The Practice of and Backsliding

I was brought up Baptist and thought as a teenager that they were the only group going to heaven. I thought speaking in tongues was of the devil and that all Catholics were going to hell. I spent a summer here in southwest Virginia and would work the restaurant of the morning, hayfield in the afternoon, and go to the revival at night at the Pentecostal Holiness church. It was a wonderful spiritual experience accompanied with a Walton type fellowship and love.

Back in those days we used to have a preacher who was a Methodist preacher who preached at a Baptist church and who would conduct revivals with whoever would have him. People used to ask him how was it that a Methodist preacher could pastor a Baptist church. His reply was that the way he saw it the only difference between the Baptist and Methodist was that the Baptist did not believe in baptism but the Methodist practiced it, and everyone would laugh. As someone brought up Baptist that would give me cause to think and to ponder. I have also heard that Billy Sunday’s worship leader, Homer Rodeheaver, would say that his instrument was a "Methodist trombone" that would occasionally "backslide."

 

The Pentecostal Holiness revival was good until about 2005, and now there is little left of it. In study I can trace the revival to...

1. Non-Conformist - John Bunyan type open air preaching.
2. Methodist- John Wesley type open air preaching.
3. United Methodist - Francis Asbury camp meetings
4. Holiness - Of the late 1800’s
5. Pentecostal Holiness- Lasted about a decade

I can see what has transpired scripturally as....

Thyatira - The Catholic Church.- The spirit of Jezebel is to control and to dominate
Sardis - Denominational Protestant - A Sardis is a gem, elegant yet hard shelled
Philadelphia- What I traced as revival
Laodicea - Rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing?

And the message to the Philadelphians....

Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name. - Revelation 3:12

“No more go out” - Which is a terrible dis-advantage to this church... They are in and out of revival, or practiced backsliders. Which is aggravating. The advantage of being John Calvin Sardisean is that if you can convince them of OSAS, the doctrine will keep folks around.