CHARISMATIC CHAOS
IS EXPERIENCE A VALID TEST OF TRUTH?
The Reasons why these things must be addressed
1) For the confused Christians about the still-growing charismatic churches in our country.
2) This is also to inform and educate the church, the leaders of the church especially the teachers because they are the one responsible to answer everything about this issue.
3) To wean and warn our relatives who are still in the charismatic movement.
Personal Experiences about the issue
My classmate in college was a member of
Our pastor in the church encountered the same. One pastor of CNBC where our church is a member, if I’m not mistaken, told him that every pastor must have a gift of tongue because tongue is the least gift among the gifts of a pastor.
Our youth leader also asked me about the gift of healing, tongues. My friend from another church asked me about tongues. One of his friends is a member of a certain charismatic church who practices tongue. His friend practices tongue and my friend was confused whether this kind of experience or gift is true because it was experienced by his friend. And these experiences of mine drives me to study whether these are true or not with the very help of the Holy Spirit. And God, through the studying of His Word with the guidance of the Holy Spirit revealed to me that all these esoteric experiences are unscriptural.
A letter from a woman to John Macarthur
“You resort to Greek translations and fancy words to explain away what the Holy Spirit is doing in the church today. Let me give you a piece of advice that might just save you from the wrath of almighty God: Put away your Bible and your books and stop studying. Ask the Holy Ghost to come upon you and give you the gift of tongues. You have no right to question something you have never experienced”
Another letter from a radio listener of Grace to You
“You people, and especially ministers of the Gospel, who claim that speaking in tongues is not for today are, in my opinion and all those who do, grieving the Holy Spirit and missing a blessing from God. To me-it is as ridiculous as if an unsaved person tried to persuade you that you absolutely cannot be sure that you will enter heaven… If you haven’t experienced it – you can NOT tell someone who HAS that it doesn’t exist.”
A letter to stop the attack of false teaching for the sake of unity
"Please reconsider your policy of dealing with the Charismatic movement and other controversial topics on your radio broadcast. Though we share your convictions on these issues, many of our listeners do not. These people are dear brothers and sisters in Christ and we do not feel it is helpful to the cause of Christ to attack what they believe. We're committed to keeping peace among brethren and unity in the Body of Christ. Thank you for being sensitive to these concerns."
John Macarthur’s Response in his sermon
“It is not helpful to the cause of Christ to attack error anymore. That's what it says. It is not helpful for these dear brothers and sisters in Christ to attack what they believe even though it is wrong. It is more helpful, under this philosophy, to let them remain in error. We are committed to keeping peace, even if peace means error and finding unity even if unity means heresy. Thank you for being sensitive to our desire to maintain heresy if it must be maintained for the sake of unity.”
DEFINITIONS
Charismatic
– those who hold the view that salvation is preceded by gifts: tongues, miracles, healing, prophetic utterance, feelings of euphoria, emotional outbursts, esoteric experiences like they died and went to heaven or hell and God send them back here to say something, fantastic encounters with Jesus Christ and likes. To them the Bible is an open-system because they experienced, according to them a divine revelation directly from God through visions, audible voice and likes which cannot be found in Scripture and fond out to be contradicting to the Scripture.
– It all starts with the baptism of the Spirit as a post salvation experience.
TWO BASIC APPROACHES TO CHRISTIANITY
1) Historical Objective Approach
- emphasizes God’s action toward men as taught in the Scripture
- thoughts, ideas, and experiences are validated or invalidated by the Scripture
- this is Reformation Theology, Historical Evangelicalism
2) Personal Subjective Approach
- intuition, experiences, and mysticism have always played a central role
- Scripture is judged by experiences
- Truth is determined by intuition or feeling
- Liberalism and Neo-Orthodoxy
HOW SHOULD WE BUILD OUR THEOLOGY?
- Should we go to the Scripture of to the experiences of thousands of people?
- If we hold the second approach we will have many views that will contradict the Scripture and the opinion and views of others.
- Experience must be judged its validity in the light of the Scripture and not the reverse
- Spiritual experience would be the result of the quickening of the truth in the Christian’s mind
PETER AND PAUL WERE NO CHARISMATIC
- Peter had the experience of witnessing the glorious appearance of Christ in the Second Coming during the transfiguration and yet in his epistle 2 Peter 1:19-21 says that they have more sure word of prophecy in comparison with what? Than experience, his experience in the transfiguration.
- Paul’s letter, 2 Corinthians 12:1-4, though Paul was taken by God to the third heaven but he was not allowed to speak the things he saw, but he devout himself in proclamation of the Gospel and it manifested throughout his 13 writings.
EXPERIENTIAL THEOLOGY
1) Existentialism
- philosophical view that life is meaningless and absurd
- it teaches to do our own thing freely as we are responsible for the
choice
2) Humanism
- philosophy that says humanity has unlimited potential
- encourage everyone to self-authenticate, to be someone
- truth is relative
3) Paganism
- beliefs about mystery religious spawned in
- marialotry of catholic is rooted in
- sex orgies, idolatry, mutilation, and human sacrifice
- people who took part of pagan practices had experiences of joy,
peace, happiness, and ecstasy
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