Success has replaced Victory

Success is not even a thought in the mind of God. Success is an apostate term referring to numbers of people, diversifying stock investments, size of operation, fiscal budget and projecting future growth. That is success, but the church does not exist to be a success - the church exists to be holy and victorious.

 
Charismatic are success oriented.
Pentecostals are righteousness oriented.
 
Charismatic emphasize riches over righteousness.
Pentecostals emphasize righteousness over riches.
 
Charismatic try to be relative to world values;
Pentecostals strictly seek what is Biblically relative.
 
There is a difference between Biblical Pentecost and the modern Charismatic.
The church that chooses through prayer to attain character, and power over sin, will be given power gifts. God knows that only good character can rightly use power and authority. The church that seeks success will throw contempt on the teaching of Christ and the apostles to follow after godliness and separation from the world.

Calvary was not a success, it was a victory!

The story of the cross is the story of what happens when a divine omniscient with a plan of victory visits a world of ambitious men bent on success.

God has no plans for succeeding. He invaded this planet to conquer it!

If His objective had been success, then success oriented and success prone humans would not have rejected and crucified Him!
 

But take an honest look at the ministry of Jesus. As far as super crowds He was a failure. He apparently did not want to succeed at amassing the people around Him. When the crowd came out to Him He blasted them with denunciations that scattered them in every direction mumbling to themselves. For three and one half years He stunned the nation of Israel with miracles of the greatest magnitude and yet out of a nation only a band of one hundred and twenty tarried for Him in the upper room. Matthew 23; John 8 and Acts 1 and 2. That's not exactly being a success.
 

He would not allow Himself to become an object of charisma worshipers. This is where the real battle lines and decisive spiritual combat begins and where the battles have been lost by the modern preacher and layman.
 

Western culture and not Jesus has programed us to success. Modern Charismatic equate success with spiritual achievement and maturity. Millions of modern Christians labor under the illusion of the success philosophy.
 

Excuse me sir, but the Holy Spirit is not come to make you a success, He has come to help you die - to take up your cross daily and bear it suffering with Him! Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; 1 Peter 4:1
 

Material gain is a fringe benefit of obedience, not a prime objective worthy of the extreme emphasis Charismatic have placed upon it in this church generation. Our taste for victory has given way to a lust for success.

Jesus knew the difference.

Jesus was not presented to the world as God's Public Relations agent. He came to transform us morally no matter the cost - to Him or to me.
 

Success makes us feel good, victory makes us feel right. If riches constitute a sort of spiritual success or divine approval then Christ's simplistic lifestyle proves Him a failure. But if godliness and purity is a goal, then He was gloriously triumphant!

Success is a cheap substitute for victory.

Where the church necessarily touches the world there will also be business transactions essential to the church's welfare. Even Jesus had a bag of money, which Judas carried, to care for the practical needs of His faithful band. Today the business methods of the church are based on simple honesty and have very little in common with the business psychology methods of the business world. What business principles of the world may apply to the business of the church must be watched and kept properly at the perimeter of the church's activities. But if that spirit penetrates to influence the spiritual leadership of the church it may indeed produce a visibly successful church. But when personal purity and holiness of life is no longer stressed the living organism becomes an organization and the outcome promises to be devastating - even if it waits till the judgment to be exposed.
 

Success is a business word.
Victory is a battle word.
 

The Kingdom of God never was and never shall be "big business."
 

Success depends upon human resources.
Victory depends on Heaven's resources.
 

Achieving success will make us feel good and then we make the big mistake of believing that good feeling is the blessing of God.
 

The next step is natural; we confuse the blessing of God with the approval of God. It then follows in our thinking that, What God blesses, God approves.
 

This is where "big men" jump the track. Scripture reveals that "big men" make the biggest mistakes. When a big man makes a mistake, he only makes big mistakes because his high profile effects so many people with his error. This is the good thing about being a "little man." A little man can only make little mistakes.

Thank God, Jesus did not make the mistake we are making - confuse spiritual victory with material success!

The cross is the greatest paradox of world history!
 

While Jesus failed to sway the depravity of men to thinking God's way, He nailed that depravity that rejected Him, to the cross, stripped it of all of its power and its ruthless enslavement of mankind, and in an open display of divine compassion He triumphed over His enemies in a spectacle etched on the conscience of the world it cannot shake off. That was not success, that was a cosmic victory over all the regions of the damned! Colossians 2:15.
 

The paradox of the cross is that, while it contained the death of a man who did not succeed in the eyes of His enemies, it also contained the resurrection of a man who was victorious over all of the enemies of God.
 

Golgotha was a place where the raging legions of hell engaged the powers of Heaven spilling the blood of our Prince in the course of the bloody battle.

Brethren, This Is War !

Yes, brethren, the Kingdom of God is not, "business as usual" It's war! You better believe there is no business going on between Heaven and hell!
 

For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. There has never been any other kind of relationship between the God of Heaven and the imps of Hades.
 

You don't succeed in battle!
In war you are victor when you have vanquished the enemy!

To defend the theories of "success" is to give your life and destiny to a myth.

To emphasize prosperity over piety is to pit a fantasy against the mighty lacers of divine truth!

Let's get back to the business of holy lives.

Building scriptural moral lives unspotted from the world is the chief business of the church.

In business, morality is sacrificed for unity.
In the spiritual warfare, unity is often sacrificed for the glory of victory.

Moses refused the offer of unity with Egypt. He failed at unity, but joined himself to Israel and achieved moral victory.
 

Don't be rattled brethren, the greatest achievement of a child of God is to accomplish the supernatural character of Christ, and that means a thousand battles, a thousand scars, perhaps for some a thousand painful wounds with the promise of the victors crown when at last every enemy has been beaten down in death. (1 Corinthians 15)
 

The Bible doesn't say, "We can succeed in all things through Christ, our executive director," but it does say, We are more than conquerors. To know the difference between the gospel that conquerors and the a gospel that makes you rich is to know the difference between the apostle's doctrine and the apostate's doctrine, Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Romans 8:37
 

The work of Christ in this world is not even relative to the success mentality of the Charismatic prosperity philosophy. The gospel message of God's love and redemption of man appeals to man's sense of sin and guilt and the sinner's desire to know the true and living God. God cares less about how much money you have in your pocket. God cares how much love for truth is in your heart. This Charismatic obsession with reaching ahead and finding a new gimmick, a new doctrine that will work, that will keep the people coming and the coffers full, works for the world and the worldly church, but it is not the stuff angels talk about on the sea of glass, nor does it interest in the least a pure hearted Pentecostal.
 

Charismatic believe their philosophy is Biblical and perfectly acceptable to God. You have the choice to believe what they say or check it out carefully with the Word of God. When they say, "Don't be so sensitive to just little things and unimportant things." Be sure that what they call a little thing is indeed also a little thing to God. Remember Shammah. He fought for beans because God made Israel a promise that wherever they step foot belonged to the Lord. It may only be beans, but they are God's beans! (2 Samuel 23:11) they say. "Just get people saved and the Holy Spirit will do the rest." If we see a mighty church full of the Holy Ghost, and signs and wonders, it will be because we have endured blood soaked battles with the enemy! To say the Holy Spirit does the rest is an excuse for running from the enemy. And the Holy Ghost does the rest? No one enters the kingdom like that, and no one gets there by accident. We will have to fight for beans If we are going to take the promised land for God! Matthew 5:19. When Jesus was nearing Capernaum a man stepped out of the crowd and shouted a question to Jesus, "Lord, are there few that be saved?
 

Jesus said, Amen, Amen, strive (agonazomai, literally, strain every nerve!) To enter in at the strait gate. Authentic Pentecost does not have this silly message about the Holy Ghost does the rest simply because it is a philosophical idiom that is not Biblical at all! Pentecostals preach the Grace of God that is teaching us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, and righteously, and godly in this present age. (Titus 2:11-12)
 

Pentecostals believe in ironing out every wrinkle and removing every little spot. Charismatic teach Grace as God's mercy canceling God's justice. That is a poor bit of Biblical exegesis! God's mercy never violates divine justice! If that were true then God's Son would have never departed the glories of heaven to fall to this earth like a stricken bird to become rejected, despised and tortured to death on a Roman cross in order to pay the penalty divine justice demanded. Pentecostals believe in a moral transformation of the nature when a man comes to the feet of Jesus in repentance of his sin. Pentecostals teach that God's mercy is demonstrated when He poured out His wrath in perfect justice upon His own Son who took the penalty for my sin. By this justice was fulfilled and carried out perfectly. Mercy was in that Jesus took my place providing a perfect atonement satisfying all of the demands of perfect justice.
 

Pentecostals believe that to be a friend of the world is to be the enemy of God. (James 4:4) Charismatic churches hold cosmetic classes for the women of the church in the church. Pentecostals don't wear cosmetics or do anything to accentuate the feminine charm. Pentecostals do not believe in externalism, they believe that to be pure is to be natural. Jude is right again - shameless departures from the truth of God's Word!

Doctrine Has Become Philosophy

Many of the doctrinal crazes that have swept through the Charismatic movement (but not accepted by Pentecostals) are resurrected philosophies of Greek Hedonism (prosperity doctrine) and Eastern occult visualization philosophies (Positive confession teaching). There is a close relationship between Christian doctrine and human philosophy. They are alike in that they both seek the highest good of man. BUT, God is the only source of goodness and goodness begins with submitting to the sovereignty of divine government, i. e., God's moral law, instantaneous creation and the infallibility of the Word of God. Clever men are the authors of human philosophy. There is no comparison in the authors of humanism and holiness! Pentecostals discern and refuse philosophy as a human substitute for God's work of redemption and moral transformation. Be careful! You can slide quickly from Biblical revelation into human philosophy through logic and rationalizing that there is good or similarity between the Bible and what they teach. Yes, but this does not mean it is a revelation of God. But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Romans 6:17.

He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.  Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Mark 7:6-7.
 

Charismatic use this Scripture to support their criticism of Christians who hold to traditional Pentecostal values. But Jesus was denouncing the Jews for teaching and living by the interpretations of the Talmud while putting to naught the Torah (Word of God). Jesus warns those who ignore the Word and teach their own customs and traditions born out of imagination of personal interpretation. Jesus said of these Jews who taught Talmud over the Word, they teach for doctrine the commandments of men.
 

In this text in Mark 7 Jesus is rebuking the Jews for their obedience to the Talmud (not the law of Moses contained in the Torah). And before someone questions our using this Scripture to expose the Charismatic tendency to teach philosophy over doctrine, let us make it clear that peculiar and extreme doctrinal interpretations of Charismatic is exactly what the Pharisees were guilty of. The teachers of the law "interpreted' the teachings of Moses and entered these interpretations into the Talmud which were more binding and more observed than God's Word. This is the Charismatic error. They have interpreted Scripture to their liking. Every time the apostate church graduates to another lower lifestyle following after the world, it has to reinterpret the Bible again to suit the fancies of another generation with another mentality. This business of interpreting and reinterpreting the Scripture is where men become like Pharisees. It is not the keeping of the actual moral law of God that is condemned by Jesus but those who have believe and obey a the interpretations of men creating a parachurch with paradoctrine outside of the actual Word of God. Recent dominion teaching by prominent Charismatic men declaring that the planet belonged to man and that before God could do anything on this planet He (God) had to have man's permission to do it, is not only the epitome of arrogance, it is splendid idiocy!
 

Doctrine despised by Evangelical Ecumenicals.  Many Charismatic luminaries involved in the Evangelical Ecumenical program discredit the importance of doctrine.  Of course they don't like pure doctrine!  They wrongly teach a conditionless love for the brethren which can be easily disproved as Scriptural correct.  There are wayward brethren, evil brethren and false brethren.  While it is true we are to love them, this does mean we are to have a full and complete relationship with them as with true brethren who are faithful and true to the Christ.  To love a brother does not mean that I fraternize with him if he is under discipline or has been excommunicated from the church.  I will be gracious and friendly with him.  But I cannot have a full brotherly relationship with him until he is restored by confession of sin or has fulfilled the discipline put upon him by the elders of the church.  My love for a brother and my relationship to him are two different things.  Of course, it is ideal when I love him and we are in accord and have a mutual love for pure doctrine.  The brotherly relationship is conditional and subject to many other Scriptural factors as noted below.  To promote a fraternity of heretics in the name of God's love is ludicrous and irresponsible.  While the Word of God does tell us indeed to love the brethren, it also tells us to we should not be joined with brethren who teach false doctrine.  Charismatic by their ecumenical beliefs accept false teachers into the body of true believers.  Pentecostals do not accept false teachers as brethren who will not renounce their error.  Let us see what the Word of God says about being joined with those who have false teaching and then accept the fact that Evangelical Ecumenism is a dangerous violation of the Word of God.
 

Evangelical Ecumenism teaches that "anyone who believes in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is my brother."  Wait a minute . . . Devils believe that. (Read James 2:19).  This means that devils, which believe Jesus was born of a virgin, was crucified and rose again, qualify to be my "brother"!  Pentecostals do not believe in this ecumenical doctrine, nor do they accept this foolish statement of faith.  If a preacher believes in casting out devils, he surely should not be promoting devil's doctrines.  The church of Acts taught differently than the modern Charismatic.  The apostles did not teach that Christians should receive as a brother a man who believes I must go through Mary to Jesus, or that tradition is equal to Scripture in authority.  To say that a man who believes in the infallibility of the Pope, purgatory, and that sins can only be remitted by a priest, is to be received as a brother and that what he believes and teaches must be subjected to "unity" is rebellion against the revelation of God's Word.