Another
error that signalled a deviation from the apostolic truth was the special place
given to Mary, Jesus' mother, by Irenaeus in his attempt to debunk the false
claims of the Gnostics who maintained that for God to take human form and come
down to planet earth, was impossible (being a Spirit).
Inasmuch as
these men could be credited for putting up some form of defence against the
false teachings of the day, it is noteworthy
that some of them equally sowed the seeds of error that sooner than
later robbed the Church of its power and caused her to relapse into religion and,
eventually, the Dark Age.
However, as
God moves again to restore the lost glory of the Church, as the latter reclaims
her God-given authority and power to establish the kingdom of God and His will
on the earth, smacking the strongholds of the devil's kingdom, the leadership
of the 21st Century kingdom-minded Church should be extremely careful to
operate solely with the spirit of the fathers. Here, I mean all past
generations of saints who laboured to fulfill the mandate of God on their lives
and adhered strictly and whole-heartedly to the apostles' lifestyle and
doctrines and who also made it a moral duty to commit to the generations after
theirs the same old-time, undiluted gospel and apostolic truth. A glance at
Church history from Pentecost to the present time would reveal a large company
of soldiers, including the famous and the unsung.
The same
spirit that moved these people to openly challenge and rebuke established
deceptive practices religiously fashioned by men, hazarding their lives to
prevent succeeding generations of God's people from taking a course down the
precipice of damnation and hell, must rest on the emerging generation of true
Church leaders. God is counting on this new generation to stop the devil from
doing further damage to the souls of humans, as He gives it the grace to access
deeper truths through revelation to accomplish this.
The new
generation must join forces with the true fathers that remain, combining the
strength of youth and the experience of age, and stand firm to launch the final
onslaught against all that represent the kingdom of darkness on the earth. This
generation has the heaven-ordained duty to double the pace of the warfare,
moving with the mentality of men and women in a battle. For no man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs
of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. (2
Timothy 2:4)
Granted that
some of the fathers have performed somewhat woefully and have left us with
examples that should not be repeated in the present time, the onus is on the
emerging leadership to examine its act thoroughly, separate the good from the
bad, discard the bad, take the good and then run with it.
The
corruption and decadence that have been the lot of the Pentecostal Move in
recent times could be traced mainly to the inability of the present-day Church
to keep to the original standards and lifestyle of past true heroes of the
faith. Due to inaccurate teachings; kingdom values mixed with worldly cultural
mindsets and outright self-motivated cravings, the ways of God have been perverted
and the Church has been sidelined and mocked at in the world. Foundational
truths upon which successful Christian living ought to be built to manifest
true kingdom life to the world have been ignored, and in some cases erroneously
interpreted.
Some
chapters of this book will be devoted to revisiting some of these foundational
issues. A proper understanding of the truths and how we apply them to our lives
will determine whether or not we will be able to move into the fullness of
kingdom life and fulfill our God-ordained purpose in this generation.
No comments:
Post a Comment