Reading Fudge's Book Again

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by Sarah

This thread reminds me of an incident that happened at the first UPC General Conference I ever attended. The year was either 1964 or 65, and it was in Grand Rapids, MI. Do any of you remember that conference? Bro Sam and Sis Fella are the only ones I can think of who would be old enough on this forum to remember, besides myself. Anyhow......

A Chinese man was brought to address the audience. Some of our people had "run into him" in China. This man told us an amazing story. There was an underground church there, and had been there since the "dark ages". He grilled our people (not sure if they were UPC, but were Apostolic) for hours on the new birth.....repentance, water baptism, infilling of the HG....... before he would allow them to preach to his people. He said the only difference in his church and the American church is that their women did not cut their hair. lol

God has always had a church, somewhere, that teaches the way to be saved is through repentance, baptism in Jesus name, and receiving the Holy Ghost. Just like the one in the book of Acts.

I had heard that story but I don't remember that it involved a GC. Such a find is incredible and would certainly attract a lot of attention. The activities of that group from the 1960's right up through today would make fascinating and encouraging news.

Who are they? Where are they? Any names? Places? Dates? Documents? Sounds a lot like the "2 million Urshanites in the Soviet Union." As the Iron Curtain came down I met with Russian Pentecostals. For the most part they would just stare at you with unbelief when you asked them about Oneness believers and Jesus Name baptism. They had never heard of such a doctrine.

I don't want to sound like I'm being cruel toward the hopes of others; but put yourself in my shoes- and the shoes of thousands of others. We had hope for just this sort of thing. We've got blank pages in our books and sermon materials waiting to be filled in with this news. But if we're going to stake our reputations and ministries on something, we want a little proof.

That proof will put the excited edge into our voices. We need a little certainty to go on to be persuasive toward our critics. Try presenting a paper based upon the conclusions of "After the Way Called Heresy" and "Ancient Champions of Oneness" in an academic setting. Such writings are not even received well in Oneness Symposiums.