I am amazed at the reaction I have received from third wave worshippers when I have addressed the paganization of the church via the worship. I have been called a Pharisee. I have been asked to seek deliverance from the 'Spirit of Westernization'. I have been told that I am an 'American Imperialist that wants to Americanize the church and not Christianize the church'. I have been called a cessationist, accused of having religious spirits, or not having a passion and pure worship of Jesus. I've been told to surrender my brain and let God in and to 'not think, but feel". I know of one group that called people who came out against this tribalistic worship as having 'the spirit of Michal' (based on 2 Samuel 6:16-23) and promised that anyone who acts like Michal towards them and criticizes them (they see themselves as King David here) will be spiritually barren and spiritually fruitless for the rest of their days. So these people find a Bible verse to twist in order to justify their actions. In fact, this 'prophecy' went as far as to use verse 22 about becoming more undignified in worship as a sure tell all sign that the more undignified this was to the world and to the church people who disagreed, the more of God it is.

I have found that the same arrogance of elitism in action in the previous moves of God now permeates this 'move'. This viewpoint of churches other than those in the "current revival" are not on fire for God and do not see the gifts in operation among their midst. What begin as a pure quest to worship God turned into a conceited attitude about the former "move" of God. They become convinced that if you are not part of their movement then you are somehow in need of re-dedication and need to be re-saved. It then begins to evangelize the saved instead of the lost that they originally intended to outreach. In fact, they accuse us of 'judging' something that so closely resembles pagan and New Age cultures that one has a very hard time effectively distinguishing between the pagan and the Godly unless much spiritual discernment is used. Some who participate in the Third Wave Worship have gone as far as comparing themselves to the Great Persecution and considering themselves as a Salem Witch Hunt after the order of the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition. This really is not an American Christian vs. the world thing. Nor is this a quest for martyrdom to leave a legend. It is a fulfilling the desires of the flesh vs. fulfilling the desires of the Spirit thing. Standing up against this pagan infiltration is not the 'westernization of American Imperialist Christianity'. Instead, it is the pursuit of holiness and wanting to be separate from the world in actions and deeds by removing the totems, taboos, transgressions, etc that prohibit us from getting intimate with God who desires to make us a holy temple of the Holy Spirit.

In fact, we now interpret the Word of God through this pagan and tribal mindset. Where in the cases of healing from infirmities, the Bible specifically tells us if this was either demonic, due to past sins, or just to show the glory of God. However, many within Christianity act like the Pharisees and are more concerned about the demonic or who sin caused this to the point where the focus of the issue at hand is diverted. This mentality of cheapening God can go as far back as to having origins in the Word of Faith movement. Taking verses such as James 5:13-19 out of context into believing that all sicknesses is due to somebody's poor choice to sin to the every popular 'touch not mine anointed and do not the prophets any harm'. The Word of Faith movement has spent more time analyzing and trying to lay blame on the problems at hand on some 'secret sin' or some 'he disagreed with the pastor' instead of dealing with the problems at hand. One can clearly see in the New Testament that all infirmities were not the cause of 'secret sins', 'lack of faith', and 'demons'.

The Word of Faith movement is so guilty in acting out judgments against those who disagree and deterring sin like tribalism. Where the ancient Indian tribes saw lightning as 'the gods are angry', the Word of Faith saw most sicknesses implied (and in some extreme cases stated) as 'God is very angry at you because of some sin.' However, ask the Word of Faith teacher why he or she is sick and it's due to 'all these demons attacking me'. Like the tribal religions who would attribute a baby dying to choleric as 'retribution for the sins of the forefathers', many in the Word of Faith have attributed such things as birth defects, miscarriages, etc. as 'the payback of secret sins', the 'reaping' of things 'sowed', God is angry and hates you because of your sin, the parents of the child sinned, and/or the forefathers sinned to the point of a four generational 'curse' was on that person. What happens is that in reality, we really do not know why human suffering is upon the earth, but we as a human want to know why and what to do to prevent it and to stop it. So many take scriptures out of context and say 'Yes, this must be it' and they usually take one verse and justify a theology instead of seeing the verse in light of the verses before and after it in Scripture and properly apply it. We have used such things as 'secret sin', 'lack of faith', 'your mother disagreed with a faith preacher and therefore touched the anointing', and 'God is angry at the sin of your great grandfather" to try to explain why people are sick, crippled and in wheelchairs, poor, born with birth defects, why people make poor choices, etc. when in many cases we do not know the real answer. It is amazing that people born of a sin nature and have sinned and came short of the glory of God can now easily look at handicapped and dysfunctional people and tell them it's has to be some sin you or your ancestors did that caused you to be blind, paraplegic, autistic, or whatever ailment you suffer with. Instead we give out these answers because most of the time, someone did sin, or we are able to deceive somebody that they did not pray hard enough and what it really does is not address the problem at hand but make ourselves look more holy in the eyes of the questioner while transferring the fault and shifting the blame of not getting healed from the person who prayed 'in their faith' for healing to the person needing healing lacking faith.

The book of Job, which chronicles about one man's experience in suffering, is a very interesting book that is commonly ignored by many especially the Word of Faith group. The human drama of suffering in this book goes against the grain of those who teach that in order to be considered loved, anointed, and accepted by God that 'you must always be healthy, you must always be wealthy, and you must always be prosperous and any one sin or disagreement will place a permanent judgement of sickness, poverty, and failure on your life.' In fact, if you read the book of Job, we see that Satan had to ask God to allow him to attack Job. We see during these attacks that Job's friends acted much like those involved in the Word of Faith. Eliphaz is too busy trying to find out the secret sin. Bildad is too busy trying to convince Job that he lacks faith in God. Zophar misapplied theology by applying 'pick-and-choose' verses to justify his own reasoning. Eilhu presented himself much like the new young breed of Word of Faith pastors today. They have the desire to seek the approval and 'anointing' of the older Word of Faith teachers by preaching what they preach and rebuking what they rebuke while speaking some truth at the same time. It is at the end when Job confesses to not fully understanding the sovereignty of God that Job is restored. Job learned that that no matter what happens, the ways of the Lord are not our ways. Job did not secretly sin, did not lack faith, nor did anything displeasing in the eyes of God. The reason tragedy happened to Job was to show God's sovereign reign and control over his life and circumstances, not because of anger, not because of sin by his parents and / or his children, not because of secret sin, and not because he lacked faith.

If you look at Job's friends, the Word of Faith movement, and the third wave / third day movements, one can easily see that in each of these three movements there is a common thread. In each of these movements, there has been the attempt to 'formulate God'. The ancient tribes had formulated that lightning was a sign that the gods are angry and had formulated that stillborn babies must be judgement due to making the gods angry. Job's three friends tried to formulate God to where prosperity, health, and riches was automatically seen as right standing with God while poverty, sickness, and destruction was automatically seen as wrong standing with God. The Word of Faith teachers went as far as rhyming their formulas with such phrases as 'name it and claim it', 'confess and possess', and 'sow a seed to meet my need'. Also the Word of Faith teachers went as far as to determine that all poverty and sickness is automatically due to secret sins and the failure to break free from sickness and poverty is due to our 'lack of faith'. The third wave / third day movements tries so hard to formulate God by the concept of 'we can sanitize the world system and make it God' and ' the more kookier our church service is, the more anointed it must be because His ways are not our ways'.

However, throughout the book of Job, God shows us that one can be poor, sick, and in poverty and still be in right standing with God. The sick and impoverished Job never sinned and never cursed God even though his wife encouraged him to many times. Throughout the scriptures, God has showed us that one can be wealthy and be in wrong standing with God. Also God has showed us that many mighty men of God were ailing and still seen as mighty and full of valor. Elisha was described in 2 Kings 13:14 as "becoming sick with the illness of which he would die from". In fact, verse 21 stated that when a dead man was placed in Elisha's tomb and the dead man's flesh touched the bones of Elisha, the dead man was revived back to life. Isaac in Genesis 27:1 was either near blind or already blind in his last days before passing the birthright to Jacob. If one believes modern Word of Faith teaching in reference to sin and sickness, one would then have to determine that these two men of God must have committed grave sins or lacked faith in God to be healthy and the anointing should have already left these gentlemen because per their logic, anointing can not reside in sick and handicapped people.

It is an amazing observation of human nature in reference to how we act in tragedy. When tragedy and human suffering happens to us, we are like Job in the sense of asking "Why did this happen?". We either rationalize this as 'persecution for God' or if so indoctrinated in Charismatic circles look for things to call 'sin', something we may have 'lacked faith' in, etc. just to find something to repent over to make us feel a little bit better about ourselves and in hope for this tragedy will pass away instantly and not be around months from now. However, when tragedy and human suffering happens to another person and especially if the other person is an enemy, then we are very quick be like Job's friends. We praise God for his 'justice'. We praise God for 'eternal torment'. We want people to repent over personal opinions we dislike instead of repenting for disobeying God. We then begin to claim that the person must have brought the tragedy and human suffering on themselves by not confessing 'secret sins', or they 'lacked faith' or they 'disagreed with a televangelist'. Also, many who love to play the role of Job's three friends love to take a section of one verse and compose a rationalistic theology of human reasoning to justify their dissentions when the section of one verse when read in the context of the scriptures before and after it, does not even apply to their own rationalistic thinking.

Where are the tangible results of the tribal mentalities? Where great revivalists came in under the power of God and impacted people and impacted cities with the closing down of bars and burlesque halls, the impact from the tribal mentalities of the third wave like the river movement, only produced more meetings, more arrogance, more rudeness and selfishness, and more opportunities to dance and act pagan and to appease the flesh. We have somehow lost the notion that God can change the environment around us and still have everything in control via his sovereignty instead of a politician evangelizing via the legislation of righteousness as a law of the land. The third wave / third day movements in the name of having churches that are culturally current ended up absorbing the culture and paganisms around them into the church instead of being a church that went out to impact and change the outside culture. A new dance, a new party, a new musical style, and a new sensuality we have tried to sanitize and call it God instead of letting God direct us into worship that is pleasing and acceptable unto Him.

Click here for part five of this article.