Quote:
Originally Posted by Dichotomy Girl
Yes, but my point was that those sitting at Jesus's feet probably weren't calling him the Greek form of his name either....
Exactly this...when you demand absolute specificity, there will always be room for improvement.
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Great point.
This is something that has puzzled me about our movement. Believe me when I tell you that I took my time making the transition from the AoG to the UPCI. I went over everything with a fine toothed comb. I studied scripture, writings and history. After this thoughtful and prayerful study I came to the following conclusions.....
1) The standard. modern version of the Trinity doctrine is not quite tritheism but does start one down that road in his thinking. At best it is a very inadequate way to describe the God of the Bible.
2) The oneness doctrine, while also having it's "problems" best describes the God of the Bible amongst all the teachings out there.
3) That Evangelicals, while admirably being zealous to defend the doctrine of justification by faith alone, made a mistake in relegating water baptism to a "
post salvation , outward expression of an inward act".
4) That the
Mathew 228:19 wording is actually describing baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ as practiced by the Apostles.
5) That the baptism in the Holy Ghost is
NOT a "
work of grace subsequent to the new birth" but is indeed the new birth of the Spirit.
One conclusion I did
NOT come to was that nobody was saved from the rise of Catholicism until 1913. What God impressed upon me was that he is patiently trying to reintroduce these truths to a church that is filled with flawed, weak human beings who tend to miss what he is saying one regular basis, individually and corporately. The Lord also impressed upon me that the rancor and animosity that exists between Trinitarian and Oneness Pentecostals was never his will and grieves his heart.
Since 1992 I have continued to walk in and teach the 5 points that God showed me as listed above. But I have never burned my bridges to those good men in the Trinitarian Pentecostal ranks who led me to Christ and discipled me from 1980 to 1992. If I am a blessing at all to the UPCI, much of the credit goes to them.
Having studied the history of the Apostolic movement, it is clear that our leaders back then did not feel the Holy Ghost filled Trinitarian associates they were separating from were lost, hell bound sinners as is taught by many in our ranks now.
As dichotomy Girl pointed out,
demanding absolute specificity on every minute detail before you will call someone a brother (I'm referring to people who have the Holy Ghost) only leads to the need for more and more specificity to the point we can't even get along with our own Jesus name brethren, much less Trinitarians who might be open to more truth if it weren't laden with so much vinegar.
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