While I was a licensed minister in the United Pentecostal Church, I passionately pursued obtaining a proper, fully-accredited Bible degree. In no way do I want to sound like I was tooting my own horn, but I wanted to be a legitimate scholar who knew, understood, and was able to defend the faith on a proper level.
While chasing this this dream, I received a lot of opposition from people who I thought were on the same “team.” There were some apostolic ministers, a vocal bunch, who criticized me for choosing this path. To sum up the basic argument, in their minds, education was the enemy of faith.
In no way is this true!
The Biblical education I received (through different denominations) helped my faith grow immensely! In fact, it opened my eyes to the real reason why certain folks were against me and my path. It was not because education is a true enemy of faith – that is so wrong and warped – but because education showed me the errors of the doctrine I followed. It also revealed the fact that there were those who refused to open their eyes to be honest about the fallacies of the doctrine.
Some, for differing reasons, cannot (or will not) accept the truth when it is right in front of them. There is a reason why there are so few (if any) real scholars in the Apostolic movement. Truth and lies cannot co-exist in the heart of a Christian. There comes a point when one has to choose his or her path… Is it really built upon truth? Or, is it one that has embraced lies?
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http://Www.atseminary.com
Going to a non-accredited ‘seminary’ does not qualify one to be a ‘scholar’. On top of that, you aren’t even endorsed by your own organization.
This isn’t a legitimate school. The post kinda proves my point.
What a very true article. Almost without fail, getting a real education requires opening one’s mind to change…which involves learning to differentiate between legitimate sources and those with no proof. It involves learning sound reasoning and logic. It involves being able to identify the difference between simple rhetoric and information founded upon actual truth. Learning to look at culture in relation to passages completely changes how one should interpret a passage. The intent of the writer has to be considered. Unfortunately, UPC and Apostolic preachers do not want to look at these things because the random scriptures they pull out to support all the rules they want to enforce no longer have any meaning.