#236-Repetition

A Pastor's welcoming message to the guests first service.

Hello, welcome to the Apostolic church service. God will be here. It's good that you are here. Join us, as we worship God.

This first visit will be nothing like you have seen before. It will be awesome.

Why? Because we are Apostolic, that's why.

Don't know what Apostolic means?

Just read Acts 2 and you'll know where we come from.

Sure the sun won't be darkened, nor will the moon be drowned in blood like Peter describes in the Last Days.

Heck, we don't even have the tongues of fire that's described.

But we do have the Truth. and God. And our Apostolic Identity. This is important.

Also don't include the last few verses of Acts 2 that describe the Apostolic experience as having Communion daily or having all possessions in common. That's just not realistic to our capitalistic society.

But trust us, we're as Apostolic as you can get without being a communist.

Also read Acts 2:38... it's kind of a big deal.

Also, let me reiterate.... it's about to get CRAAAAAAZY UP IN HERE. This is part of being Apostolic.

The same pastor's message to the same guest's fifth church service.

Welcome Back again!

It's great having you.

I noticed you are still dressed like Jezebel?

Don't worry about it. If you still aren't trying to dress like us in six months then we'll talk. Because the Holy Ghost and Brother Steve will provide you with the necessary information to tell you how to dress, which will end up being dressing like us. Because we are Apostolic and we have the truth.

If you don't listen to the verses Brother Steve shows you then it means you don't have the Holy Ghost.

You have a question?

(Pause to hear question)

Ah yes... today's service....Our CRAAZZYY Apostolic services...

Funny you should mention it.

Yes, I know what you mean... About how the craziness seems as repetitious here as going to the bathroom on a daily basis for everyone else...

But I guess..... (scratches head)..... Well, geeze...

I guess that's how God chooses to work!

Yes! God happens to work the same two ways in each and every service... Either you will feel sad and cry because you did something naughty or you LOVE GOD JUST THAT MUCH (at which point the music will correspond perfectly with this remorse)

Or God happens to make you dance yourself Clean (at which point the music will once again seem to match PERFECTLY with what God is doing)....

I assure you this is how God wants it....

The program of craziness is the way God wants it, and the normalization of the craziness you speak of is just a secondary, unintended consequence of God's Pentecostal SPONTANITY!

We have SUITS Too!

And the Truth....

And if you don't like the way our CRAAAAAZY service is, then i'm afraid you don't have the truth....

So come and get crazy, and if you happen to get bored, consider that boredom as part of the Cross you have to bear in order to sacrifice yourself to God's Truth.... Where is a better place to learn sacrifice than at God's house?

(pause for another question)

No! You are not the Temple of God. This building is.

#235- Being Balanced: The Unbearable Lie of "the Middle Ground"

Maybe, I have wrote about this topic before. I have no clue. I don't remember yesterday. Thus it's impossible for me to remember the content of this blog.

The point is, I realized on the day before yesterday that one of the worst kind of horrorshows for our movement is when someone confesses that filthy illusion that they consider themselves "in the middle" of the Left or Right "spectrum" within our movement, or more specifically.... When someone claims a point or a stance that actually means something, a Man in the Middle chimes in that "We  Must maintain a balance and keep the other "end" of the argument in mind."  And then that convictionless person rambles on about not straying to far to the left, or too far to the right, but Keeping our eyes towards heaven....

And God's will, happens to be the middle?

Did I miss something?

No I didn't.

So before I continue, this kid below is reminding you and me, that if there is anyone we should be pointing the finger at within our movement, it is the "man in the middle who authorizes balance" above all...

Because the Man of the Middle is a Very very Bad Man.


Why? Not because the man in the middle is insensible, because in all respects, The man in the Middle is the most sensible.

But rather, this sensibility and "balance" and argument from being "practical" and making sure we are not being too extreme, too radical, too liberal, or too conservative is too sensible...

So sensible, that the Man in the Middle struggles from actually believing anything other than they want things to stay the same so they can keep their job, or line themselves in such a way to be next in line for a job from a predecessor who, also happens to be in the "Middle."

Except this middle doesn't exist.

because I think i am in the middle.

and you probably think you are in the middle.

And I think i am balanced.

You do too...

No one wants to be an extremist..

Except the most extreme person that exists today, is the person who claims to be balanced and in the middle in their beliefs, but in reality, this means, "I am lazy."

Because, as neutral, and balanced as the Man in the Middle claims to be, he does have a very Strong Position that bases itself in one doctrinal point: Any action one way will cause a negligence of the other side (one Extreme is "Legalism" and the other extreme is "The social Gospel/Emergent" movement).

Therefore, while the Man in the Middle claims to be balanced and without bias, his bias is more than anyone else's bias towards the Left or Right....

The Man in the Middle believes above all else in the Powers that Rule the Air in the Here and Now. The Man in the Balance worships the gods of capitalism, hierarchy, and not caring enough for anyone who doesn't step into their church walls. Because action means change, and when you want change, you cannot do so by maintaining a Middle ground...

Because the Middle Ground really means "I am allowing the hypothetical sins of the Legalists or the Emergents support my laziness to believe in nothing..."

But laziness, and inaction really mean that you fully support the way things are now...

Except God hasn't come back....

And our witness is dwindling...

We will rot as a movement if we listen to the voice of complacency spoken by the Man in the Middle.

But most horribly....

The Bible will have none of this nonsense...

Jesus doesn't talk about balance, maintaining the Middle, or any such nonsense....

Find me the scripture that supports "the middle ground" in the Bible.

You probably wont.

Why? Because this parasite of "balance" that is so common amongst ourselves today isn't biblical...It's a business-fiction to justify the lack of care for things outside our immediate comfort.

As for the practicability of the middle? Where is the middle ground for Hitler's Nazi germany on one end and Churchill's England on the other end?

Let me see.... if The Brits killed 0 Jews. And the Nazi's killed 6 million Jews. THen the Middle Ground would be 3 million Jews....

And you may say that my example is extreme, but that point is very clear.....

In regards to some or many evils, a Middle Ground is very much a sinful position. Finding the middle in the present age, says nothing about How God will judge us, because the sins on one end may be so bad hypothetically, that any kind of compromise with this radical evil end will result in the damnation of those who proclaimed it's middle.

Ramble about balance a lot Middle Man, so you can sleep easy tonight....

The sins of the world are waiting to fall on your shoulders.

#234-Domesticating God so that we can be sure we have God.

First first: If we want God to live with us, we must teach him to abide by our routine of life:


Maybe it was a month ago. Maybe more. I don't really remember to remember time or dates these days. The point is, I was on the phone with a friend who requested his name remain anonymous for this post. Beneath the surface.

This mysterious friend, made an observation amongst many others he has made to me over the years, that within Apostolic Pentecostal churches, "the point of worship service is no longer to make you feel the Holy Ghost." But rather, the proper goal for most worship services these days is "to make you feel like you feel the Holy Ghost."

The quote may seem like simple words games, but I would argue the extra "like you feel" is a very important distinction. The point would be that within worship services, pursuit of God and encountering God are no longer the thing pursued. Of course, everyone would say that encountering God is the whole purpose of the worship service (or perhaps it is the more absurd belief that worship service is done to "Lift Him Up!"), but if we take a step back and reflect....we may realize that within some worship services, the pursuit of God has become secondary within the worship service, and replacing the pursuit of God and the drudgery such a pursuit would demand is a new found monster in our ranks: replacing the THING ITSELF (God) with the APPEARANCE of God, and after the fact, we hope that after we have experienced the surface appearance of God in our hearts or with our eyes, we may actually convince ourselves that we encounter God Himself.

In the old days, we assumed that if we were happy, God must be making Himself right at home and thus Himself was happy....



In other words, in the old days, we could speak of old Pentecostal worship services as such: "It looked like an old fashioned Pentecostal outpouring, it felt like a Pentecostal outpouring, and therefore it really was a Pentecostal outpouring."

But these days, we should be saying "It looked like a Pentecostal outpouring, it felt like a Pentecostal outpouring, and therefore we know the worship leaders were really good and the song selection even better."

And thus what we must acknowledge, though we are not ready to most of the time, is that just because we are happy....it does not mean God is happy...

And if you question my claim, you are free to rebuttal anonymously below, .... but before you do answer, these questions.... Answer it with thought: Why do we need music in worship service? Why can't we have a worship service in silence? Why is silence so awkward in church? How come we can only take silence when either it is announced by the Pastor that we are about to meditate on the Lord silently, or we have worshiped our hearts out long enough as a church, that just when we get physically exhausted, God has a worshipful rest of silence waiting for us and the exhausted musicians?

Why is God's encounter with us dependent on the songs we play? Why do we have to have music to worship as a church? What if God is talking and we were so busy producing his appearance with our worship music that we miss his still small voice?

The point is we are making a habit of our worship. Or we have been making God a habit for some time. So much so, that without thinking we go through the movements of worship service, thinking that if God is meant to be encountered it must be through our own stage, through our human constructed habits involving music and loud noises, that coincidentally enough, pleases our Westernized, middle class- ears all the more...

Bible Portion for the day:

I Kings 18:26b-29:  Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. “Baal, answer us!” they shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made.

 ²⁷ At noon Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.” ²⁸So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. ²⁹ Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.

And if our God is the God of Truth as we say. And if we possess the FULL Truth in knowledge and revelation....Then couldn't we say, God's appearances are in a way dependent on how we allow him to appear in our worship services? That is to say, is God, who we know in full truth, limited in some way to present himself in the world by the manor we set forth for God  to appear within our worship services? 


If God wanted to appear in a different form or in a new revelation, He couldn't do it because he is dedicated to us in our revelation of Him. And thus even if He did appear in a new way, we wouldn't listen, because we HAVE GOD in Spirit and in Truth. Thus if there was something new, it would mean that the Truth we possess now isn't the Full Truth. 


But we have the Full Truth! And thus God wouldn't appear in any other way than in the manor He has already shown us....


And therefore, in our worship services, God is restricted to appearing in the manner we set forth. 


God is God. But we are His People. And we have Confiscated His Sovereignty. Unless what we mean by sovereignty is rather that God is free to do all things, and those things he happens to be free to do, coincide with what He has already revealed to us He Will do....


We of course know this is nonsense... we know that we don't have the Full grasp of God even if we tell ourselves we do. Similar the way we don't really dictate God's appearances to us as a Body of Believers, but yet we act out a formula for a worship services that gives the appearance that we are encountering God.


It's not that God is never encountered in our worship services, but rather in the consistency of how our worship services go (slow songs create one kind of atmosphere, whereas fast songs do something else within us), we are pretending like our favorite style of music and worship happens to be God's favorite style of music and kind of worship. Yet we know God is not bound by our ways, and thus He will manifest Himself in ways that make us uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean He's not there.....


If we know all this, the question is, why aren't we experimenting more? Why aren't we trying to realize different forms of worship within our church walls themselves that other people may say works for them? Thus we have unity in our diversity that doesn't pretend that God only appears in our comfortable perimeters to worship...


And if we aren't for this.....then isn't it safe to say we are domesticating God? making him out of our own image? Making God out to be something palatable that is convenient with our own tastes and habits? As much as God doesn't like being made out into an image of human hands, I think it would be all the worse to make God out to be an image in the likeness of our very own image....

If we are to really let God be God, and not just be the God we dictate him to be, this means something quite uncomfortable....

But maybe we do need to release God back out into the wild....or else not only will we die in the process, as the Catholics, and the Jews, and anyone else who closed off God, but perhaps in some way, God dies too..