Many Gods and Mini-Gods @ The Grove Church

There should be spiritual alarms going off at The Grove Church. They evidently have multiple gods in a one-God religion and their garbage theology includes that all men are the mini-gods of their family. I wonder what kind of pitiful male ego would need to promote that kind of false religion and why any woman would sit in that congregation and support such nonsense.

On Sunday, Barry Russell preached another ridiculous sermon about marriage. He seems to be proud of his false theology on the subject. So please go listen to him say very plainly (2/2/25 sermon, at 36:26) that he BOUGHT his prized possession (his wife) Nikki on 8/3/2002 with a goat and a cow from his in-laws. He was seriously bragging about being in human trafficking trade for his wife. Please listen to him go on about that being a Biblical truth. He is either a moron or a con-man. Whichever it is, he’s deceived as he has misinterpreted the text of Ephesians 5 to mean that the pagan norms of that day were God’s will for marriage. If that were true, then he must also interpret the next chapter “slaves obey your masters” as God’s will for today as well. So, would Barry twist those texts to condone slavery and sex trafficking?

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.”; “And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.” (Ephesians 6:5 & 9)

Let’s look at the passage a few verses earlier in Ephesians 5 that led Barry to believe that he owns his wife rather than being in partnership with her under God’s lordship. This whole text is about Christ and the church. Paul used a pagan cultural norm to describe a spiritual truth. He was not condoning men’s barbaric treatment of women which was rampant and widely accepted in those days. He was instead encouraging change in their dysfunctional marriages and trying to help them understand God’s lordship in the church. In those passages: “slaves obey your earthly masters” and “wives submit yourselves to your own husbands”, Paul is not condoning slavery or spouse abuse. He is suggesting that women of that day, who were intentionally kept illiterate, respectfully go along to get along, while primarily encouraging the men to treat their wives gently and lovingly. Remember that this letter to the church of Ephesus was likely read aloud to men in a culture where women were forced to be subservient. Paul’s hope was that Christian men would set themselves apart from the pagan culture and treat their wives better than non-Christian men. It was acceptable cultural norms to treat women as slaves. Please read it in context and see if you come to the same conclusion that I have. And I always say “Don’t believe me. Ask God yourself.” (Please read the summary sentence at the end of the passage first so that you can see the context. “This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.”)

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” (Ephesians 5:22-33 NIV)

In the Bible, book of Hosea, God commands Hosea to marry a prostitute to symbolize Israel’s unfaithfulness to Him. “When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, ‘Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the LORD.’” (Hosea 1:2 NIV)

Why did God divorce Israel and send her into captivity? The reasons were consistently the same. Israel was unfaithful and guilty of adultery, prostitution, and promiscuity against God by having false gods. When a wife refuses priority allegiance to God to instead obey her husband, she is prostituting herself to a false god. Does the wife belong to God or does she instead belong to her husband? If the husband were wholly submitted to God, and hearing His voice in prayer, he would know that God doesn’t want him to stand in God’s place or sit on His throne in the marriage relationship. The covenant with God is that He is the one and only God. The Christian marriage covenant is intended to be mutual loyalty and exclusivity to each other with both being wholeheartedly submitted to God. There is no mini-god in the marriage covenant. There is only one God and both parties in the marriage should individually be submitted to Him.

Please read the attached pages and seek God for direction. Btw: that comment about the foolish pastor on the attachment is about Barry’s brother, Brad, in his Father’s Day sermon from a few years ago. Both brothers are idiots that have no place in the pulpit of God’s church.

Source: The Rogue Prophet Magazine, “The Prophets” dated April, 2022, page 6; and “Spiritual Crimes Against Women in Ministry”, dated August 2023, page 15.