ustxtxb_obs_1986_06_27_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

angles, all positions, all eyes are focused on their little idol.” Not so with the Jubileeans. Their sole concern is to put on that white garment of salvation, without blemish, without wrinkle. “How does one keep free of wrinkles?” Elms asks and answers his own question: “By not sitting on your garment. I think we’ve ‘ got a pretty wrinkle-free congregation here. We don’t stay seated all that long!” Listening to Rev. Charles Jones [of Second Baptist Church of Amarillo] and Rev. Royce Elms on one and the same day is a disquieting experience. Both agree that Christ is coming soon, and secretly, for his bride \(the church of true To Elms’s way of thinking, only the Unitarian Pentecostals meet the necessary requirements. The first requisite is water baptism in one name, the name of Jesus, and not under the trinitarian formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which he considers to be an unscriptural complication of what was straightforward and clear. Water baptism not only signifies death, burial, and resurrection, it also represents the blood of Christ covering and cleansing sin. The blood of the Lamb is “an inner detergent, an iniquity eradicator, a record-eraser. It’s blood that brings complete holiness. Doesn’t matter if you’ve committed fifty billion sins.” The second requirement for salvation, for making the Rapture, as Elms sees it, is “fire baptism” of the Holy Ghost “with evidence of speaking in tongues.” To Jones, on the other hand, water baptism is a sign and a seal, confirming what already must have taken place. And speaking in tongues is neither required nor encouraged. But for Elms there can be no relaxation of the double requirement: “If you’re not baptized in Jesus’ name and filled with the baptism of the Holy Ghost,” he insists, “you’re headed for nuclear holocaust.”. Nuclear holocaust \(“Doomsday for in 1982. The readings are from Revelation and Jeremiah, and for “Babylon,” Elms substitutes “America.” Why America? Because, at best, America .is saturated with the Laodicean spirit lukewarm, satisfied, rich, increased with goods, needing nothing. At worst, and in bitter truth, she is the’ “all-time economic Babylon of the world” because she has lived deliciously and glorified herself among the nations. The text is Rev. 18:7-8: How much America hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her, for America saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, I shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she America shall be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. “We have never had the sorrow and the devastation that other nations experienced in World War I or World War II,” Elms reminds his congregation. “Those wars were not fought on our soil.” / sit a queen and am no widow. Selfsufficient, powerful, “we can take care of ourselves . . . we’re no widow.” Or so we think. But judgment is coming, Elms promises: “And though she should fortify the heighth of her strength” an unmistakable reference to military satellites in space “it will not help us . . . You say: ‘Not America! We’re the ones who send missionaries all over the world!’ But wait a minute we are the ones also, we might say, that have had the freedom and been the citadel for freedom in the world. But at the same time we have used our freedom to spit in the face of God.” . Elms admits that there may be more Spirit-filled Christians in the rest of the world than we have in our own country. And because he knows that there is a solid unitarian Pentecostal movement in the Soviet Union, he cannot lightly countenance the possibility that the Russian population may be utterly scourged. The Russian nation may be godless, but it includes thousands of true believers. So Elms has a problem that only the Rapture can surmount. In fact, the Rapture is the only way to reconcile the prospect of massive, indiscriininate human destruction with the knowledge that there are good Christians on the enemy side. AND IT IS ONLY now that I begin to understand. The corning Armageddon, for Elms and for Rapturists generally, will be a war of unbelievers against themselves the enemies of God against the enemies of God. It does not concern Christians. This goes a great way towards explaining the placidity of many Christians in the face of the, holocaust to come. Famine, death, mourning, and devouring fire are to come. “In one hour,” Elms sings out, “is thy judgment come.” \(For nuclear reasons, there is a slight acceleration of the text therefore “I’m sorry,” he says, and he sounds sorry, “I wish I could report that America would just sail on to the glory world. I wish I could report that America would still stand and its cities would still stand, but, I’m sorry, it’s not in the Bible: The Bible said that she shall be burned with fire . . .” “Jeremiah 50:43 is one of the most heartrending Scriptures in this prophecy! It speaks about the king of Babylon. Who’s the king of Babylon? The President of the United States. This speaks about the very moment that the red telephone rings and the President puts it to his ear.” He hears the report from our early warning stations that the missiles make bright the arrows are on their way. The phone will drop from the President’s hands. “Why? Because, friends, he knows it’s doomsday for the USA.” Perhaps he was a President who believed in strong military preparedness. But a sword was over him! Pressure was upon him to back off. The antinuclear movement, the liberals were prevailing. The people who support a nuclear freeze are going to help fulfill prophecy. “The Bible says it “God’s Word propounds it “The Holy Book declares it This is what is in store for the unraptured: devouring fire, and a nation there is good news for God’s people. In Revelation 18:4, it says: And I heard another voice.” Loud rejoicing from the congregation now. “I heard another voice from where? Heaven! Heaven! Hallelujah! Saying: Coming out of her! Come out of her! Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins and that ye receive not her plagues. What’s the Lord God saying? Rapture! Rapture!” Most of us, most of the time, live in a subsonic realm, Elms contends. Most churches are subsonic; they “put on a program, put on an act, make it look pretty those morgues which call themselves churches.” Elms wants his church to be both supersonic \(he loves wants to resurrect. the church in the book of Acts, particularly at the time of 10 JUNE 27, 1986