The following message was delivered at Grace Community Church in Panorama
City, California, By John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape,
GC 90-58, titled “Charismatic Chaos” Part 7. A copy of the tape can be
obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412.
I have made every effort to ensure that an accurate transcription of the
original tape was made. Please note that at times sentence structure may
appear to vary from accepted English conventions. This is due primarily to
the techniques involved in preaching and the obvious choices I had to make in
placing the correct punctuation in the article.
It is my intent and prayer that the Holy Spirit will use this transcription
of the sermon, “Charismatic Chaos” Part 7, to strengthen and encourage the
true Church of Jesus Christ.
Charismatic Chaos – Part 7
“How Do Spiritual Gifts Operate?”
Copyright 1991
by
John F. MacArthur, Jr.
All rights reserved.
As a preface to our study tonight, I want to just mention to you that we are
going through this study on the Charismatic movement, its contemporary form.
And I am unable in this particular study to cover every relevant passage of
Scripture, and so I would just encourage you that you will find a series of
tapes on all of the relevant passages that I have already preached on in
years past, out of the Book of Acts, out of 1 Corinthians, which are the
primary ones. You will also find in the bookstore and the tape room, a study
guide of about 300 pages on the issue of spiritual gifts; in some great
detail I cover that. I also have written a book on Tongues, and speaking in
Tongues, and all that is involved in that. And then we have the commentary
on 1 Corinthians, which is a verse by verse discussion of those passages, and
particularly focusing on chapters 12 through 14 that deal with Spiritual
Gifts. So there are some supplemental materials that would be very helpful
for you in filling out your understanding of this subject. What I am
endeavoring to do in this series is not go through every single passage in
great detail, but to take a kind of overall look at the contemporary
Charismatic movement and compare it with what we know to be true out of the
Word of God. We are looking at it more from the doctrinal side then we are
from the expositional side.
Now, I want you to turn in your Bible tonight, to a passage of Scripture that
I think sets a good context for what I want to say. Matthew, chapter 7, and
I want to begin reading in verse 15, and just read down a little ways, and I
think that you will catch the flow of what we find here. Jesus, here, is
bringing the Sermon on the Mount to its conclusion, and in so doing, this is
what He says, beginning in Matthew 7, and verse 15, “Beware of the false
prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous
wolves.” By the way, sheep’s clothing is wool and it was the garment of the
prophet. The prophet wore wool and so they are coming, not as false sheep,
but as false shepherds,
“You will know them by their fruits” (verse 16). “Grapes are
not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are
they? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit; but the bad
tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor
can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that doesn’t bear
good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you
will know them by their fruits.”
What Jesus is saying is, “Don’t listen just to what they say; look at the
character of their life–the product.” And then He says, in verse 21,
“Not everyone,” and still in the context of false teachers, “who
says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven; but
he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. Many will
say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your
name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform
many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew
you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'”
An amazing passage, warning us about false teachers. These particular false
teachers appear to say the right thing–they speak about the Lord. “Lord,
Lord,” they say. They even seem to do the right things–they prophesy or
preach in “The name of the Lord.” “In the name of the Lord,” they cast out
demons. “In the name of the Lord,” they perform many miracles. But they
don’t know the Lord, and the Lord does not know them, and we are to be aware
of that reality.
So as we come to any examination of the Charismatic movement that takes us
into looking at the phenomena of the movement, we have to very aware of the
fact that Jesus warned us already that even though they speak in the Lord’s
name, and even though they cast out demons in the Lord’s name, and even
though they do miracles and claim to do them in the Lord’s name, they may be
false. They may say all of the right things but you have to look at the
fruit of their lives; you have to compare them with the divine standard of
good fruit.
This examination and this test must be held up in the issues of spiritual
gifts. As we look at these people who say they are prophesying in Jesus’
name, and casting out demons and doing miracles, we want to be sure of two
things: one, that their lives back it up, and two, that what they do is
consistent with the Word of God.
So I want to help you to evaluate that, if I can, tonight. And I want to
refer to some of the more well known of these Charismatic leaders today
because they’re so very public, and they represent the kind of thing that is
going on that has to be tested.
In Orlando, there is a preacher in the Orlando Christian Center, named Benny
Hinn. Benny Hinn slays people in the Spirit. When Hinn feels the anointing
come upon his hand, he touches his followers on the forehead, or simply waves
an arm at them, and they fall down in a faint. If you’ve ever seen him on
television, then you have witnessed that. He has a nationally aired
television broadcast in which people are slain in the Spirit nearly every
week. In fact, the other night I was watching him and he slew everybody in
the entire auditorium–one section at a time. He waved his hand over this
section and they all fell down, and then he waved his hand over this section
and they all fell down, and he waved his hand over that section and they all
fell down, and then he waved his hand over the balcony and they all fell
down.
And the question comes to mind, of course, “Is Benny Hinn’s ability a unique
spiritual gift? Is this God? Is God knocking all these people down? Or is
he simply using the techniques of mesmerism and the power of suggestion? In
fact, isn’t it fair to say that he may even be using demonic power?” Surely
in the light of the warnings of Scripture (Matthew 24:24, Mark 13:22, 2 Thess
2:7-9), demon inspired people are going to do “lying wonders.” And so that
possibility must not be ruled out.
One thing is certain, Benny Hinn or anyone else who knocks people over, is
doing something that is never described, never discussed in the Bible.
Nothing like it is listed in any list of spiritual gifts, and no apostle, and
no early church leader ever did anything like that. The Charismatic practice
of slaying people in the Spirit, yet, has become so commonplace that many
Charismatics may be surprised to learn that Scripture is utterly silent about
such a gift. There is no record that anybody ever did that. The only time
anybody ever fell over was when Jesus spoke in the Garden when the soldiers
came to arrest Him. Yet the practice typifies the Charismatic movement’s
obsession with some kind of strange and bizarre phenomena. There is no
indication that in the early church anybody had the power to knock people in
to some kind of spirit-filled catalepsy.
But there is a preoccupation today with the paranormal, the same fascination,
I think, that leads people to reading avariciously [greedily] as they do the
books of Stephen King and others like him. From the earliest days of
Pentecostalism the quest for more unusual and more spectacular manifestation
of spiritual gifts, has in effect, sabotaged rational thinking so that you
have people that are turning away from what is reasonable and rational. And,
as I have noted throughout the series, reports of inexplicable things, even
unbelievable things, mystical phenomena, are just rampant in the Charismatic
and Pentecostal tradition. And it doesn’t matter what it is; no tale seems
too bizarre, too fantastic, too far out, to get a following. Peter Masters
and John Witcomb (sp.) have written a book called, “The Charismatic
Phenomena,” and in it there is a quote that might be worth your listening
too,
There is no doubt that Charismatic teaching results in a
considerable lowering of the credulity threshold of all its
adherence. The practice of tongues, the relegation of the
understanding to a minor place, the diet of miracles, and the
extreme subjectivity of Charismatic thinking, all combine to
produce this effect, quickly and inevitably. Once people have
been mentally conditioned by a Charismatic environment, they are
able to take seriously such amazing ideas as Oral Roberts claim
to have seen a vision of Jesus 900 feet tall! Charismatic
practices loosen up the mind in such an unhealthy way that
people will believe almost anything.
You see, once you disconnect people from rational thinking, they are fair
game. In fact, many appear to believe that God’s power can be displayed only
in ways that are irrational, unearthly, eerie, and somewhat preposterous.
Some Charismatics disdain logic, as we have noted, disdain reason, disdain
common sense in an eagerness to embrace these kind of things. Worse, the
entire Charismatic movement has absorbed the erroneous notion that whatever
is truly spiritual, whatever is truly of the Spirit must somehow transcend or
bypass a person’s rational senses. They would, for the most part want us to
believe that anything that is rational, sensible, reasonable, is not
supernatural. Spiritual gifts supposedly operate by somehow suspending the
faculties of human reason. And you would think that the strongest evidence
of the Holy Spirit’s working is when everybody goes into a stupor! And then
you are really seeing the power. When everybody falls over in some kind of
stupor, you are really seeing God at work. And so the lore of the
Charismatic movement is filled with outrageous accounts of behavior that
resembles trances, seizures, subliminal messaging, hypnosis, suspended
animation, frenzy, hysteria, and even dementia. And these are often cited as
evidences of the power of God. Churches where people think reasonably and
rationally, sensibly, discern with their minds the things of God–“Do not
know,” they say, “the power of God.”
Kenneth Hagan, another very popular leader in the movement, for example,
claims that one night while he was preaching, a cloud of glory enveloped him,
and he lost track of where he was and what he was saying,
I didn’t know one word that I had said for 15 minutes. I had
been the “Glory Cloud.” When I found myself walking around the
altar, I got so embarrassed. My face got red and I ran back on
the platform, got behind the pulpit, and said, “Amen, let’s
pray” and gave the invitation. Sometimes when I am preaching
(Hagan writes) the Spirit of God comes on me, arrests my
attention, and I can’t say a word in English. He goes on to
tell an incident when he was ministering with Fred Price, who is
down here in the Crenshaw area, and he said he was struck with
what he believed was an anointing in the church service. Hagan
said that he was unable to communicate in English for hours.
Now, the point is that this is to evidence the real power of God, when you
completely out of touch with reality! In a similar vein, Hagan relates this
story, and I am quoting from his writing,
Sister Maria Woodworth Edder (sp.) was an evangelist during the
early days of the Pentecostal movement in this country. I read
the newspaper account of what happened in Saint Louis sometimes
before 1920. She was in her 70’s preaching in a tent which was
full, when right in the middle of her sermon, with her hand up
uplifted to illustrate a point and her mouth opened, the power
of God came upon her. She froze in that position and stood like
a stature for three days and for three nights. Think about
that, all of her body had to be under the control of the Spirit
of God! She had no bodily functions for three days and nights.
She stood there! According to the newspaper account, it was
estimated that more than 150,000 people came by to see her in
the three day period. The third night the Spirit of God
released her. She thought it was the same night and the same
sermon and she went on preaching at the same place in her
sermon.
It completely escapes me, why anyone would assume that such behavior
manifests God’s power! Nothing remotely like it can be found in Scripture,
except Lot’s wife. Still, whatever sermon she was preaching she never
completed. Still, Hagan tries to eclipse that tale with even more bizarre
ones, he says,
One night a sixteen year old girl was filled with the Spirit,
spoke with other tongues, went into a spirit of intercession,
then with her hands raised, stood in one spot for eight hours
and forty minutes. She never batted an eye, never shifted her
weight from foot to foot. It was January and she was standing
away from the stove. Her mother, concerned about her getting
cold, asked it if would be all right to move her nearer to the
stove, which was in the center of the room. “I don’t know,” I
said, “I have never seen anything like it.” The pastor who
weighed 250 pounds said, “Brother Hagan, you get under one of
her elbows and I will get under the other and we will scoot her
closer to the heat.” But she couldn’t be moved–it was as if
she was nailed to the floor!
On another night, when we gave the altar call, I sensed the
power of God was upon one of the women. She began exhorting
people to be saved. I said, “Sister, go ahead and obey God.”
With her eyes closed she stepped upon the wide altar and began
walking from one end to the other, exhorting sinners to be
saved. She would walk right up to the end of the altar and you
would think that she was going to step off! But, each time she
would turn. Folks started coming to the altar, her eyes were
shut, but every time one would come her spirit would know it and
she would dance a little jig for joy. Then she would go right
back to exhorting. When the twentieth person had come, (every
single sinner was saved that night, God is my witness, my wife
is my witness, and each person in that building is my witness)
she began to dance right off of the end of the altar! She stood
in midair dancing! Her feet were not touching the floor,
everyone saw it, I could have reached out and touched her, then
she turned and danced back on to the altar, down the altar to
the other end and stopped, opened her eyes and stepped off.
Frankly, that seems like a scene from a bad horror movie, more than [it does]
a true miracle. Levitation, altered states, feet nailed to the floor! That
is the apparatus of the Occult–not genuine spiritual gifts. You say, “Well,
you have chosen some isolated and atypical examples.” Not so! And it is not
just provincial and old fashioned Charismatics who report such spectacles.
Virtually every major segment of the Charismatic movement feature stories
like those. Even the newest, the Third Wave movement, which we discussed
some last Sunday night, despite strong ties to the academic community,
exhibits a definite bias towards signs and wonders in which human intellect
is disengaged. Carol Wimber describes the watershed experience that launched
her husband’s church into power evangelism (her husband being John Wimber),
It was Sunday evening, Mother’s Day 1981, and a young man whom
John had invited to preach, gave his testimony. At the end of
his message, the guest speaker invited all those under the age
of 25 to come forward. None of us had a clue as to what was
going to happen next. When we got to the front the speaker
said, “For years now the Holy Spirit has been grieved by the
Church, but He is getting over it. Come Holy Spirit!” And He
came. Most of these young people had grown up around our home
and we knew them well. We had four children between the ages of
18 and 24. One fellow, Tim, started bouncing! His arms flung
out and he fell over, but one of his hands accidentally hit a
mike stand and he took it down with him. He was tangled up in
the cord with the mike next to his mouth. Then he began
speaking in tongues, so the sound went throughout the gymnasium.
We had never considered ourselves Charismatics and certainly
never placed any emphasis on the gift of tongues. We had seen a
few people tremble and fall over before and we had seen many
healings, but this was different. The majority of the young
people were shaking and falling over. At one point it looked
like a battlefield; bodies everywhere, people weeping, wailing,
speaking in tongues, much shouting and loud behavior. And there
was Tim in the middle of it all–babbling into the microphone!
Can you tell me that, that kind of chaos is to be accepted as proof that God
is at work? Even John Wimber at first seemed uncertain: “He spent all night
reading Scripture and historical accounts of revivals,” Mrs. Wimber reports,
“He was afraid of doing anything that wasn’t explicitly outlined in the
Bible.” That’s a healthy fear. But apparently that all night study didn’t
yield him any conclusive answers, and so Mrs. Wimber goes on,
By 5:00am John was desperate. He cried out to God, “Lord, if
this is You please tell me.” A moment later, the phone rang and
a pastor friend of ours from Denver, Colorado, was on the line.
“John,” he said, “I am sorry I am calling so early but I have
really something strange to tell you. I don’t know what it
means but God wants me to say, ‘It’s me John!'” That was all
John needed. He didn’t have to understand the trembling, or why
everything happened as it did, all he needed to know was that
the Holy Spirit did it.
And how did he know the Holy Spirit did it? He got a phone call from Denver.
That’s how he knew. If John Wimber had continued reading Scripture he might
have come to 1 Corinthians 12:13-14, and he might have seen the Apostle Paul
reprove the Corinthian Church for just such a scene. In verses 23 and 40 of
1 Corinthians chapter 14, it says, “If therefore the whole church should
assemble together and all speak in tongues, and ungifted men or unbelievers
enter, will they not say that you are mad? But let all things be done
properly and in an orderly manner.” And of course, you don’t determine God’s
will by a phone call from anywhere. God’s Word is the only reliable test of
such things, and it seems clear that an honest reading of Scripture would
have given the plain answer. How can you take counsel from an unexpected
telephone call? But that’s the mystical again. It must be God, because it
seems so extraordinary. I guess John Wimber decided that he didn’t need to
make sense of what was happening in the church. He didn’t need to reconcile
it with Scripture. He didn’t need to understand it, he only needed a phone
call. He had a mystical sign and that was enough, so he put aside his fear
about extrabiblical phenomena, deciding and opting out, for the proof of a
phone call.
Now, these are simply illustrations of what goes on in the movement. The
Charismatic tendency to suspend the intellect and let mysticism run amuck is
the essence of what Paul wrote against in 1 Corinthians 14. There Paul
condemns primarily the misuse of the gift of tongues, but he also has other
things in mind as well. And he was bringing order to the very chaos which
has come back to the Church. And yet it is so true, that in the modern
Charismatic movement, chaos and confusion are typical, very typical.
Several of our elders from Grace Church attended the Vineyard, a few weeks
ago, to see this very kind of chaos. People lying on the floor prostrate for
a prolonged period of time with all their limbs sticking out, as if they were
in a catatonic state. People babbling in tongues and being incited to do
that by the leader. People pushing chairs off the floor and dancing all over
the floor and jumping up and down on the chairs. The same kind of hysteria.
Norval Hayes (sp.) describes an incident when he supposedly healed a man of
deafness,
The man fell straight forward, face down on the floor. You
would have thought all of his teeth would have been knocked out,
but they weren’t. Then he bounced and fell back down again.
The impact could have broken his nose but it didn’t. Again he
bounced up off the floor and fell back again. This time he laid
there real quiet for 60 seconds, then his mouth opened and a
little squeaky sound like a mouse began to come out. It got
louder, sounding like a big rat, and finally sounded like a
screaming hyena. In a little while the man shook his head and
pushed himself up off of the floor. He acted as if he had been
hit in the head with a stick, but both ears had popped opened
and the knot in his stomach was gone. People jumped out of
their seats and started running towards me and saying, “Pray for
me.” As I reached out and began to pray, it was as though the
wind of God had come into my hands. People were lying all
around on the floor, including denomination pastors. God
baptized them in the Holy Ghost and the moment they hit the
floor they started to speak in tongues.
Kenneth Hagan tells us of incredible tales about unusual healings that he has
done when peculiar anointings have been manifest in his ministry,
Several times the anointing has come on me to do unusual things
while praying for the sick. Sometimes I go along 5 or 6 years
between times. The first time it happened to me was in 1950. I
was preaching in Oklahoma, a woman came forward for prayer, she
said she was 72, she looked like she was about to give birth to
a baby, of course, she had a tumor. I started to lay hands on
her to pray, when the Word of the Lord came to me saying, “Hit
her in the stomach with your fist!” On the inside of me I said,
“Lord, you’re going to get me in trouble, going around hitting
women in the stomach with my fist. I don’t believe I much want
to do that.” “Well, if you want argue about it, the anointing
will leave you. It will lift from you just like a bird flying
away after sitting on your shoulder.” It left me.
When it left me, I thought, “Well, I will go ahead and minister
with laying on of hands.” I laid hands on her again and the
anointing came again, and the Word of the Lord came and said,
“Hit her in the stomach with your fist!” I decided I better
stop and explain that to the crowd before I started doing it.
So I told them what the Lord said and I punched her in the
stomach with my fist, and God and hundreds of people are my
witnesses that that stomach went down like you’d stuck a pin in
a balloon.
Hagan tells of another man he was told to “Hit in the head!” And a young
female college student he was to hit in the Kidney!
Now, all I am doing is reading you the testimony of these people. The words
are their words. And such tactics, apart from being dangerous, especially
with 72 year old people and other people who are under physical duress, leave
me dumbfounded, to say nothing of their foolishness. And recently, you might
be interested to know, that an 85 year old woman came forward for a healing
touch from Benny Hinn. And while she was in line, he slew someone in the
Spirit, who fell over and crushed the woman’s hip and she died. And there is
now a $5,000,000 lawsuit against Benny Hinn. That kind of ridiculous chaos
that ends in the death of an elderly woman is not the power of God.
Charismatic chaos is usually not so physically fatal, but it is spiritually
fatal for many.
Some concerned parents wrote our church, and I get letters about this quite
regularly, my file is fairly large, but their daughter had become involved
with a spiritual gifts workshop in a large well known Third Wave church. The
mother wrote this,
In December of 1989 she began (speaking of the daughter)
speaking in tongues. Shortly thereafter she began to see
angels. An angel in armor always stands outside the front door
of her home and another stands inside her living room. He has
large wings. She says she asked God to send her angels for
protection while her husband was on a business trips. A few
months later she began to see demons also. A monkey like demon
sat on her husband’s head one night and hissed at her. She sees
others riding on tops of cars or standing on rooftops and some
in battle with the angels. She sometimes sees darkness around
people. She believes seeing this is a God given gift. When I
told her to test the spirits, she got angry. She said the Lord
said, “Yes, it is I the Lord.” I believe they are all demons.
I told her to read the Bible. She said she only reads the
Scripture numbers the Holy Spirit puts in her mind.
We visited her and attended one of her group meetings. A
prophet from Kansas City came (one of the Kansas City Prophets.
That’s a group that I have mentioned); he said something about
the past, present, or future of nearly everyone in the room.
Somethings were incredibly true and other things haven’t
happened yet. Our daughter now wants to develop this gift in
herself and can now sometimes see a person’s sin written on
their forehead. She will then expel a demon. Since I told her
to test the spirits, as the Bible tells us, she will not tell me
what she’s seeing anymore. I feel there is a wall between us.
I listened this week to five tapes of one of these prophets, who supposedly
can tell you your phone number, your address, and so forth. And by doing
those kinds of things, which can be done by chicanery, little different than
the Amazing Crescan (sp.) does them, or could be demonic, he thus convinces
people that, indeed, he is a prophet. And once the convincing is done by the
people who are already are under the power of suggestion, and are already
“setup” to buy into anything that is supernatural, whatever the person then
says is taken as truth. Like so many Charismatics, that young woman has come
to believe that her experiences obviate Bible study and spiritual
discernment. Why should she listen to her mother when God talks to her?
I’ve seen marriages break up. I went through the breakup of a marriage of a
wife who had no reason to listen to her husband because God talked to her.
These people believe that they have some kind of a superior relationship with
the Holy Spirit. They don’t need Scripture, except an isolated verse or two
that supposedly the Holy Spirit brings to mind.
You see, the Charismatic movement breeds this kind of catastrophe in
marriages, in families, in churches, because it discourages people from
discerning the truth from Scripture. It discourages the people from using
the mind. Instead, truth is appraised subjectively, through signs and
wonders and mystical means. Kenneth Hagan again, who really is the Patriarch
of the Signs and Wonders movement, explains his criteria for judging between
true and false spiritual gifts,
When God moves everybody will be blessed. If something is of
the flesh, everybody will have a sick feeling. If something is
of the devil, it seems like the hair will stand up on neck.
That’s a simple way everyone can judge whether they’ve got any
spiritual discernment or not.
You mean to tell me that I can know if I have spiritual discernment by
whether I feel sick or whether the hair stands up on the back of my neck?
There it is, as explicitly as it can be stated, by a leading Charismatic.
That’s how you determine spiritual discernment. And he is defining there
exactly what is wrong with Charismatic mysticism. Spiritual discernment,
from the Biblical perspective is unnecessary. It’s really a very simple
system of biofeedback. Again and again Charismatics hear the same message,
“Put your mind on hold, ignore your reason, listen to your feelings.” That
kind of extreme mysticism contradicts everything Scripture teaches about true
discernment.
Spiritual gifts are not supposed to produce mindless chaos and mindless
pandemonium in the church, nor are they to be a way that a person can show
off his spirituality before the crowd. They are never to be used selfishly;
they are never to be used in some kind of performance; they are never to be
used to cause you to lapse into some kind of spiritual coma or put other
people in a state of unconsciousness.
Kenneth Copeland, a rather comedic child of Kenneth Hagan, in terms of having
the same theology, writes, and this is a quote, “Believers are not supposed
to be led by logic. We are not even to be led by good sense. The ministry
of Jesus was never governed by logic or reason.” That’s just not true. Now
there is so much that we can learn and look at in 1 Corinthians. Let me just
give you a little bit of a feeling for how Paul dealt with this. I don’t
want to take much time, so listen very carefully. Very brief.
The Charismatic gifts as we know them, were operating in the early church,
for God had purpose for them at that time. And in the book [Charismatic
Chaos] there will be a chapter on the matter of tongues and I will deal with
it a little later in our series so I don’t want to get into it in detail now,
but simply to say, there was a time when all the spiritual gifts were
operative, but they had become misused and abused and counterfeited in
Corinth. And we would have to say that the Charismatic Chaos of today is
very much like the Charismatic Chaos of Corinth. Some of the factors differ.
In that day all the gifts were operative, today they are not. But there were
abuses then and there are abuses now. The situation was so abusive that Paul
writes 1 Corinthians to correct it.
They had a lot of problems in Corinth: divisions, personality cults, cliques,
moral compromise, and other desperate ills in the church. Carnality
outweighed spirituality; sexual perversion, fornication, incest, adultery
were being tolerated. Worldliness was there, materialism was in the church,
church members were suing each other. There was rebellion against apostolic
authority. There was marital conflict going on. The role of single people
was misunderstood and misrepresented. Liberty was being abused. Idolatry
was being practiced. Selfishness was rampant. Pride was widespread. Demon
worship had come in. The church was abusing God’s intention for the Lord’s
Table and the Love Feast. And in the middle of all of this, spiritual gifts
were being perverted, misused and prostituted.
This is one corrupt church. The problem wasn’t that they lacked spiritual
gifts: 1 Corinthians 1:7, Paul said, “You are not lacking in any gift.” It
was how they fouled them up. So a major segment of that first letter, 1
Corinthians 12:13-14, directs itself at this terrible, terrible misuse of
spiritual gifts. The Corinthians, like the Charismatics today, had tended to
equate the Holy Spirits work with ecstatic involuntary frenetic and
mysterious activity. And if it was inexplicable from the human level, they
would say it was the Holy Spirit, even to the point that some people were
cursing Jesus and they were saying it was the Holy Spirit because the
phenomena seemed so bizarre. The wilder and the more agitated the person
was, the more godly and spiritual he was supposed to be. They got to the
point where in order for them to say it is the spirit, it had to be bizarre.
Then there was the desire to be seen and the desire to appear as being
spiritual. People were exploiting and perverting the gift of tongues
particularly, and counterfeiting it with ecstatic babble that came out of
their past paganism. They were confusing the work of the Holy Spirit with
mystical practices they had known from their former pagan religion.
You see for over a thousand years that part of the world had been dominated
with the mystery religions. The pagan mystery religions. They can be traced
all the way back to Babylon. But they cultivated, all of them had this in
common, they cultivated a magical, sensual, communion with deity. The
assumption in the mystery religions and their cultic kind of form of worship,
was that you get yourself in some kind of state, a mindless kind of state, a
transcendent kind of state, an irrational, not logical, not reasonable kind
of mystical state, and when you get into that you will then commune with the
deity. You can do it through drunkenness and so they got drunk in the pagan
religions. You can do it through the passion of sexual involvement, and so
there were priestesses who acted as temple prostitutes, and you could come in
and throw yourself into an orgy. And in the euphoria of that orgy, and in
the stupor of being drunk, in the stupor of that whole event, supposedly you
were to commune with deity.
Paul has that in mind, certainly in Ephesians 5, when he says, “Do not be
drunk with wine, in which is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.” If you
really want to connect with God, be filled with the Spirit, don’t be drunk.
They would do almost anything to get into a semiconscious, hallucinatory,
hypnotic, or orgiastic spell, because they believed that somehow that got
them in touch with deity. This is not very far different than going back
into the 60’s in the drug culture, and the things Timothy Leary tried to say
about how you transcend this world and touch the divine, and what the Eastern
Mystics were saying, as they were advocating the same kind of stuff. Whether
from literal intoxication, or some kind of emotional hysteria, or
exhilaration, worshipers falling into some kind of euphoria assumed they were
then in union with the deity.
According to S. Angus, once professor of New Testament and Historical
Theology at Saint Andrews College at Sidney, the ecstasy experience by the
mystery religion worshiper, brought him into
A mystic ineffable condition, in which the normal functions of
personality were in abeyance, and the moral strivings which
formed character, virtually ceased or were relaxed, while the
emotional and the intuitive were accentuated.
In other words, the worshiper would get into a state where his mind would go
into neutral and his emotions would take over. The intellect and the
conscious would give way to passion, sentiment, and emotion. This was
ecstasy. Angus further said,
Ecstasy might be induced by vigil and fasting, tense religious
expectancy, whirling dances, physical stimuli, the contemplation
of the sacred objects, the effect of stirring music, inhalation
of fumes, revivalistic contagion, hallucinations, suggestions
and all other means belonging to the apparatus of the mysteries.
One ancient writer speaks of men going out of themselves to be
wholly established in the divine.
It is exactly what happened in Corinth and it is still going on today. As
the mystery worshiper experienced such ecstasy, he believed he was lifted
above the level of his ordinary experience into an abnormal sense of
consciousness and therein he could really see God. And according to Angus
again, he says, “Ecstasy could range anywhere from nonmoral delirium to that
consciousness of oneness with the invisible, and the dissolution of painful
individuality which marks the mystics of all ages.” The person literally
became irrational, unreasonable, out of touch with reality. I don’t think it
is too far afield to say that there are testimonies by Pentecostal
Charismatic believers that seem to me to sound very much like this. They
explain their various states of euphoria as engaging in communion with the
Holy Spirit, but is it that? Certainly not by Biblical definition. Is it
only an emotional high? Is it only some kind of psychological self-induced
hypnosis? Is it only falling under the spell of the power of suggestion? Or
is it demonic? In any case it is not Biblical. It certainly isn’t, “Come
now let us reason together, says the Lord.” It certainly is not, “Let
everything be done decently and in order.”
The problem Paul dealt with in Corinth is the same problem he deals with
through his letters in the charismatic movement today. The problem is this:
“How do you tell the real from the counterfeit?” And the only answer I have
to you, Beloved, is to take it to the Word of God–and if it isn’t there, it
isn’t real. That’s the only place we can go. You certainly can’t believe
experience. Why? Because “Many will say, ‘Lord, Lord,'” and they will
prophesy in His name, and they will cast out demons in His name, and they
will do miracles, at least what appear to be miracles, in His name. But He
will say “Depart from me, I never knew you. Who are you? You workers of
iniquity.” We need to warn the true believers in the Charismatic movement
that Satan is having a field day counterfeiting, because you’re not checking
with the Word, and because you are not using the mind that God has given you
to understand His truth. Christ is being dishonored.
Remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:2, he said to the Corinthians,
“You are being led astray, just like you used to be. You used to be led
astray to dumb idols, led astray like a prisoner. You were just led astray
to your false gods. Now, that you have become a believer, you can’t let that
happen. You can’t just throw yourself open and be carried away by demons in
the ecstasies of these events.” The truly spiritual person is not someone
who sweeps away into trances, ecstasies, emotional frenzies, who falls over
in a dead faint. The true spiritual person isn’t somebody who goes into a
glory cloud for 15 minutes, can’t speak English, comes back and doesn’t know
he has been gone. When a person is out of control, it is never the Holy
Spirit! The fruit of the Spirit is self-control (Galatians 5). No where in
Scripture do we see the real gifts of the Spirit operating when somebody is
out of control, or when somebody is under a supernatural seizure.
And so Beloved, as we look at this movement, we have to be concerned and
literally sad in our hearts because of so many people being led astray in the
Name of Christ. But I guess that we should expect it. My dad used to say,
“Nobody counterfeits brown paper and sticks, because brown paper and sticks
aren’t worth counterfeiting. They don’t have any value. Wherever you see a
counterfeit,” he used to say to me, “just be sure there is a real, because
people only counterfeit what’s real, and they only counterfeit what’s
valuable.” Counterfeiters copy what’s valuable and what is priceless in the
Church. Listen to me, what is priceless in the Church is the true work of
the Spirit, and the true gifts of the Spirit, and the true ministry of the
Spirit. And how tragic it is that a whole generation of people are cut off
from the reality because they bought the counterfeit. Many of these people
have been saved but they are part of a system that cuts them off from the
true working of God’s Spirit. The Church will be built up when spiritual
gifts are used properly; when the Scripture is understood properly, taught
accurately; and when the believers are walking in the Spirit with self
control, obeying the Word of God.
Well, let’s bow in a word of prayer. Father, even as we have talked about
these things tonight, we have been brought back again to the great foundation
of your Word, where we must test everything. Help us to know that it is not
enough that someone lifts up your name and says, “Lord, Lord,” and claims
you. It is not enough that they preach and cast out demons and do wondrous
things. They could be false prophets. They could be sheep dressed up in
prophet’s garments, and the fruit of their life wouldn’t support their
claims, and someday you’ll bring it to light. Lord, give us discernment.
There are many that you love, that belong to you who are swept up in this
movement, tragically exposing themselves to error, demonic activity,
confusion, and on the other hand, cutting themselves off from the true path
of sanctification, the true work of the Spirit, and the true interpretation
and proclamation of your word. Lord, how tragic that they would be
dispossessed of that and think they’ve come to a higher level of
spirituality, when, in fact, it’s a lower one. And what they think is
something more is really something less.
Father, I pray that you will bring clarity and sanity and the true work of
the Spirit to bear upon the confusion, that you true Church may be delivered
out of that confusion into the light of the true work of the blessed Spirit,
whose task it is to move us from one level of glory to the next, evermore
into the image of Christ. In whose name we pray. Amen.
Transcribed by Tony Capoccia of
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