walkawayarchie wrote:

I was taught that there was a hierarchy- we ALL had to obey God, because God saw and knew all, and disobedience meant being punished for all eternity in HELL. The preachers were part of that "God-ordained" hierarchy which strongly resembles feudalism in my opinion. We were taught that obedience to authority was part of obedience to God.

My first exposure to that was when I went on a teen missions trip. The group was called Teen Missions International, it wasn't pentecostal but it was totally authoritarian. The guy would explain to us that God put him in authority over us and if we disobeyed it was like the sin of witchcraft which was punishable by death in teh olden times. As he said this, I swear he had this gleeful little grin on his face.