This is an English translation of the Official position of the Assemblies of God Convention in Portugal the original can be found in Portuguese here – (accessed on 4 July 2005).
After an extended analysisofthe G-12 Model/Movement, it was unanimously agreed to reject it and not accept its adoption and implementation in the “Assemblies of God” Churches in association with the Convention of the Assemblies of God in Portugal.
The determining reasons for taking this position are due to at least four aspects of the orientation of this G-12 movement:
I Doctrines
II Practice
III Church model
IV Arrogant and Exclusivist Attitudes
I. Doctrines
1. Emphasis completely misplaced on curses – everything that happens in the life of the people is the consequence of some curse that is found on them, many of the curses being hereditary.
2. These curses are caused by evil spirits that exercise influence on people and so they have specific reactions. For this reason it is necessary to fight against the spirit of prostitution, of poverty, of bad habits and other things. The G-12 model describes the believer as divided between God and the devil: he belongs to God, but the devil also exercises control over him. This leads us to the true character of the doctrine of the G-12 movement, that is to say, its dualism, where God and demons struggle to exercise influence on man on equal terms. These doctrinal positions place the G-12 movement more in the pre-Gnosticism of the first century than that of biblical Christianity. There is evidence of the syncretistic nature of the movement and of its total incapacity to demonstrate the sovereign redeeming work of God. Salvation is stripped of its singular character, and that and the Christian life they depend on this human venturing into the spiritual world. These people live terrified, threatened and stirred up by these leaders, and in this way they control them.
It is important to note that the “Encounter” itself is where the participant, a faithful believer in an established church, is finally converted. That means that Satan has the power to enter the life of those who are already saved by Christ.
3. Besides denying the redeeming work of Christ, the teaching of G-12 even opposes the person of God. His attributes are underestimated, including His goodness, love and justice. In the repentance sessions, the leaders of the Encounter guide and direct the participants to forgive those that had caused them to suffer.
4. So that the success of the human relationship with God occur and true salvation happens it is necessary to identify all the curses and traumas that impede the true experience of that which God has for him or her. The only way to do it is to visualize all the past since the beginning to the Encounter, so that all the traumas, curses and committed sins can be noted and registered on paper, after which is given the Internal healing.
5. All sins committed before the encounter have to be confessed in detail, citing the locations and the circumstances in which the same had been committed, so that the forgiveness of God can be received.
6. So that there is a full inner healing, it is essential to forgive all the ones that have been the cause of injury or offence or grief to the person, including God himself, who also should be forgiven.
7. Salvation is what is achieved through repentance, the breaking of curses, and inner healing, invalidating thus the unique sacrifice of Jesus as Saviour.
8. Anointing – it is emphasised that only the person that adheres to the new vision of gospel, created by G-12, has access to a supposed “new anointing” that, in the language of the participants of G-12, is called ” tremendous”, and that only this “anointing” can guarantee success.
9. Breaking of curses- In the “Encounter” participants are required to confess their sins, even those committed in the womb, so that all the bonds with the past are broken, good and bad, even ministries and creeds, in order to start a new life. For this they submit the participants to a directed prayer called “The breaking of bonds”.
II. Practices
1. They have stopped being a model, to become an international movement, with a constitutional body of doctrine.
2. They have an imperative need to break with that which has been instituted. Renunciation is preached in the encounters of the G-12 as a way of rejecting the concepts, habits and customs of the Christian life that up till then have been professed. As most participants in “encounters” are native people of different religious confessions and denominations, the final result of these encounters is to endanger the churches of historic and serious teaching. This happens because of miraculous and magical pronouncements about growth, substituting liturgies, creating a new language of preaching and transforming the worship services into worldly and unbiblical spectacles.
3. They have a need to comply with the “Vision” in all its detail in order to produce results. All the focus is centred on the Vision – it is that which produces growth and which brings the anointing.
4. All Christian life before the encounter has no validity. Only from the Encounter is it possible to live in the true dimension of the Spirit.
5. All the secrecy that surrounds participation in the “Encounter”, like the fact that its location isn’t known by the participants, they cannot communicate with any outsider and they are not allowed to relate what happens during the programme of the “Encounter”.
6. The imposition of absolute silence among the participants of the Encounter during a great part of the time of its duration.
7. Use of New Age principles and methods.
III. Church Model
1. It is well known that the motivation of the G-12 is the vertiginous growth of the church. Denying biblical evidence of the New as well as the Old Testament (Dt. 1; Acts 15; 1st Tm 1.6-16), Castellanos defends the end of ministries, presbyteries and assemblies, and proposes a system of totalitarian government of a single man he openly declares that, to give important steps in the Church, the era of assemblies, administrative commissions and other collegiate institutions have already passed into history. Normally the churches that establish the G-12 dissolve the local ministry, ” promoting ” the respective members to the function of counsellors.
2. The regular worship services of the church are transformed into cell meetings, whose participants are as a general rule, of the same sex and age, where, simultaneously, the same teaching and practices of the vision are taught. Only a great joint celebration remains on Sundays.
IV. Arrogant and Exclusivist Attitudes
1. They present the model of the group of 12 as the only answer and paradigm of God for the present millennium, which should be adopted by all and therefore those who do not are condemned to failure and extinction.
2. Disdain for the diversity of Gods activity, as is seen throughout history, and the limitation to only one model for all peoples and cultures.
3. In direct opposition to the Gospel, which promotes love and union, the participants of this model/movement despise and cut relations with all those who do not participate in “the vision” and respective forms of worship.
4. Because the proposed model is “the vision of God”, only the ones who accept it constitute the true people of God and the Church of Jesus, which is a typical and characteristic
attitude of the sects.
