United Pentecostal Church 1

There is a vibrant UPC community in and around Indiana Wesleyan, and every year it seems like various questions arise by students about it, so I thought I would blog a somewhat more formal response on my part that I can use for any future engagement.

Identifying the Church's Distinctives
First of all, the church's website identifies itself in the following way:

"The doctrinal views of the UPCI reflect most of the beliefs of the Holiness-Pentecostal movement, with the exception of the "second work of grace," the historic doctrine of the Trinity, and the traditional Trinitarian formula in water baptism. It embraces the Pentecostal view that speaking in tongues is the initial sign of receiving the Holy Spirit."

This is a very good summary of its distinctives and before we go into much detail on it, it will be helpful to "parse" these statements:

1. It's beliefs reflect most of the beliefs of the Holiness-Pentecostal movement.
The founders of the UPC were initially part of the assemblies of God movement that became somewhat organized in 1914. But in 1916 when the Assemblies of God Church formalized its doctrinal beliefs, the founders of the UPC went their own way primarily over the doctrine of the Trinity.

2. ...with the exeption of the "second work of grace"


3. ... the historic doctrine of the Trinity, and the traditional Trinitarian formula in water baptism
The UPC in this regard stands outside the historic faith of the church and implies as much when it speaks of the "historic" doctrine of the Trinity.

We should emphasize the uniqueness of their position on this matter. You can point to speaking in tongues throughout the history of the church here and there. The vast majority of those who have called themselves Christians throughout the ages have not spoken in tongues. For this reason, the UPC must by virtue of their doctrine say that the overwhelming majority of those who have called themselves Christians have not really been Christians.

But their claims are far more radical than this. It is not just non-tongues speakers who are not Christians--it is those who have been baptized in the name of the Trinity. There were of course modalists in the early church, particularly in the late 200's. A modalist is someone who believes that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all different phases of one person, that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not distinct or different persons but the same person at different points of time. But we have no evidence that a single one of these spoke in tongues. I imagine a few did, just going on the percentages of people in the world (Christian and non-Christian) who experience tongues at any one point in history. But even if a few modalists did speak in tongues, they still baptized in the name of the Trinity--they believed the Trinitarian formula meant something else, but still used it.

The importance of this combination--both tongues and modalist baptizing in the name of Jesus only--effectively implies that the only people who will be in heaven are members of the UPC in the twentieth and now twenty-first century. This arbitrary conglomeration going to heaven is so restrictive that we must classify the UPC as a cult.

The UPC is of course pre-modern in its use of Scripture and so doesn't notice how bizarre a claim this is from a historical perspective--that the only people we know are going to heaven for sure are those who since the early 1900's have both spoken in tongues and been baptized in the name of Jesus only.