All That Glitters Is Not Gold
When my friend and I arrived to the church of the gold cloud phenomenon, the service was already in progress. It was termed a “soaking” service to mean that the people were waiting for God’s presence to show up in the form of a gold cloud of gold dust. Frankly, I felt somewhat freaked out by what was going on because I did not understand it. I watched intently. People were simply standing around with outstretched arms as if to be in praise and worship.
The church appeared dimly lit giving the ambiance of a gold appearance. However, I did not yet see any gold. I thought the dimly lit sanctuary was odd. I wondered how one could actually see gold in such a dimly lit area. I thought that maybe the gold was going to be shiny and bright. I eagerly waited to see. I wondered if I would walk out of the church covered in a dustbowl of gold. I wondered it any of it would get into my eyes. If the gold had healing qualities, I needed my eyes healed because I suffered from dry eyes.
Within the hour of being at this church, some people began audibly verbalizing that they could feel the gold dust falling and see the specks. I looked all around me. I looked upwards. I looked down on the floor. The room was so dimly lit that I could see nothing. I checked my own skin for remnants of what was said to be in the air. My skin appeared completely bare. Most people had their eyes closed as they seemed to be praying. I saw no gold, but I could hear and see people exclaiming the miraculous wonder of it all.
By the end of the service, I was a bit disappointed because I had experienced nothing. I was not even convinced when my friend exclaimed excitedly to me in the car that she had felt and seen the gold specks. She turned on the light in the car and began to cry. There was a gleam of brightness to her eyes that I could see through her tears, but that brightness was from the reflection of the light shining directly into her eyes. She lifted her arms and told me to look. I stared blankly. She told me to keep looking because she could see the gold. I looked even more intently, but I could see nothing.
My friend grew frantic and exclaimed with fervor that I might be closed off from the experience for my lack of faith. I could hear the desperation in her voice. My mind spoke to me. “She’s delusional. Even if you were to squint hard enough and force your eyes to see, you are not going to see gold because there is no gold.” I continued to look though. The expression in my friend’s eyes displayed her seriousness. Yet, I believe my facial expression told her all that she needed to know about what I saw … which was absolutely nothing.
To my friend, I obviously had very little faith because I never saw any gold manifest during the service. Because she thought this was the problem, she suggested that I pray for more faith. She claimed that most first time visitors experience sightings of gold and healings during their first initial service, but the fact that I had not signaled that something might be wrong. Frankly, something sounded off to me, but I agreed to return back to the church with my friend another time. After all, she had been in this spiritually charismatic arena of church for a long time. I obviously had a lot to learn.
Going For Gold
The second time my friend and I went to this church with the gold phenomenon was also my last time. Prior to my second visit, I had spent some time praying for discernment about this gold experience. I also spent time researching to understand this phenomenon too. I needed to understand why I could not see or feel the gold when my friend could see and feel it. I also wanted to know why it would even rain gold inside of a church in the first place.
I needed to understand the purpose of this gold experience. My friend had counseled that I lacked the faith to believe in a God of miracles. So I prayed for more faith. Yet, because I had experienced situations involving cults in the past, I knew enough to pray that I not be fooled into believing a lie regardless of the amount of faith present. I just did not want to subscribe to being conned into something. I knew God rained down manna from the sky for the Israelites of the bible when they were hungry, but everyone at that time saw the manna. Plus, there was a purpose for the manna. The manna was food.
In my mind, this gold experience needed a purpose. I wondered why I needed faith to believe gold would even rain down. The only thing I had heard said was that the gold healed people with dental impairments. At the time, the only thing I needed were more aligned teeth. I wondered if I should pray for my teeth to become more aligned during the service in order to believe that this phenomenon existed.
Frankly, none of it made any sense to me. Now this is not to discredit those that have actually experienced this phenomenon, but I had to wonder based on my observations if the people in this particular church I visited were being coerced into believing something that simply was not there. I wondered had these members been seduced into believing something that was not real. I wondered if they were under the power of mind control. I wondered if I needed more than faith to see gold. In essence, I wondered if I needed to be brainwashed first.
Nevertheless, I considered that maybe this gold experience was just for the members of this particular church, but when my friend excitedly said that she had the gold on her, I had to wonder because she was not a member. I also wondered why the gold was only showing up in only this particular church. I had not ever heard about this phenomenon until my friend had mentioned it. Then I wondered if this was another reason that some of the members at the church my friend and me attended considered her nutty.
Yet, I was led to believe I should not question God about what He wanted to do even though I felt something about it all was off. All I needed was confirmation one way or the other that this was real. Either my faith needed to be increased, or the gold was simply not for me. The second time around, my friend and me were both eager for this gold occurrence otherwise I would not believe. My friend seemed to need the occurrence more than I did. It was as if so much was at stake and riding on my ability to see gold.
Upon the second visit to this church, it was all going to be settled for me. When my friend and I arrived, there seemed to be even more people in attendance for this particular service. For whatever reason, the pastor of this church spoke about the phenomenon. He had not done so with my first visit. I wondered if God had let this pastor know of my concerns. While speaking, this pastor seemed to address every one of them. It turns out [according to this pastor’s message] that I was not exercising my faith. In fact, this pastor seemed to be speaking directly to me as he looked specifically at me. I remember feeling strangely uncomfortable with his gaze.
Nevertheless, the service proceeded with prayer and a lot of “soaking” in praise and worship music. Despite this pastor’s message that seemed directly crafted to me, I was still not convinced, and my discernment was turned to the highest level. Something just felt off to me. I took note of a still dimly lit sanctuary and wondered why this was so. As I looked around the sanctuary, a few people began either laughing loudly or crying loudly.
My friend, standing next to me, also began loudly crying out and praising God. I only slightly closed my eyes because I did not want to miss anything. Then my friend screamed “I see the gold! I see the gold!” She said this in almost a sing-song fashion. I actually turned to look at her. When I turned, I saw a woman on the other side of my friend turn to her to tell her that my friend was all aglow. “Bask in the glory cloud. Bask in God’s cloud for you,” the woman emphatically said.
I then spoke to myself inwardly. “Am I missing something here? I don’t see a thing. I don’t see any gold. I don’t see gold specks, gold dust, or gold bars. Why can’t I see this? Why is everyone else able to see? How can anyone actually see? It’s so dim in here. How bright is this gold?” I wanted to believe, but I could not, and I did not believe that I lacked faith. I just could not see any gold.
Maybe the fact that I needed a reason to understand the purpose of the gold was a hindrance to my faith in accepting its existence. I turned to look at my friend to see her crying hysterically. The woman next to her had told her that her face was glowing with a gold anointing. I simply stared incredulously. I saw nothing. In fact, in such a dimly lit sanctuary, I thought I should have been able to see what this woman was seeing, but I saw absolutely nothing.
My friend’s face was not shining. There was no reflection of light in that dimly lit sanctuary. All I could see was that her face was wet from her tears, but I saw not one speck of gold. I saw nothing glistening, and I even searched for evidence around the sanctuary, but I saw nothing. Although I recall one person shouting about a golden cloud of dust, I saw nothing. I looked up, all around, and up towards the front of the sanctuary. I even turned to look behind me. Yet, I saw no cloud. Nor did I see a golden one.
I searched the faces of the different people, and it was clear to me that something was amiss. I just did not know what at the time. I looked upwards toward the direction of the pastor, but his back was facing me. I felt I had no choice but to question within myself whether these people had been smoking some powerful drug as I also questioned why I was the only one sober. Surely, I could not have been the only one who saw nothing. There had to be someone who was as gold-less as me. However, I did not notice anyone who gave me the indication that I was not alone in my lack of experience.
A Gold Rushed Conversation
By the time service was over, I was deeply pondering mainly what I had not experienced when my friend began talking to me about the night. She was my ride home. So I sensed that I needed to be careful about the way to mention my struggles with this situation up to her. She was so excited about the night. She continuously kept mentioning how she was basking in the glow of God’s glorious gold. That’s when I knew and was for certain that something was off. I turned my head towards her without turning my body so that I could talk. She must have sensed that I was still not convinced because she became deadly silent.
Me: I guess I lack faith because I didn’t experience the gold.
She was silent.
Me: It was almost as if the pastor was speaking to me about it at the beginning. It was strange.
She was still silent, but I could sense she wanted to say something. So I waited for what seemed like an eternity for her to speak.
Her: The pastor was definitely speaking to you and anyone like you who doesn’t believe in the glory cloud of gold. I actually spoke to the pastor about you. So I think he made an effort to reach you to get you to understand.
I will never forget the sinking feeling that I felt within the pit of my gut when I heard my friend say this. Although I cannot refute her experience or the experience of anyone else regarding the so-called glory cloud of gold, I knew that I had experienced nothing. All I had were my suspicions about the atmosphere. Knowing that she had spoken to the pastor about my lack of faith sounded off alarms within my head. I felt like I was a dissenter for not following along to some program that everyone else had subscribed to within this church.
There were a lot of other strange things that occurred that night. Perhaps I did need more faith, but I did not desire to chase for gold. I could not find anywhere in the bible where this type of thing was even something God would do. Unless this is in the texts that are said to be lost books of the bible, I could find nothing to ease my mind that this gold falling in the atmosphere of a church [and nowhere else I might add] was not anything more than a fraud or a figment of imagination.
I ceased talking anymore about it to my friend because I had nothing more to say. I simply decided that my lack of faith was enough to stop me from any more visits to this particular church. I cannot say whether the church itself was a brand of a cult or not, but I had been down that road of cultish churches before and had no desire to repeat being branded an apostate for my lack of belief in something that made no sense to me. Yet, I sensed from my friend that maybe that is exactly how she perceived me – as an apostate. Despite her attempts to gaslight me for not being a believer, I did not care.
My friend remained silent the rest of the time during what seemed like a tortuously ominous ride away from the church to my home. The closer she drove to my home, the more tension I felt arising within myself. I wanted us to be okay, but I could sense a growing gulf between us. I knew there was separation over my presumed lack of faith, but I also sensed there was a whole lot more – an unspoken more that I did not understand at the time. Although I never sensed that my friend was a narcissist, she had a way of trying to control and manipulate me through emotions. As she drover nearer to my home, she began softly crying in the form of sniffles. The mixture of her tears and my tension were always a sign that I had done something wrong.
Although it was not the end of our friendship, it was the end of the ride for me. Before I got out of the car, my friend turned to me and stated that she hoped I could experience the wondrous sensation of knowing what it felt like to be under God’s cloud of gold. I was very doubtful of that happening. I never planned on returning to that church, and it did not appear that this cloud of gold followed anyone like me from the origination of that specific church.
Even though I never specifically told her I would not be returning for any more visits to this church, I sensed that she knew this already. That is probably why she cried, but her tears were not going to work to convince me, however. Also, the fact that she told the pastor of that church that I did not necessarily buy into the falling gold phenomenon bothered me. Because of this need to control my belief in this phenomenon, I strongly sensed that there was a bit of mind control going on in this congregation. That was enough of a reason for me not to return.
Needless to say, I turned away from my friend to get out of the car. I looked at her intently under the outside nightlight. I did not see any glistening sparkles of gold specks on her at all. I did not see a cloud of gold above her either. I just saw her as a regular person. Whether she was seeing gold in the spirit realm, I did not know, but as for me, the gold cloud was just simply not my experience. In fact, it was all something I did not desire to have the faith to even believe in, and I needed her to be okay with that, but I knew that she was not okay with that. So I stared at her and simply said, “You know, all that glitters is not gold.” Then I shut the door and walked away.
My Voice Unchained 