Quote:
Originally Posted by TRFrance
Stephanas,
so as not to emotionally invest too much in this post, I'll keep it very simple.
Maybe we're talking past each other a little here. Pardon me if I missed your meaning; perhaps you've missed mine also. But this is the the primary point at the heart of my previous post:
If you were only look at baptized people as being "converts" in both the AG and Oneness (which is how you seem to wish to do it), then yes, we'd then have a valid apples-to-apples comparison. But the reality is far different. You consider the 450,000 "converts" to be a meaningless number. But it is far from meaningless if these are people who've been told they're "saved" because they made a "decision for Christ". Needless to say, those are not just numbers, those are souls -- the majority of which are not properly taught as to what bible salvation truly is.
In the AG they consider anyone who's made a "decision for Christ" to be saved. What this leads to is a lot of people who've sitting in their church pews for years, who've not gone on to be baptized or filled... yet apparently they still think they're ok.
This is what the AG is recognizing -- that over the years they have de-emphasized the Holy Ghost to point that now a sizeable number of their members (perhaps even a majority) don't have the Holy Ghost. I believe that is the natural conclusion to draw not just from their own stats, but from Crabtree's own assessment that "in 10 years we will have a very small percentage of Pentecostals in the Assemblies of God". Meanwhile, I dont think anyone would seriously make a similar statement about the UPC or any Oneness organization I know of.
Are there reliable Oneness statistics to compare to the AG's stats? Not that I'm aware of . But I think a combination of common sense and the available anecdotal evidence paints a pretty clear picture .
Bottom line is, as far as being truly "Pentecostal", the AG is a denomination in decline. Its kinda sad, but not unexpected considering the path they've been on for decades now. What the AG has perpetrated over all these decades now has been a spiritual travesty.
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You can't compare the AOG with the UPC statistically because of the huge differences in the conversion process.
If the AOG has huge rallies and 2000 people come to the altar they consider that a decision for Christ while the UPC doesn't consider someone a convert until they have been BAPTIZED both in the Holy Spirit and Water.
I don't see how in the world the UPC doesn't have 100% spirit baptism unless they are accounting for children of the members or those who have been water baptized and are just waiting for the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
Statistically you can't compare Oneness and AOG in Holy Ghost Baptism UNLESS you account for the differences. To be honest a great starting point would be to compare the percentage of those baptized in water to those baptized in the Holy Spirit.
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