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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | Solo Scriptura -- Radical Individualism | 2 Tim 3:6 | DocTrinsograce | 243406 | ||
Dear Ed, Your reaction to my post is probably only rooted in your disdain for anyone reformed, reformed leaning, or reformed like. However, it occurred to me that you might have identified somehow with the the odd balls of whom Calvin was speaking. You know, Calvin has been dead for over 450 years: an easy target for your charges. I would rather contend with a dead guy, myself. Now the lunatics Calvin was speaking of are also long dead. Little trace of them remains in our day. They actually rejected the Scriptures entirely (which is not normally an orthodox pentecostal position, is it... at least, unless there are things you are not telling us). As Calvin said, they actually would laugh at those who would depend on the Word -- and believe me, laughing was the most innocuous thing that they did. Those fellows would dance around in their "sanctuaries" like maniacs. They would talk to one another as if they themselves could actually call forth the oracles of God Himself. Amazingly, instead of examining those things in the light of Scripture, they swallowed them hook line and sinker. Since they worshiped nothing that was anything but an idol, I have often thought that perhaps their behavior was a reflection of the "desolation of abomination" elevated in their midst. Some of them were so resistant to the Scriptures that they denied the value of reading or writing, condemning them as wicked and unbelieving at their very roots! Even though they could not have come into existence without the Reformation, they denied the rightness of the teaching of the Reformed as stalwartly as the Romanist. I guess they just couldn't bring themselves to own up to being in one camp or another. You could well imagine how these nut jobs were thought of by Romanist and Reformed alike. Why, these guys even thought they would be able to bring heaven to earth by the meer resistance to all religious beliefs with which they disagreed. They were militant right up to the last. Oh, the mess they caused! Under the Romanist church they were at least bound by specific constraints on their sinfulness. They didn't want to trade those restraints by Reformed theology. They even thought that everything in the Law was a hindrance, from which they were freed. Wow! Instead of following one Pope, they actually turned themselves -- each and everyone -- into his own Pope. They thought that all of this gave them the right -- nay the duty -- to ignore absolutely everything which had been taught before them. Society began to collapse into a disorder unimagined by any of us moderns. They disavowed marriage, truth speaking, protection of property, submission to authority, etc. etc. Now I don't know what goes on in orthodox Pentecostal churches, nor am I clear on what they teach. However, I'll go out on a limb and suggest to you that you never see any of the junk that was going on in the above paragraph. If you did, you would'd not be in this forum, in submitision to the terms of use as Lockman has provided. In anticipation of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, I am reading as many biographies of Luther as I can lay my hands on. He laid into those nutters far more severely than the simple tongue lashing in question. Those guys were even more messed up than the Corinthians! So rest easy, Ed. Where there is none of the above stuff in your midst, where the Word is taught, perhaps Christ Himself is in attendance! I know full well that you believe in the Word -- at least insofar as it doesn't interfere with your more valued doctrines (cf Pauline doctrine in post #243400). Furthermore, you have nothing to fear from Calvin, Luther, or any of the Reformers. Nothing is threatening your embrasure of Johann Tetzel, Johann von Staupitz, Johann Maier Eck, Andreas Bodenstein Karlstadt, Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas de Vio Cajetan, Girolamo Aleandro, the Libertines, etc. Even relative contemporaries believe the way you do: Erich Fromm, H. Daniel Ropps, and the German and American liberal theologians. You might have to read a few books in lieu of quick excerpts from the Internet to see it. Sometime read a bit of Huss, Tyndale, Luther, Calvin, and Knox. The more factual information you have, the more bang you'll get out of your declamations. You'll need to read the complete works of Jacobus Arminius. It will take a bit of intellectual sweat, but I bet afterwards, you'd be able to write something that would really knock our socks off! I look forward to seeing someone harnessing Biblical, historical, and grammatical truth, to the edification of all. In Him, Doc PS Why are there so many morally aberrant Pentecostal teachers? It is as though your denomination carries more than its fair share of them, right back to 1906. We must pray those leader, that they might stand in integrity and righteousness. The more exposed through secular means, the more harmful it is for all Christendom. How shall we pray for that leadership? |
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2 | Solo Scriptura -- Radical Individualism | 2 Tim 3:6 | EdB | 243415 | ||
You are right we Pentecostals do not see any of this junk in our midst, although many Calvinist claim they have observed in our services. Which they have never attended I might add. And I assure you no liberal theologian believes as I do. I'm reluctant to dignify your last paragraph by responding to it but I will take a shot. Is it a fact that we Pentecostal's have more moral failures than other denominations or is it a case where many Pentecostal churches are so large a failure is more noticeable, more open to public ridicule? I believe it is the latter. That said any failure of any type in ministry is a tragedy. Frankly way too many enter ministry not because of a calling but out of a belief that it is a good career. I believe any man not called of God to the ministry and enters ministry is a fraud and will probably be exposed into shame. |
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3 | Solo Scriptura -- Radical Individualism | 2 Tim 3:6 | DocTrinsograce | 243419 | ||
Dear Ed, I rather doubt that there are external pressures that can be blamed for the many failure of the leadership in your denomination. The potential for any person to fall is there. It is rooted in our descendance from Father Adam. I think that the problem might be at least one of the following two issues: 1. No universally accepted set of written doctrines are available to Pentecostals. Thus, neither clergy or laity can be examined -- nor can they examine themselves. That means that you get all the junk coming in to your churches from Creflo Dollar to Kenneth Copeland. Ordination cannot properly take place because examination of the applicant could and probably is all over the map. The same issue occurs when a church goes to hire a pastor -- he might believe anything. So the guy hired is not a matter of his being fit to the congregation. Even the congregation doesn't know what they believe. 2. The second issue is the problem of autocratic polity. If there is no standard, how can a man be held accountable? These pastors do not turn to other pastors for support. They probably feel like they cannot show any weaknesses. Church discipline is rarely upheld (Swaggart was an example of that); and when it is, it is shrugged off because "God told me to keep on teaching!" These problems are in no way strictly an issue with Pentecostals. Many other groups, ranging from Wesleyan to Independent Baptist suffer from these problems. Christ never intended His church to operate in this fashion. Down through the centuries believers have thought and rethought these things. What is more, they came up with a wide variety of solutions. Of course, we don't see those solutions in action. Take Charles Spurgeon as an example. What we have are many of his sermons, lectures, and publications. No one saves the congregational covenant or plans or the minutes of the business meetings. What survives is his teaching. I can guarantee, though, that the Metropolitan Tabernacle didn't function autocratically. It didn't in John Gill's time and it doesn't now with Dr. Peter Masters. You see, the fewer problems of Reformed pastors is not that they are more learned, more disciplined, nor more pious. Instead it is the prudent structuring of support that they have, from initial calling, through ordination, and pastorate. Nonetheless, when any of these pastors and elders end up in a situation in which they do not have accountability, they can and often will fail. I have attended a couple of Pentecostal services. I have had far more exposure to Foursquare churches -- they are no doubt similar. I have to admit that none of it made any lasting impression on me. I tend to have very good recall of sermons. The only thing I remember clearly was taking my ten-year-old son with me. He was so frightened by the things taking place around him that he begged me to leave. I don't even remember what was happening that scared him. What is liberal versus conservative theology is very different than you imagine. Even if you had learned some church history, you wouldn't see the connection that is so prevalent in modern churches due to the liberal theology taught in the early part of the last century. Regardless, if you heard what they had to say, it would sound very familiar to you. Anyway, don't get so apoplectic about who I am and what I say. To be honest, I rarely read your posts. By the grace of God I am what I am. Indeed, if one who holds to orthodox Christianity did not get some push back from the world, it might be time to worry... for to be friends with the world is to be at enmity with God. In the end, He will sort us out. Let's pray that he shows us both mercy and less meritorious consequences! In Him, Doc |
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