blackdog wrote:

It's always been like, seriously scary-obvious to me how much the "game" of Pentecostalism is rigged in favor of the leadership...that was one of the reasons I never bit one of their baited hooks and got sucked in...but I am always amazed...and can't help but wonder how so many others do not see this?
Ahh, the missing piece in your puzzle is this: The Pentecostal/Charismatic movements run on experiences - not on intellectual understanding. Pentes and Chrismatics get actual thrills from worship services, similar to the feelings you might get at a sporting event where your team suddenly makes a huge play, or at a concert where you fall headlong into the music and have an emotional experience that transcends everyday life. Those thrills are addictive - so much so that when the thrills aren't there, people in those churches say that the "spirit" wasn't moving - or worse - wasn't there. That's when the pastors and deacons of the church tend to get off their butts and hire an outside contractor (they call them "evangelists") to come in and "stir the Spirit" back up.

Now, before you declare how impervious you would be to all of this obvious chicanery, consider that in the midst of this "in-rushing of the Holy Spirit," you have people apparently getting instantly and miraculously healed of physical ailments, depressed and despondent people suddenly laughing and crying with emotional release, the "voice of God" speaking through believers in the form of lamentations or exhortations or prophecies, and a general feeling of ecstasy flowing through the crowd and - whether you want it to or not - through you, as well. The experience can be so overwhelming that it - temporarily at least - overrides the cognitive center of the brain, and unleashes pent-up emotions that all human beings have.

It is only after the service that people may begin to have doubts, but with the entire congregation having collectively experienced the same event (or so they believe), it is hard for one person to question the reality of what just happened. The other people who were there will close ranks and (naturally) assume that the problem is within you: you simply don't want what God is offering you; it's Satan trying to rob you of your blessing; it's your own mind (soul) playing tricks on you ("Lean not unto your own understanding."), or it's "hidden sin" that is preventing you from experiencing the full power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, peer pressure is intense, and forces the doubter into a sort of self-imposed shunned state, cut off from friends and family, and completely isolated.

It's the rare individual who can fight his or her way out of that state and into freedom; more often than not, loneliness and fear overwhelms intellectual honesty and doubt, and the "wayward lamb" is brought back into the fold, often to start the entire process all over again. People will spend years, stuck in this spiritual yo-yo, until they either go crazy or leave the church. Either way, they get so emotionally scarred from this process that they need help getting healed from it, and that's the reason this forum exists.


Hope this helped.

Rob