ChronoSapiens: Time Machine and Religion

Category: Book

  • Understanding Neo-Pentecostal Beliefs

    Neo-Pentecostalism has rapidly grown and become influential in contemporary Christianity. This movement is known for its dynamic worship, focus on the Holy Spirit, and spiritual gifts. Here, we provide an overview of Neo-Pentecostal beliefs, practices, and their significance.

    Origins and History

    Early Beginnings

    Neo-Pentecostalism emerged from the early 20th-century Pentecostal movement, which began with the Azusa Street Revival in 1906. This revival highlighted personal experiences with the Holy Spirit, including speaking in tongues and healing. Neo-Pentecostalism built on these foundations with a modern approach in the mid-20th century.

    Key Figures

    Prominent figures in Neo-Pentecostalism include David du Plessis, Kathryn Kuhlman, and Oral Roberts. Du Plessis helped connect traditional Pentecostals with other Christian groups, while Kuhlman and Roberts were influential in healing and televangelism, respectively.

    Expansion and Growth

    Neo-Pentecostalism has expanded globally, with significant growth in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Notable churches include Brazil’s Universal Church of the Kingdom of God and Nigeria’s Redeemed Christian Church of God.

    Core Beliefs

    Fundamental Doctrines

    Neo-Pentecostalism emphasizes the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts, such as prophecy, healing, and speaking in tongues. Miracles and divine intervention are seen as tangible aspects of faith.

    Scriptural Interpretation

    Neo-Pentecostals interpret the Bible with a focus on personal experience and contemporary applications. This flexible approach differentiates them from other Pentecostal branches.

    Worship Practices

    Services and Rituals

    Worship in Neo-Pentecostal churches is energetic, with lively music, expressive dance, and spontaneous praise. This vibrant style helps believers connect deeply with their faith.

    Prayer and Healing

    Intense prayer sessions and healing services are central to Neo-Pentecostal practices, emphasizing divine intervention for various needs.

    Prophecy and Speaking in Tongues

    Prophecy and speaking in tongues are vital, with prophetic messages providing guidance and tongues serving as a personal and communal expression of faith.

    Organizational Structure

    Church Governance

    Neo-Pentecostal churches often feature charismatic leaders who guide congregations through their spiritual journeys. Governance varies, with many churches operating independently or in loose networks.

    Networks and Alliances

    Major networks like the International Charismatic Mission and the Association of Pentecostal Charismatic Churches of North America (PCCNA) support collaboration and expansion. Neo-Pentecostals also engage with other Christian denominations.

    Influence and Impact

    Global Reach

    The movement has a substantial global presence, with influential churches across Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

    Social and Cultural Impact

    Neo-Pentecostal churches contribute to community development through humanitarian efforts. Their impact extends into popular culture through music and media.

    Youth Engagement

    The movement’s dynamic worship appeals to younger generations, with churches targeting youth through events and social media.

    Controversies and Criticisms

    Theological Debates

    Neo-Pentecostalism faces criticism, particularly concerning prosperity theology, which links financial success to divine favor.

    Ethical Concerns

    Leadership and financial transparency issues have led to ethical concerns. Some churches have responded with stricter governance and transparency measures.

    Response to Criticism

    Neo-Pentecostal churches often address criticism by highlighting their positive impacts and engaging in dialogue with critics.

    Future Prospects

    Trends and Predictions

    The movement is likely to continue growing and evolving, with further expansion and influence expected.

    Challenges Ahead

    Challenges include maintaining doctrinal integrity and addressing ethical concerns. Overcoming these will require stronger governance and enhanced community engagement.

    Conclusion

    Neo-Pentecostalism’s dynamic worship and global influence make it a significant movement in contemporary Christianity. As it evolves, it will continue shaping the religious landscape.

    We invite readers to share their thoughts or experiences with Neo-Pentecostalism in the comments.

  • About meaning of “salt” in Bible

    Salt is the substance with chemical formula NaCl that it consists of Sodium and Chlorine. These two chemical elements are of almost opposite properties (the first is a very active metal and the second is a halogen).

    Both are highly reactive and flammable, both are poisons. But when they are combined together they produce an “moderate” substance which we can even to eat in some quantities.

    So Jesus speaking about salt meant composition of opposites which lead to a moderate outcome.

    (Mark 9:50) “Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, with what will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.””

    This means to hold seemingly contradictory radical concepts combined into a composite theological theory which makes them into one moderate philosophy leading to peace with one another.

    See my book End of Gospel for some examples of such concepts.

  • Love is a simple thing

    What is love? What the word “love” means in New Testament? These look like very difficult questions.

    But the Greek word “agape” for “love” also means “charity”. So love is simply ability to do charity.

    (1 Cor. 13)

    1 If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I have become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but don’t have love, I am nothing. 3 If I dole out all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don’t have love, it profits me nothing.

    In the past it was about me. I had faith, I was baptized by Spirit and fire and prayed in tongues, I knew more than most other people. I even wanted to help the poor. But I didn’t have charity.

    I was seeking for ways to get money for my ministry. It was a business, business attempting to serve God, but not a charity.

    I was heavily pressed by the contradiction that I need money for my ministry but should not be greedy.

    I was divided between God’s commandments and between my desire to get money for my ministry by any means (such as cursing other people and making them to die because of my curse).

    At last (quite hilariously) I tried to put my hope on conforming to the Russian law (I’m from Russia) about charitable organizations. I tried to make me conform to this law, because I saw no other way to overcome my “holy” greed.

    I found myself a modern kind of a Pharisee.

    But now thanks to End of Gospel teaching I am free from being a Pharisee and have charity in my heart. Read this book.

  • Why do we need commandments?

    Introduction

    Consider a 14 years old teenager. How should he make decisions related to sex?

    He doesn’t yet know sex and love. He is inexperienced. He cannot make decisions based on his own knowledge or experience.

    He need somebody or something to guide him.

    A thing which can help him is biblical commandments.

    If he would already know all about sex and all about its consequences (not even any adult knows all!) he would not need the commandments. He would not need the Bible.

    Commandments are for these who don’t know something.

    When we mature, we no more need some commandments. I, for example, don’t need that Bible would teach me not to marry an unbeliever. It is quite natural for me the knowledge that I can’t make a good family with an unbeliever. I know this in my inner man and don’t need that Bible would teach me this.

    There are two extremes:

    Extreme 1

    Extreme 1 is to reject commandments altogether (as for example atheists do).

    This way you could deny the wisdom of God and try to behave based only on your limited mind without help of God. This is not a good way.

    Extreme 2

    Extreme 2 is to scrutinize to follow every commandment you know whether you understand it or not.

    This is also not a good way. We should live by knowledge and faith (and love!) not by particular commandments.

    This way is to make Bible a law for you, rather than a guide. This is also not good.

    This extreme is caused by not knowing limits of applying biblical covenants to our life and trying to follow them in every tiny bit aspect of our life.

    Failure to reject the law

    We may set our mind not to fall into the extreme 2. But trying to do this in my old religion, I failed.

    My failure was this way:

    I understood that I should follow the spirit of Gospel not the commandments.

    But how do I know the spirit of Gospel if not by studying particular commandments? This way I found no other way to follow my understanding of Gospel as to follow every commandment as a law.

    Certainly, this way I often violated more important commandments trying to follow every tiny bit of the law I made for myself from Gospel.

    The teaching of End of Gospel

    The solution is to reject following Gospel as a law altogether.

    We cannot reject following commandments of Gospel as a law one-by-one, rather we need to reject living by a law altogether.

    For this we need understand where are the limits of Gospel as a whole are and that we need to reject being in the so called New Covenant with God altogether. We should become free persons rather than law-followers slaves.

    We become no more slaves of God in this new stage.

    Read my book End of Gospel about this.

  • Bearing a cross

    (Matthew 16:24) “Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”

    The words of Christ should first be taken literally. He called anyone who desired to (literally) come after him (that is to follow physically his human body on the Earth) to take a literal cross.

    I don’t know whether people literally following Jesus literally did it.

    But to take a cross and move with it may seems the silliest and the least efficient way of doing things. If one bears a cross, he cannot for example cook a meat, cannot earn money for a ministry, cannot do anything useful.

    Yet, we believe that the words of Christ are wise (that is efficient for a business, be it an earthy business or heavenly business). This looks the least efficient of all possible variants, but we should believe in efficiency of words of Christ.

    The reason why Christ wanted us to do this, becomes more clear from the following Bible verses (Matthew 16:25) “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it.”

    This mean that our main purpose is to stop doing the old way of our life. Not to do good but just to stop doing bad. Not only we should stop doing bad in this life but in afterlife also.

    But now I should tell you what was a secret in the past:

    I don’t know whether literal followers of Jesus complied to his commandment to carry a big piece of wood to keep their hands busy and to be able to do nothing.

    But now we should not do it anymore.

    The “cross” here means “gospel”. We should stop live accordingly the word of gospel, but move to live accordingly the spirit.

    Read my book End of Gospel about switching to the next stage. In the epoch of gospel we were slaves of Christ (borrowing his cross not to be able to do what we consider good), but now he makes us free people, not his slaves anymore.

  • Christ passing through the sin

    The following is a rough idea and my explanation may be not detailed or not exact enough:

    As I state in my New Testament commentary, Christ is the radio waves (well, not only radio but also other parts of the spectrum) of the universe. Christ is also the truth (the true information contained in the cosmic radio waves).

    When information passes through the sin, it is damaged, that is loses its content.

    Christ is the only kind of information which can pass through the sin without being damaged.

    So in likeness of sinful flesh it appeared the essential content of cosmic radio waves. All other kinds of information except of Christ has faded away, but Christ has appeared in likeness of sinful flesh, without any damage but remaining true.

    This way, despite of being bad, sin reveals Christ, filtering away anything other.

    Get my rough idea on how Christ is related with sin.

  • God and divine council

    Hello Dr. Michael S. Heiser,

    What do you think about this idea? (It is my idea, but I am not quite sure if it is true.)

    One of many ways to describe God (I mean Yahweh or Christ or maybe Father): “God is the democratic way of governance of the infinite universe.”

    This way God and “divine council” are essentially the same. (But note that extrapolating of what we know about finite council to the infinite one may be wrong, moreover there may be several different ways to extrapolate finite systems into the infinite.)

    This aligns with my social description of Christ in my free e-book:
    http://books.portonvictor.org/nt-commentary/

    Note that I duplicate this email in my blog. I ask your permission to possibly publish your answer too in my blog.

  • On Christian prosperity doctrine

    Hearing about prosperity doctrine preached about by some Gospel preachers, I wondered:

    (1Tim. 6:9) But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction.

    Isn’t the whole point of donations under this doctrine to boost the donor’s own prosperity?

    For example, I am a mathematician and keeping money for myself rather than donating it to more stupider people, I would use money more efficiently as it supports breakthrough science research.

    Following “prosperity Gospel” I must donate money to others in order to increase my own blessings. It is not because money there would be better but just for my own prosperity.

    Now, after I have determined that I should no more consider myself as a slave of Christ not following the slavish doctrine anymore, I can freely prefer to give money to these who need it the most (or keep to myself if I myself need money for some useful project).

    Read my book about renowned Christianity where we don’t anymore consider ourselves as slaves of Christ but as free people.

    By the way, if you want to use your money efficiently you can donate them to me because with me they would efficiently support: math research, innovative software, and Bible research and theological writing. Use money where they are the most efficient, or keep them to yourselves if you can use them effectively to help other people.

  • End of Gospel book, edition 3.4

    I present new edition 3.4 of my book “End of Gospel”.

    When I started to write this book, my English was rather bad. But as for now, I’ve took some English lessons. Using my improved knowledge of English I have rewritten this book in better English.

    The book is available online free of charge:

    Note that as of this edition, I have abandoned formatting PDF for print layout. The book is now optimized for electronic e-book distribution.

    There are also other little changes in the book.

    Read this amazing book.

  • Reconciling humility and God’s purpose

    (I’m going to add the text of this blog post into my book.)

    Gospel teaches to (Phil. 2:3) each counting others better than himself consider others below ourselves. Now I will muse about the following topic: How we knowing Gospel may consider others above us? Doesn’t knowledge of Gospel makes us above other?

    The correct answer is that converting to Christ makes us worse not better.

    Do I imply that people should refuse to convert to Christ? No, and the reason is the following: The God’s desire is (1Tim. 2:4) who (God) desires all people to be saved to save as much people as possible. But there is a limit on the number of saved people (Rom. 11:25) … the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. It is clear that the reason for this limit is the impossibility to “pack” more people into the heaven without a conflict. God solves the following mathematical problem: Save as much people as possible without falling into a conflict between them.

    I mean a worse man is somebody who disturbs salvation of others more. And by this criterion already saved are worse than unsaved.

    Probably the best example of how a saved person may prevent salvation of others is my spiritual war which I fought in the past. I was really the biggest of sinners. I could call my sin “magic”, that is misuse of spiritual powers.

    Thus follows that evanglelization should not be our main purpose. Instead we need humility before each other and before unbelieving people which are actually better than us, as the mean to reach the full number of pagans. If we need to choose between evangelization and humility we should choose humility, because it influences the process behind the scene. Evangelization is just a screen before the actual essence of events as it is clear from (Jn. 6:44) No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. I can say: People are saved not by evangelization but by move of Holy Spririt, evangelization is just an external appearance of God’s work.

    Thus remember: From the moment you convert to Christ your are already saved and thus you become less important person that unbelievers as long as it concerns future, but indeed only future matters not past.