20th CENTURY MAN CENTEREDNESS: Part 6

I. Liberalism in the Charismatic Movements
What had happen in their time was that they began to mishandle the Word of God which was extremely important.[1] With a less lack view of epistemology and not allowing the Word to interpret its’ self by adding their own personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences lead to a diminished gospel, and not the Gospel which was given to us by scripture alone. Liberal Theology has infused these views of their gospel, into their hermeneutics and lead to the decay of scripture. That is why scripture in postmodern culture sees scripture as, “what it means to me”, and not what its’ original meaning to the reader was.

With these problems in time they would lead to major denominational beginnings of the 20^th century in which were all liberal. Their man centered mind bought about feelings and experiences that would captivate the one attending and give them a type of spiritual high so that they could feel good about themselves. These were mainly played out through Pentecostal type churches that began their own set of beliefs to try something new and get away from the traditions of the past.

To explain this, the Pentecostal movement was/is a movement that places special emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as shown in the Biblical account of the Day of Pentecost. Pentecostalism is similar to the Charismatic Movement, but developed a little earlier and separated from the mainstream church. Charismatic Christians, at least in the beginning of the movement, they tended to remain in their own respective of denominations.

Secondly the Charismatic movement was/is a movement that began with the adoption of certain Pentecostal beliefs. See, one didn’t like how one worked over time, so they started their own set of beliefs. These were specifically what are known as the biblical charismas of Christianity. Speaking in tongues, prophesying, slaying in the spirit, miracles and healings. Within mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches. As time went by and by then the Charismatic Christians then formed their own churches and denominations because of their unhappiness to worship how they felt, of was feeling at the time. Because of the continual cross-over between Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement, it is increasingly difficult to speak of Charismatics and Pentecostals as being two separate movements. Beliefs of these two different groups are very similar. Although each movement however is unique in its historical beginnings. These beings came from the influence of the mainstream churches, Dennis Bennett, which is an American Episcopalian, is the reason of this poor movement’s seminal influence. Bennett was form California and during the 1960’s said he had the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that had given him this movement. But after the 1970’s these people was forced into the denominations along joining forces with the Pentecostals. This has then passed on into the U.S. and now spreading rapidly in Canada ever since the 1980’s. It appears today that in modern-day Charismatics and Pentecostals are far more united in experience that they have and theology because both movements have adopted elements of Mr. Latter Rain teachings who had influenced the teachings of these movements in the 1950’s with mostly Pentecostals which also was complete heresy. And now this movement spreading into other countries like as far as Brazil and even running their sound churches.

Thirdly in time came along the Vineyard movement, an organization of over 850 churches worldwide, and due to its size is generally considered to be a part of the Christian denomination. Church leaders and most laity, but they did not typically consider the Vineyard to be a denomination. This is because of their culture within most Vineyard churches that happens to discourage the use of denominational labels for some stupid reason. The Central Governing Body of the Vineyard is a 12-member board of directors. The board is made up of the eight regional overseers of the church plus 4 additional leadership members, including the National Director. Currently, the National Director of the Vineyard is Bert Waggoner. All major decisions, including all major theological and doctrinal statements, are made by the board of directors and not by the word of God. These people don’t even have a statement of faith for their denomination for the longest time. Then in 1983 they started one and took more than 10 years until 1994 till them even had a generic one! And now here of late in 2004 they have a 10 point code for the faith, so they say. Most Vineyard churches have no official membership or any kind of joining procedures or even no membership records. Instead, a community of believers is formed by those who attend Sunday services they say, and weekday “home groups,” and participate in various church ministries that they have to reach the lost with their happy feel good messages. They even have their own publishing houses so that no one can see or know about their material they use. They have it all actually even their own music recording company; this is basically a cult in its self I believe.

They say the scripture is the final authority but yet they have like councils that make up rules, doctrines and laws and ordinances and theology for their denominations that do not come from the word and they don’t even come up with scriptures for all them. They have put feeling and what they believe to be true and what seems cool, or god at a time or for the crowd over the actually biblical doctrines and word of God that they so call to be their authority. A huge idea that they think is that the book of Acts is for doctrine and use that to defend them when they don’t look at the bible as a whole and see that it was meant for use of history and to show how the church was stated and progressed. The action of the apostles becomes their doctrines and beliefs to be true for their church. The problem lies at the interpretation of the scripture and how it is looked at. They never stay with the same hermeneutic thought out the whole scripture, and make no distinction between what the purposes are of the books written for and why and to even who! I get less upset with these people and once again they are cults, as far as I am concerned.