Untwisting Scriptures – An Excellent New Book by Rebecca Davis

Our friend and ally Rebecca Davis has just published a new book, Untwisting Scriptures that were used to tie you up, gag you, and tangle your mind [Affiliate link].  We asked her to put together a description of it for us to post here at ACFJ. So here is her book. I (JeffC) have read it and I can assure you that it is extremely helpful in combating the lies and misuses of Scripture which so often hold us in bondage to abuse. By the way, it is being released TODAY and it is the second book now that we have published under our Justice Keepers Publishing. We hope to have more new titles released by Justice Keepers in the future.

*****

Behind the scenes at “Untwisting Scriptures”

Hello friends! I wish I could sit and enjoy a cup of coffee or tea with each of you individually while we talk over some of the Scriptures that have been twisted to keep you or someone you care about in a place of manipulation and control, and think together about the genuine hope we have in Jesus Christ.

I would remind you first that one of the tremendous advantages we have as New Covenant believers is that we get to see clearly what the true God looks like—He looks like Jesus. This is from my “final words” in Untwisting Scriptures that were used to tie you up, gag you, and tangle your mind:

One thing I always seek to remember in reading and interpreting the Scriptures is that Almighty God is perfectly represented in Jesus Christ. Hebrews 1:3 tells us He is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” That “exact imprint of his nature” can be roughly translated “the engraving on his under-establishment.”

I think of it as Jesus being the features on the face of God.

I worked on Untwisting Scriptures [Affiliate link] passionately. As can sometimes happen, when you get very close to a project, especially a project like this one, what seems to be clear to you might not be clear to others, so it was vitally important for me to get input from my pre-readers, all of whom were either abuse survivors or people who had been closely involved in helping abuse survivors. They gave me tremendously helpful feedback, some of which looked more or less like, “Back to the old drawing board with you! This isn’t untwisted enough yet!” So I hustled back to work on more untwisting.

Another recommendation several of them made was regarding all those wrong teachings all through the book (there are a lot of them, from teachers such as Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Bill Gothard, and Adrian Rogers) — that the wrong teachings needed to be somehow visually more distinguished from my own teaching. So now all those quotations aren’t just indented, they’re also in gray boxes. Besides making them easy to distinguish, that also makes them easy to skip. That way, if you find the wrong teachings arouse unpleasant emotions and physical reactions, you don’t have to be completely derailed in your reading.

I know that ACFJ does a stellar job addressing false teachings, but if you have other questionable teachings you’d like to ask me about, you’re welcome to email me at rebecca@heresthejoy.com. I’ll be writing more Untwisting blog posts too, at my website, Here’s The Joy.

I hope you find some aspect of this short book helpful. If you’re an abuse victim or survivor, or someone who cares about an abuse victim or survivor — even if I haven’t met you — please know that I wrote this book with you in mind. Along with the ACFJ team, I’m eager for more people to walk in the victory and true freedom that has been offered to us through Jesus Christ, the perfect representation of God.

***

UPDATE Sept 2021: I have come to believe that Jeff Crippen does not practise what he preaches. He vilely persecuted an abuse victim and spiritually abused many other people in the Tillamook congregation. Go here to read the evidence. Jeff has not gone to the people that he spiritually and emotionally abused. He has not apologised to them, let alone asked for their forgiveness.

***