the conversation they were having was "private". This was a public youth group event. My child never felt welcome after that.

Two. While at the community college a number of Christians in Intervarsity ate lunch together. My children were told by the Darling children that their father asked them to not eat lunch at the table with the Intervarsity students because the Intervarsity Christians did not dress very cool (sweatshirts and jeans instead of cool clothes) and it did not make Christianity look very appealing to the students they were witnessing to if Christians looked geeky.

Obviously, children do childish things they regret years later. They poke pencils in eyes and they tell people they are not welcome or mock their clothing. People sin. Hopefully, they feel bad upon reflection, repent, and change. I am not holding this against them. It's just that if he is going to be filled with rage all these years later about a pencil accident, maybe he has an anger and lack of forgiveness problem.