Last night, I finally got around to watching a service from Pentecost Sunday at the Field Church in Bluffton, Indiana. I had been there a few times and it is my son’s church of choice. It was where he finally was washed in the blood of Christ at the altar. It was where he was given a watery death and and  a rebirth in Christ.

While you may not think this too amazing, he was 22 years old and had been an Odinist. That was until he was healed by God through the power of the Holy Spirit that was brought on by prayers across the country. So to me, it is important. And in some way, this post is about him, but what happened after the Pentecost service.

Pastor Zach Petree had a guest pastor that Sunday. I’ve seen people filled with the Holy Ghost, but this gentleman was overflowing. My son said you could fill the electricity in the air, a different feeling he had truly had there before. My son was called to the altar, and was laid out by the Power of the Holy Ghost when he had hands laid on him. Not once, not twice, but three times.

For someone not in the Pentecostal church, this usually seems either weird or ridiculous. And as a Catholic of over 20 years, I might agree with you. After all, the Catholic Christians don’t really go in for emotionalism and the signs following. But, I’m not your average Catholic. Before I was confirmed, I started as a Seventh Day Adventist and then more of an Evangelical. So I understand and believe in the signs following.

My last post pointed out, in a small way, that I am a mix of Pentecostal and Catholic. If you choose to, go read Paradox Christian. But for this article, I will go over a few series of events that hit me. The first was watching my son at the Pentecost service.

I fully understand that the Catholic Church does not accept Scripture alone but also relies on traditions that go back over the last two thousand years. But like many denominations, there are things they agree and disagree with in biblical concept. And that’s fine. Considering Heaven will not be denominational in makeup, I don’t generally adhere to the sign out front.

Anyway, I still hold to many of my Evangelic beliefs. The signs following are those, as well as study, prayer, and service. After watching the replay of the service, I was looking around You Tube and found Pastor Greg Locke. If you haven’t heard of him, and I would be surprised if you haven’t, he was speaking about the biblical scriptures on witchcraft bad divination. The context was because he has been threatened a few times by local practitioners of the black arts (and yes, they come from the devil). Leviticus tells us in chapter 20 verse 6: ‘As for the person who turns to mediums and to spiritists, to play the harlot after them, I will also set My face against that person and will cut him off from among his people.’

So finishing that short video, not the first I have watched from him, I was presented with a flash from the past. Back in the late 1990’s (my Evangelical days), I watched Breakthrough with Rod Parsley. But at the time of this particular viewing, it had been between 20 and 25 years since I had watch Pastor Parsley preach. This episode came from the recent Dominion Camp Meeting. This is a week or so of varying pastors and speakers. Pastor Parsley was the last to speak, and the message hit like a brick.

He was preaching about the weakness of today’s preachers and the compromises they have made. The weakness of a pulpit allows for sin to openly be within the church. I have written about this and the message was energetic and filled with power when pastor Parsley spoke. There are preachers that have a silver tongue and sound eloquent. There are those that sound like they belong in the halls of academia. But Pastor Locke and Pastor Parsley are the throwback that is more than needed for today. They pull no punches, and as Pastor parsley said, does not worry about Twitter or Facebook likes or being Tik Tok famous. What they care about are the souls that are headed for Hell.

Pastor Parsley spoke of many things in that sermon. But more importantly, it brought my mind and spirit back to a time from long ago. A time where I had a fire and a passion to see souls saved through the power of the Holy Ghost. It brought understanding and a clarity that even the Catholic Church with all of it’s history and traditions have not brought back to me.

They say what most pastors and priests are afraid to. That man sin’s and needs repentance. That things like homosexuality, sexual immorality, and compromising the commands and teachings of God will send your soul to hell. In today’s political and self-serving climate, men like these are a fresh wind of an old power. A wind that entered a room 2000 years ago and transformed not only that age, but every age since.

The feeling that I have felt before, I am starting to feel again. Where the breath and will of God will take me, I have yet to see. What God will have me do, I have yet to now. But I do know that I am reminded of a couple of verses that fit this situation.

“Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.” (Isaiah 6:8. 18)  

 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.” Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom;but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness,but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1Corintians 1:18-25)