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Why Did The Glory Leave US? By Rev. Mel C. Montgomery
Article VII The Sin of: Refusing to Judge
The seventh in a series of articles in which we acknowledge that the manifested Presence--the Glory--of God has left much of what we are doing in Charismatic and Word of Faith Circles. We examine why it left, and what we must do to get it back.
The Sin of Refusing to Judge Concerning spiritual gifts and all that takes place in public services, Paul wrote: "Let all things be done decently and in order." I Cor. 14:40. Frankly, the burden is on us. If things are out of order in a service, don't pray to God about it. He isn't going to do anything about disorder. He has given leadership the assignment, and He expects us to cooperate with our leadership to ensure that as things take place in our services, WE keep things within scriptural boundaries. Can you imagine the Apostle Paul presiding over a service where believers barked like dogs? He would not have tolerated that for a single second. He wouldn't have prayed about it. He wouldn't have tried to make excuses for it. He would have stopped it. Why don't we stop these extremes? Because like Hophni and Phinehas, we refuse to judge the things that are taking place in our midst. One of the great strengths of the Goodwins ministry that kept them sound while others just as anointed went off the cliff, is that they JUDGED the things that happened in their services. And they PUT A STOP to anything for which they could not find a scriptural basis. I do not fault the adherents of the New Prophetic move for rebelling against the Word of Faith move. By the late 1980's and early 1990's, things had become mechanical and dead in most of the Word of Faith move. Even Brother Hagin indirectly admitted as much. At the instruction of the Lord, Kenneth Hagin began going from church to church holding "Holy Ghost Meetings" in which he just yielded to whatever the Holy Spirit wanted to do from moment to moment. He did this because the Lord said to him, "There is a move of My Spirit that will be lost to this entire generation if you do not instruct them." Sister Goodwin also complained to me one time about the Word of Faith people saying, "they know almost nothing about the Spirit." But in rebelling against the deadness of many WOF Churches, the New Prophetic Move adherents threw out the baby with the bathwater. Along with throwing out the deadness, they threw out also all understanding of spiritual order. And before long, they had "prophecies" flying in every direction, and people barking like dogs and hissing like snakes. Our ignorance seems to take one of two extremes: Either we have things so tightly ordered that we shut down the Holy Spirit completely, or we throw the door wide open to the Holy Spirit and any other spirit that happens to wander by. Neither extreme is acceptable. The Goodwins understood well the role they were to play in overseeing the move of God in their church. Howard Carter commended them on it. He said that they provided the best oversight in their church that he had seen in his life. A person might wonder, "Do we need to oversee the Holy Spirit?" The Holy Spirit, no. The human beings He flows through, yes. We need to recapture that understanding of judging prophecies, closely overseeing spiritual manifestations, stopping that for which we can find no scriptural basis, and keeping things within scriptural boundaries. The same Bible that tells us to quench not the Spirit, also gives us the assignment to see to it that all things are done decently and in order. In the next article in this series, we will examine the next sin we noted in the list above. Namely, the sin of enablement. To access this article, please click on the title in the left column, or click: "VIII: The Sin of Enablement" Copyright 2007 Mel C. Montgomery all rights reserved. Material may be copied and shared with others as long as it is done so without charge, in entirety, and if attribution is given.
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