If somebody come along, and Pentecostals get ya, or the Jehovah Witnesses get ya, or Bob Feene at Houston’ll get ya, or Herbert Armstrong, somebody leads you off, you just half baked, you don’t know anything much about the Bible unless you read it.
–43:48–

As in his 1970 book False Doctrines, Dr. Rice used to put Pentecostals in the cult category, right along with Jehovah’s Witnesses. John MacArthur expressed the same view in The Charismatics, by comparing Assembly of God to the Mormons, because they both believe in continuing revelation from the Holy Spirit. The big difference is of course, that AG believes the sixty-six books of the Bible are the final authority and completed canon of Scripture; they filter through a fundamental Baptist and Wesleyan theological system; and believe that prophetic words need to be tested by Scripture to be useful (1 Cor. 14:29; 1 Thess. 5:20-21). I think that Dr. Rice’s big problem with Pentecostals was their doctrine of initial evidence. I’m a Pentecostal, and agree with Assembly of God in theology and experience; and I think it was an error for Dr. Rice to place all Pentecostals in the cult category. Especially since he used to hold evangelistic campaigns with some AG preachers. However, him stating his age as 77, this dates this sermon at 1972; and might suggest a drift towards a more negative attitude about Pentecostals that he developed over time. Dr. Rice started his evangelistic ministry right around the time Assembly of God was just getting started as a denomination; and it was probably more fundamental from the 1920s through the 1950s. Not the Purpose Driven seeker sensitive thing that it is today. The Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International (FGBMFI) was founded in 1952 and was the true starting point of the prosperity gospel mentality within Pentecostalism. By 1972 it had 300,000 members. As Pentecostals entered the 1970s, Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin, and other televangelists had turned away from the fundamentals and mainly preached the prosperity gospel. So when Dr. Rice talks about reading your Bible so you won’t let the “Pentecostals get ya,” he’s probably thinking about the Word of Faith prosperity gospel types, which had clearly become the most popular expression of Pentecostalism through TV in the 1970s. The whole concept of TV evangelism should have been a red flag for fundamental Pentecostals, since TV was generally condemned by Baptists and Pentecostals alike. It should have been seen as a liberalizing trend toward antinomianism. It was in the early ’70s that Jim Bakker’s PTL Club also took off; and he was unfortunately a great pervert. The fundamentalist type of Assembly of God expression continued in the ministry of David Wilkerson at Times Square Church until his death in 2011; but his was considered a minority view compared with the prosperity preachers on TBN. –J.B.