Phenomenon?
For those of you who are Holy Ghost filled, loving men and women of God, this post is not for you. For those of you who are making efforts to live the best way you know how for God, this post is not for you. I recognize that there are many kind and loving Spirit-filled people in the Pentecostal ranks. So please do not take this post into yourselves. It is not for you.
And Brother Joe, I am thinking that this post is not even for you because when I was your age, I had the same responses. Frankly, I just did not know what kind reaction I was contributing to from people who were trying to tell me something with those responses I once had.
My response to your post:
So why do some of you people label others as "backsliders" when you know nothing about the other person? What purpose can you possibly have hidden in your heart to even have the need to LABEL somebody else as backslidden unless you
want to describe other people who do not agree to some of your standards in a
negative way?
You people react to negativism in the same manner as the "backslidden". Only you people use the many Bible verses to throw at the people you people reject because of the club rules and then chortle "It's bible". Yet, very few of you people will take a step to help restore people that are labeled "backslidden" by your group.
If there is any root of bitterness in people's heart, it is because the root came from some of you so-called Apostolics in the first place with all your man made rules and superior attitudes of you must obey "the man of God".
Don't you know that everybody who has the Holy Ghost is a man of God or a woman of God? Not just those who go to the Seminary or get Ordination papers by another group of people. It is who
God makes righteous for only God can see what is inside a person's heart. All the rest of us, pentecostal or not, should take the attitude that our righteousness is as filthy rags.
Yeah I know out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. But some of you call it "root of bitterness" when you do not want to listen to how the people feel. I can speak of phenomenons likewise. That is a phenomenon where people cannot engage in honest dialogue because they do not want to hear how the other person feels nor expend any energy changing themselves and conforming to the actual Word of God in the Bible. Or they just do not want to leave other people alone to work out their own salvation with the Lord. Charity covers a multitude of sins right?
Sorry. I don't buy your statement. Many Apostolics deliberately shut people out of their church system by the way they treat others who do not agree with them. Those type of people are
afraid of the very things Pilgrum mentioned. And I don't think most Apostolics are sorry for the experience they help contribute to a person who leaves, then labels them to be a "backslider".
Some Apostolics tear down their own house, then blame it on their victims.
There are many people who hold to
Acts 2:38 and believe it with all their heart. But there are many in your ranks who only look upon the outward appearance and determine that they are "backslid" and treat them horribly. I think that is arrogance to make such a determination in this manner. You may not do this, but there are plenty of people who do and others who play follow the leader.
I feel that most people who do leave is not because they reject
Acts 2:38 at all. But more likely they reject the treatment they receive at the hands of the Apostolics for asking questions, for disagreeing with other things taught that are extra biblical.
The Bible has specifics about a brother or sister who is backslid.
9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
I Corinthians 6:9,10
And
19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:19-21
But many of the pentecostals lump the cutting of hair, the relaxing of the dress "standards" cosmetics, and used to be beards and mustaches for men etc to be
the measuring stick to tell who is backslid or on their way.
Heh. I've found people who are supposedly "in the church" guilty of one or more of the above scriptures, yet because they adhere to those "standards" they continue to just click right along.
Furthermore, there are many "holiness" people who go out of their way to persecute the labeled "backslid" instead of looking at themselves and the things they say and do that played a part in people leaving the system. They look at the "backslid" and accuse them of having a root of bitterness, all the while they themselves have a controlling, unkind and unloving greedy spirit.
And...there are some out there that preach outright lies for reasons only known to God and to them. You see we may not know these reasons, but God surely does and it does not mean we have to sit in a pew and become indoctrinated with it.
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