A Pentecostal Future

what a great conference has it been tremendous hasn't the lord spoken in every message have you noticed it hasn't been a promotion conference it hasn't been a fundraising conference it's been a word from god and yet we have raised the necessary funds yet we have shown what god is doing through the united pentecostal church international acts chapter 2 and verse 17 i think it's been quoted or read here this week and it's a well-known verse a prophecy of joel reiterated by the apostle peter and highly relevant in our day acts 2 17 says and it shall come to pass in the last days says saith god i will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams there's something in there for everyone but notice this is talking about the last day outpouring of the holy spirit i'm preaching tonight a pentecostal future a pentecostal future we're stepping into it right now you may be seated one of my predecessors brother stanley chambers in 1960 his first address as the general superintendent at a

general conference i believe it was atlantic city new jersey the title of his message was this 1968 can the upc the united pentecostal church survive the onslaught of history i wasn't there some of you were but by all accounts it was a classic message that resonates even to this day can the united pentecostal church survive the onslaught of history we were at a crucial time some had left us saying we weren't strong enough and of course the charismatic movement was rising culture was changing we were in the midst of the 60s in which all forms of authority were being overturned all norms of society all teachings of morality were being challenged as never before by our culture and in that context our general superintendent gave a very timely word that still resonates today can the united pentecostal church survive the onslaught of history of course his point was we can we must and we shall i believe we've answered that question i believe we need to continue to reiterate the answer from time to time so this is no criticism of that message actually i commend that message and i think we need to restate

that message from time to time but we should not stay in that situation i've come to pose a new question for us and that is simply can the united pentecostal church possess the future there's a time to look back and say history is catching up on us but there's also and there's a time to look back and say we will reaffirm our heritage we will not compromise that is necessary but that is not sufficient to achieve what god has for us i challenge us today to look forward to look into the future to see something greater i'm not just talking about heaven but i'm talking about tonight i'm talking about this weekend i'm talking about 2018 i'm saying can the united pentecostal church possess the future i've shared part of my experience that i'm going to share again i referred to it earlier in the business meeting but as i was thinking and praying about the various decisions that that we face as an organization as my various responsibilities several challenges at the beginning of this year and even looking forward to general conference and this message this night i was praying and i usually

try to start the beginning of the year and begin to think and pray and study to give enough time for god to speak to me and so it was the end of february and it was the sunday before the general board meeting i decided to take a couple days off to try to get ready for the board meeting and so i was going to be at home in austin and my secretary had contacted me before and brother tom foster in dallas had asked for me to preach and we were supposed to get together somehow the secretaries and the calendars didn't connect and we hadn't got the date and so uh sister morley told me we've got to find a date for brother foster and of course i can't just ignore brother foster and and so i looked and the whole year was already booked every single sunday was booked except the day i had selected to try to stay at home and get ready for the general board meeting i thought well you know i can just stay in austin get up early in the morning it's a two and a half hour drive if

there's no traffic and i could just drive there preach in dallas drive back i'll be okay and so i started that morning about seven o'clock on the freeway fortunately there was no traffic so i didn't do anything unsafe but i got on cruise control and i just started up interstate 35 to get there in time for church at 10 o'clock and i will just say this i'm not what you would call a super spiritual type person so i don't lightly say god said this god did that etc because you know i i recognize the fallibility of my human imagination i guess that's the way to put it but i will say this it felt as if the lord jesus christ came in the passenger seat and sat there i didn't have a vision it wasn't a physical presence in that sense but i was just worshiping the lord as i was listening to some music just preparing my heart trying to get in tune for the service and trying to get in the right frame of mind and it just seemed like the lord began to talk to me talk to me about the upci

talk to me about decisions talk to me about this service and i began praying i began weeping i'd been sobbing i'd been speaking in tongues and for two and a half hours it was that the lord was just pouring things into my spirit and along the way i wanted to make sure i had the right message for that morning too and when i got there i stepped out to preach and i've said this before it's it's really good to have the right kind of church for something like this to happen but i preached a simple message the power of god fell 10 people received the holy ghost and i didn't take it so much as i was a great advantage although i did think you know maybe that's what i should consider especially if i don't get reelected i'll just become an evangelist if i can just preach in churches like that i'm home free ten people receive the holy ghost but i really took it as god saying everything i told you on the way up here i just want to show you i want to confirm it to you i'll show you what

can happen with a simple message and the anointing of god and a church that's ready we can have a harvest of 10 new souls right there it's the way it's supposed to be and what the lord told me and i'll i'll tell some of this towards the end of the message but what the lord seemed to tell me when i became district superintendent of a new district south texas god gave me three things when i became general superintendent i was elected i didn't know what was going to happen that day so when i got up to speak i didn't have a prepared speech except i had those three things that i've been preaching for seven years starting the new district and i just felt led to share those three things and what those three things were we need apostolic identity by that i meant our doctrine our holiness everything that makes us who we are distinct from the world and distinct from all other groups we need to maintain that that's what brother chambers preached can the united pentecostal church survive the onslaught of history not merely as an organization but he wasn't worried about

can we still have a headquarters building he wasn't worried can we still have a legal corporation he was saying can we maintain our apostolic identity jesus name baptism the oneness of god speaking in tongues the initial sign of the holy ghost the new birth experience the life of holiness inwardly outwardly practically expressed in gender distinction modesty those things we need to maintain the apostolic identity the fruit of the spirit the gifts of the spirit miracle signs and wonders intercessory prayer the fellowship of the saints the belief in the soon coming of the lord these things are not options these things are essential if we abandon those we have no right to exist that's the first thing the second thing is apostolic unity we need a revelation especially in america we're so individualistic you have to remember i was raised in korea a collectivist culture not socialistic but a strong sense of family respect for elders respect for society respect for community and that can be good and bad but in america we have a rugged individualism which is very good in many ways but sometimes we don't have respect for elders we don't have respect

for preachers it amazes me when i preach in a predominantly hispanic or african-american or asian congregation the respect for the elders is so much it's almost embarrassing to me but in other places it's as if there's little or no respect for any form of authority and i'm just talking about authority i'm telling you the feeling of unity of oneness that we can't afford to hurt the rest of the body our preference and our expression and our freedom of speech and our emotions cannot be exercised to the detriment of the whole of which we are apart and if we're going to have what god wants us to have we need to recapture that apostolic unity and then the third point was apostolic revival growth i got those from acts chapter 2 and they matched the motto of the upci the whole gospel that's our identity to the whole world that's revival by the whole church that's unity and so in february when i was thinking what are we going to do as a church what about some decisions we're going to face as a general board what about some criticisms that have come what about all

this that's going on what am i supposed to preach at general conference i felt the lord saying think about it you have more apostolic identity than ever before in the history of the upci now that may sound counterintuitive to some of you they're focused just on current problems i'm not old i'm 60 years old but i remember as a child my parents discussing i remember we traveled on deputation there were large pockets of the country of upci churches and district superintendents who did not believe that acts 23 238 is the new birth they believed in acts 2 38 but they didn't believe it was a new birth i remember my mother getting so distraught as we she preached a passionate message and uh and and and appealed for for souls and appeal for commitment we're going to korea casting a vision the lost there's there they were the pioneer missionaries of the upci or there were no churches there were no believers and at the end the pastor said well you know they've never heard the gospel they're not lost they've never had a chance they're all saved and she said well why do you

think we're leaving our family my mother is dying of cancer and yet she said you need to go those people have never heard don't stay and wait for me you need to go she says why do you think we would leave our family and my mother dying of cancer and go to a country if they're already saved he said well you're just trying to earn some stars in your crown but we don't have that anymore now any given time four thousand seven hundred churches in the us and canada ten thousand two hundred ministers at any given time there's somebody struggling with something but as a movement we are not fighting battles over the new birth we're not in question over whether we need to send missionaries to the lost whether they're really lost or not we're not even debating the basics of holiness we may have small local differences of application but in our transgender culture we understand more than ever before gender distinction we understand in our cultural promiscuity we understand more than ever before the value and need of modesty i was at a meeting of holiness leaders i'll be not i'll be

generic but these were prominent leaders that invited me because of my position and they were talking about how do we restore holiness to the church and of course they were talking about holiness in the broad theoretical context some of the things we would think of as dress that was that was too far gone for them but they were trying to recapture a culture or concept of a mindset which i appreciate and i want to be part of the conversation and around the lunch table one of them said you know our young people are losing the sense of morality he says not our friends young people the ones are actively involved in leadership and he gave the example of a relative he said he and his girlfriend were living together and i finally convinced them that he needed to get married and that just blew my mind because when i was a pastor of course you're going to have people fail god people commit sin no church is immune but by and large our young people they know what we believe and they're following what we believe and if they're in leadership they're following our guidelines

if they fail they know it we know it we set them down they repent they get restored so there's there's there's no church is perfect but by and large with our young people that are faithfully coming to church and serving god and being used they believe in our teachings and they're practicing our teachings 34 000 young people at youth congress they were dressed modestly they were dressed with gender distinction they packed 200 000 meals for the homeless there were no major incidents we didn't have to deal with moral problems in the dorm room we didn't have to deal with crime in the streets we didn't have to call security or call the police even the hotel security didn't have much to do with 34 000 young people that says something and then it reinforced to me you know what we are fighting the battle here and there of how long should the dress be or how should we do this but that is at least teaching our young people the line is here we're not having to fight for basic morality in the minds of our young people we still believe in holiness we still

believe in morality we still believe in the what the bible teaches we're stronger than ever don't let anybody tell you the church is going down don't dare let anybody tell you the next generation doesn't believe in revival 34 000 young people at north american youth congress says the future is in good hands look at the young ministers who preached at this conference look at chris green look at aaron soto look at aaron bachelor look at the others who testified were used by god wednesday night these are men in their 30s in their 40s these are not compromisers these are not wishy-washy people we are stronger on our apostolic identity than ever before and unity i get frustrated sometimes because i hear this that and the other if i don't hear it somebody's sure to let me know sooner or later you'll be surprised what i hear i know more about problems in the upci than any one living person but having said that think of where we've come from we just purchased a new headquarters we didn't even have any argument we didn't have any resolutions we didn't have any letters written nobody we didn't

have an uproar we have restructured our various divisions and departments and there's room for discussion and difference of opinion but by and large we have just gone straight ahead making major decisions of every area of our policy and our structure we've restructured we have we have done all this stuff basically with a consensus different opinions on methods but not a contentious spirit that's incredible something is happening and it's not just me saying something theoretically but again when you have record participation at youth congress when you have record offerings in division after division and not just by a few thousand but half a million dollars more here and half a million here and several hundred thousand here when you see the response to the hurricanes what we're seeing is thousands of pastors and thousands of churches have bought into the vision it couldn't be done by one leader or one department or one promotional man there's no way you could have record attendance and record offerings and record participation of every dimension unless there's an underlying unity i'm a realist but realistically we have a stronger agreement on our identity than ever before we have a

stronger sense of unity than ever before which leads me to believe and this is what god told me you we are finally getting the place that i can give you the revival that i want to give you so you need to be ready and you need to tell the church to step into unprecedented revival unprecedented growth you've had some years of incremental growth that's good but do not be satisfied with incremental growth you need to prepare for explosive growth you need to get out of survival mode out of maintenance mode into revival mode that's what the lord told me in february and i've been feeling in my spirit ever since god is trying to tell the united pentecostal church international the future is bright the future is here the future is now it's time to step out of the corner and possess the future it's time to step out of the shadows and inherit the will of god it's time to possess the kingdom will the united pentecostal church possess the future yes we will now let me briefly try to share with you does this sound unrealistic we say we're apostolic what did the

apostolic church look like look at the church in jerusalem and i'm going to rush through some and i'll put it on slide so you can see what acts chapter 2 41 3000 were added to the original 120 acts 4 4 the number of the men was about 5 000. so maybe the total was 20 000. okay believers here's here's the next one acts 5 14 believers were the more added to the lord multitudes both of men and women 5 28 even their enemies said you have filled jerusalem with your doctrine acts 6 7 the number of the disciples multiplied in jerusalem greatly a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith the opposition the leaders of the opposition and the critics said acts 21 20. or no this this one is james talking to paul thou see us brother how many thousands of their of jews there are which believe now you could play with math if you looked at all those how many people do you think there were in jerusalem in the church and if you think well thousands went back to their home countries after pentecost and and people died

people backslid a conservative estimate putting all those together would be 25 30 000. now the roman historian tacitus said there were six hundred thousand jews in jerusalem or six hundred thousand in jerusalem the first century most scholars today say that was greatly exaggerated they say only a hundred thousand either number according to acts somewhere between 5 and 25 of the population were christians that's the apostolic church if we claim to be apostolic we should stop thinking so small we need to think big god wants us to have an impact upon our society god wants us to grow god wants us to have revival god wants our opposition to say you're filling the whole place with your doctrine now let me go on a little further thessalonica what was the church like there these that have turned the world upside down or come hither also their reputation preceded them how about corinth god spoke before there was a church and said i have much people in this city that was a prophecy is it limited to corinth the context yes was for corinth but i'm giving you example after example of god's will and what was

fulfilled in the first century ephesus all they which dwell in asia that was the province and ephesus was the capital all they which dwelt in that province heard the word of the lord jesus almost throughout all asia this paul hear the opponents again this paul has persuaded and turned away much people when your enemies say you've got many people when your enemies say you filled the whole city with your doctrine when your enemies say you've turned the whole province upside down in fact you've turned the whole world upside down that's telling you those christians were making an impact upon their pagan society that's apostolic scholars estimate that by the end of the first century there were 1 million christians now we think of the upci is small in comparison to many religious denominations we're numerically small but we have 4 million constituents around the world we have more and and we're not all there is to the apostolic movement and god is pouring out the holy spirit and increasing numbers are being baptized in jesus name outside to organize oneness pentecostal movement and of course we'll leave that up to god how to count on

all that but god is doing a work so if the first century everything we preach about we we talk about we praise god about we extol we exalt and the end result was one million we're already four times bigger than everything we preach about do you see where we are now can we change the world yes we don't have to grow any more in order to change the world we have to change how we think i'll just give you some examples genesis 18 32 before god was going to destroy sodom and gomorrah he spoke to his servant abraham and abraham begin to plead for the city and he got down to if i find 10 righteous people will you spare the city i want you to notice one intercessor can change the destiny of a city if there's only one apostolic preacher going in there to start a whole missions church you can change the destiny of that whole city if there's only one apostolic church you can have a revival that shakes the city now i tried to find out what scholars say they say cities of that time were very small maybe even

as small as ten a thousand or maybe as big as ten thousand so let's just take those conservative estimates ten people of a thousand is one percent ten people of ten thousand is one tenth of one percent does your church have one tenth of one percent if so god has already said if that many people would get together i would change the destiny of the whole city for that many people if you haven't quite made it there make that your next goal make your next goal to have influence over one-tenth of one percent of your city or your town and according to scripture you could change the destiny of your town you ever heard the unitarians they've changed american history four presidents identified as unitarians you know they have only six hundred thousand people in the u.s the quakers ever heard of the quakers they founded the state of pennsylvania they have only four uh four hundred thousand adult members worldwide you ever heard of the anabaptists that's mainly the mennonites they have 2.1 million worldwide ever heard the church of the nazarene that's the largest holiness church to come out of the holiness movement

they have 2.5 million worldwide we're bigger than each of the groups i've named but we don't have the same influence because historically we've been absent from the pages we can change that we don't have to be any bigger than we are to change our world you ever heard the jews estimated 17.5 million worldwide talmadge french's book estimates all kinds of oneness pentecostals now exceed 30 million the jews were god's chosen people they changed history every nation the world knows about the jews well the apostolic oneness pentecostal people need to step up to the plate and say we're going to change the world we're going to reach every nation every nation is going to hear about jesus name baptism every nation is going to be re hear about the holy ghost speaking in tongues why not if these other groups could have an impact why can't the church of the living god the jesus name believers holy ghost filled believers why can't we possess our inheritance we can how about this i tried to estimate the assemblies of god and the united pentecostal church doesn't have an exact history it's not an exact overlap but probably

most of the early oneness ministers were one time in the beginning part of the zombies of god same basic emphasis on the holy ghost until the split came on jesus name baptism in 1916 156 oneness ministers left the assemblies of god and 429 trinitarian ministers remained for a ratio of 36 now the assemblies of god had the same teaching of the whole of holiness the same emphasis on receiving the holy ghost but they made a decision to align with historic christianity if you read the debates they openly said we cannot accept jesus name baptism because it's contrary to historic christianity and it would be the sebelian heresy which was deemed by the church to be heresy back in the fourth century actually that was the catholic church it did that not the assemblies of god but but they decided to align with that over the years they began to change some of the practical commitments of outward holiness they were the same as us if you go to springfield missouri and look at their historical center the pictures look exactly like oneness people but they begin to change because they felt like we can expand

their doctrine of salvation is simply baptist essentially baptist sinners prayer, holy spirit is extra so on all externals they've conformed to the trinity they've conformed to the the the plan of salvation, the basic generic protestants the lifestyle all that's indistinguishable so they could grow and they have had explosive growth so how much difference has it made their strategy has conquered seemingly so 2016 100 years later i tried to find his exact comparison as i could there were 4 631 upci churches including our daughter works in the u.s and canada that was closest comparison compared to 13 023 assemblies of god churches in the u.s and puerto rico very close guess what that ratio is 36 after a hundred years their strategy has resulted in growth our strategy has resulted in equal growth in the united states of america we don't have to compromise apostolic identity we can grow we prove and we can grow a hundred years of history says we can do it here's what other people say about us john g lake missionary to south africa wrote a letter to charles f parham march 24 1927.

none of the other divisions of the movement of which i know accept the movement headed by brother goss holds much hope i see more hope in goss's division of the movement than any of the others there is one thing we will have to concede and everybody does who is really intimate with their assemblies with their preachers and that is they show more genuine spirituality than any other branch of the movement the mere fact of their emphasis of jesus that the other divisions of the movement regard as extreme has tended to bless them in that it has brought them into close touch with the lord's life and spirit an outside observer says watch those united pentecostals watch those oneness pentecostals they have some kind of relationship with jesus christ that says something in the future is more promising than anything else i think it's about time we fulfill that promise i think it's about time we start fulfilling that potential we're certainly not perfect but scholarship is not tearing us down listen to this i know all the people that i'm going to talk about next i know them personally and most of this is in

written publications which i could quote but i'm not trying to embarrass or highlight personality i'm not trying to glorify ourselves i'm just showing you professor regent university i'm going to be brutally honest with you i think the oneness pentecostal tradition is right professor fuller seminary oneness pentecostals remind us that there is a huge leap from what the new testament says about the father son and holy spirit to the trinitarian developments later in church history there is no doctrine of the trinity in the new testament a professor at the society of pentecostal studies after my doctoral thesis was published as the book called the glory of god in the face of jesus christ we were talking about that book and and i said i was trying to be polite he said well i'm trying to present a oneness view of christology he said i would say you have a biblical view of christology assemblies of god professor the oneness saw more clearly than their trinitarian counterparts within the pentecostal movement that christ's role as bestower of the spirit encompasses something that is essential and decisive to christian identity here's a professor at fuller seminary i'm just

summarizing my own words he presented acts 2 38 and said this is the basic biblical paradigm for christian initiation i'm saying observers are looking at us and sometimes they may see more potential in us then we recognize in ourselves now i mentioned the three points i want to hasten on i don't have much longer but i do have a few things to say we do face some challenges and i could categorize them in many different ways but i decided to put two categories the first is worliness and i believe that's what brother chambers was warning us about the culture around us is secular it tries to impose its values the world or the church world around us is also increasingly getting away from biblical values and trying to impress its culture upon us i also said and this will be controversial to some and probably this part of my message will be critiqued social media is an amazing tool which i use i did a facebook live which had 30 000 views that's incredible their response to the hurricanes social media just jump started that we we as we contacted church after church to help

them many of them were already okay because social media had taken care of what they needed so i'm not here to decry that except to say it has a danger and here's the danger i see i put it under worldliness on purpose have you noticed our political system and whether you like the president or don't like or whatever have you noticed our political system is increasingly going towards sensationalism rumor scandal gossip lies not just presenting the facts and letting you decide but trying to shape your mind by false narrative or sensational narratives or derogatory hateful rude sarcastic social media lends itself to that because and i've had this personal experience going up to some preachers shaking their hand we're behind you we're praying for you we love you but the temptation on social media is to say something very hateful or harsh or undermining the very thing we're all trying to promote i'm being plain tonight but if we're going to have unity we can disagree we can discuss we can talk but there has to be christian ethics if we use the world's methods that is worldiness just as much as a modesty of

dress just as much as evil movies if we descend to a worldly type of political interaction what i call that is worldliness so i suggest start with the golden rule matthew 7 12 whatever you want others to do to you that's what you how you treat them i suggest to pastors whatever you think is appropriate for your saints to discuss about your sermon about your building program about your new endeavor that you and your church board voted to start whatever is fair game for them to discuss on social media whatever mannerism whatever tone of discussion that you think is appropriate fine but if it's not appropriate in that context it's not appropriate for you and your ministerial friends you say well you're not my pastor i thank god i am not the pastor of the upci let's get that straight i don't want to be the pastor of upci but we're all supposed to be disciples at least that's what brother gleason preaches we're supposed to be followers of jesus i don't find all the statements about communication ethics um the way we treat one another i don't find anything in the new testament where

there's an asterisk that says if you are a card-carrying minister of the upci the foregoing teachings do not apply to you you are exempt i'm just appealing for unity i'm not appealing everybody agrees with me or votes for me or anything like that i'm appealing for a spiritual unity spiritual ethics respect for one another's ministry respect for one another's discipleship being followers and imitators of the lord jesus christ if you think i'm tarting you i'm not targeting you unless you say you're unethical you be the judge of whether i'm talking about you i'm talking about the body of christ i'm talking about unity i'm talking about whatever medium we use the principles remain the same and i'm saying this is a danger in our day this is a form of worldliness that brother chambers didn't preach against because it didn't exist except in back corners now just take it for what it's worth i see worldliness as a danger but a second danger i've told you we have unprecedented opportunities with those opportunities or unprecedented dangers i'll be brief but if we grow the way i believe and the way you've all shouted that you

believe we don't change doctrine but we're going to have to change some traditions some methods some ways of doing things and you said what do you mean brother-in-law well that's going to be up to you but when we started our church in austin the only way we could start was a sunday afternoon service we grew for four years 125 people in that setting then we switched over to sunday morning sunny night but we were we had to change traditional way of pentecostal doing things in order to start a church there are many things growth requires change we have increasing diversity which we celebrate but that means in the congregation and in the fellowship worldwide people have different views the racial tensions and ethnic tensions of society press against the church now the church should not con succumb to that but we have to become more aware more sensitive more knowledgeable and more careful in how we frame issues because it's not just about us and our group of people and how we think and how we were raised and how we define terms it's about people from other countries other languages other cultures other races

that come from a very different perspective we unite around our apostolic identity but we've got to make room in our conversation for increasing diversity a great part of the revival that god is giving us is diversity we can't make a political litmus test to be a member in good standing of our church and as we get increasing recognition which i believe we will that puts the spill on us and that's why i've tried even in our social media to try to take careful positions we have a communications council and a committee and a director that tries to help us keep abreast of changes and and comment and say how the upci is positioning itself why do you think that's needed because now any individual can say i'm upc or i'm apostolic and here's what we believe in fact somebody said there was some chalk out there some website that was promoting what supposedly apostolic should believe if we don't speak to certain things one self-identified person becomes the spokesman to the whole world and i love each individual minister but i'm not so eager to have any one of ten thousand two hundred minutes to

say i'm upc and here's what upci believes on such and such controversial hot button social issue are you following me as we grow a lot of things are in the corner we can overlook and i'm not talking about discipline i'm just talking about finding a way to present ourselves to the world as we grow we're going to have to be more intentional about how we present ourselves to the world i'm just talking about challenges now facing the challenges there are two approaches one approach is survival mode and brother soto i believe preached that message it's necessary to think of survival but it's not sufficient we have to overcome our insecurities we have to overcome our small mentality we have to overcome our fortress mentality we have to overcome being so suspicious of every new person every new thing and i realize whenever there's change there is a danger and whenever you have ten thousand ministers doing different things and somebody does something's never been done before one of those persons could have a wrong motive or could go too far but are we going to hold back 10 000 minutes because we're afraid of change

we're afraid of what might happen that is an insecurity mode that is a fortress mode that is a survival mode what we need instead of survival mode is a revival mode now if you think i'm out of the book jesus prayed and i'll put this on the screen john 14. they are not of the world just as i am not of the world sanctify them by your truth your word is truth i i started to too far too late i do not pray that you should take them out of the world but that you should keep them from the evil one i do not pray for these alone but for those who believe in me through their word that they may all be one here's the model of jesus in the world but not of it some people of the church but not in it think about that we're supposed to be in the world but not of it we can interact with the world as long as we don't adopt the values and and the culture of the world and we're to be warned it's not an ecumenical oneness of denominations it's we must

be one with the apostles jesus told us how we can engage the world without compromise paul likewise and i'll just be brief he talked about being all things to all people in other words a missionary to his culture if i went to china i wouldn't expect the chinese people to speak my language i wouldn't expect to preach to them in english i wouldn't expect that after church they would eat the food that i want i wouldn't expect that their dress would be like mine i would expect to adapt to them not the doctrine but everything else we have to be missionaries in our own culture in north america recognizing we now have many cultures many beliefs we can't just come from a traditional bible belt culture we have to come reaching our world missionaries to our world when we the songs we sing it's not just about what what makes us feel good but it's also about how do we reach those people that don't even know those songs how do we communicate i'll leave it at that but i hope you get the message coming to a close will we compromise we've answered that

question many times no we must continue to answer that question no but we cannot afford a spirit of suspicion or a mode of attacking our brethren will we survive brother chambers ask yes we can look back on a hundred years of when his pentecostal history seven years of upc history will survive will we fulfill our potential that's what i'm asking and when the lord spoke to me back in february this is the last major point i want to make i was worried because some people are saying i'm compromising some people are saying i'm making foolish decisions and this and that and that kind of shocked me because my whole ministry has been writing in search of holiness writing the new birth writing the oneness of god i mean i know what it's like to be the only united pentecostal young person in a whole country or 40 million people you know there's nobody to have fellowship with there's nobody to date growing up as a teenager i had to stand alone and my sister with me there was no one the whole country that i could relate to if you think i'm gonna compromise i've

grew up in a place where i had to stand alone as the only english-speaking understanding our culture apostolic oneness pentecost a young person my sister and i in the whole country when i went to rice university one of the top 15 schools in the nation i was the only united pentecostal student the whole college the whole university whole campus and they were teaching these transgender and homosexual stuff back then that was in my textbooks back then that's nothing new all this stuff that's happened to my culture today is shocking everybody i saw that coming 40 years ago because they were trying to brainwash teenagers then when i went to the university of texas law school i was the only united pentecostal young people in person the whole law school on the top 10 law schools in the country there had to be some upc lawyer somewhere but i did not personally know any united pentecostal person that was going to law school to become a lawyer so i had to stand up for what i believed and politically speaking i remember the day that ronald reagan was shot attempted assassination i walk into the break

room at my law school and everybody was cheering saying hope he dies hope he dies this stuff is nothing new so if you think i'm going to compromise if i was going to compromise i would just go be a lawyer and i can make a lot of money by compromising now i'm not anti-lawyer i i still have my license with the state bar of texas and and uh you know all those lawyer jokes it's really not fear it's only the 99 that give them a bad name so so i'm not even thinking compromise so it shocked me that my fellow ministers would be talking about poor brother bernard he's compromising and so i was feeling sorry for myself brother batcher in the midst of that holy ghost revival it was a little pity party and then the lord turned it on me i felt like the lord told me this don't ask are you gonna compromise you and i both know we've had that conversation many years ago what i want you to ask yourself what are you willing to risk they might ask they might think you're willing to compromise i want to know

how far are you willing to risk and it just so happened i have not taken unusual risk but i've traveled in communist countries under communism and done secret meetings i've been stopped at the border and interrogated for 30 minutes by myself i've smuggled in the new birth and the oneness of god books and been searched for 30 minutes and holding my breath wondering what was going to happen when they found it you know i've been in situations this year or had to hide in a restroom for 50 minutes while there was a security incident at the overseas country that i was dealing with i've flown in since being superintendent we had a major muslim country with a great work had some problems they wanted me to help them and then international incidents and and all kinds of violence and so we discussed is it even safe to go in and so what we finally decided to do they wouldn't announce my going in i would just go in for 24 hours fly in without telling anybody go meet their board preach fly back out the next day and along with our missionaries and global missions

personnel we were able to make a major impact that changed the situation that country but there's a little risk involved and so i was trying to decide whether to go on a trip in march because now i'm general superintendent anybody can google me and find out who i am and then my cover is blown and so i was thinking maybe it's not worth it and my wife and i were talking about it and here's the thing a humbling thing the leader sent me a message i finally sent them a message is it safe because we had to cancel a trip there several years ago they said it wasn't safe and so i asked is it safe and their answer was there's a very humbling thing you're a man of god god will tell you what to do and whatever decision you make is going to be the right one wow and so in that prayer meeting god said what are you willing to risk so it's okay god it really doesn't matter what happens on this trip i'm going on this trip i am going on this trip and it we did had that security

incident but i made it back i'm here i won't go into all the others since i've gone farther than i intended to go it's fair to ask if i'm going to compromise i'll keep telling you no i'm not it's fair to ask if we're going to make some wrong decisions and to correct them or to challenge them that's okay but at the end of the day let's ask ourselves let's not get in this attack mode let's not get in suspicion mode let's not get in survival mode let's not get a fortress mentality move but i would like to challenge you every one of you what are you willing to risk what are you willing to sacrifice if we're going to have worldwide revival i can't take all the risk out of the equation i can't take all the sacrifice out of the equation somebody has got to take a chance somebody's got to sacrifice somebody's got to risk let's stand together so my question is what will we sacrifice i'm not asking you will you compromise i think you have answered that question over and over again and we still need to answer that but

i want you to go further than that what are you willing to risk for revival what are you willing to sacrifice revival can the united pentecostal church survive the onslaught of history yes we proved it and we need to revisit that issue i commend brother chambers it's not a critique can the united pentecostal church internationally inherit the future i think in this message i proved it can from scripture i proved it can from our own history i proved it can the real question is will the united pentecostal church international possess the future and only you can answer that question in the monday general board meeting sister flo shaw director of world network of prayer god does use women in ministry she preached to the general board 10