Let him hear....
I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. Revelations 3:18-22
After 30 years of walking with God in this Apostolic truth, I’ve never ceased to be stunned when after all the storms, all the trials, all the tests, you speak a word to someone who has the audacity to ask you exactly what God is talking to you about…only to be roasted publically for it over the pulpit afterwards. I addressed something like this situation in a former article and stated that the time of this happening is nearly over in the Church in the United States. God is not above bankrupting a nation to destroy a church’s pride and arrogance.
God forewarns you when you are to get ready for battle. I thank God for that. No one sends warriors into combat without a mission plan and objective and knowledge of where the enemy is located. After thirteen years as a Marine, I’m very thankful for that.
I sat recently in a service where a man of God who is a friend of mine had a difference with me about preaching holiness. He absolutely refused to preach or teach holiness from his pulpit and it shows in that particular congregation. We have for several years agreed to disagree agreeably on the subject, until recently when God spoke to him about the need for preaching holiness and I confirmed this in a home setting what God had spoken to me. He made the mistake of giving us all a piece of paper and asking each of us what God was telling us in prayer about our life, our ministry, our church and our nation. My answers were only the scriptures God had given me in the past several weeks without any embellishment.
Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: Hebrews 12:14
He has now come out in public forum against me over the pulpit and in weekly services to proclaim, “It doesn’t always have to be your way.” I watched as he turned purple in the pulpit, attempting to force the words out of his throat that God had already told him not to speak. Pentecostal political games…You’d think that despite 30-plus years of Pentecostals attempting to throttle God’s voice that someone would write a book or a blog and let the whole world know it DOESN’T WORK!
All I could think was “don’t shoot the messenger.” Additionally, the politics of shutting off the gifts of the Spirit from operating in the service will only last as long as God is willing to forebear with your situation….and yes, God’s ministers have the authority to silence those gifts in a congregation and God will honor it…for a time. Note…go ahead and pop your candlestick out while you are in the process. God will send his angel to collect it from you shortly….The last guy I saw do that has been taking a dirt-nap since September 2007. Just a thought, angels of the churches!
Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more. For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God: That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified. For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness. He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his holy Spirit. 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8
I had opened the service the prior week and never said one thing about standards of dress, modesty, separation, or what the Pentecostal movement sometimes incorrectly titles “holiness.” I “stayed in my lane” and merely stated that with this new year I had located an old Bible notebook of mine with sermon notes of message I had preached long ago and some that I had sat through by great men of God in the 90s and that God was impressing me to find the old landmarks and return to the landmarks in his word. I stated that it was prayer, fasting, praise, worship and soul-winning that would bring us revival, not a program.
That’s all it took. I had a bulls-eye on my chest from that point on.
I warned my wife after that service that it was going to get rough the next few weeks as an occasion was found to attack by word in private or over the pulpit against us. She is slowly learning the ropes of what I went through the past few years and has been privy to a lot more information about what God has brought me through (even before we got married) than I have ever put into type on this or any other website. Yet after reading it all…the court documents, the hate mail from backslidden ministers, adulterous abusive ex-spouses and legal documentation of all that God has brought me through, she stayed the course and married me anyway. ;)
I let her know that in every case where I’ve ever been in a situation of that type, God was trying to give a minister revival, but first He challenged him to turn away from the one thing that was hindering his church in each situation. In 30 years in the church, I don’t think I’ve ever seen even one man in America humble himself and let God deal with him like that. We like to cherry pick the venue by which God corrects us. Catch a hint, God isn’t going to be locked into doing things OUR way, Pentecost! He isn’t married to us yet!
Instead, without fail, they have always turned on the messenger and their end state was worse than the first. In some cases it was gross sin God was correcting in their lives, or a pride issue, or a stealing from the church issue…or a wife running the church issue. Ultimately God always asks for something before he gives you something, be it a healing, a miracle, or a revival.
Sorry, I’m a firm believer in what my first mentor, Rev. James Gilbert, a pioneer of Pentecost, preached from the pulpit…you get what you preach. If you want a holy church, preach holiness. If you want worship, lead your congregation in worship by example and as another former pastor of mine would stay, stop being a Pentecostal Statue!
If you don’t mind a worldly church where just about anything goes, silence the pulpit and shut the pulpit off to any young ministers that will teach what God gives them to speak. Legislate and dictate what God can and can’t say through the ministries of the church over the pulpit in a conference room and silence the fire of the anointing until God comes and removes your candlestick, angel of the church. Everything rises and falls on leadership! God doesn’t suggest. He orders, directs and mandates. If you believe otherwise, and that God's word isn't inspired you are a fraud!
If you choose to muzzle the ox that treads out the corn as the Bible says, God might forbear with you for a time, my friend, but understand this, ultimately it is not your church, despite any diatribe you may present over his sacred desk, it is still HIS church and he can pluck up and plant shepherds into His flock as He sees fit. (See Ezekiel 34 if you doubt this!) Don’t ever forget it. Abuse his desk or office for long and the loving, gentle Christ that modern Pentecost loves to preach will braid himself a whip and assert himself in a way you will not like, angel of the church!
Just to drive the point home the attacks started in a closed-group setting, just as I had warned my wife they would, with the more involved members of the church as he came out against my father’s worship right in front of his new converts during a recent home service. My friend claimed that it was “well-meaning, but out of order,” to worship like that… (You know…run the aisles, shout, or worship with the preacher).
Sorry, but my father has been trained to worship in other states where the men of the ministry still wear pants when they get in the pulpit…and who still list their congregations as Pentecostal or Apostolic in the phone book, not as “non-denominational.” They aren’t afraid of offending anyone, especially visitors, or running them off by letting them know they are an Apostolic church up front. As I have stated in previous articles and blogs, my father did not develop “standards” or learn to worship, pray, fast and win souls from Pentecostals. He got it from his own prayer life and walk with God and he taught it to his family.
I sat in that particular service and worshipped with my father, feeling the praise team…or at least those that were supposed to be the “praise-team,” quench the Spirit of worship as my dad began to shout “old time Pentecostal style” and worship and run the aisles. I knew instantly that I would hear about it over the pulpit in weeks to come. It wasn’t long in coming.
There is something about seeing a fat old sharecropper’s son stand in your congregation wearing his garage sale and flea-market-purchased clothing that offends the sensibilities of modern Pentecost. We are SO refined in Pentecost in this day and age. Sorry, but my father will never be highlighted on the cover of GQ Magazine. His typical mode of dress is a plaid work shirt, heavy (sometimes striped) suspenders (just thank God he retired the rainbow suspenders years ago!), utility pants and a pair of saddle shoes that didn’t even come back into style in the 80’s.
Now picture all of this and understand that his out-of-the-mainstream clothing no longer fits him because dad and mom have been in prayer and fasting six days a week for about a year now since he retired from working construction. During that time my brother, a backslider got custody of his children back from an abusive ex-wife and her husband, and the prophecy came that I also will get my children back. Mark it up, friend; my parents have Pentecostal bark on the tree. God, give us more parents in Pentecost who know how to tie into prayer and fasting!
Once in my childhood a minister got in the pulpit with my father sitting in the congregation and made the comment that he was “tired of God sending poor slobs to the church…he wanted God to send him some doctors and lawyers” to his church. Dad walked out the door and never went back. To this day that Charisma-costal church has doctors and lawyers…but not a single candlestick of the Holy Ghost left in to light the congregation. You get what you preach. I’ve run into that particular gentleman at General Conference twice since that time, once in Louisville and once in Richmond and each time in mid-conversation with the man I’ve felt the Holy Ghost move on him and like someone slapped in the face he turned and walked away without finishing his sentence. All I could do was wonder what God must have said to him, but I’ve never seen anyone turn so white in all my life.
Now I’ve come under fire because not only are they upset with my stand on holiness and my father’s worship when he visited, but because they want to know why my wife and I won’t put our name on their list of which “meal” we will skip weekly during the annual “30-days” of prayer and fasting.
I was never raised to fast a meal. If that’s your thing or you are sick or a new convert just beginning to fast and pray…more power to you! I salute you and support you entirely, but from the time I was a teenager, my father set up house rules and part of those house rules was that you picked one day a week to do an absolute fast for the church and your pastor and another for yourself. That was the house rule of my father. If it wasn’t for him setting the example for us boys at an early age, I’d never have attempted a 40 day fast as an adult.
What are you putting in your kid’s lunch box, Pentecostal mom and dad? What memories are you giving the next generation, Pentecostal?
You can imagine the mental picture as my dad ran laps around the metal chairs in the gym where the church met regularly for their one service-per-week-whether-they-needed-it-or-not. Apparently my father’s worship offended those who were leading that service. I’ve only seen one or two people dance or run the aisles there in almost three years. That’s getting ready to change.
I no longer wonder why I felt a check in the Spirit now for the last three years every time I invited my parents to come visit the church and they would always find a reason not to visit. God had it in his plan all along. All I can say is that the next few weeks, if they thought that my father was bad, look out! I’ve been noted in recent years for weeping, wailing, bellowing like a bull and praying in the Spirit, but those who grew up with me know I can run the aisle, cut the rug and dance in the Spirit or out with the best of them. Set aside the blue suede’s, put on steel-toed shoes and get ready, bubba!
My wife and I visited a church in another state Sunday night and the pastor there was on a 10 day fast, as were most of his saints. I give credit to where credit is due, CLCE! It was humbling to see the difference between the two churches spiritually. My wife looked at me and thanked me after the service, saying that it was just what she needed. It was good to visit a church that not only preached holiness from the pulpit, but lived holiness…and where fasting was not a lost art. Shame on us when worship, fasting and prayer are considered outmoded methods of archaic Pentecostalism!
It’s a sad day when old time Pentecostal worship is critiqued, criticized and shut down in our churches. And YES, my fleece is before the Lord and I’m waiting for the word to pack up my family and depart from a church that despises worship and holiness. I will raise my family in a church that preaches holiness and true worship; even if I have to start a home-mission’s work in a metro area! God always provides.
Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD. Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD. And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase. And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the LORD. Jeremiah 23:1-4
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