STRANGE FIRE!

Strange Fire ... It has swept across our movement like a plague the past 20 years. If you don't know what it is, read the account of Nadab and Abihu in Levitus.

"And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. (Leviticus 10:1, 2 KJV)

I heard a man preach years ago that worship without repentance was strange fire, but I believe it goes way deeper than that. We live in a generation of Apostolics and Pentecostals (let's just be honest, they aren't the same thing anymore) that see no problem with walking into church with sin in their life and carrying on like it is "church as usual."

I'm not speaking of just the good ole' ain'ts either. We have men in this generation that literally think they are an extension of Levitical priesthood in the Gentile church age dispensation...and that they are "appointed by right of office" simply because an organization granted them a license, and they somehow cannot be inspected, corrected, rejected or replaced. That is a heresy among us, that if we don't break it out of our movement soon, will get us bypassed by the Holy Ghost faster than a freight train passing a hobo.

Since when does a position IN the church or body of Christ or even an organization position us to be beyond correction from anyone except our self-appointed bunch of deadbeat, half-backslidden buddies? How is it a man can get in the pulpit week after week, month after month, year after year and refuse the correction from the Holy Ghost, refuse to repent, reject all guidance in an area God has dealt with him repeatedly in for years, to the point he can't even hear from God anymore and we think he can't be removed after months of offering strange fire over the pulpit?

Since he hasn't done anything to tick off the local board or the good old boy network of his personally chosen organization of elitest, then he is in "good standing" and the saints just have to get over it and suck it up! Not in the coldest day.... Maybe it would be a good thing if we were an extension of Levitical priesthood...and our ministers had to get in the pulpit with bells and pomegranates on the hem of their garments and a rope on their ankle to pull them out of the building if God struck them dead for trying to minister before the Lord and the congregation with sin in their life! (500 funerals in one week across our movement might start a revival among us! Forget television debates UPCI & WPF, you couldn't beat the news crews out of your churches if God were to judge us like Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 3.)

Now we don't only allow strange fire over the pulpit, we allow our kids to do what they want in our churches. We even toss aside our doctrines while we sit back fat and happy and let them prostitute our movement into oblivion and lose the glory of God among us, like Eli the high priest did until God sent a little boy to correct and send judgement on the him and his entire family and offspring in 1Samuel 3 (I continue to give chapter and verse so the organization men can't say I'm not in the Book!). And now like in Samuel's twilight years, we appoint our sons as judges in offices God never called them to! Let that sink down into your ears and hearts for a bit.

Strange Fire has drastic consequences at every level, but especially on ministry.

I say this, having sat under men who openly admitted over the pulpit that God had not spoken to them in over a year, yet they continued pastoring on, preaching at conferences, revivals, BOT, and even General Conferences!

At one point, he even told me to get out of his church, that he was not my pastor, and I recounted a story from my childhood, while sitting in his office, about when a spitfire young preacher and evangelist came and preached our senior camp in Illinois, and he would charge hell with a water pistol, preaching to saint, sinner and preachers alike, even the district board! At a fireside consecration service in that same camp meeting, I had asked God for a double portion of that young preacher's anointing. I looked him straight in the eyes and told him that as Paul Harvey would call "the rest of the story," I didn't know 25 years later I would be standing in his church with him screaming in my face to get out of his assembly. He put his head down on his desk and bawled like a baby...but did not change!

God has a sense of humor though...4 years later he appeared at another camp meeting up in another district and in mid-message his first night he blurted out, "those of you preachers who kick people out of your local assemblies and somehow think you've kicked them out of the kingdom of God...well you're just and idiot!" He was bellow the platform in front of the pulpit and looked back 8 rows on the center aisle, and I was the only one standing clapping. His mouth dropped open and he stood there with a deer-in-the-headlights look for what seemed like an eternity. God can send correction even if you run a 1,000 miles from your pulpit and prayer closet!

One minister recently wrestled for a year, refusing to preach what God gave him for his church, attempting to slow things down and just teach every single service, or worse joke and cut-up in the pulpit with his nightly family comedy routine, ...until I walked in wounded one night and wept and prayed to God up high in the balcony, and said, "God, I need help tonight, so he either preaches in the anointing tonight or he gets out of the pulpit permanently!" He looked like someone stuck a red-hot poker to Porky Pig as something hit him in the pulpit and he bellowed like a bull and began to preach like a house on fire, jaws shaking and all red in the face, repeatedly telling the church he did not know what came over him, but that he didn't have a choice! The next week he went back to the same routine....

I stayed there for one more year before God allowed my job to take me on to another state, where two esteemed elders told me that I'll not run into the same nonsense any more...well at least not in their congregations...the other dozen or so churches in the region are another story.

These verses I have presented here keep echoing in my mind over and over...you know how it is if God has ever worked you over before about anything. As I am in transition until I fulfill what a couple district elders have directed me to do and visit every apostolic assembly in the area...which is a lot, so I have a lot of time on my hands. Trust me, it is worse that having an impatient kid in the back seat on a hundred mile drive...just won't leave me alone. ;-)

We need consecrated ministries, not self-absorbed narcissistic lifestyles. If our churches aren't growing we have a problem in the body. God cannot and will not bless strange fire, whether it be unconsecrated music ministry, preaching, worship, or even just our walk with God. Anything offered before Him must first pass through the consecrating fire of the sin offering of repentance and consecration. Fire from any other altar igniting our praise, worship, preaching, or living for God regardless of the degree of blessed talent it is offered with will be rejected by God, and the consequences are far-reaching, even to the second and third generation.