Attention please. The following article on pentecostalism is one chapter of the book, The Theology of Jubilee Economics, and is copyright protected.   Individual persons may make a single copy for their own private use only.  Any other copying or distribution without prior approval is expressly prohibited. 

    Here we're dealing with another variety of the same old non-ethics with another handle. Again, we must tread very carefully here. There is something good, reverent mysticism, which we do respect and honor, versus something else to be altogether avoided.  One is an egg.  The other is the serpent's egg with venomous malignity in it.

    Regrettably, all of our major denominations have had pentacostalism in their origins. Simultaneously with original church beginnings was an emergence of Holy Spirit theology, itself of obscure derivation.   Could Jesus himself have brought the concept to his movement?  Not likely.  Much more probable: there came first a determination by disciples that Jesus should be elevated to divine status, and this point then required further speculative development.  The trinity concept had been familiar to pagan Druid thought for at least 2000 years.*  The Druid savior was even named Yesu.  The Trinitarian concept need not necessarily conflict with monotheism.  No one more stoutly defends monotheism than traditional Christianity.  (But admittedly Trinitarian theologians have to be on the defensive here).  There is no difficulty at all in reconciling monotheism and trinity if we cop-out by resorting to the obvious dodge that there is that about God which passes understanding.  The Trinitarian theology is after all a deduction drawn from prior assumptions, themselves not necessarily secure.  Trinitarianism primarily is used to reinforce the claim that Jesus is divine and therefore infallible.**  The primary useful point would seem to be that Christians do find God and heaven revealed in Jesus, and that in reverent prayer, worshipers regularly find themselves to be in touch with infinite realities.  But about exact Trinitarianism doctrines, it isn't especially important to know the details.  And it would be futile anyhow to try. (See Appendix VI for more about how skillfully Rufus Jones harmonized

*Traces of monotheism and Trinitarianism are found throughout paganism, all branches of which can be traced to Nimrod of Babylon. Details in Appendices V & VI.

**The Matt.3:16 scene should not be understood as a bird fluttering down from above, but rather that Jesus became and remained dove-like.  If the Trinitarian and sacrifice atonement theology were correct, we would not expect Luke 23:46 to say, "Into thy hands I commend my spirit", but instead something more like: "I now condemn myself and let the Father and Holy Spirit also condemn me".

the various sides in the historic quarrel of several centuries duration).  These days, hopefully, in the realm of abstract theory, the problem seems to be pretty much of a dead issue, as it should be.  But the related Maryism problem persists.  There is no New Testament basis for worship of Mary.  Nor justification of any kind.  Paganism didn't just disappear.  It was just absorbed by the "church".  Paganism's Semiramis=Isis became renamed as"Mary".

    The Pentecost event as related in the second chapter of Acts, by Luke who was not an eyewitness and was writing 20 or more years after the presumed happening, was entirely unlike today's "holy rollerism". (or should we say unholy rollerism?)   If what was recorded by Luke was true, then that pentecostal happening was absolutely unique and no "pentecostal" meeting since, attempting to duplicate it has ever again had this happen. There have been 2000 years of absolute failure to ever do it again.  Because, according to Luke's account, every man from foreign places heard in his own language what was said, presumably in another language.  If true, this would have been the opposite thing to what allegedly happened at the Biblical tower of Babel, where speech was said to have been confused and communication made impossible.*  But only unintelligible babbelings occur at modern "pentecostalism" meetings.  So, all subsequent attempts by "pentecostalists" to duplicate what is described in Acts, have been completely futile.  It just doesn't happen now because it also never happened at all in the first place. At least not exactly as now recorded in the second chapter of Acts.  Only Luke, who was not present, reports it, and this many years after the alleged event.  But people who were there at the time, never spoke of it. New Testament writers Peter and Jude would have been there, and apostles Matthew and John should have been, and probably Mark.  But, the event is not mentioned in writings by or bearing the names of these persons nor by any other churchman, only by Luke alone.  For all other people, the event is not worth mentioning and it is more important to write about other things.  So, this alleged pentecost event assumes an importance in Luke's thought that is not found elsewhere.  In other words, no one else agreed with Luke's account.  Ferrar Fenton is said to present evidence that Luke and Paul were cousins.  And Paul was in prison, (Luke 1:3 & Acts 1:1) and

*According to Gen.11:1-9, the city and presumably the tower too were left unfinished.  But modern archaeology shows the tower was finished, the top with glazed and colored tile.  So, neither the Genesis story nor Luke and Paul's variation of it in Acts 2, is historically accurate!

Luke is writing to Paul's jailer, Theophilus, trying to get Paul sprung!  Could Luke be making up a magic story to intimidate the probably superstious Theophilus?  Paul also has two very big additional huge motives in making up such a story.  For (1) many years, he has been trying his utmost, but without success, to convince Jerusalem churchmen his (Paul's) burning-bush like experience--which no one else could confirm,--makes him, Paul, to be an apostle.  In the Pentecostal story according to Luke, all the real apostles have also had similar burning-bush like experience--so, according to Paul, Paul is an apostle too. Paul is also thusly rewriting "Peter's confession" to be as Paul would like it to have been, (Much more later about "Peter's confession").  But, no person present at the original meeting ever confirmed Luke and Paul's impression of something at which neither Luke or Paul had been present.  Luke (and Paul) made something out of it which no person actually present at the time ever made of it.

    Since the still living Jesus had survived the crucifixion and had only recently departed Damascus, after a year and a half stay there--the phantom "Christ" Paul says spoke to him, is a delusion, not a reality.  And the Pseudo-Pentacostalism Paul derives from this delusion is equally non-genuine.

    Pentecost had long been a Jewish holiday corresponding with the earliest harvest, that of barley (barley, from which intoxicating beer is made).  Pentecost was also the traditional date on which Moses was said to have brought down the Torah (law) from Mt. Sinai.   In these two features we can see additional appeals to the supernatural in Luke and Paul's concocted story.  Also we can see a connection between early El-Yah worship of it's presumed law, with pagan agricultural fertility cults and the drunkenness associated with pagan ceremonial public orgies. Pagan Greeks would not fail to notice the strong similarity with this purported story and their annual spring bacchanalia.  Here, we catch Paul in the act of reverting back to Paganism!

    It has been suggested that what most likely happened at the original Christian pentecost occasion, was that all those present had had some exposure to the Hebrew language which every week was used in a ceremonial reading of scripture during worship services. Everyone present would also know, before he heard it, what generally was being said in Peter's announcement, because it was the talk of the town.  Everyone was already thinking and talking about the same thing. Then probably everyone present heard Peter speaking ordinary Aramaic sufficiently like the variety of language he knew,

that the substance and consensus carried the drift of Peter's announcement across to all those present, who didn't need the announcment anyhow to know all that. So it is not necessary to presume any miracle occurance. Modern travelers do much the same thing all the time when asking for directions or assistance, though they do not know the language of the land.

    All those present already knew, before they heard it, what Peter was announcing.  We need not guess what this announcement was.  It is given in Acts 2:l4-40.  Summarized, the announcement essentially is: the still living Jesus is messiah and that their's should be transformed lives!  It was not necessarily supernatural flame that converted 3,000 on this occasion.  This "flaming" message could do it then and since then has done it again many, many times.  If anything more happened then, it was a special occurrence never repeated nor should we ever expect it to be.  It was not needed then, nor has it ever been needed since.  We still have the same message available, and those who want to hear it or repeat it will find that it does tend to bring the same response of right relationship which we call the spirit of holiness.  Many prefer to think of and experience the Spirit as the reverent influence of things holy. This is quite as powerful and effective.

    It is when we call good, good that we find this spirit of holiness: and when we call evil good, or good evil that we offend it. (Matt.12:22-23, see also Isa.5:20 & Jn.3:7).  How about reducing all this to just the one word: ethics!  When one understands and approves any of the many wonderful aspects of the Kingdom-Of-God, then proper emotional approval and feelings will automatically adjust and ethical response will be following too.

    But in pseudo-pentecostalism,* novice, misguided Christians, often the best of people but still novices at understanding Bible or spirituality, work themselves into a trance-like state of excessive directionless enthusiasm, sometimes sweet but oftentimes much like insanity or debauchery.  It can even be demon-like, bringing great discredit to the participants and to the church in general.  Such excessive forms have no necessary connection with the reverent zest for good we here describe.  In fact, we should not infer

*To test for genuineness, ask several of the ones in the audience who claim to be translators, to sit away from each other and write their "translations".  Then compare them!  Don't let them get ready in advance!

any good about such unwholesomeness at all. Though good people experiment with such, it is unholy, not holy.  The pseudo-pentecostalist, wanting some sort of supernatural miracle to happen to him, has a big tendency to not recognize holiness when he sees it.  He wants it to be unrelated to ordinary life, something very different, the more weird the better, so he mistakingly would have it.  In more academic circles, Tillich and Barth are noted for proclaiming the total otherness of God.  Well, of course God is more than we can understand.  But this supereminence is not the same as being "totally other."  Both the pseudo-pentecostalist and calvinistic theologians should bear in mind that another something noted for otherness is the "devil".  The creator God of Christianity makes man in his image, not totally other. And man is an unfinished creation until he achieves that likeness, best seen in the historic Jesus.

I Corinthians l3:1-13* says it tenderly and well: This babbling at it's best is only childish: see I Cor. l3:

     When I was a child I spake (babbled) as a child.
     When I was a man (mature Christian) I spake as a man (no more baby-talk)
Behold, I show you a better way: (better than baby-talk)
     better way than angel tongues,
     better way than prophecy,
     better way than great knowledge,
     better way than "faith that could move mountains"

    The "better way" the writer of I Cor. l3 speaks of he calls charity (which we here in the Theology Of Ethics usually call ethics), our bedrock.  Charity applied to life situations is the same as our stewardship ethics.

    Baby talk is not God's (or man's) ordinary way of getting information shared or of solving problems.  Babies do it because they have no other language.  Adult people should try to think with their heads, not with their feelings emotions) only.  There is nothing here against joy!

    The (tower of Babel) babbling of pseudo-pentecostalists has never yet been a language. Researchers making recordings have shown that such gibberish has never been language. No dictionary or grammer can be produced.  It is unholy, not sacred.  It is fraudulent to call such phoney "tongues" a "gift".  These people do already have the great gift of ordinary speech, but scorn proper speech to instead perform

*In I Cor. 13,  Paul is quoting a poem or hymn with very different concepts from all Paul's own writings!

this theatrical exhibition. False prophets. It is idenitcally the same VooDoo methodology of ancient false prophets to who offered the product of their hyped-up feelings and personal preferences, as though the oracles were the "infallible last word of God".  As will be shown in detail later, genuine prophets do not need this, though some of the Biblical prophets with correct messages did also (unnecessarily) proceed this way. The "pentecost" of Acts 2 just attributes to a crowd what formerly had been ascribed to individuals.

     But, having established the deplorable features of pentecostalism, we need to acknowledge some of the finest of saints find that it is, for them, a variety of prayer, and there is nothing here against prayer.  Medieval medicines used to often be strange concoctions of weird ingredients, but if one or more of the components happened to be good medicine, the overall effect could be the odd mixture worked!  But there could be better ways to do it.  And "Holy Spirit" need have nothing to do with it.

     From dictionary definitions it's easy to see a "spirit" is not necessarily a person. The Greek word "pneuma", translated spirit in Bibles, is defined by Strong's Exaustive Concordance (word #4151) as a current of air, that is, a breath (blast) or a breeze; by analogy a human spirit, the rational soul, by implication a vital principal, mental disposition etc., or (superhuman) an angel, daemon or (divine) God, Christ's spirit, the Holy Spirit:--ghost, life, spirit, mind. From Kittel's Theological Dictionary Of The Bible (l8 pages of information):

    "Spirit in the Old Testament means 'seat of emotions', 'intellect', and  'will'--God's        inner nature--power and wisdom--and refers to that which gives insight. "the Greek        concept and New Testament; it can be the seat or agenda of mental or spiritual        functions--'pneuma' is the seat of perceptions and feelings.  It is the Spirit of God that        strives against human weakness.  Secular Greek knows no person of the Spirit as a        divine entity, pneuma is always a thing, not a person."

From this defination, it can be seen that a holy spirit is not necessarily a divine person, but may very well be an experience or mood of holiness.

    But if one dispenses with the hypothesis that the Holy Spirit is a separate individual entity of a presumed Trinity, then already there is no longer a Trinity. Already we are down to a dualism of Father and Son.  But if God really created mankind in his own image (Gen.l:27), and "as many as receive him" to them it is given the power to become the sons of God (John l:l2)", then God must have many sons, not just one.  And are we not taught to address our prayers to

Our Father who art in heaven? Then, Presto, we're back to monotheism!

     Counterwise, the very first post-crucifixion disciples believed there had truly been a resurrection and therefore it would seem to them that Jesus must have been divine. The resulting dualism raised numerous unacceptable theological problems which they attempted to solve by proposing a trinity, which speculation raised just as many problems. It was still a fluid theological dispute until the government authority of Constantine's Nicene Creed set the trinitarian doctrine in cement, so far as the state church was concerned.  We'll examine this more, later.

    Pseudo-pentecostalism attempts to redefine the word holy and the concept of holiness to mean something other than righteousness.  It is, like pseudo-believe, another of our mislabled anti-ethics phony terms making one of our best words to seem to mean something altogether opposite. Long distance runners regularly experience what they call "second wind."  Just when they come to the end of their physical endurance, a sudden surge of great relief washes over them and they change to a feeling as if walking on air and could continue to run without effort all day.  What pentecostalists experience is probably nothing more than ordinary runner's second-wind, which they could have anytime by running hard and non-stop for about a mile.

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