I have not been writing much of late. I took a vacation out of state in July to go and listen to my favorite former pastor get up in a service and preach against the very things he had done to me over the past 4 years. It would have been fun to hear, except friends of mine were there too and listened in incredulous awe.

How does a man get to the point in the spotlight of an organization that God puts his word in his mouth and totally bypasses his life and heart? I’ll tell you why. We’ve gotten to the point where we’ve learned to let the word flow through us as a mouth-piece and not affect our lives, walks, hearts and ministries. We’ve become spiritual reprobates in the pulpits in many cases. You don’t have to ignore God in some big area of your life to become reprobate. It can happen in the little things we walk out of the pulpit with after a sermon and keep going back to "business as usual," never letting God become Lord over that one area of our lives that we hate to let go of…self-rule.

I’ve been so terribly busy for about 3 months now. There have been no great dreams from God of shocking spiritual revelation, no visions, relatively few prophecies, yet I know that during the silent times sometimes God drops stuff into my spirit. Sometimes I have to ruminate over those nuggets for several days or weeks before the anointing hits me to write about them, getting the last shred of spiritual nutrition out of them before passing them on to others. I’ve been sensing things in the spirit for 4 years and sometimes I write about them and sometimes I’ve fallen silent. I have learned however, that when God gives you something to speak or to write you have to speak it or write it, or he will not talk to you again for some time. I said something publicly 2 years ago and was soundly rebuked by one of the greatest soul-winners in Pentecost for prophesying something against one apostolic organization. A year later it came true and I learned to let him do what he does best and I’ll do what God called me to do and speak and let the chips fall where they will. It has to be that way.

We have made it the topic of sermons and books and tapes for years that when the enemy comes in like a flood the Spirit of the Lord will raise a standard against him. We know that no weapon formed against us shall prosper according to Isaiah 54:17, which is one of my favorite verses and helped me through my darkest of hours. So we know from the word of God that the powers of hell will not prevail against the church, but what about Spiritual Suicide? What about self-inflicted wounds to the body of Christ by those who sit among us, who hold an office, titles, the positions, the respect of persons, the esteemed…but have not conformed to the word of God?

Let me break it in with a newsflash…God cannot and will not restore full apostolic power, signs, wonders and miracles to a church that refuses to administer justice and judgment! We’ve preached across our pulpits for years, blasted it over the radio, and become infamous in the religious world for preaching it “hard, strict and straight.” We’ve even been labeled by many that have left us over the years as being legalists and being too “hard” on some things that are not salvation issues.

We damn the Baptists for believing once saved always saved and for basically teaching that mental gymnastics and not a single lick of obedience to the word of God can save them. We have also damned the Catholics for being a “mother of harlots” church for years out of our own ignorance. Yet here it is a hundred years later and Islam has far outdistanced them as a religion for growth and is seated in the very region where that spirit was to rise to power…but still we blindly followed some misguided self-professed Bible scholars for years on that doctrine and would not have thought to challenge it. I mean, why…It makes such sense doesn’t it?

We claim to be “The Originals.” No weapon formed against us shall prosper. The gates of Hell shall not prevail. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. When the enemy comes in like a flood...we love all that pomp and pageantry. We are standing on rock solid ground, denying any inkling that we may be going astray in our doctrine. Yes, I’m sure the hate-mail will pile in after I finish this, but if you will bear with me I’ll give you the PO Box so you can send it in bulk.

If we are the church, and I believe doctrinally we are, so don’t get your Pharisee-robes in a bunch. And, if we are the body, and I believe we are, and the gates of hell can’t prevail and all that jazz, then why aren’t we taking the world by storm? What has so crippled us? What has so sterilized us? What has so emaciated us? What has so eaten our lunch that we can call the name correctly but can’t cast out cancers, heal the sick, empty hospitals, see stumps grow back into limbs, see eyeballs pop back into faces that were devoid of sight. We can cast out demons but can’t heal the sick, the maimed, the dying?

Why is it that instead of reaching the world we are pulling the Pentecostal amoeba and splitting off into our fractions, factions and schisms? Get ready. I’m getting ready to come unhinged. Why is it that physical cancer is attacking our saints and minister and for the most part other than a few wild services here and there, the power of this spirit to afflict the body is unchecked and unhindered among us? I’ll tell you why. What infects the body physically is a direct reflection of what is attacking the body spiritually! Physical cancer has gone unchecked in our movement for two decades because SPIRITUAL CANCER has gone unchecked, unhindered and unmolested in the Apostolic fellowship for as many years.

I’m going to say something and it may come across as harsh, but that is not my intention, so take it in the spirit it is being presented in, not in any case of ruffled feathers while you read this. A dear man of God who has ministered in the Spirit for years, worked as a One God missionary for years before I was born is currently in the hospital in poor health. I love him dearly and fear that when he is off the scene that no other men will pick up his mantle of ministry and carry it onward in this body. He recently spoke on a division in the Apostolic body that he was a part of that it was a cancer leaving the body.

When my pastor told me this, I said something about the fact that there was still a cancer in the body of the organization and I immediately struck fire. Strangely enough, my pastor and I almost never disagree, unlike my former pastor. God dealt with me in a flash about the statement he gave me at that moment. He did not want to hear that there was still cancer in our particular apostolic organization. It’s so much easier to call the other guys Korah! It’s always so much easier to label the other guy a rebel!

Anyway, medical science is not my forte’ and that will be readily evident by my writing. However, from what I remember about cancer from high school and college and working in a VA hospital in Florida, cancer is the rapid, uncontrolled, unstable DIVISION of cells in the body. The body cell may have divided, but the new cell is not the cancer. Both bodies are still cancerous!

Dictionary.com listed cancer like this:

a.

a malignant and invasive growth or tumor, esp. one originating in epithelium, tending to recur after excision and to metastasize to other sites.


b.

any disease characterized by such growths.

2.

any evil condition or thing that spreads destructively; blight.


Hold on one second. I just found another tab on that site that lists an encyclopedia and this is what Referene.com says about the same word, cancer! (I’ve pulled excerpts so I don’t have to paste the whole text here.)

“cancer, in medicine, common term for neoplasms, or tumors, that are malignant. Like benign tumors, malignant tumors do not respond to body mechanisms that limit cell growth. Unlike benign tumors, malignant tumors consist of undifferentiated, or unspecialized, cells that show an atypical cell structure and do not function like the normal cells from the organ from which they derive. Cancer cells, unlike normal cells, lack contact inhibition;”


These let us see what the affects of Spiritual Cancer does to the body. It is not limited by normal cell growth. They don’t function the way the body is expected to function. THAT WILL PREACH! I’ve not even gotten to my scriptures yet and I’m feeling something rising up in me that makes me want to scream in the face of every church fellowship in our movement, “Wake up! Don’t you see what you are doing to the body?”

“Loss of contact inhibition accounts for two other characteristics of cancer cells: invasiveness of surrounding tissues, and metastasis, or spreading via the lymph system or blood to other tissues and organs.”

In the case of spiritual cancer, I don’t think it is being transported by the Blood! This one is purely the responsibility of the body! It does tend to invade the bodily organs around the site of the infection. It can spread rapidly over a pulpit, metastasize inside a clique in the church and spread rapidly through the “lymph nodes” of respect of persons. Don’t think we have that cancer in the body? Let me rename it for you. We call it senior saints. We call them elders. We call it the ministerial privileged class.

How about the fast-metastasizing cancer of BITTERNESS? I’ve personally witnessed this recently when an admin for one of our organizational men’s sites banned me for asking to intervene in a matter of another brother on the site from another organization who refused to remove homosexual posts off a Pentecostal site even though he was a moderator and had the power to do so. When I pushed the issue they banned me from both sites without a hearing on the matter.

The previously mentioned brother and I had bumped heads repeatedly over doctrinal issues and making comments that could have been construed as “organizational policy” in a public forum where he denounced extending a hand of fellowship to anyone other than those who have come to truth, an another time for declaring that we needed to just minister to the saints in our church that God had given us and not be reaching for more. I spoke to him in January that the bitterness and cancer in his spirit is what is causing his cancer in his body. In this particular instance I knew it was true. However, it is not always the case. Sometimes there is collateral damage in the body on other organs. I’ll get to that.

Now those of you, who know me, know how I might have worded my reply in public forum. I didn’t sit under my psycho former mentor for nearly a year for no reason, and I am vaguely aware that my Marine Corp version of “tact” and that of the Pentecostal movement are a “Stone’s throw” (No pun intended) apart from being anywhere near similar. I’m also quite aware of the anointing and the mantle I asked God for as a child is resting heavily on these shoulders and I don’t have the time to pretty this up. I just have to say it. Fluff can come in a later revision and I’ll keep the names out to protect the guilty.

Now on to the collateral damage issue!

“Cancer tissue, growing without limits, competes with normal tissue for nutrients, eventually killing normal cells by nutritional deprivation. Cancerous tissue can also cause secondary effects, in which the expanding malignant growth puts pressure on surrounding tissue or organs or the cancer cells metastasize and invade other organs.”

Cancer in the spiritual body does not have to be in the spirit of the person affected by it originally. We’ve preached for years that rebellion sends out signals in the spirit world that tells all the agents of hell, “You can do business here!” How much more so can a message preached over the pulpit from a man infected with spiritual cancer affect the body of Christ unknowingly? I have never heard a sermon preached on spiritual cancer. It ranks up there with my top “first sermons” to preach when I get back in the pulpit again… (the one about Apostolic Abortions!) If this is true of rebellion, then we’ve got to deal with spiritual cancer too. All those who have wondered why we’ve seemingly had little effect on our saints and ministers falling to this deadly disease in the natural had better lend some ears in the spiritual! It’s not time for criticizing the messenger it’s time to start doing some soul searching!

Is it any wonder that in an age when we hear tell about “Old Time” camp meetings, brush arbor meetings, revivals that let out way in the wee hours of the morning that we are hearing it told by men and women who have forgotten what it was truly like by their actions and conduct, or even worse have never experienced it for their selves!

Can we truly desire the “old ways” and the “old paths” when the ministries of our forgotten era were not birthed in the licensing meeting of a general board room but were birth in the heart of a man or woman who has run screaming to the altar in repentance and poured out their soul in a deep, urgent, passionate groaning and agony in their spirit. They repented passionately in tears under the convicting power of the Almighty God, and it was born from a message preached by a man or woman who had not let go of the horns of the altar since stepping into the ministry. Nor had they given up walking in the passionate prayer of repentance to walk in the circles of a social club (otherwise known as a ministerial licensing fellowship), that is devoid of the deep intercession, passion, compassion, and anointing of our forefathers.

Is it possible that our lack of spiritual restoration of power and authority in the realms healing and the power gifts of the gifts of the Spirit are somehow linked to our refusal to operate in full power and authority in the physical functions of the church? Could it be that our refusal to do as Jesus mandated in Matthew 18:14-18 and as Paul directed in 1 Corinthians 6:1-11 has somehow emasculated us of the power of Apostolic dominion and while we as the church are refusing fair judgment in matters of the church based on our opinion of who we want to listen to and who we don’t. The move of the miraculous is standing just outside of our reach, forever unattainable, if we do not pick up spiritual authority in the natural realm!

I say this and even as I was typing it God showed me something else about this. When Paul is rebuking them for taking matters before the civil authorities and not the church, he says in verse 8 “Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your bretheren.” He was not talking about a brother defrauding his brother before civil authorities alone, but the CHURCH defrauding brothers and sisters by REFUSING TO EXERCISE APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY IN JUDGING MATTERS.

Let me put it in a way you can think on it without hurting your cranium. Jesus did not just suggest that this was how the church should function; he MANDATED that this was how the church was to function. Paul wasn’t rebuking two ding-a-lings reprobate saints for going before a judge. He was rebuking a church for refusing to handle the matter between two bretheren and THEREBY DEFRAUDING THEM OF APOSTOLIC JUDGMENT!

This is where our scope of ministry fails, first off because we have a non-apostolic view of the ministry. I won’t belabor the point. I’ve touched on it in other articles but not in depth. Mainly because I didn’t want to stir up a hornets’ nest like I did in two other state a year ago by telling someone the truth who was not willing or able to accept it. Jesus never intended our ministers to be ruling princes in our churches. If you want to disagree with me go ahead, but I have scripture for this. If you have to argue, go read Matthew 20:25-28.

God never mandated that our ministers be the CEO and Chairman of the Board of a church, nor did the apostles expect to run the church. If you disagree, go read Acts chapter 6 and get back with me on it. They knew their ministry was to give themselves continually to prayer and the ministry of the Word, but we’ve damned the Catholics and Baptists for generations yet refused to toss aside their methods of operation after the later day out-pouring began at Azusa.

They picked out elders to run the church and run the affairs and business of the local assemblies. And why don’t we do this today? I’ll tell you why. It’s because we’ll lose our nasty little control over people! I spoke to a dear minister friend of mine almost 2 years ago about this very thing. The fact is we have a lack of faith. We have no confidence in God that a truly anointed and God-called and ordained man would never be overthrown from the ministry of a church if we don’t keep our hands on the steering wheel and gear shift! We’ve seen a spiritual metamorphosis from the spirit led body of the early church to the man run church of the 21st Century. Don’t argue with me if you know I’m telling the truth…no matter what your friends may think. Listen to the confirmation of the Spirit.

Look at what happened in Acts 6 when they chose Stephen and several other men as elders to handle the affairs of the church. The moment Stephen steps forth in the full measure of Apostolic order and authority, Pow! The word of God increased. The disciples multiplied greatly, a great company of priests were obedient to the faith (wouldn’t that be a great day in some of our churches!) THEN Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people. Among the church? No, the man got out into the streets and did what Apostolic Pentecost is supposed to do. Got it out of the four walls and put it to use! We will never see full Apostolic restoration until we stop trying to run God’s business with programs, ordnances of men and PENTECOSTAL POLITICS. God is not going to bless flesh, only a Spirit-led church.

And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people. Acts 6:7-8

I’ve got news for you. God will not step on the scene and defend a church and ministry that does not follow the ordnances, teachings and precepts of the early apostolic church. We wonder why we have ministerial burn out. I’ll tell you why. God intended us to give ourselves to the word of God and prayer. MINISTRY! Not typing up bulletins, coordinating prayer chains, cell groups, and visiting 20 visitors at their homes after a Sunday service…that was all stuff for the elders. It wasn’t for the pastors to fix the brakes on the church bus, mow the church lawn, make peanut brittle and do all of the door-knocking either. If you’ve got 20 people in your church and the pastor is still having to do all of that stuff, then you NEED a revival, friend.

But hold on I’m not done…it wasn’t Jesus’ intention for our ministers to prostitute their callings and somehow leave their church where they pastor and go bask in the limelight of being guest speaker in over 200 meetings around the world every year, wear their alligator-skin Stacy Adams shoes, their SAKS suit and serve brown envelopes. All the while their saints back in the home church are fighting off every demon of divorce, adultery, drugs, alcohol, incest, discord, heresy, division and an unending list from the hordes of hell that can, will and have attacked our churches. It is not right to leave a local assembly with no semblance of pastoral guidance, leadership or counsel either!

Let me break it down and make it plain. If you are prostituting the call on your life to serve the limelight and your moment of popularity and fun in the sun, friend you are doing God and your saints a disservice. You are a hireling and should turn in your license!

I know as a movement we have not fully allowed the development of the 5-fold ministry. We’ve forced men called to prophetic offices and the office of an apostle to conform to the role of pastor in many cases when that was not their calling. We need to get rid of the Catholic model of leadership. It’s unbecoming to Pentecost! It’s like turning a mad bull loose in a pre-school. The prophet and apostle were called to direct leadership and call God’s people back into alignment with the Word of God… and instead we’ve launched them into a sheep-fold to take care of lambs. That’s like sending a Praetorian guard into a nursery to feed babies…More on Apostolic Abortions in another article.

“Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in adults; leukemia is the most common cancer in children. Other common types of cancer include breast cancer (in women), prostate cancer (in men), and colon cancer (see also Hodgkin's disease). The incidence of particular cancers varies around the world and sometimes according to ethnic group.”

I wonder what the death rate of spiritual cancer is in our movement. Let me make it plain for you. One hundred years of Pentecostal Apostolic Holy Ghost out-pouring and we have not yet come together to fuse ourselves into one body, one movement, one people. I’m not talking organizations exactly. God knows we’ve messed that up over the last 100 years too! We are divided, scattered, experiencing the division of spiritual cancer in the body. We need a spiritual healing on apostolic proportions in the Apostolic movement. We can’t keep wondering why the box isn’t working, healings aren’t happening, miracles are hit and miss. We are not called to debate our differences. We are called to unify the body of Christ. If we don’t do it, God will completely BY-PASS our movement and take this to someone else who is more receptive to his word!

There will not be a healing in the physical until we have a healing in the spiritual! Everything rises and falls on leadership. It’s going to have to come by spiritual surgery birthed in the fiery ministrations of the word and a call to repentance that our people must FIRST SEE in our ministry. We as ministers must be first partakers of the fruit. We have to stop choking off the true flow of the Spirit in our lives and ministries by letting ourselves become entangled in the cares of life that we know choke the word in new converts…and still does the same thing in our ministries.

Here is why we have no power other than what we take by presidential appointment or CEO (carnal) leadership in our churches. We’ve refused to exercise apostolic justice and judgment. We’ve condemned the denominal world and the charismatic’s for years for only wanting love, grace and mercy until they stretched themselves into something that was no longer love, grace or mercy, but promiscuity, sloppy agape and liberalism. However, we have done the same thing but in the realm of spiritual authority.

When Jesus mandated that we go to a brother or sister that has done us wrong and if they will not hear us to take two witnesses and if they won't hear us in front of two witnesses, then to take it to the church for judgment, IT WAS NOT A SUGGESTION! It was a heavenly mandate!

God will not restore apostolic power and authority to a church that refuses justice and judgment over the pulpit or in the counseling chambers for political correctness and respect of persons! We do not have a right to refuse to handle things in this manner; NOR DOES THE CHURCH have a right to refuse judgment! Forget our little politically correct “don't upset the saints, staff and old folks” mentality. The biggest problem we have in rendering judgment in our churches is that maybe some of us have gotten wise enough to realize that half our saints and ministers have become so carnal that if we had to judge a crisis situation in our churches we would lose our church. Half our people would backslide with the gossip circuit or even worse, take sides and divide the church and not the issue down the middle! Why? …Like people, like priest.

God will not be mocked, and what we sow, we are going to reap. We can’t continue to walk around preaching about a coming revival and restoration of full power and authority in the Apostolic church if we refuse to pick up the one key given us in the Word and use it in the door. If we are going to have restoration we have to deal with it on his terms from God’s word and stop destroying our own revival and our own restoration. We are bound by our refusal to act and God is bound by the mandates of his word. He’s not going to change something for us in the last days if we will not step into the roll he’s mandated for us and remove the divisions, bitterness and man-made thinking, programs and politics out of the Apostolic body.