This is both disturbingly sad and hysterical at the same time! I was just blogging with someone a few hours ago with this subject as an explanation for a fideistic doctrine that he apparently knew nothing about. I share the experience (and some of the colorful coloquial comments) of wondering why we have to read all of these “DMG”s. While a young adult living at home with my parents, I’ve been called a heretic for simply reading Calvin, and books that have been deemed dangerous have disappeared and replaced with Ken Hagin “books.” (Cringe and shudder.) I’ve also been accused of straying from the true faith because of my faithless love for knowledge and intelligent people. Supposedly, I’ve sold out.

Sadly, I’ve heard Assemblies of God ministers make the same comments as Dave Hunt does in your quote above. I’ve been told by Sunday School teachers that Martin Luther was not Christian, that the “true Christian church” never shared any history with Catholicism, etc. The only notable church history skips from the New Testament to 1890. Depending on the group, they may go all the way back to the Declaration of Independence or some such other event in American colonial history as a holy time.

So I am ever grateful to those mysterious few in my history and development who have always been there to make comments that most people never recognized, suggesting that the dilemmas of our lives and within our churches had been faced by others in the history of our faith. In contrast to the FEAR induced by the idea of reading the words of fallible men, these few others encouraged me to look to the past with confidence in Christ, expecting to find human examples of people very much like me. I am grateful for you and these few others who gave me this insight which ultimately lead me into truth, liberating me from several cultic mindsets. Keep fighting this good fight and pray that God continues to open the hearts and minds of those of us who were raised in fear of anything outside of the binder of the KJV.