How to Stay Above Deception Part 14

THE CHURCH REFORMATION

By Apostle Felix

I give you the name Peter, a stone. And this truth of who I am will be the bedrock foundation on which I will build my church—my legislative assembly, and the power of death will not be able to overpower it! Matthew 16: 18

PENTECOSTALISM

The church has gone through several stages of doctrinal growth. It’s started with one message of the gospel which was death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The emphasis in the early church was to convince the masses that Jesus was the Messiah prophesied about by the prophets.

Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Acts 2: 36, 37

This one message was preached across the world and produced outstanding results. The church was founded on that simple and yet powerful message of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. However, the church started losing the message of the gospel when syncretism was introduced into the church. The message of the gospel lost its effectiveness, and the church became more of a religious body. It was in a state of apostasy for many years before the reformation in 1517. The reformation was initiated by Martin Luther due to wrong practices and abuses in the church.

This may inform us on the importance of reformation. Revival without reformation can be detrimental to the church community. Doctrine violation is inevitable when reformation is ignored and discarded. Reformation has got to do with theological uprightness and soundness. The problems the church is facing today are doctrinal oriented.

Church has come through many curves of theological deviations through time and space. From Martin Luther, the church has been battling with church splits on doctrinal disputes. Pentecostalism has had its own battles and challenges since its inception in the early 19th century. Pentecostalism had it’s set of challenges in the 50th and 60th century with the rise of charismatic movement whose emphasis was largely on spiritual gifts exercise.

The movement’s emphasis got a large following from the mainline denominations and conservative Pentecostals. The charismatic movement introduced independent ministries, whose main focus and emphasis was charisma. The movement was not so much focusing on doctrine but the manifestation of spiritual gifts. The church started receiving new revelations and inspirations without any consideration of the inerrancy of scripture. The charisma of an individual became more important than character. And this was because of the turn the church took from emphasizing sanctification to emphasizing spiritual gifts.

Ministries started springing up under the umbrellas of men and women, who were deemed as gifted and anointed, regardless of the individual’s theological discrepancies. With time, the church paid a blind eye to theology and came to depend on personal experiences and revelations. This doctrinal independence in the church, watered down the theological position of the church. Theological accountability died and people did as they wished, introduced doctrines that the church is still battling with today.

In the next devotions, we are starting to address some of the erroneous teachings the church has deemed as part of God’s revelation concerning the Christ.