Zondervan Labels UPCI as a cult.

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 Apostolic Friends News & Views - http://www.apostolic.net/singles.htm
 
 Below is an e-mail that was forwarded to me by Pastor Gardner. It was sent
 to him in reply to his e-mailed objection to the Zondervan Publishing House.
 His objection was regarding a book that Zondervan publishes which states
 that the UPCI and other Oneness organizations are a cult.
             While this is not a new thing to us, we feel that we cannot
 patronize a company that publishes such works. We further felt that we
 should pass this on to our over 10,000 visitors that visit the Apostolic
 Voice & Apostolic Network web sites every month.
 
 
             Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 09:49:36 -0400
                         Message-ID: <0003D295.1311@zph.com>
                         From: zpub@zph.com (zpub)
                         Subject: Re: United Pentecostal Church
                         To: PASTOR4HIM@aol.com
                         Content-Description: cc:Mail note part
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                         Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
                         Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
 
                         Dear Pastor Gardner:
 
 
                              Thank you for your message voicing your
 objection to Zondervan's publication of Calvin Beisner's "JESUS ONLY"
 CHURCHES as part of our series on cults and religious movements.
 
                         We included the book in the series because Oneness
 groups, including the United Pentecostal Church International (UPCI),
 properly fit the definition of a cult:  "A cult of Christianity is a
 group of people which, claiming to be Christian, embraces a
 particular doctrinal system taught by an individual leader, group of
 leaders, or  organization, which (system) denies (either
 explicitly or implicitly) one or more of the central doctrines of the
 Christian faith as taught in the sixty-six books of the Bible" (Alan Gomes,
 UNMASKING THE CULTS, p 7.).
 
                         Among central, defining doctrines of the Christian
 faith taught in Scripture and adhered to through the centuries are
 the Trinity, the union of the divine and human natures in the one
 Person of Christ, and salvation by grace alone through faith alone in
 Christ alone apart from works, whether moral or sacramental.  The book
 documents that  UPCI and other Oneness groups deny each of these
 three fundamental, defining doctrines of Christianity.
 
                         Thank you again for writing.
 
                         Jonathan Petersen
                         Director, Corporate Affairs
                         Zondervan Publishing House
 
 
             Jonathan Petersen quotes Alan Gomes' book UNMASKING THE CULTS as
 the source of his definition of a cult. Apparently Zondervan Publishing
 House also publishes this book and has adopted it as doctrine.
 
             While we certainly deny explicitly and implicitly one or more of
 the central doctrines of the so-called "othodox" trinitarian church, we do
 not deny any of the doctrines of the Christian faith as taught in the
 sixty-six books of the Bible.
 
             Here is a link to the online catalog on the Zondervan web site
 where they list this book:
 
             http://www.zondervan.com/academic/cults.htm
 
             It is listed as follows:
 
 
             "Jesus Only" Churches, E. Calvin Beisner, 0-310-48871-0,
 Softcover, $5.99, 96 pages, 1998. Known also as "Oneness" churches, there
 are several denominations, most prominently the United Pentecostal Church,
 International, that have a distinctive and non-Trinitarian view of Jesus
 Christ. These churches broke away from the classical Pentecostal groups such
 as the Assemblies of God. "Jesus Only" churches require baptism for
 salvation, and that baptism must be only in the name of the Lord Jesus
 Christ and not in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Note that
 while unitarian groups typically hold a non-Trinitarian view of God that
 denies the deity of Jesus Christ, "Oneness" churches hold a non-Trinitarian
 view that makes Jesus exclusive as the Godhead. Cults and The Occult
 
             We are advocating a boycott of Zondervan Publishing until they
 no longer publish this, or any other book of it's kind that attacks the
 church of the living God.
 
             Bro. Stan Hallett, Webmaster
             www.apostolic.net
             www.apostolic-voice.org