Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam
We all know that can't be the REAL Holy Ghost.
Must be some kind of false spirit because:
the girl has on a bifurcated garment
the preacher is CoG and therefor preaches three gods
the preacher has spiked hair
some women in the crowd have trimmed or cut hair and jewelry
our God would not associate with those kind of folks
etc.
etc.
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regarding my post which is quoted above:
I was not dismissing or minimizing the experiences of the people in the video. Tommy Bates pastors a church in Kentucky, maybe an hour from where I live. I have never been there and probably never will. He is an "older style" Pentecostal in some ways and a "modern style" Charismatic in other ways. This is not a criticism of him. He proudly traces his roots to the move of the Holy Ghost in Kentucky which happened around the same time He was moving in Tennessee/North Carolina/Georgia which resulted in the current Church of God (Cleveland, TN); in India at Pandita Ramabai's school; in Russia and Armenia; and at Azusa Street. This was in the late 1800's and early 1900's and is, in my opinion, the latter rain outpouring of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit was moving in these areas, it is my understanding that when news of what was happening at Azusa Street in California, one man went to California by horseback to check it out. He was so amazed at what was happening there he rode back to Kentucky as quickly as he could with minimal stops along the way. When he arrived back home they had to pry his feet from the stirrups to get him off his horse because he had ridden so long and so intently. He was overjoyed at what he had seen in California and announced some thing like, "Folks, they've got the same thing out in California that we have here." That message of the Holy Ghost Baptism spread from Kentucky up through Ohio and Michigan. Today there are many assemblies in Hamilton, OH who use the term "Church of God" in their names that are a result of that move of the Holy Spirit over a century ago in Kentucky.
What I was doing in my post was being sarcastic of the attitude that we (and I include myself in this) Apostolics have exhibited in the past toward others who have enjoyed the blessings and gifts of the Holy Spirit. During the "Latter Rain" Movement in the late 1940's and early 50's; and during the "Healing Movement" (William Branham, Jack Moore, Gordon Lindsey, A.A. Allen, Jack Coe, Oral Roberts, etc) and FGBMFI around that same time; and during the Jesus People Movement and the Charismatic movement of the 1960's; and of the "Third Wave" which has been going on for some time, we dismissed those people and those blessings as though they were not of God.
All around us were people from various denominations receiving the Holy Ghost Baptism and seeing the gifts of the Spirit in operation. These folks did not believe like we did. They were -gasp- trinitarians. They did not look like we did. Some wore clergy collars. Some were nuns in their habits, some had beards and long hair and wore sandals. Some wore jewelry and makeup. Some women wore "pantsuits" and had did not have "uncut" hair. Some met outside and some in coffee houses and halls and even bars, and others met in church basements, but they did not leave their churches and come join us. They did not come to us and get baptized. We thought we had an exclusive franchise on the Holy Spirit.
All of a sudden, God was moving among people and they did not come to us for us to dispense/distribute Him. What could we do? Some of us dismissed the whole thing as fake, not the REAL Holy Ghost, wildfire, etc. Some of us realized that God did not really pay much attention to our organizations and our petty little doctrinal squabbles, and our exclusive self righteous attitude toward anyone who did not see everything the way we did. We had to swallow our pride and admit that God was indeed pouring out His Spirit upon all flesh as He had promised long ago. We could go into a "bunker mentality" and hunker down and rave and condemn and shoot at anything and anyone who was different and try to remain "exclusive" or we could acknowledge that the House of God was larger than the little room we had been hiding in while we sniped at anyone and anything that didn't conform to us.
Oh, well, that's enough of a rant for now.
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