As we mentioned previously, there is not a great deal of discipline in the average church assembly, at least in the Pentecostal-Charismatic variety of assemblies. The fear of God must be added to our churches. When Ananias and Sapphira were disciplined by the Lord "great fear came upon all the church."

There is an element of fear in most discipline. Paul stated that many were sick and some had died because of participating in the Communion service in an improper manner.

The Lord Jesus is ready to place each soldier where He wants him or her. The soldier of the Lord must remain faithful in his or her appointed position until the Lord directs otherwise. Let each one of us seek the Lord that we may discover where we are to be and what we are to do. Then let us be faithful unto death.

We no longer are free to criticize the elders or one another, to run here and there as it pleases us, to usurp the place of another, to participate in special loyalties to individuals or groups. We are to look always to Jesus and do as He says. He is the Commander in Chief. We also are to obey the authority that the Lord places over us. If the authority behaves in an improper manner, then we are to pray and ask the Lord to make the necessary changes.

The Lord Jesus will stand behind those whom He has placed in authority. He will be an enemy to their enemies as long as they serve the Lord faithfully. The day is past when we carelessly and willfully can criticize, mock, contradict, scorn, rebel against, and tear down the officers whom Christ has chosen. The soldier in the army of the Lord who goes about gossiping and criticizing, who is as a loose cannon careening across the deck of the ship, injuring people and destroying the Lord's work, will be punished severely by the Lord.

The imposition of stern discipline by the Spirit of God is as much as part of the Kingdom revival of today as tongues is a part of the Pentecostal revival.

The prevailing concept of salvation is that the blood of Jesus is a ticket to the spirit Paradise when we die. Every sincere believer understands that a Christian ought to please the Lord in motive, speech, and action. But the Christian concept is that in the final sense we go to the spirit Paradise by God's grace and mercy independently of our behavior and obedience to God, and that this is the main difference between the Law of Moses and the grace of God in Christ.

This concept is unscriptural and can be disproved easily from the New Testament Scripture by an intelligent high school student.

To be continued.