Godliness 

A modern Pentecostal slogan today says, "Expect a miracle every minute." Of course, they usually mean a materialistic miracle. It is obvious that God does not intend for the Christian to live with this "miracle-every-minute" attitude and especially NOT when it comes to material goods. 

Pentecostals today usually come to these two false conclusions:

(1) that sickness and poverty are signs of God's disfavor, and

(2) health and wealth are signs of His favor.

These are simply not true and the Word of God is plain about it.

Gain is not Godliness, but Godliness with contentment IS Gain. 

I have seen several things happening along this line of teaching.  The church is confusing some Godly terms with those of Charismatics and New Agers: 

Faith is being confused with positive thinking; zeal with enthusiasm; tact with diplomacy; and wisdom with psychology.  

The Spirit of God promises Faith, Zeal, Tact, and Wisdom.  It is the FLESH that seeks and manifests positive thinking, enthusiasm, diplomacy and psychology. 

There is only one way to discern and know the differences:  You must be Biblically sound in doctrine.

Praise and Worship 

I have a very serious issue with the music that has crept into today’s Pentecostal Churches:

As a child, I remember the old time genuine camp meetings, where everybody, regardless of social status came together to worship, to praise and to hear truly anointed preaching.  There was a great reverence, repentance, and restitution  that showed itself in the testimonies of the people, and in the singing.  The songs of yesteryear were written following the Word of God.  Holy living, Bible reading, family altars, family bible time and soul-winning marked their lives as a result of such genuine moves of God.

I understand that songs alone should not be the basis for our Christian worship and praise, however, it is more and more obvious every day that Christian music is becoming somewhat less than the praise, worship and glory to God that it should be. 

The music itself is growing so close to the hard rock of the ‘70’s that unless the church wakes up and turns from it, there is going to come a time when Pentecostals are going to have to deal with Pure Demonic power that will dominate the music of the church. 

I could give you many examples of situations where young girls have filled their minds with the rock beat of today’s so called Contemporary Christian Music and ended up hissing like snakes and wiggling like worms across the floor. Christian music has no place and no business sounding like or trying to imitate the world’s rock.  You say it draws the kids?  You say it's what keeps them?  You say it's what they need?  No wonder many churches are in shambles.  No wonder few are being saved.  No wonder, church teens are becoming pregnant, contracting sexually transmitted diseases, diving headlong into a culture of piercing, cutting, tattooing, and are being stricken with the depression that follows.  No wonder parents are now constantly facing overwhelming rebellion from their teens.  No wonder teens are leaving home and leaving the church when they come of age, many never to return.  After all, if they hear the same music, wear the same clothes, do the same things in the church as the world is doing, what is the difference?

Biblical separation must be applied to our choirs, to our singers, and to all of our musicians.

We have sacrificed deep Biblical teaching in favor of our “singings” and unless the church wakes up NOW and separates themselves from the music of the world, the church WILL become even more “worldly”. 

Since churches got away from the old hymns, got away from the spiritual songs and the songs that actually contain a gospel message, I have seen an almost uncontrollable demonic power that has gripped today’s thin-skinned Christians and has plunged them into a “FORM” of Godliness, but there is no power to live a godly life. 

I have read of at least 2 “Contemporary Gospel” songwriting contests which state some of the “rules” for the composition of the hymns. 

There are 4 categories:   contemporary-traditional, contemporary, folk and rock-jazz. 

The rules state that words like “righteous and righteousness”, “cleansing”, and phrases referring to “washing in the blood” or offensive terms such as those that (quote) "demean classes of people as in homosexuals"; should not be used. 

In other words, you can't mention that homosexuality is wrong and you can't use the words sodomy, sodomite or Sodom.

All I can say about this is that these guidelines are entirely unscriptural and wreak of something more sinister:  Demonic Influence.

There aren’t any more Bible Study Conferences in which a congregation will sit down WITH THEIR BIBLES IN HAND and search out what they believe.  The only Bible conferences you see now, even in Pentecostal ranks are those that want to argue over which new, damnable (per)version of the bible to use.

The preaching of repentance and holy living is no longer heard from many of our pulpits.  The fundamental principles of the Bible are being left in favor of blind loyalty to a pastor, teacher, elder in spite of his departure from the Word of God.  Say one word today about a preacher’s (mis)conduct and you are the one who is questioned. 

No longer are the ones in our pulpits living an exemplary life above reproach, but they are instead, indulging in their own sinful pleasures and trying to justify it because they happen to be a “minister”. 

Folks, this is wrong, dead wrong.