The Dangerous Path of Doctrinal Deviation Ebook

Doctrinal deviation, degeneration, and denigration is a perilous path leading not to genuine unity of the Spirit, as posited by its propagators, but rather disunity with the Spirit, apostasy, perdition, and ultimately hell itself!

An oft recited slogan in some segments of the church over the last few decades is: "We must agree to disagree without being disagreeable." In itself, the import of that pun has some merit. Even among the most sincerely congenial colleagues and cohorts, perfect and perpetual agreement is an unrealistic and impossible expectation. Honest and sincere men do sometimes have honest and sincere disagreements. Indeed, disagreement is inevitable, but disagreement need not be fraught with divisiveness or produce disharmony.

Humans working and walking together in whatever enterprise or relationship will not always be in perfect accord on every nuance of every issue, but that variance need not begat discord, particularly among those infused and immersed in the Spirit. Though it may seem a contradiction, dissonance among reasoned individuals, especially those walking by the Spirit (cf. Gal. 5:16-26), need not produce disharmony.

(Sometimes dissonance means you are the right instrument in the wrong orchestra!) While concord generally would seem a worthy goal, sometimes controversy is the initial rumblings of needed and coming change, voluntary or involuntary.

Albeit agreement is a commonly desired status quo, disagreement sometimes signifies hidden fault-lines in thinking or timing. While uniform amity or unanimity would be desired in human interrelations, when it is not present, the destructiveness and alienation of animus must not be allowed to ferment. Disagreements are much better addressed and hopefully resolved in an amicable rather than antagonistic atmosphere. Nevertheless, we must never yield to the temptation to deviate from established essential doctrines or compromise proper principles in order to "keep the peace," or to "go along to get along." Yet, that is precisely what some have taken this slogan concerning disagreement to mean.

A dangerous trend is developing among many segments of the church, including the Pentecostal/Neo-Pentecostal segment, toward what they are saying is "unity" but which really amounts to a "truce" by definition, predicated on doctrinal compromise. Though they may attribute to it the term of "unity," it differs little, if at all, from the syncretism-based ecumenicism that numerous Christian denominations in alliance with the Roman Catholic Church have been forging for decades, which universal alliance in the end will comprise the end-time one-world Babylonian Church signified in eschatological Scripture.