Jones Chapel is a cult of hateful, homophobic TrumpTards.
Located at 590 County Road 775; Athens, TN 37303, the “church” has voted to leave the United Methodist Church over their support of LGBT+. Chad Riden‘s grandparents are buried there. His family has been going there for decades. He was dragged there every Sunday from the ages of 12-18 and that entire time he was saying they’re fake Christians, pretending to be good people but nobody listens to kids. At some point he was put on their membership list and was still on it as of Sunday, January 29, 2023 so he showed up to vote on their decision to either join the Global Methodist Church or go independent. Cult leader Bert Beria said everybody would get a chance to speak and nobody would be interrupted but that’s not what happened.
As with any cult, Jones Chapel suppresses any voice outside of their small little worldview. Acting on insecurity and fear, the only way they can “successfully” debate any issue is to silence others.
It’s definitely a cult. Chad Riden started going to that church 36 years ago and has seen countless preachers try their best to tell this group of people what they need to hear and the pattern is always the same: they get mad that somebody would dare tell them how wrong-hearted they are so they run them off. preacher after preacher after preacher for decades now.
Bert Beria was just a dude in the church – a guy who painted houses for a living – but eventually he took over preaching duties because their insulated group-think sect doesn’t allow anybody outside of that building to bring any other perspective in.
For at least the last 30 years Jones Chapel has been nothing but the Sugart and Trew families fighting for power among themselves while the membership dwindles.
Riden took every Bible study course Hiwassee College offered and fully understand who wrote those books.. why and when.. and who REwrote them and REwrote them to suit their needs.
Gender complementarity has been a social norm, NOT a demand from God. Recheck the ten commandments. Hateful bigots always cite Leviticus 18:22, which, IF you believe in Jesus and the message He brought, would be an irrelevant Old testament scripture negated by the New testament (at best). Any biblical scholar worth his salt will tell you you need three verses from three different sources that agree with each other before you can even begin to declare that that is “God’s will” and not an editorial choice made by human to further a specific agenda as the book was rewritten over and over for the last 2,000 years.
If you’re going to cite Old testament sources that have since been negated by the word and covenant of Jesus, then Exodus 21:7 says I can sell my daughter into slavery and Exodus 35:2 says anybody who works on the Sabbath should be put to death and Leviticus 11:7 says anybody who touches the skin of a pig is unclean.. so that’s bad news for a lot of people, But we don’t hear these hatemongers talking about that very much.. because it’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous nonsense that nobody listens to. We’re all eating shellfish and planting different crops right next to each other, despite the dire warnings against these things in the old testament.
Condemning homosexuality is a very recent thing in the modern church and it really has its origins during the crusades when numbers mattered. when you were going to literally slaughter All of the people who believed differently from you. So yes the Muslims and the Christians both preached against homosexuality and contraception because they needed people. They needed numbers to win the literal war they were waging against each other. If it’s socially unacceptable to NOT have a nuclear family cranking out young ‘uns, out of self-preservation people will hide who they are and do what they know society wants them to do just to try to fit in and not be murdered.
The reality is: God is love and we are ALL His children created in His image. Matthew 7 tells us that our actions should produce GOOD FRUIT. Condemning homosexuality puts these people in danger. They’re the most vulnerable people on the planet. Human beings being turned away from the church.. being physically thrown out, being assaulted and murdered for the way they were born is NOT good fruit. That is evil.
Even if homosexuality was a sin (and it’s not, But even if it was) Matthew 7:1 tells us: JUDGE NOT.
Jesus did NOT preach in the temple. He walked into the temple and completely lost it – flipping tables over and chasing the greedy profiteers from His father’s house. He preached outdoors, because even then the church was wrong-headed and corrupt. He fed the hungry and didn’t ask them for a dime in return. He healed the sick – and He didn’t have work requirements.. He never administered a drug test. He gave them FREE health care because that’s the right thing to do.
What Jesus DID tell us was: Love your neighbor.
If you believe the book of Revelations, you know that in the end the Church will become so corrupt that GOOD will be called EVIL. Evil will be called Good. God will become SO furious with this group of horrible people doing terrible things in His name that He destroys all of creation. None of these churches think that scripture is talking about THEM.