The following message was delivered at Grace Community Church in Panorama
City, California, By John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape,
GC
90-57, titled "Charismatic Chaos" Part 6. 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 6,
to strengthen and encourage the
true Church of Jesus Christ.



Charismatic Chaos - Part 6

"The Third Wave"
by
John
MacArthur



It is a somewhat difficult task that falls to me this evening, to
discuss
with you, in the series on "Charismatic Chaos," some of the matters
with
regard to a movement known as the "The Third Wave." I cannot, by any
means,
consider all of the issues, nor can I speak of all those who represent
that
movement. But I do want to give you some perspective so that you can
be
alert and aware in regard to what is happening.

Of all of the elements of
the Charismatic movement, that are contemporary to
us today, this one is
getting the most press. Of all the questions that are
asked to me by people
who write and call with regard to issues facing us in
the Charismatic
movement, this is the most commonly discussed one. The main
figure in what is
known as the "Third Wave" is a man by the name of John
Wimber who is pastor of
the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Anaheim. He is
the major figure in this
movement that has come to be known as the "Third
Wave of the Holy Spirit." It
is sometimes called the "Signs and Wonders"
movement. And this latest
Charismatic tide seems to have swept across the
globe in the last decade. It
is literally everywhere in the English speaking
parts of the world.

The
term the "Third Wave" was coined by C. Peter Wagner who is a Missions
professor at Fuller Seminary and the author of several books on church
growth.
He is really the leading proponent of the Third Wave philosophy and methodology. According to Wagner, he said, "The First Wave was the
Pentecostal Movement, the Second Wave was the Charismatic Movement, and now
the Third Wave is joining them." And by that he means an inundating wave of the power of the Holy Spirit manifesting itself in visible ways. And while acknowledging the Third Wave's spiritual ancestry, that is, that it is the third of those three, Wagner nonetheless rejects the label "Charismatic and Pentecostal." In fact, most of the people in the Third Wave don't want to be identified in that way. Wagner says,

The Third Wave is a new moving of
the Holy Spirit among
evangelicals who for one reason or another have
chosen not to
identify with either the Pentecostals or the Charismatics.
Its
roots go back a little further but I see it as mainly a movement
beginning in the 1980's and gathering momentum through the
closing
years of the 20th century. I see the Third Wave as
distinct from, but
at the same time, very similar to the first
and second waves. They have
to be similar because it is the
same Spirit of God who is doing the
work. The major variation
comes in the understanding of the meaning of
"Baptism in the
Holy Spirit" and the role of tongues in authenticating
this. I
myself, for example, would rather not have people call me a
Charismatic, I do not consider myself a Charismatic, I am simply
an
Evangelical Congregationalist who is open to the Holy Spirit
working
through me and my church in any way He chooses.

He refuses the label
"Charismatic," not primarily because of any doctrinal
distinction, but
primarily because of the stigma attached to the name. It's
important for me
to mention that to you because if you talk to someone in the
Third Wave they
might endeavor to distance themselves from classic
Pentecostalism or more
contemporary Charismaticism, but the fact is that they
are basically the Third
Wave by their own admission of the very same kind of
theology. It is accurate
then to see the Third Wave as part of the whole
Charismatic movement as we
know it. While it is true that many who identify
with the Third Wave will
avoid using the term "Charismatic" and they'll even
avoid using Charismatic
jargon when writing or speaking about Spirit Baptism
or other issues.
Basically, the theology is the same. The terminology may
change; the
theology is for all intents and purposes identical. Most Third
Wave teaching
and preaching that I have listened to, that I have read, echoes
standard
Charismatic theology, and therefore in evaluating the Third Wave, we
would
assume that it is safe to say that the other issues that we have been discussing, that we find unbiblical in the Charismatic movement, are
generally
true of this movement as well, although there may be some
individuals in the
movement who would vary from that.

So at its very core it is an element of
the Charismatic movement. At its
core is an obsession with sensational
experiences, a preoccupation with the
"Charismata" that is, tongues,
healings, prophecies, words of knowledge,
visions, and ecstatic experiences,
and that is, of course, where we find the
indisputable link between the Third
Wave and the Charismatic and Pentecostal
movements. In all three movements
there is a major absorption with these
supernatural, sensational kind of power
encounters or power displays as they
like to call them. They de-emphasize
what you and I would know as the
traditional means of spiritual growth:
prayer, Bible study, the teaching of
the Word, and the fellowship of other
believers. They don't intend to do
that and they wouldn't do that in
statement or even in print. But because of
the very surpassing emphasis on
the sensational experiences, those matters
tend to get pushed significantly,
if not all together, into the background.
Pentecostals, Charismatics, and
Third Wavers, all will affirm that any
Christian who is not experiencing some
supernatural events, some supernatural
giftedness, some kinds of healings,
some kinds of prophecies, words of
knowledge, or manifestations of the Spirit
of God, in visible tangible ways,
is really stuck at a low level of spiritual
progress; is denying the full
power of God and denying himself the blessing of
God.

Now, while those in the Third Wave would like to distance themselves from
the
first and second wave, because of its excesses. The truth of the matter
is,
the third wave has not managed to avoid any of the excesses that are characteristic of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. In fact, there are some in the Charismatic movement who want to distance themselves from the Third Wavers because they feel that they go to excesses that even those Charismatics wouldn't go to.

A visit, for example, to the Vineyard, would
reveal to you all the commotion
of many people speaking in tongues at the same
time. It would reveal to you
intense kind of emotional experiences going on
where people were falling on
the floor and laying in prone positions for as
long as an hour, some people
with their limbs extended. It would reveal to
you people giving multiple
prophecies, some of them rather bizarre, and some
of them with poor grammar,
and yet claiming they come from the Lord. There
would be likely an
experience in which they would clear the floor of chairs
and they would be
dancing around in a completely liberated fashion in any form
that they would
choose to do that, with people again perhaps falling over,
climbing on
chairs, dancing on the top of chairs, and doing all the things
that once were
associated with what we used to call, "Holy Rollers." In fact,
Chuck Smith,
pastor of Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, told one researcher,
"John Wimber has
absorbed every abhorrent teaching developed by the
Pentecostals into his
teaching."

Now, all I want you to understand is that
the Third Wave people very often
want to see themselves as mainline
evangelical. They want to distance
themselves from the Pentecostal,
Charismatic excesses, and yet it seems to be
true that the excesses that
occurred in both the Pentecostal and Charismatic
movements are very
characteristic of the Third Wave as well. What makes them
a bit different is
that they can line up some teachers and leaders that
appear to have more
academic credentials than has been true in the
Charismatic and Pentecostal
movement. That may mean, that in the future,
there will be some correctives
that will come to some of those excesses,
which as of yet has not taken place.
But despite all of their claims to the
contrary, Third Wave apologists have
had astonishing success in selling their
movement as a non-Charismatic
phenomena. Unsuspecting churches, and I think
unsuspecting denominations have
opened their doors and their pulpits to Third
Wave teachers, I think because
of their academic credentials and because they
claim not to be in the line of
the Charismatics, but in fact, they are.

If you look very closely at the Third
Wave you will see in it the very same
kind of things you see typically in the
Charismatic movement. And so I want
to do a little bit closer inspection, and
as I said we can't by any means
exhaust this in the next half hour or so as we
examine it, but I will try to
put you in touch with some of the issues that
need to be addressed in a much
more comprehensive way than I'll be able to do
tonight. But I hope that I
can give you enough information to set you in the
right direction.

I want to just consider maybe four of the promises that the
Third Wave makes
that need to be inspected rather carefully. The first
promise they make is
that they are experiencing supernatural Signs and
Wonders, and that these
Signs and Wonders come at a rather proliferated rate.
That is to say they
are not abnormal, they are not uncommon, they are not few
and far between,
but rather they are normal, common, and very often come in a
flurry. They
believe that fantastic Signs and Wonders demonstrate the
genuineness of their
movement. The fact is that we cannot turn our back on it
because
supernatural things are happening all the time. Miraculous phenomena
is at
the very heart of the Third Wave credo and experience.

Third Wave
people are persuaded they are having miracles, they are having
visions, they
are speaking in tongues, giving prophecies, predicting the
future, reading
peoples minds (that is, they can stand up in a meeting and
tell you your home
address, your mother's maiden name, your father's mother's
maiden name), and
all of those kinds of things that we have always associated
with people like
the "Amazing Crescan" (sp.) who purvey a certain kind of
magic, a certain kind
of con art or whatever you want to call it. But they
are into these very same
kind of things. In fact, it was interesting to me
that one of their leaders
said that the key to his really "buying into" and
believing this whole thing
was when one of their prophets stood up and told
him, and told the whole
audience, his mother's maiden name and the true first
name of his father who
was only known by a nickname.

And so they believe that these kind of things
are happening, that there are
healings; that there are resurrections from the
dead, and they frankly view
Christianity without those things as impotent and
adulterated by the western
materialistic mindset. And [they believe that]
unless we can escape the
western materialistic mindset and catapult ourselves
into the Third World
paradigm, and begin to think in terms of mystical
phenomena, we are going to
be locked into a very shallow kind of Christianity.
Signs and Wonders also
would be the key, they believe, to Third Wave
evangelism. Third Wavers say
that unbelievers must experience the miraculous
in order to be brought to
full faith. Merely preaching the gospel message,
they believe, will never
reach the world for Christ.

One of their leaders has
said, "That we cannot evangelize the world with the
simple gospel, apart from
Signs and Wonders." This, in spite of the fact,
that Paul, in Romans 1, says
that the simple gospel is the power of God unto
salvation to everyone who
believes. But merely preaching the gospel, they
believe, isn't going to do
it, it'll never reach the world for Christ. Most
people will not believe
without seeing miracles, they say, and those who do
will be inadequately
converted, and therefore stunted in their spiritual
growth. John Wimber,
himself, cites Elijah's confrontation with the prophets
of Baal on Mount
Carmel, as a classic example of power encounter, where the
power of God
vanquishes the power of evil.

Similar Signs and Wonders, say third wave
gurus are the chief means we will
be using to spread the gospel. And so what
they are doing is traveling all
over the world endeavoring to teach the Church
how to do Signs and Wonders.
And you will hear them openly confess, even the
leaders at the highest level
and those that are kind of developing into their
next generation of leaders,
that they are learning how to do miracles. They
are learning how to heal the
sick, raise the dead, read minds, tell people
their address and phone
numbers, and their names of their parents. They are
learning to do that,
they are learning to call out healings, they are learning
to read behind
somebody's face and see the sin that is in them. They are
learning to do
that, because that is very essential if they are going to
convince the world
that the message is from God.

Modern miracles workers
have yet to call down fire from heaven as did Elijah,
but they may be working
on that as well. Third Wave officials tell of some
fantastic Signs and
Wonders, Wimber, for example, reported an incident where
a woman's toe, which
had been cut off, supposedly grew back. He described
another woman in
Australia whose cleft palate closed up miraculously three
days after God him a
"word of knowledge" that she would be healed. Wagner
recounted a report from
an Argentine faith healer, who's in the movement, by
the name of Carlos
Anacondia (sp.), who said, two particular manifestations
of the Holy Spirit
seem to impress unbelievers more than anything else in his
crusades, "falling
in the power of the Spirit" and "filling teeth." On a
fairly regular basis,
decayed teeth are filled and new teeth grow where there
were none before.
Interestingly enough, according to Anacondia, most
unbeliever's teeth are
filled and very few believers get their teeth filled.
Now, I don't why he
said that, or even why that's supposedly true, but I have
another question,
"Why does God fill teeth instead of just giving them new
teeth as long as He
is going to do it?"

But, nonetheless, whether you are talking about Wagner
or Wimber, they are
convinced that these miracles are happening. They are at
least trying to
convince us they are happening. Both of them are convinced,
for example, at
least from what they say, that many dead people are being
raised from the
dead. Many of them, not just some, not just a few, but many.
And it is
really difficult to resist the conclusion that these are either
utter
fabrications, that have just grown with the telling, or that these
people are
so caught in the wish that these things come to pass, that they
have
convinced themselves that in fact they do. In the two cases that I
mentioned
to you from John Wimber, he maintains that medical doctors witnessed
the
events, yet he offers no documentation.

And you have to ask the
question somewhere along the line, "Why don't they
publish proof that these
events really took place?" It would seem to me that
if people are being
raised from the dead, at a fairly regular clip through
the year, some of these
people could show up somewhere and there could be
some evidence. Particularly
if they had been in the grave for several days
like Lazarus, because somebody
would have been there to see them put in the
ground. And we wonder why they
don't publish the proof of these things,
phenomena such as digit and limb
replacement, the healing of birth defects,
supernatural dentistry, and raising
the dead. It seems to me that it would
be rather easy to document. It would
certainly help bring about the kind of
world wide response the Third Wave
people say they are hoping to have.

To borrow from one of them, you can only
imagine if they could take four
quadriplegics and instantly heal them of their
quadriplegia. Four who were
well known by many and been known for years to be
in that condition, and they
could step out of the wheel chair and be
absolutely 100% whole. It wouldn't
seem too difficult a thing to present the
evidence for that. And it would
seem to me to be quite a powerful
statement.

But a pattern has begun to emerge from the Third Wave literature,
and that is
this, the truly spectacular miracles always seem to involve
nameless people.
Real people's miracles tend to be mundane and hard to prove:
cures involving
back pain, inner healings, migraine relief, emotional
deliverance, ringing in
the ears, maybe some internal problem that is stated
but not verified. The
only time you get a detailed, step-by-step, carefully
laid out description of
a healing situation is an occasion when the healing
doesn't happen. You hear
rather oblique references to the healing that did
happen, and rather detailed
descriptions of the ones that don't.

A prime
example is Wagner's account of his friend Tom Brewster, a paraplegic,
who
believed in healing. Brewster was so hopeful that God would heal him
that he
even distributed a "Declaration of Expectation" to his friends--an
expression
of his faith that he would one day walk. That faith never
wavered, Wagner
says, though it had been almost thirty years since a diving
accident left him
confined to a wheel chair. But the miracle never came.
Brewster died after
unsuccessful bladder surgery. It's difficult to read
that account without
noting how markedly it contrasts with the many supposed
miracles that these
Third Wave people account. The most dramatic miracles
come with only sketchy
details and are almost nearly always anonymous.
Rarely do they ever involve
people who are known personally to those who
report the miracles. You
understand that? They are not first hand. And
whenever you hear the story
told about the first hand it seems to have a sad
ending.

Perhaps the most
significant man in the life of John Wimber was a British
Anglican who died of
cancer, much to the great dismay and concern and sorrow
of John. A group of
five medical doctors, Christians, attended a recent
conference the Third Wave
had. These men were hoping to establish the truth
of the claims that
miraculous healings were taking place. One of them,
Doctor Philip Seldon
(sp.) reported,

The fact that John Wimber knew we were present and
observing may
have served to tone down the claims which we understand
were
made at previous conferences. Mr. Wimber, himself, referred to
bad backs and indicated that people could expect pain relief but
no
change which could be documented by a doctor. He admitted
that he had
never seen a degenerated vertebrae restored to
normal shape. And as I
suspected, most of the conditions which
were prayed over were in the
psychosomatic, trivial, or
medically difficult to document categories.
Problems with left
great toe, nervous disorder, breathing problems,
barrenness,
unequal leg lengths, bad backs and neck.

The doctor
concluded, "At this stage we are unaware of any organic healings
which could
be proven."

Now, what explanation is given for people who are not healed,
because we know
that many people must go there who have real problems. Right?
I mean, if
you hear that miracles are being done and you are looking for that
to happen
in your life--you are going to go. And people do not get healed--
obviously.
The reasons given are: some people don't have faith in God for
healing;
another reason, personal unconfessed sin creates a barrier to God's
healing
power; another one they say is persistent and widespread disunity,
sin, and
unbelief in bodies of believers and families, inhibits healings in
individual
members of the body.

In other words, they will say, one, "You
don't have enough faith to be
healed. Your lack of faith is hindering God."
Or they will say, "You have
unconfessed sin in your life and you put a
barrier between you and God." Or
they will say, "You are going to a church
that doesn't believe in healings so
you are not going to get healed as long as
you are in that environment." Or
they will say, "Because of incomplete or
incorrect diagnosis of what is
causing your problem, you do not know how to
pray correctly, and if you don't
know what your problem is you can't pray
correctly to get it fixed, it won't
get fixed, or it might not." "And some
people," they say further, don't get
healed because they assume that God
always heals instantly, and when they
don't get instantly healed they stop
praying, so they don't get healed.

Oddly enough, John Wimber, himself, said,
"I never blame the sick person for
lack of faith if healing doesn't come."
That's a contradictory statement.
And eventually he is still trying to piece
together the theology of this. He
struggles, because he said also, "I have a
continually expanding group of
disgruntled people who have come for healing
and don't get it."

Now, the reality is, with the Third Wave, with all of its
emphasis on signs
and wonders, it has produced nothing really verifiable that
qualifies in the
New Testament sense as an authentic sign or wonder, at least
nothing that
they have made available. Jesus' miracles must, after all, be
the standard
by which we make an evaluation. Right? No one before Jesus or
since has
performed as many signs and wonders as He did during His earthly
ministry.
His miracles were strikingly different from those produced by the
modern
signs and wonders movement. None involved psychosomatic infirmities,
all
were visible and verifiable, they were, in short, true signs and wonders.
We learned some other things about the miracles from our Lord's ministry, chiefly that miracles do not necessarily produce faith in an unbelieving
heart. Let me say that again, they do not necessarily produce faith in an unbelieving heart. I don't want to say that there aren't times when God can use or has used the miraculous to produce or to assist in producing faith. Faith is a gift from God but it is possible that a miracle has been a
component in God bringing about that faith. But that is not necessarily what happens, and that certainly cannot be guaranteed to happen. In fact, in the Gospel of John, Jesus did many signs and many wonders. In fact, He proliferated that entire nation of Palestine with signs and wonders. And the people were able to see them and even to participate in them, such as in the feeding of the Great Multitude.

The net effect of all of that tremendous,
tremendous, miracle working
enterprise could be summed up in the words of John
12:37, "But though He had
performed so many signs before them, yet they were
not believing in Him."
There is no guarantee that because there are miracles
there will be saving
faith. It is true that as I said, God may use miracles
to bring about faith.
In Acts 9, you might want to look at it for a moment;
in Acts, chapter 9, in
verse 32, "Peter was traveling through all those
parts," writes Luke. "He
came down to the saints who lived at Lydda. And
there he found a certain man
named Aeneas, who had been bedridden eight years,
for he was paralyzed. And
peter said to him, 'Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you;
arise, and make your
bed.' And immediately he arose. And all who lived at
Lydda and Sharon saw
him, and they turned to the Lord."

If you were to read
into the next section, in Joppa, there was a woman there
named Tabitha (or
Dorcas). She died and Peter was used to bring her back to
life. And in verse
42 it says, "And it became known all over Joppa, and many
believed in the
Lord." We don't want to say categorically, that there would
never be a time
when God wouldn't cause some miraculous act to be a component
in the producing
of faith. But that seems to be the minority effect. The
majority seem not to
have such a response. In spite of all of Jesus'
miracles, raising the dead,
healing the sick, giving sight to the blind,
having authority over demons, the
people rejected Him, the people crucified
Him, and at the time of His death
there were only about 120 followers
gathered in the Upper Room, and that after
several years of miraculous acts.

The gospels contain numerous examples of
people who witnessed Jesus' signs,
who witnessed His wonders, and yet remained
in utter unbelief. He rebuked
the cities where He performed most of His
miracles: He rebuked Korazim,
Bethsedia, He rebuked Capernaum, because they
didn't repent, and because they
had seen so many miracles. And He even says
that they were even worse off
than Sodom and Gomorrah, because Sodom and
Gomorrah, as bad as it was, would
have repented if it had seen as much as they
had seen. John 2:23 tells us
that, "Many believed in His name, because they
saw the signs," yet that kind
of belief was not a saving belief. Jesus didn't
consider them true
believers, according to verse 24.

In John, chapter 6,
verse 2, the record says that, "A great multitude was
following Him, because
they were seeing the signs which He was performing on
those who were sick."
And yet, in verse 66, when He began to teach them, and
He began to speak
about the spiritual issues that confronted them, it says,
many of the same
crowd "withdrew, and were not walking with Him any more."
So there are times
when, whatever kind of believing they did, was not
believing unto salvation.
In John, chapter 11, Jesus raised Lazarus from the
dead, a monumental
miracle. Absolutely monumental! Even His enemies
couldn't deny it, according
to John 11:47. But far from believing in Jesus,
that simply accelerated their
desire to plot His death.

Things really weren't much different than that in
the Book of Acts, in the
early Church. In Acts 3, Peter and John healed a man
who had been lame from
birth and again the Jewish religious leaders didn't
deny the miracle had
occurred, according to Acts 4:16. They couldn't deny it,
but their response
was far from saving faith. They ordered the Apostles to
stop speaking in the
name of Jesus. Go back into the Old Testament and you
can examine the record
of Old Testament signs and wonders, they didn't produce
saving faith either.
Pharaoh's heart was hardened despite the powerful signs
and wonders God did
through Moses. The entire generation of Israelites who
witnessed those same
miracles, died in unbelief in the wilderness. It didn't
seem to lead them to
any great spiritual level of devotion.

Despite all the
miracles performed during the time of Elijah and Elisha, and
those times when
God acted miraculously at other seasons, both Israel and
Judah failed to
repent and were ultimately carried away into captivity. In
fact, the very
account that John Wimber cites as Biblical justification for
power encounters,
Elijah's confrontation with the prophets of Baal, is an
example. The revival
produced out of that amazing act by which God sent fire
from heaven and burned
up stones and water, the amazing, amazing miracle
produced a very short lived
response, and within a few days Elijah was hiding
for fear of his life, and
Baal worship continued until God finally judged
Israel.

Now, that is not to
say that signs and wonders were not important when God
used them. It is not
to say that they never were used by God to be a part of
the production of
faith. But that was not the normal result. They often
attracted people's
attention so the gospel message could be [preached], and
people hearing that
message were saved. But, miracles and signs and wonders,
in themselves, do
not produce saving faith. And so when they say they
promise "signs and
wonders" it's questionable whether the "signs and wonders"
are really
legitimate, and it's questionable whether the "signs and wonders"
are
necessary for producing saving faith, since that is not their purpose in
the
Scripture generally.

Secondly, they make the promise of "Powerful
Evangelism," "Power Evangelism."
What they are really doing (and this follows
the first point) is being
powerful in terms of turning people to God. My
conviction on this, however,
is that what they say is "Powerful Evangelism"
lacks, very often, the very
necessary element of evangelism which is a clear
proclamation of gospel
truth. The saving message gets badly corrupted and
sometimes even omitted.
Third Wave books and Third Wave testimonies are
filled with anecdotes about
people who supposedly became Christians on the
basis of some miracle they
saw; some supernatural wonder they saw, with little
or no mention of the
gospel having been proclaimed to them.

In fact, in the
book, Power Evangelism, which was John Wimber's main book and
sort of set this
thing in motion (it's the main textbook on evangelism),
there is no reference
in that whole book to the cross of Christ or the
doctrine of the atonement. I
understand, now, that some are endeavoring to
instruct him in that matter so
that he can understand that, and that there is
a revision of that book coming
out which will delineate a clear doctrine of
the atonement and the true
gospel. But, up until now it hasn't seemed to be
necessary for the expansion
and explosion of the movement. Soteriology, or
the doctrine of salvation, an
accurate gospel message, can hardly be
considered as a major thrust of this
movement. In all the fuss about the
signs and wonders, the content of the
gospel seems to have been given second
place.

One report goes like this,

A serious consideration by observers in one of the seminars, was
that there was no gospel in the so-called evangelistic meeting.
The cross of Jesus was not central, the atonement was not
explained, and mankind's need and the provision of redemption
not
even cursorily treated. Believing himself to be following
the example
of Jesus and the Apostles, John Wimber called out
for those who needed
to be healed: bad backs, short legs, neck
pain, and a whole host of
diseases. People were asked to stand
and team members dispatched to
pray for them while on the stage
John demanded that the Spirit come, and
after a few minutes of
silence several screams were heard and people
sobbing. A little
later it was declared that people had been healed and
God had
given a token as a sign to those who did not believe. In
short,
they were asked to base their decision on what they had seen,
or
rather the interpretation of what they had seen, and the
sacrifice for sin through Christ didn't even get a mention. I
left
wondering what faith people would have been converted to
that night? It
didn't seem to resemble New Testament
Christianity.

Now, I realize that
this may be but the observation of one individual, but it
seems as though in
reading the material, this is a somewhat common thread.
Peter Wagner says
that he marvels that Argentine evangelist, Omar Cabrerra
(sp.) has people
saved and healed before he starts preaching. It's a
question to me, how can
you get saved before you hear the message? But [it
is] not a question that
seems to bother some of them. Most of the Third
Wavers believe that miracles
are more effective than the gospel message
preached, that preaching is
limited, and I shared some of that with you a
few weeks ago. That somehow
preaching is a very poor way to get people to
come to Christ, the least of all
ways desirable. Wagner further writes,

Christianity began with 120 in
the Upper Room, within three
centuries it had become the predominant
religion of the Roman
Empire. What brought this about? The answer is
deceptively
simple, while Christianity was being presented to
unbelievers in
both Word and deed, it was the deed that far exceeded the
Word
in evangelistic effectiveness.

That's a remarkable statement:
"That the deed is more powerful than the
Word," seems to me to "fly in the
face" of Hebrews 4, which says that, "The
Word is sharper than any two-edged
sword, and is able to pierce to depths
that nothing else can pierce." The
Anglican, Michael Harper says, "Miracles
help people believe." The question
is, "Believe what?" Is the gospel being
clearly, carefully delineated? In
fact, it has been said that those of us
who don't do signs and wonders, and
perform miracles, are doing what they
call "Programmatic Evangelism," instead
of "Power Evangelism." It is
insipid, it is powerless, vapid, kind of
evangelism. What is needed is
"Power Evangelism," supernatural encounters.
Those are the things that bring
people to Christ.

Two fallacies, at least,
lurk in that kind of thinking; both render it
utterly ineffective in winning
people to genuine faith in Christ. When
modern miracles become the basis for
an evangelistic invitation, the real
message of the gospel somehow becomes
incidental. And you would have to be
in a meeting where you would see the
"swept away attitude" of people who are
so deeply lost in an emotional
experience, and this may not always be the
case, but often the case, that a
clear message might not come through. There
is often a mystical, ethereal
Jesus who replaces the historical, Biblical
one. And the focus of faith
becomes faith in the miraculous, rather than
faith in the Savior Himself.
Those who put their trust in modern miracles
are not saved by that faith no
matter how earnestly they may believe they
are. You are only saved by putting
your faith in Jesus Christ.

Secondly, Power Evangelism seems to me to be an
unbiblical concept. "Faith
comes from hearing," doesn't it? "And hearing the
Word of Christ." It is
the gospel, not signs and wonders, that is the power
of God unto salvation.
And do you not remember what Luke 16:31 says, "If they
do not listen to Moses
and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded though
someone rises . . ."
what? "From the dead." Despite the many signs and
wonders that Jesus
performed, Jesus didn't practice that kind of Power
Evangelism. In fact, He
repeatedly rebuked those who demanded signs, (Matthew
12, 16; Mark 8; Luke
11, 23; John 4). He rebuked the "signs seekers."

The
emphasis of Jesus' ministry was not miracles but preaching. He often
preached
without doing signs, without doing wonders. And then in Mark 1:29-
34, we read
that Jesus did many miraculous healings in Galilee. Verse 37,
tells us that
Peter and the others found Him the next morning and excitedly
said, "Everybody
is looking for you. They want to see more of this. They
want to see more
signs and more wonders." And Jesus said this, (Mark 1:38)
"Let us go
somewhere else to the towns nearby, in order that I may preach
there also; for
that is what I came out for." He came to preach, therein
lies the power.
Preaching the Word was more important than the Signs and
Wonders, and I
believe the Third Wave is advocating a different approach and
is out of
balance with the Bible in that regard.

Well, there is more to say. Just
briefly, let me share two thoughts with
you. They also promise a Biblical
orientation, but I am very much afraid of
the fact, and by their own
admission, that they have many errors in their
theology. And as I spoke to
several of them this week, I asked the question,
"If God is giving Signs and
Wonders, is it to authenticate His message?"
Which the answer has to be yes.
"Then would you explain to me why the people
who claim to be doing the Signs
and Wonders are the ones who have an errant
theology? Why would God be
authenticating error?" It would seem to me that
if God was going to give
somebody the ability to do Signs and Wonders, thus
to draw people to His
message, He would give such a gift and ability to one
who was most capable of
articulating accurately the proper message. And by
their own admission they
realize that there are many theological
inaccuracies, Biblical inaccuracies,
in the movement, and that poses the
unanswerable query as to, "Why in the
world would God want to be using
miracles to authenticate those who, as of
yet, don't even have their theology
straighten out?" John Wimber would be the
first to admit that they are still
accumulating a theology. He made the
statement that, "We are drawing
together our experiences so that we can frame
up a theology." And it seems
odd to think that God would be vindicating such
and authenticating such.

Furthermore, they are committed to the fact that
the Bible is not enough,
that there must be further communication from God.
One of their leaders says
that,

To believe that the Scripture is the
end of God's revelation is
a demonic doctrine. In order to fulfill
God's highest purpose
for our lives, we must be able to hear His voice
both in the
written word and the word freshly spoken from heaven.
Satan
understands the strategic importance of Christians hearing
God's
Word, so he has launched various attacks against us in this
area. Ultimately, this doctrine, that is, believing that the
Scripture is the end of revelation, is demonic, even though
Christian theologians have been used to perfect it. So
Christian
theologians who have perfected the idea that the
Scripture is the end of
God's revelation, have perfected a
demonic doctrine, because God is
still speaking.

And there is a great thirst for new revelation, that I
believe imposes upon
the movement a low view of Scripture's sufficiency.

Well, let me just give you a final note. There is much more to say about
that, you can read it in my book [Charismatic Chaos] when it gets here in a
few months. There is just one other thing to note, and so much more that I would like to say. They claim also an evangelical heritage, they claim also
an evangelical heritage. If you listen to them, you would believe that they are in the mainstream of evangelicalism, that they are committed to a traditional, Biblical theology. And yet that is not true. Statements of
faith and creeds are just not a part of that movement. John Wimber's
Vineyard
is typical, I am quoting from one writer,

Another disturbing aspect of
the Vineyard's ministry is their
lack of any written statement of faith.
Because Vineyard
members come from a variety of denominational
backgrounds, the
leadership has avoided setting strong doctrinal
standards. This
de-emphasis of doctrine is also consistent with the
leadership,
whose backgrounds, theologically include association with
the
Quakers, who typically stress the inner experience of God and
mimimize the need for doctrinal expressions of one's
understanding
of God.

That's from the Christian Research Institute. There is no way
that they can
connect up with historic, traditional, evangelical, orthodox
theology,
because they don't codify doctrine. They don't develop creeds and
theological statements, so how do they know where they stand? And yet in
spite of that, they want to position their movement in the mainstream of historic evangelicism. They want to emphasize conservative, even
fundamentlist roots, but that does not bear out under examination. The movement is broadly ecumenical and cencredic. There is an evangelical veneer but the wide embracing of all kinds of experiences. Now, it is possible that this could change. There maybe some winds of change, there may be some doctrinal direction and structure coming, but at the present time this is
true. To reinforce that, may I say, Wimber is as comfortable with Roman Catholic dogma as he is with evangelicism. He himself defends the Catholic claims of healings through relics. He advocates a reunification of
Protestants and Catholics. A former associate said,

During a Vineyard
Pastors Conference, he went so far as to
apologize to the Catholic
Church on behalf of all Protestants.
In his seminar on Church Planting,
he said, the Pope, who by the
way is very responsive to the Charismatic
movement and is
himself a "Born Again" evangelical, is preaching the
gospel as
clear as anyone in the world today.

You can see that there is
some confusion. In their book on Power Evangelism,
he gives a catalog of
individuals and movements. When he wants to seek to
establish Signs and
Wonders, he reaches back and He identifies himself with a
whole list of
people, Helleron (sp.), a fourth century hermit, Augustine,
Pope Gregory the
Great, Francis of Assisi, the Waldenses who opposed the Pope
and were
persecuted by the Dominicans, Vincent Ferrera (sp.) who was himself
was a
Dominican, Martin Luther, Ignatius of Loyola, John Wesley, and the
Jansenists,
a Catholic sect. It's a hodgpoge of all kinds of things. In a
booklet
published by the Vineyard, he adds the Shakers. They were a cult
that
demanded celibacy and thus went out of existence for obvious reasons.
He puts
himself in line with Edward Irving, a discredited leader of the
Irvingnite
sect in 19th century England. He also identifies himself with the
supposed
healings and miracles worked by an apprition of the Virgin Mary at
Lourdes.
So you can see that the heritage is not at all evangelical, but
quite
confused. Even Wagner wants to link himself with contempory, positive, possibility thinking as well as with the Fourth Demensional thinking of
Korean
Pastor Paul Yongee Chow (sp.). It's a hodgpog of many, many things.

All of
this to say we need to be alert. We need to be aware. We need to
test all
these things by the Word of God. My only hope and prayer for these
people is
that someone may come to them, someone who can lead them to a
proper
understanding of the truth, pulling them away from this tremendous preoccupation and domination that comes to them from experiences.
Experiences
can be so deadly because they cannot always be certain that they
come from
God.

Well, much more to be said. I guess what I can say in conclusion is,
"Don't
be swept away by the Third Wave." And remember this, the only true
test of
whether a person or a movement is from God is not Signs and Wonders.
A true
test is, teaching in conformity to this Book. And the highest
expression of
God's power in the world today is not some spectacular, unusual
Sign or
Wonder. The highest expression of God's power in the world today is
the
transformation of a soul from darkness to light, from death to life.
And
equally wonderus is the tranquil godliness of a Spirit controlled
believer.

Let me just say this in closing, I don't believe for one moment that
we have
ministered here at Grace Church for 22 years without the Holy Spirit.
And I
don't believe for one moment that we have never known the Power of God.
I
shared with these gentlemen, with whom I spoke on Friday, that we see the
power of God, again and again. We saw it tonight, didn't we, when we heard
the testimonies, week in and week out. I see it in the trasformatioon of
your
life. I see it in the transformations of your marriage. For the last
several
weeks I have been praying for a marriage in our church. It was
coming apart
at the seams, really sad, grieving. And I saw, apart from
anything that I
did, apart from any intervention by me--God put that marriage
together in a
glorious way. We've seen that again and again. I talked to a
mother and a
father who had prayed for a wayward son and God brought that son
back to the
point where that son embraced Christ and embraced his family in
Christ.

I
don't for one moment search because I have never known the power of God in
this ministry, and I just affirm that, not for my own sake, not to bring
credit to me, but that no one would discredit what Christ has done here and what His spirit has accomplished. Nothing that happens in the supernatural dimension happens because of me or you, that's out of our league. But I will not yield to any who would assume that what we have experienced here is a
cheap version of the real power. Many of you have come to faith in Christ here. Many of you have grown in your knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and been used of God in many ways in spiritual service, the benefits of your own spiritual growth and maturity, because of the ministries here. Many have
gone
out of this place and conducted powerful ministries all over the world,
and
they go on even today. And I guess, all of that to say, to be real
honest
with you, I am not looking for anything, because I have already in my
life
lived through Ephesians 3:20, and I've seen God do, "exceedingly,
abundantly,
above all I could ask or think." And to be honest with you, my
faith is
strong enough to accept that this is the evidence of the power of
God and I
don't have to have more proof. Some people say they have the faith
for all of
that, but I think they have doubt looking for proof--very often.
And I want
to affirm tonight my gratitude to God and to the Holy Spirit, and
to the Lord
Jesus Christ for what They have accomplished in this place, and
what They have
accomplished through the teaching of the Word and the faithful
ministry that
God has given to this church, here and around the world. And I
want to give
God all the glory for all of it, and I want to acknowledge along
with you that
He has done it, and we have never ministered for a moment
feeling that He
wasn't here in the fullness of His power accomplishing His
work for His own
glory. And He has done it in an orderly way without chaos
and without
confusion, and we praise Him for that.

Father, thank you for our time
tonight to consider these things. Help us
Lord to be able to evaluate
everything by the Word. We know that in this
movement there are some who, of
course, are our brothers and sisters, who
love the Lord Jesus Christ, and we
would pray for them, that your Spirit
might lead them to bring Biblical
direction where they are able to this
movement. To confront its errors and
excesses. We pray Lord too that no one
would be led astray and led away from
the simplicity that is in Christ and
into chaos and confusion of emotional
experience, and find it to be a
substitute for true regeneration. Father, we
pray too that you would allow
us with grace and love to speak to folks who
perhaps are in these kinds of
groups and to bring them the help that your Word
and your Spirit would want
them to have. In Jesus' Name. Amen.

Transcribed by Tony Capoccia of

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The following message was delivered at Grace Community Church in Panorama
City, California, By John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape,
GC
90-60, titled "Charismatic Chaos" Part 9. 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 9,
to strengthen and encourage the
true Church of Jesus Christ.



Charismatic Chaos - Part 9

"Does God Still Heal?"
by
John
MacArthur


Well, as you know, we are involved in a study of the Charismatic
movement,
the contemporary movement, and tonight we come to a section
entitled, "Does
God Still Heal?" Now, in the messages that I have been giving
we have
intersected with the thoughts about healing, and we have said some
things
about that in some of our prior studies and we are not going to repeat
those
things. But there is much more that needs to be said tonight as we
evaluate
a movement that advocates healing. In fact, if there is anything
that would
be typically Charismatic or typically characteristic of the
modern
Pentecostal movement, Third Wave movement, or Charismatic movement, it
would
be a major emphasis on healing, and we need to understand that.

Let
me begin with some illustrations that set the scene for us. A familiar
name
to anybody who studies the Charismatic movement and delves into the
issues of
healing is the name of a man, Hobart Freeman, a very interesting
man, at one
time a professor of Old Testament at Grace Theological Seminary,
from which
our own Dick Mayhue graduated. And when he was a professor there
in Old
Testament, he was considered to be the finest communicator, the finest
teacher
there. In fact, Hobart Freeman wrote a very significant book
entitled, "An
Introduction to the Old Testament Prophets" which, in 1969, was
published and
printed by the Moody Bible Institute. So he was considered by
everybody to be
a mainline evangelical professor, one who not only understood
but could
adroitly teach the truth of Scripture.

Somewhere along the line he changed.
Hobart Freeman believed that God had
healed him from Polio. Nonetheless, one
of Freeman's legs was so much
shorter than the other that he had to wear
corrective shoes and walked with
great difficulty. Freeman became a pastor.
He began his ministry as a
Baptist and after he had written and taught for
some years, in the mid 60's
he became very fascinated with "faith healing,"
and it moved him into the
Charismatic movement, and then it moved him further
and further towards the
fringes of that movement. He started his own church
in Claypool, Indiana; it
was known as Faith Assembly and it grew to more than
2,000 members. Meetings
were held in a building which he called the "Glory
Barn" and Church services
were closed to non-members.

So it was kind of a
secretive and cultic association. Freeman and the Faith
Assembly congregation
utterly disdained all medical treatment. He believed
that modern medicine was
an extension of ancient witchcraft and black magic.
To submit to a doctor's
remedies, Freeman believed, was to expose oneself to
demonic influence.
Expectant mothers in Freeman's congregation were told
that they must give
birth at home with the help only of a church sponsored
midwife rather than go
to a hospital delivery room or to be treated by a
doctor. By the way,
obedience to that teaching, cost a number of mothers and
infants their lives.
In fact, over the years, at least 90 church members
died as a result of
ailments that would have been easily treatable. No one
really knows what the
actual death toll would be if nationwide figures could
be compiled on all the
other people who followed Hobart Freeman's teaching.

After a 15 year old girl
whose parents belong to Faith Assembly, died of a
medically treatable malady,
the parents were convicted of negligent homicide
and sentenced to ten years in
prison. Freeman himself was charged with
aiding and inducing reckless
homicide in the case. Shortly afterward, on
December 8, 1984, Freeman himself
died, interestingly enough of pneumonia and
heart failure complicated by a
severely ulcerated leg.

Hobart Freeman's theology did not allow him to
acknowledge that Polio had
left one of his legs disfigured and lame. Quote,
he said, "I have my
healing." And that is all he would say when anyone
pointed out the rather
conspicuous inconsistency between his physical
disabilities and his theology.
Ultimately, his refusal to acknowledge his
infirmities cost him his life. He
had dutifully, according to his own
theology, refused all medical treatment
for the maladies that were killing
him, and medical science could easily have
prolonged his life, but in the end
he was a victim of his own teaching.

Now, Hobart Freeman is a very familiar
name to those involved in Faith
Healing, but he is not the only one. There is
another one who succumbed to
ailments and that is a man by the name of William
Brannom (sp.), and if you
study anything about the healing movement you are
going to come across the
name of William Brannom (sp.). He would be the
father of the post World War
II healing revival. He was a man reputed to have
been instrumental in some
of the most spectacular healings that the
Pentecostals have ever seen. He
died, however, in 1965 at age 56, after
suffering for six days from injuries
received in an automobile accident. His
theology was unbiblical and
heretical, and of course when applied to himself
his theology of healing had
no effect whatsoever, though his followers right
to the end, were confident
God was going to raise him up. And even after he
died they believed that God
would raise him from the dead.

As a boy, I was
brought to become aware of another Faith Healer who became
very, very famous,
a man by the name of A. A. Allen. And A. A. Allen, about
whom I read and whom
I followed with curiosity, was a famed "Tent
Evangelist." He took his healing
meeting from place to place in a tent.
Interestingly enough, A. A. Allen
claimed thousands upon thousands of
healings, and himself died of sclerosis of
the liver in 1967, having secretly
been involved with alcohol for many years
while supposedly being able to heal
everybody else.

Perhaps a more familiar
name in the healing movement would be the name of one
who is elevated almost
to the status of the Roman Catholic elevation of Mary,
and that's a woman by
the name of Kathryn Kuhlman. Kathryn Kuhlman died of
heart failure in 1976,
curiously enough. She had battled heart disease for
nearly twenty years, and
that statement is made by Jamie Buckingham who would
have been one of her
disciples.

Another one that comes to mind, Ruth Carter Stapleton, was the
Faith Healing
sister of former United States President Jimmie Carter. [She]
refused
medical treatment for cancer because of her belief in faith healing.
She
died of the disease in 1983. And even John Wimber, who would be probably
the
most prominent modern contemporary Third Wave healer, struggles with
chronic
angina and heart problems. He begins his book on Power Healing with
a
personal note. This is what it says; quoting John Wimber, he says,

I had what doctors later suspected were a series of coronary
attacks. When we returned home a series of medical tests
confirmed
my worst fears, I had a damaged heart, possibly
seriously damaged.
Tests indicated that my heart was not
functioning properly, a condition
complicated and possibly
caused by high blood pressure. These problems
combined with my
being overweight and overworked meant that I could die
at any
time.

Wimber writes that he sought God and he says that God told
him that in the
same way Abraham waited for his child, I was to wait for my
healing. In the
meantime, he says, "He told me to follow my doctor's orders."
Wimber writes,
"I wish I could write that at this time I am completely
healed, that I no
longer have physical problems, but if I did it would not be
true." Now, it
seems obvious, at least a curiosity to all of us, that so many
leading
advocates of faith healing are sick!

Annette Capps (sp.), the
daughter of Faith Healer Charles Capps (sp.), and
herself a Faith Healer,
raised that question in her book; her book is
entitled "Reverse the Curse in
Your Body and Emotions." This is what she
writes,

People have
stumbled over the fact that the so-called "Healing
Minister" later
became ill or died. They say, "I don't
understand this. If the Power
of God came into operation and
all those people were healed, why did the
evangelist get sick?
Why did he or she die?" The reason is because
healings that
take place in meetings like that are a special
manifestation of
the Holy Spirit. This is different from using your own
faith.
The evangelist who is being used by God in the gifts of
healings, is still required to use his own faith in the Word of
God
to receive divine health and divine healing for his own
body. Why?
Because the gifts of healings are not manifested
for the individual who
is ministering, they are for the benefit
of the people.

Now that
double-talk basically means that somebody could have faith for
somebody else's
healing but not enough faith for their own healing. And so,
sometimes without
faith for their own healing they die, while they have
enough faith for other
people's healings who live. She goes on to say,

Over the years I have
seen various manifestations of the gifts
of healing in my own ministry,
but I have always had to use my
own faith in God's word for my healing.
There have been times
that I have been attacked with illness in my body
but as I
ministered many were healed even though I did not feel well.
I
had to receive my healing through faith and acting on God's
word.

Thus, she astonishingly concludes that if a Faith Healer gets sick,
it is
because his or her personal faith is somehow deficient when applied to
his or
herself. Now, to take that a step further, you must understand that
these
people go so far as to say, "That even Jesus Himself sometimes did not
have
the faith required for people to be healed."

Perspectives on Faith
Healing often seem as varied as the number of Faith
Healers around. Some say
that God wants to heal all sickness, others come
close to conceding that God's
purposes may sometimes be fulfilled in our
illness and infirmity. Some equate
sickness with sin; others stop short of
that, but still find it hard to
explain why spiritually strong people get
sick. Some people just "flat out"
blame the devil, and they think if they
can tie the devil up in a knot and
send him off to Tibet or something [then]
everybody will get well.

Some claim
to have the "Gifts of Healing;" others say they have no unusual
healing
ability, they simply are used of God to show people the way of faith.
A lot
of people used to say they had the "Gift of Healing" but the chicanery
they
were using has for so many years been exposed that nobody today can get
away
with that stuff anymore. So now they just claim they don't have the
"Gift of
Healing," they just sort of pray and have faith and God does what He
wants.
Some will say they heal with a physical touch; some will say you heal
through
anointing with oil; others say they can speak forth a healing, that
they can
speak it into existence; some people say they can only pray for a
healing, and
so forth and so on. And there are healers who just keep
changing from one
approach to another as the chicanery and the charlatanism
of the healing
movement becomes exposed and they have to change their
methodology.

Always
a Faith Healer, the well known Oral Roberts used to claim that he
could heal.
He claimed great powers of healing; he no longer claims that.
Oral Roberts
claimed God had called him, in fact, to build a massive
hospital. And He said
this massive hospital would blend conventional
medicine with Faith Healing.
If you visit the city of Tulsa, as I did this
summer, you are absolutely
astonished at this facility. It is mind boggling
to see a sixty story
building rising out of a weed patch outside Tulsa,
Oklahoma, and next to it a
thirty story building rising as well, now
completely vacant and most of it
unfinished on the inside. In the face of
huge financial losses apparently God
changed His mind and declared that the
whole thing should be closed down. It
is a monument to the unfulfilled
promises of Faith Healing. Nonetheless, in
spite of these bizarre claims
that never come to pass, Faith Healing and the
Charismatic movement keep
growing.

Charles Fox Pharham (sp.) who is the
father of the contemporary Pentecostal
movement, came to the conviction
originally (this is way back at the turn of
the century when the Charismatic
movement was then known as Pentecostalism
and just starting) he claimed that
God desired all believers to have complete
healing and he developed that into
an entire Pentecostal system, and then it
began to flow through the leaders.
Amy Simple McPherson (who founded the
Foursquare Church), Angelus Temple
(sp.), E. W. Kenyon, William Brannom
(sp.), Kathryn Kuhlman, Oral Roberts,
Kenneth Hagan, Kenneth Copeland,
Fredrick Price, Jerry Seville (sp.), Charles
Capps (sp.), Norval Hayes,
Robert Tilton, Benny Hinn, Larry Lee, and on and on
it goes. They have all
headlined their public meetings with healing.

There
are even Catholic Charismatics such as Father John Bertilucci (sp.),
and
Francis McNutt (sp.) who have followed suit seeing that the Charismatic
healing emphasis is a natural extension of Roman Catholic tradition. And
then
in the last phase of this so called "The Third Wave" in which we talked
about
leaders like John Wimber and others, Paul Cane (sp.) and the Kansas
City
Prophets, et al., have made healing a central element in their
repertoire.
The claims and methods of these Faith Healers range frankly from
the
eccentric to the grotesque. A few years ago I received--I receive
everything
in the mail; if they don't send it to me, somebody who wants me to
see it
does. And I have received bottles of healing oil and healing water and
all
kinds of things--but I received a miracle prayer cloth, and in it the
message
said, and I am quoting,

Take this special miracle prayer cloth and put
it under your
pillow and sleep on it tonight. Or you may want to place
it on
your body or on a loved one. Use it as a release point wherever
you hurt. First thing in the morning send it back to me in the
"green" envelope. Do not keep this prayer cloth, return it to
me.
I will take it, pray over it all night. Miracle power will
flow like a
river. God has something better for you, a special
miracle to meet your
needs.

Now, these are the kinds of things that go on all the time. And of
course in
the "green" envelope you not only send the cloth but you send some
"green"
money as well. Green being a good reminder of what color they would
like to
see. Interestingly enough, the sender of the prayer cloth feels he
has
biblical support for doing this. While Paul was in Ephesus, you remember
God
performed extraordinary miracles through him, and according to Acts 19,
it
says, "Handkerchiefs or aprons were carried from his body to the sick and
the
diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them." And as we
have
been seeing in the series, however, Paul and the other apostles had
been
given unique power, and we talked about Apostolic Power as unique
power;
certainly nothing in the New Testament suggests that anybody could send
out
handkerchiefs and they are going to produce miracles.

Kenneth Hagan (sp.)
tells of one Faith Healer he heard of who used a method
that I have never
personally witnessed. Kenneth Hagen (sp.) writes,

He'd always spit on
them, every single one of them. He'd spit
in his hand and rub it on
them. That's the way he ministered.
If there was something wrong with
your head, he'd spit in his
hand and rub it on your forehead. If you
had stomach trouble,
he'd spit in his hand and rub it on your clothes
and on your
stomach. If you had something wrong with your knee, he'd
spit
in his hand and rub it on your knee. And all the people would
get healed.

Other gimmicks, not quite that uncouth, but every bit as
outlandish, also can
be visualized everyday as you watch your television set.
Some ask for "Seed
Faith" money. Oral Roberts often says that if you donate
money to him, that
is in effect a down payment on your own personal healing.
Robert Tilton
regularly devises simple ploys; [he] pledges special healings
and financial
miracles to people who send him money; the larger the gift, the
better the
miracle. "It's in direct proportion to how much money you send,"
he says.
Pat Robertson will peer into the camera and as if he can see into
people's
living rooms describe people who are being healed that very moment.
Benny
Hinn recently healed fellow Faith Healer and Talk Show Host Paul
Crouch
(sp.). He healed him on the live broadcast of the Trinity Network.
After
Hinn had released his anointing to a roomful of people, Crouch step
forward
to testify that he had been miraculously cured of a persistent ringing
in the
ears he had been suffering from for years. And on and on it goes, this
list
of fantastic claims, incredible stories of healings grow at a frantic
pace,
but real evidence of genuine miracles is conspicuously absent.

And
everywhere you go people are asking questions about this. From all sides
comes confusion, questions, contradictions. Now as we study the Scripture,
we
find there are three categories of spiritual gifts, if we want to call
them
that. First would be the category we could say are gifted men like
apostles,
prophets, evangelists, and teaching pastors. These are the men
themselves
given as gifts from Christ to the Church. And then we could say
there are the
permanent edifying gifts and the temporary sign gifts (the
other two
categories). Permanent edifying gifts would be gifts related to
knowledge,
and wisdom, and preaching, and teaching, and exhortation, and
faith, and
discernment, and showing mercy, and giving, and administration,
and helps, and
those things that have an ongoing ministry in the Church.

And then there are
those temporary sign gifts, in other words, divine
enablements given by the
Holy Spirit for a temporary period of time as a sign
for a very special
purpose. These are listed for us in Scripture; they are
miracles, healings,
tongues (or languages), and the interpretation or
translation of those
languages.

Now, we have noted in our study that such sign gifts had a unique
purpose:
very simple--they were to identify the authentic spokesman for God.
First of
all, Jesus did miracles. Jesus cast out demons. He did miracles
that fall
into three categories: Miracles of Physical Healing; Miracles of
Demonic
Deliverance; and Miracles of Natural Phenomena, like walking on water,
or
stilling the sea, feeding the people by multiplying bread and fish. And
those miracles were to demonstrate to people that Jesus was not a mere man,
but that He was the Messiah of God. It should be very clear to everyone who saw Him that this was not a man, because no man could do what He did.

And so
Christ had unique capability to do supernatural things in order to
draw
attention to the fact that He was unique. In fact, you need to remember
that
up until the time of Jesus Christ, there was nobody who could just go
around
healing people. There were some healings in the Old Testament, and
there were
some miracles of nature, and there were some powerful exhibitions
of God's
supernatural work: in creation, and the flood, and many other
supernatural
powerful things; but as far as a miracle, which is a subcategory
of the
supernatural. . .sometimes people say, "Well, you people always say
there are
only three eras of miracles," (and that would be: the Time of
Moses; and then
Elijah and Elisha; and then Christ and the Apostles, and
those are the only
three periods of miracles). And then they will say,
"Well, that's not true,
because creation was miracle, and the flood was a
miracle," and they will go
right on through, "Jacob wrestled with an angel
and that was a miracle, and
God was always doing supernatural things." But
they fail to make the clear
distinction that "miracle" is a technical term:
it is a subcategory for the
supernatural.

God is always acting in a supernatural way, even today. Every
time someone
is saved that is a supernatural work. But "miracle" is a
technical term to
describe an act of God which He does through a human agency,
and they are
very rare. And even when you go back into the Old Testament and
you find
miracles where God acts through a human instrumentation to
authenticate his
messenger and the message, they are rare and nothing like the
healing
ministry of Jesus. No one ever just roamed everywhere, healing
everybody.

So what you have in the case of Jesus [is something] you have never
seen
before. Nothing like this has ever happened before in the history of
the
world. And so this is a very unique thing. And to assume that it never happened before (to know that by Old Testament revelation) and it happened at the time of Christ, uniquely, and then it faded out in the end of the New Testament era, and now for some strange reason it has all come back at the
same level as once it did and we are supposed to have this massive kind of healing going on as it did in the day of Christ, is to demonstrate an imbalanced and an unsound perspective of the purpose of the miracle ministry
of Jesus. It was to authenticate His Messiahship, and it is therefore irreproducible and unrepeatable.

And so Jesus did unique things which were
unique to His own ministry. Now,
it is true that Jesus passed on to the
Apostles power in two of the three
categories. Remember now, He healed
diseases, He had power over demons, and
He did miracles of nature (natural
phenomenon). The first two he gave the
Apostles. They never did any miracles
of nature. But "Peter," you say,
"Walked on water!" Yes, but that was a
miracle Christ was performing and
that occurred only in His presence. They
never did anything like "Feed the
5,000" or "Walk on water" after that, or
"Still a storm" or anything like
that. The only two things they were given
power to do were "cast out demons
and heal the sick (including raising the
dead)."

But in their case, again, these were to point to them as the
messengers of
God. There was no printed New Testament and it was very
essential that among
all of the people who were saying that they spoke for God
somebody be able to
tell who was real, and you could tell because they had
power over demons and
power over disease. And so they were given that ability
to do those things.
And the Apostles could do them, and those closely
associated with the
Apostles could do them.

Go back into Matthew 10:1,
"Having summoned His twelve disciples, He gave
them authority over unclean
spirits, to cast them out," (and that by the way
is the Gift of Miracles:
miracle is "dunamis (Greek)" power, power over the
forces of demons) "and He
gave them the power to heal every kind of disease
and every kind of sickness."
And that was granted to the Twelve. Later on
you find out that that group
was expanded and it included the Seventy.
Remember when He sent the Seventy,
two-by-two and gave them the same power?
So it was a very small group.
"These were the signs," says Paul, of a true
Apostle. "Signs and wonders and
miracles," 2 Corinthians 12:12. They were
limited in scope--only casting out
demons and healing diseases, and they were
limited in terms of who received
them--only the Apostles and the Seventy
commissioned directly by Jesus, those
who worked alongside the Apostles. It
never went beyond that.

It never
became common for anybody and everybody in the Church to do this.
There is no
indication that the evangelists, that the prophets (with a few
exceptions:
Barnabas, Philip, Stephen, and those very early men), never an
indication that
teaching pastors could do this, and certainly no indication
that members of
the Church, the Body of Christ, could do this. These were
unique apostolic
gifts. When you study the epistles of Paul--and Paul is
very clear about the
fact that if you have problems with Satan and demons you
don't find somebody
who can chase them away: you put on your armor. Right?
"We have spiritual
weapons to battle against those forces," he said.

Now if false teachers want
credibility it is very obvious that they can sure
draw a crowd and gain
creditability if they can heal. And so that is always
a kind of ploy that is
used by false teachers--it has been so in history,
whether you are talking
about tribal witch doctors in Shamanism, in Animism,
and in Paganism, or
whether you are talking about Occultic kinds of healings,
or New Age kind of
mind healings, or whether you are talking about the
charlatans and the frauds
who parade themselves even as Christian healers.
It is a great way to draw a
crowd. Why? Because the number one human
anxiety is illness and death.

Since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden disease has been a terrible reality, and for millennia the search for cures to alleviate illness and suffering has consumed mankind. And I will tell you that if I could choose
one gift, if God would give me one gift that I don't have and I could ask Him for it and get it, I would ask Him for the gift of healing. I mean, if it
was
available to me. Can you imagine what you could accomplish with it?
There
are many occasions when I have wished that I could heal. I have stood
in a
room in a hospital watching a precious child die of Leukemia while the
parents
wept. I prayed with a dear friend as inoperable cancer ate at his
insides. I
have stood by helplessly as a young person fought for life in an
intensive
care unit, the result of a motorcycle or an automobile accident. I
have seen
teenagers crushed through those kinds of things. I have watched
their parents
in agony.

I have seen people in the hospital on the edge of death with a
gunshot wound.
I have watched people lie comatose while machines try to keep
their vital
signs alive, at least on a screen, if not in reality. I watched a
close
friend weaken and die after an unsuccessful heart transplant. I have
seen
friends in terrible pain from surgery. I know people who are
permanently
disabled with sickness and injury. I see babies born with heart
breaking
deformities. I have helped people learn to cope with amputations and
other
tragic losses. I have been there when a mother was holding to her arms,
in
the bedroom, a dead baby who had died of "crib death."

If I could wish for
anything, I could certainly wish that I could do
that--heal all those people.
Think how thrilling it would be. Think how
rewarding it would be to have
that gift. Think of what it would be like to
go into a hospital among the
sick and the dying, walk up and down the hall
and touch people and heal them
like Jesus did. Wouldn't it be wonderful to
go into the Cancer Ward and the
Heart Disease Ward and the Aids Ward, and all
the other places and just heal
everybody. And somewhere along the line you
want to ask these Charismatic
healers why they don't assemble all of
themselves and go down to that place
and let's see if they have the power to
heal! Opportunities to heal the sick
are unlimited. And if, as Charismatics
claim, such miracles are "Signs and
Wonders," (listen carefully, they say
this) if they are "Signs and Wonders"
designed to convince unbelievers that
the gospel is true, then wouldn't that
be the way to really convince them?

But strangely, the healers rarely, if
ever, come out of their tents, rarely
ever come out of their buildings, rarely
ever come out of their television
studios. I have never seen them in a
hospital. I have never seen them
walking down a ward with a camera following
them. They always seem to
exercise their gift in an environment in which they
totally control, staged
their way, run according to their schedule. Why don't
we see them moving
out?

Paul Kane (sp.) with whom I met recently,
personally, who is sort of the main
prophet in this new movement, has
prophetically seen this, and I quote one
writing about him,

Kane
describes his vision of an army of children that will
parade down the
streets healing whole hospital wards. He
foresees news broadcasts where
the "Anchors" report no bad news
because everyone is in sports arenas
hearing the gospel. Over a
billion will be saved, the dead will be
raised, limbs will be
restored, those with handicaps will jump from
their wheelchairs
and crutches will be cast aside, and those in the
stadiums will
go for days without food or water and never notice.

Now
I don't know what kind of a world that is or how they are going to make
it
happen but I think it is time to start if they have that ability. Is this happening? No, because those who claim to have the gift of healing and the power of healing, and claim to be able to tap into that power really don't
have it. The gift of healing was a temporary sign gift for the
authenticating
of those who wrote the Scripture and those who preached the
message in that
first century. And once the Scripture was completed and that
authenticity was
established, the gift of healing ceased. It is not anything
new to claim it.
The original claimants were the Roman Catholics.

If you read some of Roman
Catholic history you will be amazed probably. They
boasted of healing people
with the bones of John the Baptist, healing people
with the bones of Peter,
healing people with pieces of the cross (and
somebody said, "There are enough
pieces of the cross around to build a two-
story building!"). They have said
that they, "Have healed people with the
vials of Mary's breast milk." There
is a place that you know about in France
called Lourdes, a Catholic shrine
that has supposedly been the sight of
countless miraculous healings. I have
been to the largest Catholic cathedral
in the Western Hemisphere in Montreal,
San Joseph, where people climb 450
stairs on their knees and they go in and
they kiss a little box that has the
heart of a little friar in it, and all
along the walls and everywhere are
crutches, all over the place. Supposedly
countless tens of thousands have
been healed there. And now in Metajorie
(sp.) in Yugoslavia (you have been
reading about it) more than 50,000,000
people have gone in less than a
decade. Why? They are in search of a miracle
from the virgin Mary who
appeared in 1981 to six little children. If you read
carefully about that it
is bizarre.

It is very much like the occultic kind
of healings you hear about in pagan
parts of the world. You have the oriental
psychic healers who say they can
do bloodless surgery. They way their hands
over afflicted organs and say
incantations and claim people are cured. Witch
Doctors, Shamans, claim to
raise the dead. Occultist use Black Magic and
Lying Wonders to do their
thing. Mary Baker Eddy, [who] you remember founded
Christian Science,
claimed to have healed people through telepathy. And she
had buried with her
in her casket a telephone because she was going to come to
life and call
somebody and tell them to come and get her. You see Satan has
always
captivated people's hearts through the promise of healing. Even today
the
people who promised that "Health, Wealth, Prosperity Gospel" are hooking
people on this tremendous human desire for physical healing and the fear of disease and death.

This goes on and on and on. One pastor on a popular
Charismatic television
show explained that his gift of healing works this way,
quote,

In the morning services the Lord tells me what healings are
available. The Lord will say, "I have got three cancers
available,
I have got one bad back, I have got two headache
healings." I announce
that to the congregation and tell them
that anyone who comes at night,
with faith, can claim those that
are available for that evening.

Now
if you take a closer look at these healings you will find some very
interesting things. The only documented cases that you can find, the only actually documented cases you can find, are cases of people who didn't get healed. The cases of supposed people who do get healed, you can't find any documentation. One of the most telling studies of this was done by a medical doctor by the name of William Nolan who decided that he would look into the healing ministry of really the prototype of all of it, Kathryn Kuhlman (sp.) when she was still going strong before her death. And he wrote a book after studying her, called "Healing, a doctor in search of a miracle." And he went beyond Kathryn Kuhlman, but the major section of interest to me was the
section on Kathryn Kuhlman. And he made the point in his book that Miss Kuhlman did not understand psychogenic disease. She did not understand, that is, disease related to the mind. In simple terms a functional disease might
be a sore arm. An organic disease would be a withered arm or no arm at all. Now Katherine would heal a sore arm but not give somebody one who didn't have one. A psychogenic disease would be thinking your arm was sore and Kathryn could make you think that your arm wasn't sore. Nolan wrote,

Search
the literature as I have and you will find no documented
cures, by
healers, of gall stones, heart disease, cancer, or any
other serious
organic disease. Certainly you will find patients
temporarily relieved
of their upset stomach, their chest pain,
their breathing problems. You
will find healers and believers
who will interpret this interruption of
symptoms as evidence
that the disease is cured. But when you track the
patient down
and find out what happened later you will always find the
cure
to have been purely symptomatic and transient. The underlying
disease remains.

I remember one of A. A. Allen's cures; a man threw away
his crutches and a
horrible result came from it, and he was sued by a family
for the severe
injury that occurred to that man, when under the emotion of the
moment, he
was sort of able to prop himself momentarily and brought great harm
to
himself. When faith healers try to treat serious organic diseases they
are
very often responsible for very serious anguish and unhappiness, and
sometimes even life threatening things. Dr. Nolan had Miss Kuhlman herself send him a list of the cancer victims she had seen cured, and this is what
the
doctor discovered,

I wrote to all the cancer victims on her list and
the only one
who offered cooperation was a man who claimed that he had
been
cured of cancer by Miss Kuhlman. He sent me a complete report
of his case. He had prostatitis cancer which is frequently
responsive to hormone therapy, if it spreads it is also highly
responsive to radiation therapy. This man had had that and he
had
also had extensive treatment with surgery, radiation, and
hormones. He
had also dealt with Kathryn Kuhlman. He chose to
attribute his cure or
remission, as the case may be, to Miss
Kuhlman. But anyone who read his
report, layman or doctor,
would see immediately that it is impossible to
tell which kind
of treatment had actually done most to prolong his life.
If
Miss Kuhlman had to rely on this case to prove the Holy Spirit
cured cancer through her, she would be in very desperate
straits.

Dr. Nolan did further work on 82 cases of Kathryn Kuhlman's healings using names that she herself supplied. His conclusion at the end of the entire investigation was that not one of the so called healings was legitimate--not one!

More recently, a very interesting man by the name of James Randy--Have
you
heard that? He's called the "Amazing Randy" (he gave himself that name).
He
is a professional magician. As a professional magician he has written a
book
in which he examines the claims of "faith healers." Why? Because he
knows
all the gimmicks. He is the man who exposed television evangelist
Peter
Poppoff's (sp.) fakery in 1986, on the "Tonight Show." You remember
that
Peter Poppoff (sp.) was one of the healers that claimed to get "words
of
knowledge." He would stand there and he would say, "Jesus is telling me
this
about you." And the truth was he had a little earphone and his wife
was
giving him all this information because everybody who came to the meeting
had
to fill out a card. And I don't know if you know about how that works
but
healers throughout the years have always had the "preservice" meeting,
when
everybody who wants to be cured and get in the "healing line" fills out
a
very full card. And there is a very simple way, by staggering the cards,
that the guy can be holding up a card to his head and telling you all you
need
to know about yourself, to convince you that this man speaks for God.
In the
case of Peter Poppoff (sp.) he was repeating information his wife was
putting
in his ear, from the "crib sheets" assembled in the "pre-meeting."

Now the
"Amazing Randy" is really not so amazing, he's just a magician. But
he is
openly antagonistic to Christianity. His antagonism is fed, I think, continually by what he finds out. But, nevertheless, he seems to have done
his investigation thoroughly. He asks scores of "faith healers" to supply
him
with direct, examinable evidence of true healings. Quote, he said,

I
have been willing to accept just one case of a miracle cure,
so that I
might say in this book that at least on one occasion a
miracle occurred.
But not one "faith healer" anywhere has given
him a single case of
medically confirmed healing that couldn't
be explained as natural
convalescence, psychosomatic improvement
or outright fakery.

What is
Randy's conclusion? I quote,

Reduced to its basics, "faith healing"
today (as it always has
been) is simply magic! Though the preachers
vehemently deny any
connection with the practice, their activities meet
all the
requirements for the definition; all of the elements are
present
and the intent is identical.

Well, I don't want to just be
ungracious, that's not my intention; but it is
very important that you know
the truth and that you be warned. And if the
Apostle John would even speak
the name of Diotrephes just because he loved to
have the preeminence in the
Church, and that posed a threat, then how
important it is for us to identify
these people who pose an even more severe
threat, as they say they represent
the very voice of God and can prove it by
the fact they can do miracles.

I
had a meeting with a man who is a very bright, a very intelligent, a very academically trained, a very intellectual man who understands the Bible, and
he said to me,

The reason that I am in this movement is because one of
these
prophets stood up in a meeting and looked at me and told me the
name of my mother--my mother's maiden name! And not only that
he
was able to tell me my father's real name, and my father goes
by a
nickname and I knew that he could only know that by direct
revelation.

Now, how utterly gullible can a man be? If I could find a
full-fledged,
bonifide theologian, first-ranked, teaching in one of the most
respected
seminaries in the world, and if I could convince him of my being a
prophet of
God by just finding out the name of his mother and his father's
real name,
that wouldn't be too tough if that's all it took, especially if I
had been
plying that kind of trade for years. It's amazing how gullible
people are.
We hear about these healings, but there is never any evidence.
Not one of
today's self-styled healers has produced irrefutable proof of the
miracles
they claimed to have wrought. Many of them are transparently
fraudulent, and
the healings in many cases aren't healings at all. Many
things can occur by
the power of suggestion, like people falling over
backwards and so forth.
But that can do the opposite of healing you as we
noted a few weeks ago when
we reminded you that one lady fell over in a Benny
Hinn meeting and killed
the lady she fell on. And now he is being sued.

Now
we all know that desperation accompanies disease. Sickness drives
people to
do frantic, extreme things they normally wouldn't do. People who
are clear-
minded and balanced become irrational. Remember, Satan knows this.
That's
why he said in Job 2:4, "Skin for skin, yes, all that a man has will
he give
for his life." The most desperate, heart-breaking cases involve
people who
are incurably organically ill. Others aren't really sick at all.
You know,
if I may be very personal, one of the real joys of our church is
the dear
precious people that come here every Sunday in wheelchairs. I can't
tell you
how many of those people have told me that people have said to them,
"If you
had enough faith, or if you went to another church, other than Grace
Church,
you could get out of that wheelchair."

Somebody asked me recently if we get
a lot of people here coming out of
healing churches? I say, "Yes, we get the
people who go and don't get
healed--no question about it." What a tragic
thing; multitudes go away
shattered, disconsolate, feeling they have either
failed God or God has
failed them. Now, let me say this, people are going to
say, "Well, are you
saying God doesn't heal?" No, I'm not saying that, if God
wants to heal, He
can heal. That's completely, obviously within His power,
and if it is in his
purpose [then] He can heal. He may heal as a result of
prayer. He may heal
through simple processes, through medical assistance, or
he may heal in a way
that we can't explain medically. God may speedup the
recovery mechanism and
restore a person to health in a way that medicine can't
even explain.
Sometimes He may overrule a medical prognosis and allow someone
to recover
from a normally debilitating disease. Healings like that may come,
He may do
them; He may do them in response to prayer, He may do them just
because He
wants to do them. But the gift of healing, and the ability to
heal, and
special anointings for healing, and healings that can be claimed
and
therefore realized, and all the typical "faith healing" technique billed
on
the idea that God wants everybody well all the time, has no Biblical
sanction
whatsoever in the Post-Apostolic era.

Now, backing off a minute, if
we just said, "Let's look at Jesus, and if
anybody is healing today, and if
Jesus' healings are the pattern, and if the
apostles is the pattern, how did
they heal?" And I will simply remind you of
it. We will make a comparison
and see if today it works like that.

1. Jesus healed with a word or a
touch.

That's all it took. He touched, He spoke, they were healed.

2. Jesus healed instantaneously.

Never in all His healings does the Bible
say He healed somebody and they
started getting better. No, there was
never a process, because if there
was a process the point wasn't made.
Right? Because if there was a
process then it could be explained in
another way. It was instantaneous.
"The Centurion's servant was healed"
(I love it), Matthew 8:13, "that
very hour." The woman with the bleeding
problem--it went away
immediately. Jesus healed ten lepers
instantaneously. The crippled man
at the Pool of Bethesda, immediately
became well.

3. Jesus healed totally.

When someone was healed they
were totally and completely healed--the only
kind of healing Jesus ever
did. He didn't partially heal. He healed
totally.

4. He healed
anybody.

You didn't have to have a long line of people filling out cards.
And He
certainly didn't have a whole group of people who came into the
meeting
in wheelchairs and left in wheelchairs (if they had wheelchairs,
or
crutches, or whatever). Luke 4:40 says, "While the Sun was setting,
all
who had any sick with various diseases brought them to Him; and
laying
His hands on everyone of them, He was healing them." It's an
incredible
thing. He healed everybody. He healed everybody
instantaneously. He
healed everybody totally and He healed everybody with
a word. There
wasn't some falderal there was just a word!

5. He
healed organic disease.

He didn't just go around Palestine healing lower
back pain, heart
palpitations, headaches, and other things like that. He
healed the most
obvious organic disease; crippled bent legs, withered
hands, blind eyes,
paralysis.

6. He raised the dead.

He raised the
dead. He came up on a funeral and he raised the dead! You
remember that?
Here comes the funeral procession; the widow is going to
bury her son and
Jesus stops the procession, touches the casket and says,
"Young man,
arise!" and the dead man sat up and began to speak. Now, I
will tell you
something, people who tout the gift of healing today don't
spend a lot of
time in funeral processions; the reason is obvious. And
you need to note,
by the way, that Jesus did virtually all His healings
and raising the dead
in public before vast crowds of people. Why?
Because the gift of healing
was real and it was an authenticating gift.
He used it to confirm the
claim that He was the Son of God in a way that
displayed His power and
compassion.

Then we ask the question, "How did the disciples or apostles
heal? How did
they heal? How did the Twelve, and the Seventy, and others who
worked with
them, like Barnabas, and Philip, and Stephen?" And those are the
only ones;
it didn't just run rampant through everybody in the Church. But
those people
who had that gift; how did they heal? How did they do it? Well,
the same
way; they healed with a word or a touch. We see that in the Book of
Acts:
they healed instantaneously, immediately. Remember the temple gate
with
Peter and John? The man immediately went to his feet, started leaping, walking, and praising God. They healed totally, not partial, total. They healed everybody. In fact, people who got under Peter's shadow got healed! They healed organic disease, not just functional, psychosomatic, symptomatic problems, and the apostles even raised the dead. Now, nobody is exhibiting those six traits in a healing ministry today. So if this is supposed to be
the recapturing of the Apostolic era it is really "out of sync" with that.

And a final note; according to Scripture, those who possess those abilities
to
heal could use their gift at will. That's not true of the contemporary
healers because they don't have that gift. They play games with people's minds--the power of suggestion. They prey upon people, making them believe things that aren't really true and they use deception. Look at the Apostle Paul, in Philippians 2, he mentions that his good friend Epaphroditus was
very
sick. Now, Paul had previously displayed the ability to heal, but he
doesn't
heal Epaphroditus. It's fair to say that, maybe, that gift was
passing out of
operation, but it is sure fair to say that the gift of healing
was never
(listen carefully) intended to keep Christians happy and healthy!
In fact,
you look through the New Testament and find out how many healings
occurred to
believers--absolutely rare--Peter's wife mother, Dorcas. [But
there were]
masses of unbelievers; masses of people who may or may not have
believed
anything about Christ or the Apostles. But it surely wasn't given
to keep
everybody in the Church healthy; and yet today it is being portrayed
as
something that is supposed to be done for believers to keep them healthy,
to
show them that in the atonement is their healing: totally foreign to
Scripture.

Second Timothy 4:20, Paul mentioned he that he left Trophimus sick
at
Miletus; now, why leave a good friend sick? Why did he leave his
Christian
friend sick? Why didn't he heal him? Well, maybe he didn't have
that
ability as the time passed on out of the Apostolic era, but for sure he recognized that healing was not something you run around doing for your Christian friends. It was never intended as a permanent way to keep the
Church healthy; yet today Charismatics teach that God wants every Christian well all the time. If that is true, then why did He let them get sick to
start with? It seems a basic question. God didn't give you an HMO in your salvation, a sort of supernatural HMO that works automatically. God heals
when He wants and when He wishes, but that's up to Him.

Has God promised to
heal everybody who has faith? He doesn't promise that He
will always heal,
but I think the Christian can look to heaven for healing.
Now, I want to turn
the table a little bit as I close in the next couple of
minutes. I think that
we can go to the Lord for healing. I think that we
can pray to Him for
deliverance from disease, and I do believe that there are
times when God
touches us. Sometimes He heals through medicine, sometimes He
heals through
surgery, sometimes He heals through natural process working in
the body. The
body is an amazing self-healing thing. And sometimes He may
just heal
supernaturally because it is His will, and we can look to heaven
for that. We
can cry out to God in our sickness and ask for His healing. I
would suggest
that there are three reasons why we could expect that God might
heal:

1. He
might heal because of His person.

You remember his Old Testament name,
that wonderful name: it's really
Yahweh Rapecca (sp.)--The Lord that
Heals. God heals because of His
person. "I the Lord am your healer," He
told the Israelites. And the
very fact that when Jesus came into the
world He could have done a lot of
different miracles. I mean if He wanted
to convince people about His
Messiahship He could have just flown around,
and He could have said,
"See, I can do this, and who else can do this?"
Or He could have jumped
a building at a single bound, or flown faster
than a speeding bullet, or
He could have put on a "Superman Show" and
everybody would have been in
awe of that. But why did he choose to heal
people? Because He was
demonstrating His compassion, and a compassionate
God has a heart to
heal. And I think that we have experienced that at
times in our life;
God raises up someone from sickness.

2. God heals
because of His promise.

He says, "Whatever we ask in His name, believing
and according to His
will, He will do it." And there must be times when
He will do that.
There is certainly a description in James 5 of a broken,
shattered,
devastated person, who goes in for prayer. The elders gather
around that
individual and while the pain of that situation is spiritual
it has
tremendous physical ramifications, and through prayer that person
is
restored. "The effectual fervent prayer avails much." If in God's
will
He has designed that [then] He will do that because of His
promise.

3. God heals because that is His pattern.

It is true that in
the atonement God bore our diseases, Matthew 8 says
it. Matthew 8 says,
"He Himself took our infirmities, and carried away
our diseases." Now, we
have already discussed 1 Peter 2:24 and I won't
do it again; it doesn't
mean that healing for every sickness is in the
atonement for now! But
healing for every sickness is in the atonement
for someday--isn't it? And
someday He will remove all of those diseases.
Ultimately, eternally we
will be delivered from sickness and infirmity.
And it may just be that He
would chose because of that pattern of
providing a salvation that
ultimately delivers us from bodily infirmity
when we get a glorified body,
that maybe He will give us a taste of
"Glory Divine."

God may heal.
That poses the final question, "Should a Christian go to the
doctor?" And we
come all the way back to Hobart Freeman again. We would
never advocate such
idiocy. You say, "Well, does the Bible say anything
about this?" Sure, read
Isaiah 38. Not now. I knew that you would do that;
your heads just go right
down--that's good. Pavlov's dogs! Just instant
response. That's not
derogatory, by the way, that's trained response. In
Isaiah 38, King Hezekiah
was deathly ill, and you remember the king was
crying, and he was crying
tears, and then he was crying to the Lord, and God
answered his request. And
he says this, "Let them take a cake of figs and
apply it to the boil, that he
may recover." Isn't that good? That's what we
used to call a poultice.
Right? Now, God is saying, "Do the medical thing."
In Matthew 9:12, Jesus
confirmed the same idea when He said this, "It is not
those who are healthy
who need a physician, but those who are sick." And so
the Lord has given us
that instruction also.

Now, in closing, I simply say, I want to reiterate that
I believe that God
can heal. God can do anything He wants to do. I do not
believe the gift of
healing is for today because it was to authenticate the
Biblical message and
messenger. That is in place; it needs no more
authentication then the
authentication given to it by the Spirit of God to the
heart of the reader.
But I do believe that God may in His grace chose to
heal, and we have every
right to pray for that, and at the same time seek the
finest medical help
that we can because to Lord desires us to do that as
well.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for letting us cover all of this
tonight. Our
minds are full of these considerations. Lord, we would not at
all be
ungracious to the many people who are victims of these kinds of things.
And
even Lord, there may be some in these movements who are well meaning and
well
intentioned, who for some reason or other believe that these things
really
are happening.

Lord, we would pray for those who have a true and a
pure intention, and who
are genuinely believing that this is true, that You
would show them the truth
of Your word and help them to see the light. And
then Lord, for those who
are just playing with the hearts and minds and the
wallets of people, that
you would cause them to be struck with the truth of
what they are doing. To
be literally stopped in their tracks by the fear of
God, as they would
misrepresent You.

Lord, we pray for Your Church to be
discerning, clear minded. And then Lord,
even as we close tonight, we would
remember to pray for those in our
congregation who have physical illness,
disability, physical pain and
suffering, some with even the diagnosis of a
fatal disease, that Lord, You
would be gracious to them. We know that You are
going to heal them someday,
and if it would suit Your glorious purpose and
bring honor to the name of
Jesus Christ, we would ask that you heal them now;
that You might receive
glory for that. But if not, that You might give them
the grace to
acknowledge Your perfect will. And help us to know Lord that it
is not
through these kinds of miraculous things that people are going to
believe the
truth. It is through hearing about Jesus Christ and reading the
Scripture
and having it presented to them, not only on the page but through
the work of
the Holy Spirit in their hearts, that they shall come to the
truth. And so
may we faithfully proclaim this word, which can authenticate
itself by the
Holy Spirit to the heart of one who hears.

Thank You again
Father for the clear word that You do care and that there is
a day of healing
coming for us all. We rejoice in anticipation of it, in
Christ's name.
Amen.


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The following message was delivered at Grace Community Church in Panorama
City, California, By John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape,
GC
90-62, titled "Charismatic Chaos" Part 11. 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 11,
to strengthen and encourage the
true Church of Jesus Christ.



Charismatic Chaos - Part 11

"What is True Spirituality?"
by
John
MacArthur


Now we come to the next in our series that we have been studying on
the
Charismatic movement. Tonight we want to talk about the subject, "What
is
True Spirituality?" In Romans 12:2 we find a good starting point for our thinking tonight, and that is this statement by the Apostle Paul, "Do not be conformed to this world; but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Many Charismatics believe that you
can renew your mind and achieve holiness
without any conscious effort. They
would say (some of them), that
sanctification can come to you through an
experience, effortlessly; sometimes
even through subliminal conditioning. My
first exposure to the notion of
subliminal spirituality came a few years ago
when I received a flyer
advertising subliminal neckties. They were fairly
stylish paisley ties;
normal looking at a casual glance. But the ad copy
informed the prospective
buyer,

Hidden in the fabric, almost totally
undetectable to the human
eye are the words "Jesus Saves, Jesus Saves."
The ties are made
from anointed cloth offered by a Charismatic
enterprise [and]
can be yours for a tax deductible love gift of $30.
You could
also buy seven for a tax deductible gift of $200 to help us
feed
the hungry.

We are not sure who the hungry are but I am sure that
would help. Quoting
the ad further,

For years Russian and Communist
scientists have experimented
with subliminal advertising designed to
influence unsuspecting
consumers to their ideology and propaganda. Now,
the Lord has
revealed to His people how to use it for His glory.

A
magnified picture of one of the ties revealed that indeed the words "Jesus Saves, Jesus Saves, Jesus Saves, Jesus Saves," were over and over again woven through the fabric. "When worn," the leaflet promised, "The words 'Jesus Saves' are actually being planted in the subconscious minds of everyone who sees it." In other words, you can do your witnessing without ever having to say a word to anybody. At the time it frankly struck me as a bizarre,
somewhat atypical oddity, but in retrospect I see that it was something of a harbinger of one of the latest fads in the Charismatic movement: this idea of subliminal messaging. Despite having some occult overtones and some New Age involvement, and for all intents and purposes being absolutely useless, it
has
quickly become a popular means of addressing spiritual, emotional, and
health
problems among Charismatics.

I mentioned earlier in our study the subliminal
word therapy tapes offered by
the Raffa Ranch (sp.) as a means of healing
cancer patients. Raffa offers
the subliminal messaging cassette tapes for
$14.95 each, and although the
price seems high, thousands of people
desperately seeking cure for cancer
have evidently been willing to pay the
price. Linda Fell (sp.) explains how
the tapes were born; she says,

In
1983, God healed me of Breast Cancer and called me to raise
up a place
where cancer victims can come and be healed. In
obedience to that call,
our family of four moved to 70 acres of
land in a small rural community
in Northwest Florida, and there
we began construction on the 5,000
square foot Raffa Ranch
lodge. After almost two years we had received
our first cancer
patient and quickly realized that our commission would
not be an
easy one. Over the next two years we learned much, but
continued to see the majority of our guests die. We continually
cried out to God to show us how to get the Word in His precious
people in their crisis situation, and one day we stumbled on to
a
television program describing how the subliminal process was
helping
masses of people use positive affirmation.

The idea came--could the
pure Word of God be used in a similar
fashion? After two months of some
research and much prayer we
knew we had not only a creative idea but a
mandate from God to
produce a tool that would help heal the sick. The
Lord said
that I was to be the voice since He could trust my spirit,
and
use Christian musicians, engineers and studios to create this
tape. In June of '88 "The Word Therapy Healing" tape was
released
and healing reports were immediate; within two weeks a
woman was healed
of cancer.

To those who, by the way, might have fears that subliminal
therapy is of the
Devil, Mrs. Fells writes,

Your cautions are
justified as you approach subliminal tapes; be
assured of this, there is
no need to fear our tapes. They are
holy and have the blessing of the
Lord on them; we use no
hypnosis, no relaxation technique, no New Age,
or deceptive
practices; simply a modern technological method of multi-
track
duplication of the pure Word of God. Your first tape will
convince you as the anointing will destroy the yoke. If the
Apostles were alive today, they would consider "Word Therapy" a
scroll of the 90's.

Several Charismatic ministries offer these
subliminal tapes; one group called
"Renew Ministries" offer continuous play
tapes for $20 (a continuous play
means you don't have to rewind them); they
promise you freedom from doubt,
fear, failure, fear of death, guilt, grief,
depression, temper, pride, lust,
temptation, pornography, procrastination,
unforgiveness, rejection, drugs,
alcohol, smoking, anger, rebellion, anxiety,
panic, judging, homosexuality,
scars from child abuse, and molestation--all
for $19.95!

Other Renew tapes promise to speak into being. They will speak
into being in
your life: prosperity, weight loss, peace, healing, self-esteem,
salvation,
marital harmony, surrender to God, acceptance of God's Love, and a
closer
walk with God. And according to Renew, "Bible-based subliminal
messages hit
controlling spirits where they live and command them to leave in
Jesus' name
and then the void is filled with the Word of God."

Now, you might
be asking, "What are the mechanics of such tapes?" Renew puts
multiple voices
on different tracks, simultaneously chanting a message aimed
at indwelling
demons. For example, one tape designed for people struggling
with
homosexuality includes this message, "I speak to you spirits of
homosexuality,
I curse you and cast you down in the name of Jesus!" That
message is followed
by Scripture verses relating to moral purity. And so it
goes.

Other
companies use variations of that approach. "Life Source," an El Paso
based
ministry, uses an audible track of ocean waves. Inaudible, subliminal background tracks carry Scripture verses. You can hear the waves, you can't hear the verses. Healing evangelist Vicky Jamineson Peterson (sp.) of Tulsa, Oklahoma, plays a reading of the entire King James Version, New Testament, at
a rapid speed on a 60 minute cassette. Imagine, the entire New Testament in
60 minutes! Her brochures promise that positive suggestions are being stored in your belief system at a rate of 100,000 suggestions an hour!

You wrap
this all up and it's all so easy and it's all so effortless; you put
on a tape
and you get 100,000 suggestions for your spiritual life, you get
cured of
every problem you have, you get all the demons chased away, and if
you put it
on your tie the people who see your tie are going to get saved!
This is all
so painless, it's all so easy. Supposedly you can absorb
Scripture without
ever paying attention to it. You can get involved in
spiritual development,
spiritual growth, miracles, and so forth without ever
opening your Bible.
Things like fervent prayer and diligent holiness, and
earnest devotion, and
careful study, and conscientious meditation on the
things of God are rendered
unecessary by this approach. It used to be that
losing weight required self-
control and some discipline. Now, we are told a
continuous play tape can
exercise demons of fat and gluttony for you and
there is absolutely nothing to
it; pay the money and you are delivered. More
important, it used to be that
faith and spiritual understanding and
righteousness were pursued through
disciplined lives of devotion and study
and prayer, and now the proponents of
subliminal therapy promise that
holiness can happen to you even while
asleep!

Subliminal sanctification and the Charismatic movement seem to be
good
partners; they fit together perfectly. From the very beginning
Charismatic
movements, whichever of them, have promised primarily shortcuts to
spiritual
maturity. One of the greatest attractions of the Charismatic
movement has
always been that it offers believers "Power, Understanding, and
Spirituality"
immediately through some kind of experience; and if you just
have the
experience--you've got it without the time, without the pain, without
the
progress, without the struggle that's natural to any growth process.

The question is, "Is this really a shortcut to sanctification? Can a
believer
receive subliminal messages, a divine jolt, or some other kind of
quick,
immediate power boost and be instantly brought out of infancy into
maturity?"
The answer is, "Not according to Scripture." For the typical
Charismatic the
gateway to spirituality is through an experience, and that
experience is
usually defined as the "Baptism of the Spirit with speaking in
Tongues." They
tell us that if you have that experience--you are zapped! It
accurately
describes the way most Charismatics view sanctification; they
think you go
along in your Christian life until you get the Baptism of the
Spirit, speak in
Tongues, you get the "zap" and then you have been elevated
to sanctification.
Some would go so far as to say you've reached the "Second
level of Grace."

There are many Charismatics who will even use the word "zap" and say, "Well, may Jesus zap you!" I had the occasion (it was a strange and bizarre one) to be invited to speak at the "Full Gospel Businessmen's Luncheon." That is a Charismatic group. They were having their Southern California Luncheon and somebody in the group thought that I had had the Gift of Tongues, that somewhere along the line I had gotten the Baptism of the Spirit and had
spoken
in Tongues; and they invited me to be the speaker. They asked me to
speak on
"Speaking in Tongues." This is true! And this was when Jay Leddy
was still
on our church staff and he went with me. I thought they were just
open and
wanted to hear the other side. They thought I had the "Gift." And
so I went
and they had a nice lunch and after lunch I got up, and I launched
into my
Biblical discussion on the reality of what the Bible says about
Tongues. And
I could note there was a severe amount of nervousness and
movement in the
crowd, and I didn't know why because I thought these gracious
people just
wanted to know what the other side believes.

So I continued to "wax
eloquent" about what I believed the Bible was teaching
about the cessation of
the Gift of Tongues, and that it had no part for today
and that it was a false
standard of spirituality and things like that. It
was the only time that I
can remember in my ministry that I was literally,
physically, pulled out of
the pulpit! A man grabbed my arm and pulled me
down in a chair--before I was
finished! And he got up and he said, "We've
got to stop and have prayer for
this brother because he's deceived and
confused" (and then I was really
confused because I thought that I was doing
what they expected me to do). I
will never forget his prayer. He started
out by saying, "We want to pray for
this brother, that sometime soon, in the
middle of the night, the Holy Spirit
will zap him!" That's exactly what he
said and that's what he prayed. So I
have heard that term used.

Charismatic evangelist, Norvall Hayes (sp.)
explained what happened when he
got his zap,

God came on me so strong
and started blessing me so much, I just
fell on my knees and began
crying and weeping and getting
blessed. I found out that God loves me
and He was petting me
because I obeyed the Holy Spirit.

That's somewhat
like the experience of many. Unfortunately, the Charismatic
movement has
divided Christianity into two levels--the Zapped and the
Unzapped. And the
Zapped believe they are at least a bit more spiritual then
the Unzapped. Like
it or not, the effect has been severely schismatic. Some
of the Unzapped
wonder why they don't have the experiences that their
Charismatic friends
describe. Charismatics argue that unless you have the
Baptism of the Holy
Spirit with Tongues, you can't function the way God
really wants you to;
you're missing something. If on the other hand, you do
have the Baptism of
the Spirit with Tongues, you have been elevated to a
level of spirituality and
sanctification.

A good example of this particular kind of viewpoint is
Melvin Hodges' book
called "Spiritual Gifts" and I quote,

While the
full manifestation of a person's gift and ministry
must await the
fullness of the Spirit, there may be a partial
measure of spiritual
ministry and incomplete manifestation of
spiritual gifts or endowments
before the culmination of the
Pentecostal gift is experienced. We must
not lose sight of the
fact that in the New Testament, the Baptism in the
Holy Spirit
(with the Charismatic experience) is considered an essential
and
primary requisite for a fully developed spiritual life and
ministry.

And he is doing deference to people like me and others who have
some kind of
a ministry, because you just can't just flatly deny that people
have a
ministry, but it is a second class ministry: it is a partial measure
of
spiritual ministry, an incomplete manifestation of spiritual gifts and endowments because we have never had the culminating Pentecostal Gift of the Baptism of the Spirit and that "Zap."

Now, are these people correct when
they say this? Is there a gap between
Christians? Are there two levels? Do
the Charismatics have some other level
of Spirituality they have attained?
And are non-Charismatic Christians
somehow mired in the muck of a second-
classed Christianity? We want to
answer that question by considering the
Scripture. I think we need to be
very direct in going to the Word of God so
that we can understand it. A
foundational place to go (and you can turn there
in your Bible, and we are
going to go through these fairly rapidly because I
know these are truths with
which you are familiar) but it is 1 Corinthians 2,
and I want to kind of give
you a little bit of a feeling here for some of the
terminology that is
important to the issue.

1 Corinthians 2, verses 14 and
15,

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of
God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand
them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is
spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by
no
man.

Paul spent most of 1 Corinthians 2 discussing the difference between
the
natural man and the spiritual man, and that's the difference between the unsaved and the saved. The unregenerate is the natural man and the
regenerate
is the spiritual man. The natural man doesn't know God, he is
unsaved,
isolated in his humanness and sin, and headed for hell. He cannot
understand
the things of the Spirit. In contrast the spiritual man knows God
and
understands spiritual things.

Now, that is very basic, and what I want you
to understand is according to
1 Corinthians 2, all Christians are--what?
Spiritual! It's basic; its basic
terminology. That's our position in
Christ. We are alive in the Spirit; we
have the life of God within our souls;
we possess the Holy Spirit (as Romans
8:6-9 clearly indicates). And again in
Romans 8, if we look at that, and I
would just draw you there for a brief
moment (chapter 8 of Romans) to affirm
that same thought. Romans 8:6,

The mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the
Spirit
is life and peace, [same contrast] because the mind set
on the flesh is
hostile toward God, for it does not subject
itself to the law of God,
for it's not even able to do so; and
those who are in the flesh cannot
please God, however you are
not in the flesh but in the Spirit.

And
then he goes on to say the Spirit of God dwells in you. Only two kinds
of
people: those in the flesh and those in the Spirit. Those in the Spirit
are
Spiritual, and those who are natural are also fleshly. So in the purest, truest, simplest sense, there are only two kinds of people: spiritual people, and natural people, who are also carnal people. The first understanding that
I want you to have is that unregenerate people are natural; that is, they
live
according to human nature and they are carnal or "fleshy." They operate
out
of the flesh--the impulse of the flesh. Christian people are spiritual;
the
Holy Spirit dwells within them; their inner man has been made alive; they
are
new creations; they are sensitive to God and alive to spiritual reality.
Now,
that's basic.

Now, to be spiritual simply means to be alive to God, to
possess the Holy
Spirit, and all Christians are spiritual and all non-
believers are carnal and
natural. But let me take it a step further. It is
possible for a spiritual
believer to act in a carnal way. In other words, it
is possible for us to
behave like our old self. We understand that don't we?
We still have the
remaining flesh; that carnal reality is there and it is
very possible that
that carnal reality, that unredeemed human flesh, can still
exercise and
exert its power. And so I want you to look for a moment at
1
Corinthians, chapter 3. Christians are spiritual--they just don't always
act
spiritual. And that is really contrary to our own new nature.

But Paul says
(interesting way he words his words in 1 Corinthians 3:1),

I brethren,
could not speak to you as to spiritual men, I should
have been able to
talk to you as spiritual men, but I couldn't,
and I had to speak to you
as men of flesh. I had to talk to you
like you were still unregenerate,
as if you were just infantile
in Christ.

Obviously, one who is new in
Christ, one who is an infant in Christ is going
to have a greater struggle
with the flesh (right?) then one who is mature in
Christ. And so he says,

You're acting as if you're brand new baby Christians struggling
with the flesh that's continually gaining the victory over you,
and
I can't even talk to you as spiritual because you have
succumbed so
frequently to the flesh.

In verse 2, he says,

I can't even give you
meat (solid food); I have to give you milk
because you can't handle the
meat, (verse 3) "Because you are
still fleshy. For since there is
jealousy and strife among you,
are you not fleshy, ("fleshly" it says
but "fleshy" is a good
way to translate that) and are you not walking
like mere men?"

There's the key! He says, you're walking like natural men;
you're acting
like you used to act. You're spiritual but you are acting like
a natural
man, and that is, you are succumbing to the flesh. He should have
been able
to talk to them as spiritual because they were Christians, but they
weren't
acting spiritual; they were not receiving the Word; there was
unholiness in
their lives; they were behaving carnally; and they had to be
dealt with as if
they were brand new baby Christians who were still being
victimized by the
things that used to be a part of their life.

Now, all
Christians face the same problem. All Christians are spiritual
positionally,
but we are not always spiritually practically, right? We are
alive to God, we
sense God, the Spirit lives in us; the life of Christ has
manifested itself in
us and we are a new creation, but we don't always act
like that because we are
incarcerated in the unredeemed flesh and it rears
its ugly head. I think a
good illustration of this is the Apostle Peter,
borrowing a little bit from a
pre-Church text, but he fits the picture so
well. In Matthew 16 Peter
recognized Christ as the Son of the Living God,
you remember that, and Jesus
immediately responded and said, "Blessed are
you, Simon, and now I am going to
change your name to Peter (which meant
rock). You are going to be a new
person: you are going to be solid like a
rock."

But in John 21, a lot
later, Jesus met Peter on the shore of the Sea of
Galilee and Peter had denied
Christ (you know all about that). But Peter,
even after the resurrection, was
still weak. Before the resurrection he was
in a denial state; after the
resurrection he was in a disobedient state. And
he had gone back to fishing
and the Lord confronts him and calls him to task
and asks him if he loves Him,
and if he'll feed His sheep and goes through
all of that. And when the Lord
talked to him, remember those three times He
said, "Do you love Me?" He
didn't call him Peter; what did He call him?
"Simon! Simon, Simon, Simon!"
Why did He do that? After all he had been
given a new name, "Rock." I'll
tell you why He did it, because he wasn't
acting like a rock; he was acting
like a Simon. He wasn't acting like a
transformed man; he was acting like the
guy he used to be. Whenever he acted
like the guy he used to be Jesus called
him by his old name, which is a
pretty vivid reminder.

What Peter had done
and what all of us do, from time to time, is temporarily
cease from following
closely after Christ. Even after Pentecost Peter
continued to struggle. And
do you realize that if you go back to Galatians,
chapter 2, you read one of
the most devastating accounts. Galatians 2:11-12;
the Apostle Paul had to go
nose-to-nose with Peter and confront him because
he was acting in a carnal
way. And he did that publicly before all those
Jews up there, and confronted
Peter in Antioch, and that whole thing was so
embarrassing to Peter. And it
got written in the Bible; as if Peter didn't
have enough "Bad Press" in the
gospels, he has to show up in the epistles?
And there he is again getting
labeled as this "Guy who can't seem to get his
act together." And he says,
"You are acting in a fleshy way!"

There is some measure of comfort in that
for all of us, to find out that one
of the choicest apostles of all "stumbles
and bumbles" his way around, both
before and after Pentecost. We would like
to relegate him to some other
dispensation and make ourselves feel more
guilty, I guess, for our failures,
but it is fortunate that he failed after
the resurrection and Pentecost just
so that we know that this is reality. So
it is that we do the same thing; we
are new creations and we have been
transformed, but very often we act in a
fleshy way. I think the Apostle Paul
fully understood this (don't you, in
Romans 6-7?), he says, "With my mind the
law of God; with my redeemed nature,
but also with my flesh I serve the law of
sin or the principle of sin
operating in me." And he says, "I can't stand
this struggle because I don't
want to do what I do and I don't do what I want
to do, and I am a wretched
man and how am I going to get out of this mess?"
Spirituality, beloved, is not some permanent state that you enter into the minute you get zapped! You are spiritual positionally, but practically you never enter into a permanent state of spirituality. You don't have some zap and become spiritual. Spirituality is simply receiving the Living Word daily from God and letting it dwell in you richly and then living it out in the fullness of obedience. It is walking by the Spirit, and you will not carry
out the desire of the flesh. It doesn't say, "Have one zap and you are set
for life, of five zaps, or wait for the next zap, or go to the meeting where they zap you." It just says, "Walk in the Spirit and you'll overcome the flesh."

The word "walk" is a very important word in the New Testament. It
means
"moment by moment conduct." It's a choice word: you walk one foot at a
time
and one step at a time. Paul said in Galatians 5:25, "If we live by
the
Spirit," and we do--better to translate, "Since we live by the Spirit,
since
we are spiritual, then let's just take one step at a time in the power
of the
Spirit. Obedient to the Word which dwells in us richly." Walking
speaks
about a measured pace, one step at a time, and that's how true
spirituality
functions--one step at a time, one moment at a time. A basic
mark, just to
kind of help you follow this through a little bit more, a basic
mark of true
spirituality is a deep awareness of sin. You know I hear people
who say they
reach a certain level of being zapped, and now they feel they
reached a
certain level of holiness. That is a dead giveaway that there is no
sense of
an understanding of spirituality.

You show me a truly spiritual
man and I will show you a man that is
overwhelmed, not with his holiness but
with his sinfulness; even though it
may appear to everybody else to be less
than the rest, it is monumental to a
spiritual man! It is not that he now
feels himself to have arrived, it is
that when he is spiritual he knows full
well that he is far from where he
ought to be. The spiritual man is aware of
his sin. In Scripture, those who
most despise their sinfulness were often
those who were the most spiritual.
Paul didn't say, "I have arrived at a very
high level of spirituality." Paul
said, "I am (not was, 1 Timothy 1:15) the
chief sinner!" Peter said, "Depart
from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man"
(Luke 5:8). Isaiah, the godliest man
in his nation, said, "Woe is me! Damn
me! Curse me! Sentence me to
judgment for I am a man with a dirty mouth"
(Isaiah 6:5). The spiritual man
realizes he is in a death struggle with sin,
and Paul said, "Look, (1
Corinthians 15:31) I have to die" How often?
"Daily! This war goes on every
day and I have to slay this guy name Paul,
this fleshly man, who though
spiritual in the inner man is still victimized by
his remaining humanness."

The ultimate objective of the spiritual man is to be
like Christ and nobody
gets there. Paul writes, "Not that I have already
obtained it (in this life,
not until glory)." Paul writes,

Not that I
have already obtained it, or have already have become
perfect, but I
press on in order that I may lay hold of that for
which also I was laid
hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do
not regard myself as having
laid hold of it yet; but one thing I
do: forgetting what lies behind and
reaching forward to what
lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the
prize of the
upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:12-14).

And what was the goal? Christlikeness, and the goal is the prize. The prize is Christlikeness and the goal is Christlikeness. Paul said, "I am not
there;
I haven't attained it; I'm pressing towards it." Many Charismatics,
however,
insist that once you get the Baptism of the Spirit--spirituality is
yours!
But unfortunately it doesn't work that way, so you know what happens?
They
live under a false assumption of their true spiritual condition. When
the
glow of one experience fades they are forced to find another experience,
and
then another experience. And they find that a second work of grace is
not
enough, and a third, and a forth, and a fifth, and so on. And they seem
to
have diminishing returns, and in their effort to seek something more they
often unwittingly abandon the Bible; they unwittingly abandon prayer and the true path of spirituality and they run errantly and wildly down a road of experience that leads to an inevitable increasing carnality.

Charismatic
books and pamphlets and articles are filled with testimonies,
also of how a
certain special experience brought a new degree of
spirituality. The
testimony follow something like this,

When I was baptized by the
Spirit, when I spoke in tongues, then
I began to live a more holy life
(you've heard that). I had
more power, I had more freedom, I had more
joy, I had effective
witness, more love, more fulfillment as a
Christian.

I have heard that many, many times. And although not all
Charismatics are
consistent on this point, most would strongly connect that
with speaking in
tongues as a means of obtaining that spirituality. But
Scripture just
doesn't support that idea. In 1 Corinthians 1:7, Paul
commended the Church
at Corinth and this is what he said, "You are not lacking
in any gift, you
are not lacking in any gift." They had all the gifts: they
had the gifts of
prophecy, knowledge, miracles, healings, tongues,
interpretations of
tongues--they had them all in the Corinthian Church! They
also had every
imaginable spiritual problem. They were spiritual in terms of
their gifts,
they had spiritual gifts. The true Christians were spiritual in
terms of
their position, but their actions were carnal and the Church was in
carnal
chaos. You see spirituality isn't related to your gifts or to even
some
supernatural kind of manifestation through those gifts of miracles,
healings,
tongues, and interpretation.

The Corinthian believers of the
First Century were not unique; Christians
today face similar problems. We are
saved, we have the Holy Spirit, we have
certain spiritual gifts but we still
struggle with the flesh. Your spiritual
gift doesn't change your struggle
with the flesh at all. If tongues is a
spiritual gift then why in the world
would tongues change your spiritual
struggle? It certainly didn't do anything
for the Corinthians; they were
still fleshly, carnal. He said that to them in
chapter 3, as I read a little
bit ago, "You have all the gifts and you are
carnal!" So even having the
gift of tongues has no relationship to your
spirituality. Do you see that?
It doesn't have any relationship to it. No
spiritual gift will guarantee
that you are going to win the struggle and live
on a supernatural spiritual
plain. The only way you can win the spiritual
battle and live according to
your position as a spiritual being, having been
transformed, is to walk in
the Spirit; Galatians 5:16, "Walk in the Spirit and
you will not
fulfill. . ." what? "The lusts of the flesh."

You overcome
the flesh by a daily, step-by-step obedience to the Spirit of
God. And I have
to say that any discerning Charismatic will, and perhaps
some do, admit that
he or she has just as much trouble with the flesh and the
appetites and lusts
and desires of the flesh as anybody else! Enthusiasm,
euphoria, fervor,
excitement, emotion, all of that stuff, all the things
Charismatics tend to
equate with spiritual intensity, have no power to
restrain lusts, no power to
conquer pride, no power to overcome selfishness,
no power to deal with greed;
none at all.

Charismatics, whose only strength is drawn from the last high,
the last
experience, in fact, are more likely to be spiritually weak and
spiritually
immature. Dr. Charles Smith, who is now with the Lord, was the
dean of our
seminary, points out, and I quote,

The doctrines of free
love and spiritual marriages have too
often appeared in association with
tongues. Perversion of the
Biblically teaching relating to sex and
marriage can be seen in
the Mormons and the Shakers. Amy Simple
McPherson (started the
Four Square Church) was not the only tongues
leader to receive a
revelation that her marriage was not "in the Lord"
and that she
should enter another union. One of the serious problems of
the
Pentecostal movement has been the fact that many of its leaders
have fallen into immorality. One well known Pentecostal
preacher,
a woman widowed for three years, professed to be with
child by the Holy
Ghost! Pharham, father of the modern
Pentecostal movement was arrested
for the grossest of
immoralities.

Now what he is pointing out is
something we continue to see played out on the
scene today, right? This
problem of gross immorality, this problem of a
lifestyle totally inconsistent
with spirituality; what you have got here are
people who are getting "zapped"
all the time but on the contrary are not only
not spiritual, but tend to give
manifestations of unspiritual lives, carnal
fleshly lives that are preoccupied
with lust, pride, selfishness, and greed.
To compound the difficulty, when
they stumble they are not even likely to
take the responsibility for it. They
are going to blame demonic power,
rather than examining their theology or
their fleshly will or their Biblical
ignorance.

With all their claims of
new power and a new level of spirituality the
Charismatics have no guarantee
that any of their ecstatic experiences will
put them in any kind of lasting
spiritual condition. Now, please understand
that I am not saying there aren't
people in the Charismatic movement who are
spiritual--there are. There are
people who are in those churches who walk in
the Spirit because they love
Christ truly, they study His word; but the upper
echelon propagation, the
stuff they are telling people and the "party-line"
(if you will) about
spirituality is not legitimate. No matter what kind of
experience they think
they've had, no matter how often they speak in tongues,
no matter how
frequently they get slain in the Spirit (One of their leaders
said, "If you
not slain in the Spirit every week, you're never going to able
to live the
Christian life."), no matter how many times they fall over
backwards they
still face the same challenge given to every Christian--they
have to walk in
the power of the Spirit and obedience to the Word which they
understand; die
to self and sin everyday.

There isn't any shortcut. And I want to submit to
you that begins with the
mind and not the emotion. That begins with an
understanding of truth, an
understanding of Scripture, an understanding of
God, and Christ, and man, and
sin, and the Holy Spirit. It starts with the
mind. Unfortunately there is
so much doctrinal ignorance in the movement that
the people are trying to
function without an understanding of who God is, who
Christ is, what the
Bible teaches about the Spirit and spiritual life. How
many people join that
movement because they have been promised an easy answer
to problems and a
quick and easy path to instant godliness? It's sad.
Sometimes I look at it
and I think it's more giddy than godly. You can turn
on, almost any night,
on Charismatic television and see it.

It's
emphasizing amusement and frivolity, and there is a lot of laughing and
sort
of breathless gushing and time for silliness, bafoonery, and shallow
talk.
You look at the expensive lavish clothing and the whole scene that
goes with
it, the behavior, so many women who seem, to me at least, to
violate most
everything that is taught in 1 Peter 3 and 1 Timothy 2, and I
get embarrassed
because I know the watching world is looking at this and
assuming that this is
Christianity. I mean, this has got to be
Christianity--it says it is! There
is nothing wrong with being happy, I am a
happy person. I mean, I am always
happy. In fact, I've always said that, "I
think God has taken happiness from
a whole lot of people just to give it to
me because I have more than anyone
could imagine."

There is nothing wrong with praising God and laughing and
feeling self-
fulfilled, enjoying your Christian life and enjoying life in
general. But,
it seems to me that many in the Charismatic movement seem so
determined to
pursue the emotional high, the quick thrill, the exciting event,
the
electrifying moment, the exhilarating conference, that they don't know
anything about the serious part of spiritual life. They don't know about the consistent walk with God that deals with the reality of your life, and therefore, they have given up the rich rewards of that walk; and they have settled for a superficial frivolity, sort of a cheap substitute; and gaiety
is
no substitute for godliness.

Real godliness doesn't carry with it some kind
of silly emotional high.
Again I say, that the truly spiritual and truly
godly person pursues
righteousness with a burning sense of conviction, with a
deep awareness of
his own sin. And when the Spirit of God is at work there is
deep joy, but
there is also a sort of corresponding profound sorrow. Walter
Chantery (sp.)
has aptly written and I quote from him,

When the Holy
Spirit comes to sinful men, He initially brings
sorrow, but in
Charismatic circles there is only the boast of
rapid transport to joy
and peace. Any religious experiences
that brings immediate rejoicing
and uninterrupted cheerfulness
are not to be trusted. There is much
more to spirituality than
a lifting of the spirits and the entering into
the exuberant
life and in extending one's succession of thrilling
experiences.
Yet, in many of the popular neo-Pentcostal societies, you
will
look in vain for anything else. No one who has God's spirit can
walk through our world without deep groanings of sorrow and
distress when the stench of immorality feels his nostrils. The
spirit filled man cannot be happy, happy, happy, all the day!
If
the Spirit were to come powerfully today, it would not be to
make men
clap their hands for joy but to make them smite their
breasts in
sorrow.

And Chantrey (sp.) adds, "He's not the jolly spirit--He's the Holy
Spirit!"
Charismatics usually give the impression however, that it is more
jolly than
holy. And I don't want to be ungracious to those in the movement
who are
genuine, and there are many. But the face of Charimaticism that we
see cast
before us projects so much of this. Meanwhile, the self-indulgence
in
immoderation gets louder, gaudier, flashier, and more eccentric. This
trend
I don't see as the fruit of genuine godliness.

One of the most
unfortunate characteristics of this movement is the continual
emphasis also on
the astonishing, and the dramatic, and the sensational, and
the idea that that
has got to be the part of everyday life. The effect
really is to intimidate
anybody who is not getting the same kind of results:
tongues and prophecies
and spiritual pyrotechnics and whatever else is going
on, miraculously filled
fuel tanks and audible voices from God and all that.
There are people--you've
got to know that those churches are filled with
people who don't quite have
that spectacular list of events on their weekly
schedule. They are getting,
frankly, not any spectactular things at all, and
they live through a dry
spell. And you have got to wonder what they think
and how unfulfiling and sad
of heart they find themselves.

The Apostle Paul knew what it was to be
scorned, and he knew what it was to
be intimidated by people who felt they had
attained a higher level than he.
Did you know that? Second Corinthians, you
don't have to turn to it, we
don't have time, but in 2 Corinthians, you read
chapter 9 and to the end, and
Paul talks about the "Super Apostles." Remember
he had poured out 18 months
of his life and love establishing the Corinthian
Church. And when he wrote
back two letters, obviously there were so many
problems. The worst of it,
from his viewpoint was, some guys had risen in the
Church who wanted to
destroy Paul. There whole view was that Paul was not an
honorable man and
that they had reached a higher level of spirituality than he
and they were
the "Super Apostles." By the way, the leader of that group, I
believe, was
the thorn in the flesh, the messenger from Satan that really tore
him up.

They came to town while he was gone, or they rose from the
congregation while
he was gone. They were the new guys. They love to extol
themselves and
elevate themselves; they had the power, they had the
experience, they had the
estacies. They had swept the Corinthian believers
off their feet and it
broke the heart of Paul because people in the Church
were believing them and
following them and turning their back on Paul. And it
all came back to Paul
that his spirituality was in question. He didn't
measure up to the
superstars; he didn't measure up to these new guys. They
were saying that
Paul couldn't play in their league. How did Paul respond?
He didn't rattle
off a list of healings or other miracles he had performed;
instead he
presented his credientials. He didn't say, "Well, I have raised
five and you
know, I've healed a 1,000. I've cast demons out of 1,500; here's
a few
illustrations." Do you know what he said? He said,

I want to
present my credientials: five times I received thirty-
nine lashes.
Three times I had been beaten with rods, once I
had been stoned and
left for dead, three times I have been
shipwrecked, I have spent a night
and a day in the sea. I have
been hungry and sleepless, I have been in
dangers from robbers
and Gentiles and even my own countrymen. I have
been run out of
town more times than I can even remember. I've got a
thorn in
the flesh that the Lord won't even take away and I have asked
Him three times. You know what? Do you want to know my
credientials? I am well content with weakness, insults,
ditresses,
persecutions, difficulties for Christ's sake, for
when I am weak then I
am strong. I have become foolish; you
yourselves compelled me.
Actually, I should have been commended
by you for in no respect was I
inferior to the most immenient
apostles, even though I am a nobody.

Wow, what an amazing list of credentials. It seems to me very doubful that Paul would have made much of a guest on a Charismatic television show.
Instead of being "Slain in the Spirit" he was almost slain in the body over
and over again. He couldn't even remember his visions; he couldn't even get
on to tell them. Second Corinthians 12:1-4 he mentions being caught up to
the
third heaven fourteen years before, but he couldn't rememeber the
details.
Now, how are you going to make a career out of that if you can't
even
remember what happened? Instead of emphasizing his miraculous trip to
the
third heaven and back, he wanted to talk about his weakness, and he
wanted to
talk about his pain! Because all of that weakness and all of that
pain put
all the glory in the place it should be and gave it to God. That's
the kind
of true spirituality that is missing in the movement, and that's the
kind of
true spirituality that doesn't make it on the "Best Seller" chart.

According
to Paul, his life was weak, his life was wretched, his life was
desperate, he
was humble, he was the chief sinner, he was in a constant state
of stress,
tension, fear, even misery from the time he came to Christ until
his head got
cut off. The same is true of the other apostles: Peter, James,
[and] John.
You never find anywhere some kind of catalog of all their
escapades. See,
they learned that true spirituality was walking humbly
before God in the power
of the Holy Spirit; that's where spirituality is.

Well, there is much more to
be said, but I just remind you that perhaps the
best and clearest definition
of true spirituality comes in the simple
statement of Ephesians 5, which says,
"Be not drunk with wine, in which is
excess; but be filled with the Spirit."
I wish we had time to go into all
that that means but allowing the Holy
Spirit to control your life is the
essential issue; and that comes when you
submit yourselves to the Word of
God. The path to true spirituality is
through the Word, prayer, daily step
by step commitment to the Holy Spirit.
Aesop told about a dog who was crossing a bridge with a bone in his mouth.
He
looked over the edge, saw the reflection in the clear stream. The bone in
the
water looked better than the one in his mouth, so he gave up the reality
for
the reflection.

My great fear is that there are many Christians who with
great zeal and
lacking knowledge are doing the very same thing. A false
standard of
spirituality will not restrain your flesh; witnesses are abundant
to prove
that. The only way to restrain your flesh and gain victory is true spirituality. Again I say, the path is through the Word and prayer to a
daily
walk with the Spirit. Let's bow in prayer.

Father, just touching these
things tonight reminds us that even while we are
endeavoring to understand a
movement that we feel doesn't honor You we don't
want to leave it at that, we
want to bring this into our own hearts and ask
if we are on the path of true
spirituality to the place of true obedience; if
we are walking in the Spirit
so that we don't fulfill the lusts of the flesh.
Since we are spiritual and
the Spirit dwells within us we must walk according
to His will. So Father,
may the Word of Christ dwell in us richly, and may
that Word become the
controlling principle that moves through our mind to our
volition and yields
our body and our mind to the controlling Spirit. May we
know true
spirituality, we who are spiritual, and give no occasion to the
flesh, that we
might live to your glory for Jesus' sake. Amen.

Transcribed by Tony Capoccia
of

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The following message was delivered at Grace Community Church in Panorama
City, California, By John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape,
GC
90-63, titled "Charismatic Chaos" Part 12. 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 12,
to strengthen and encourage the
true Church of Jesus Christ.



Charismatic Chaos - Part 12

"Does
God Promise Health and Wealth?"
(Part 2)
by
John
MacArthur


The subject tonight in our study of the Charismatic Chaos is the
Health,
Wealth, and Prosperity gospel. We can title this message with a
question,
"Does God Promise Health and Wealth?"

When I was in the Soviet
Union a couple of weeks ago they said to me, "We
want you to preach on the
'Health and Wealth' gospel." I was talking to
hundreds of pastors, and Pastor
DuChanchenko (sp.) who heads up the Church
there in the Ukraine said, "I want
you to preach on the 'Health-Wealth'
gospel." I said, "You're not telling me
that that's a problem here?" How
could anybody go to the Soviet Union and
promise people wealth? A whole
nation in poverty! He said, "It's here." He
said,

Recently, outside of Kiev, a man came from America and he
called
the people in the city together, and he said [that] he
represented
Jesus Christ, and he was going to preach. And a great crowd
of
non-Christian people came to hear him, and he promised them that
God wanted them healthy and wealthy! And he said that if they
came
back the next night the power of God would fall and they
would all be
healed! And so they came. A large crowd came and
nobody got healed--
and they spit on the man! They spit on the
man!

The kind of foolish
promises that are being made that cannot be fulfilled
bring a terrible
reproach to the name of Christ.

One of the most unusual legacies of World
War II has been what are known as
the "Cargo Cults of the South Pacific."
Anybody who lives in Australia or
New Zealand knows about them. Many
Aboriginal Island people ranging from
northern Australia to Indonesia were
first exposed to modern civilization
through the allied armed forces during
World War II. The American military,
in particular, often used these remote
islands in the South Pacific as sites
for temporary landing strips and supply
depots. And those of you who
remember the scenario of World War II--
personally I have absolutely no memory
of any of it because I was so small,
but I have read and I know what
occurred--some of you will even remember, and
some of you will remember your
history books and be reminded of the fact that
we were all over the South
Pacific on remote little islands with our landing
strips and our supply
depots so that we could keep our men in the air
particularly. And so when
Americans and other allies came to these little
islands and met these
Aboriginal island people they came bringing cargo. They
flew in there,
created these airstrips so they could fly larger equipment in
there. And
then they brought in huge warehouses full of cargo and they left
as quickly
as they came when the war ended. The tribal people had absolutely
no
opportunity to learn the ways of civilization, but for a brief moment
they
saw high technology up close. Cargo planes would swoop in from the sky,
they
would land, they would unload their payload and then takeoff.

Natives
that lived in the bush all of a sudden saw cigarette lighters that
produced
fire instantly and they believed it to be miraculous. They saw
large machines
come in and push trees down. They went all the way from not
even having a
wheel or a cart to seeing a Jeep, modern weaponry,
refrigerators, radios
(talking boxes), power tools, and many varieties of
food in all kinds of cans
and jars. They were fascinated by all of that and
many of those tribal people
concluded that the white men were gods. When the
war was over and the troops
were gone tribesmen built shrines to the "cargo
gods." Their tabernacles were
perfect replicas of cargo planes, control
towers and airplane hangers. They
made them out of bamboo and woven
material. These structures look remarkably
like the control towers and the
plane hangers and the planes themselves, but
they were really nonfunctional;
all they were was shrines or temples to the
cargo gods.

On some of those remote islands today the cargo cults still
thrive. Some
have personified all Americans in one deity and they call that
deity "Tom
Navy." They pray for holy cargo from every airplane that flies
over. They
venerate religious relics like Zippo lighters, cameras,
eyeglasses, ballpoint
pens, nuts and bolts, and so on. As civilization has
begun to penetrate some
of these cultures their fascination for cargo has not
diminished. In fact,
missionaries that have been sent to these areas where
cargo cults have
flourished receive a warm reception at first because the
cargo cultist view
their arrival as the "Second Coming" of the cargo god. But
they are looking
for cargo--not gospel. And missionaries say they find it
very difficult to
penetrate the materialism that is the essence of the cargo
cults.

In recent years the Charismatic movement has spawned its own variety
of cargo
cult. It is called the "Word-Faith Movement"; known otherwise as the
"Faith
Movement," known as the "Faith Formula," known as the "Word of
Faith,"
"Hyperfaith," "Positive Confession," "Name It and Claim It," "Health,
Wealth,
and Prosperity Teaching," all of those titles. This subdivision of
the
Charismatic movement, listen, is easily as superstitious and materialistic
as
the "Cargo Cults" of the South Pacific. The Leaders of this Word-Faith movement, including Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, Robert
Tilton,
Fred Price, and Charles Capps (sp.), promise each believer financial
prosperity and perfect health; anything less, they argue, is not God's will! And there are many people who "chime" in with this; in fact, if I understand, last week there was a great, great convocation at the church of Fred Price, which espouses this, attended by many, not only Charismatics and Pentecostals but even a leading Presbyterian pastor in our area. They were all there.

The tentacles of this kind of theology has reached out far and wide. They
have sought mainstream acceptance and they have managed to build
relationships
with people, who because of those relationships will not speak
the truth
against them, and so the thing flourishes like a wildfire. And of
course it
appeals to people because it demands nothing but faith; it doesn't
demand
holiness, it doesn't demand devotion or dedication, it only demands
faith and
it promises that if you have enough you'll get rich and
healthy--that's a
popular message.

I suppose that we could say that virtually every false
religion ever spawned
by man worships a god whose function it is to deliver
some kind of "cargo."
That is, human religion invariably invents gods for
utilitarian reasons.
They invent gods that give them what they want. They
invent deities to serve
them rather than the other way around. The Word-Faith
theology has turned
Christianity into a system that is no different from the
lowest human
religions. It is a form of voodoo where God can be coerced,
cajoled,
manipulated, controlled, and exploited for the Christian's own ends.
I received a mailing sent out by one rather extreme Word-Faith teacher named David Eppley (sp.). A brochure was included with a bar of prayer-blessed
soap, quote,

We are going to wash away all bad luck, sickness,
misfortunes,
and evil! Yes, even that evil person you want out of
your
life. Jesus helped a man wash blindness from his eyes; I want
to help you concerning hexes, vexes, home problems, love,
happiness, and joy. (the brochure said).

Inside the brochure were
testimonies from people who had been blessed by that
ministry. "Door opens to
new job!" said one. "An $80,000 dream comes true!"
said another. "Couldn't
use my hand for twelve years!" said another. Also
inside was a personal
letter from the pastor closing with a full page of
instructions on how to use
the soap. If you used it right it would bring you
healing and money,

Now, after you wash the poverty from your hands, take out the
largest bill or check you have. That $100, $50, or $20 bill,
hold
it in your clean hands and say, "In Jesus' name I dedicate
this gift to
God's work and expect a miracle return of money."

And of course, your
largest bill or check must be sent to David Eppley (sp.).
The last paragraph
said,

Through this gift of discernment, I see someone sending a $25
offering and God is showing me a large check coming to them in
the
next short while I mean "large;" it looks like over $1,000!
I know this
sounds strange but you know me well enough to know
that I have to obey
God when He speaks. I'll be here waiting
for your answer.

Frankly,
that sounds more like Black Magic. Certainly a more outrageous
example than
most, but still it reflects a style that is typical of nearly
all Word-Faith
ministries. If it was just plain hucksterism that would be
bad enough. I
guess I could tell you honestly, I could take Reverend Ike. I
could take
Reverend Ike because . . . (I don't know if you know who he is, but
if you
don't, don't worry about him)--but, I can take Reverend Ike because
he uses
the same gimmick, but he doesn't make it Christian! What corrupts so devastatingly is to tie this kind of con game into Christ!

Word-Faith teachers
have corrupted the heart of New Testament Christianity.
They have moved the
believers' focus off sound doctrine, worship, service,
sacrifice, and
ministry; and they have shifted it instead to promised
physical, financial,
and material blessings. Those blessings are the cargo
that God is supposed to
deliver to those who know and follow the Word-Faith
formula.

Word-Faith
writings . . . and there are myriad of these things, you can't even
keep up
with them. I got a new one this week that somebody sent me to try to
help me
to see the truth. It's a thick book and it is all about all of these
Word-
Faith teachers. It has all their pictures on the front. There is
almost no
end to the proliferation of literature (many trees are dying in
this operation
to be used for pulp and paper). Word-Faith articles carry
titles like, "How
to Write Your Own Ticket with God," "Godliness is
Profitable," "The Laws of
Prosperity," "God's Creative Power Will Work for
You," "Releasing the Ability
of God Through Prayer," "God's Formula for
Success and Prosperity," "God's
Master Key to Prosperity," "Living in Divine
Prosperity," and so it goes.

In
Word-Faith religion the believer uses God, whereas, the truth of Biblical Christianity is--God uses the believer! Word-Faith theology sees the Holy Spirit as a Power to be put to use for whatever the believer wants. The
Bible
teaches, however, that the Holy Spirit is a person who enables the
believer to
do whatever God wants. It is absolutely the opposite of
Scripture. Many
Word-Faith teachers claim that Jesus was "Born Again" so
that we might become
"little gods." Scripture, however, teaches that Jesus
is God and it is we who
must be born again.

Frankly, I have little or no tolerance for these
deceptions, these corruptions
of Scriptures and false claims of the Word faith
movement. I have absolutely
no constraints on me to speak to this issue
because I believe that I am
literally bound by my obligation as one called to
minister the truth of God
to so speak, because this defies everything I
understand to be true about
Scripture.

The movement [Word-Faith] closely
resembles some of the destructive greed
sects that ravaged the early church.
Paul and other apostles were not
accommodating to or conciliatory with the
false teachers who propagated ideas
like that in their day. They identified
them as dangerous false teachers and
urged Christians to avoid them. Paul
warned Timothy, for example, about "Men
of depraved mind and deprived of the
truth, who suppose that godliness is a
means of gain." This isn't anything
new. Paul was dealing with those who
thought godliness was a ticket for
money. Paul further said to Timothy,

But those who want to get rich
fall into temptation and a snare
and many foolish and harmful desires
which plunge men into ruin
and destruction. For the love of money is a
root of all sorts
of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away
from the
faith, and pierced themselves with many a pang. But flee
from
these things. [1 Tim 6:9-11, NASB].

These cults are generated,
know this, out of a love for money! They develop
a religion to accommodate
their lusts. Jude wrote of the greed mongers of
his day,

Woe to them!
For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay
they have rushed
headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished
in the rebellion of
Korah. These men are those who are hidden
reefs in your love-feasts
when they feast with you without fear,
caring for themselves; clouds
without water, carried along by
winds; autumn trees without fruit,
doubly dead, uprooted; wild
waves of the sea, casting up their own shame
like foam;
wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been
reserved
forever . . . They are grumblers, finding fault, following
after
their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for
the sake of gaining an advantage. [Jude 11-13, 16 NASB].

There is nothing
that I could say that would be as strong as that, and that
is out of God's
Word. Peter wrote,

But false prophets also arose among the people,
just as there
will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly
introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who
bought
them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. And
many will follow
their sensuality, and because of them the way
of the truth will be
maligned; and in their greed they will
exploit you with false words. [2
Pet 2:1-3, NASB].

Peter went on to say,

Their judgment from long ago
is not idle, and their destruction
is not asleep . . . For speaking out
arrogant words of vanity
they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality,
[that is, they
entice you by the things you lust for], and they entice
those
who barely escape from the ones who live in error, promising
them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for
by
what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. [2 Pet 2:3,
18-19,
NASB].

You show me a person who preaches the "Money Gospel," the "Money
Message,"
the "Wealth Message," I'll show you a person who has been corrupted
by the
love of money; that's what Peter is saying. Paul said covetousness
is
idolatry and Paul forbade the Ephesians to be partakers with anyone who
brought either a message of immorality or a message of covetousness (Eph. 5:5-7).

Now the question is, "How closely do modern Word-Faith teachers
resemble the
greedy false teachers that the apostles described? Is it fair to
write the
movement off as heretical? As sub-Christian?" Well, I want us to
look at
that, and let's find out. In some ways I hesitate to label the Word-
Faith
movement as a cult only because its boundaries are, as yet, somewhat
hazy.
Many sincere Christians hover around the periphery of the Word-Faith
teaching. It isn't a sort of a bordered, identifiable cult. It is somewhat amorphous and it floats in an almost undefined way and bumps in and out of
all
kinds of groups of Christians. And so while on the one hand we can't say
that
everybody that it touches is cultic, all of the elements within it are
cultic:

It has a distorted Christology that is a warped view of
Christ.

It has a distorted view of man, an exulted view of man.

It has a theology built on human works.

It has a process of
sanctification that justifies greed.

It has a belief that new
revelation from within the group is unlocking
secrets that have been
hidden from the Church for years.

It believes that extrabiblical human
writings are inspired and
authoritative.

It has an exclusivity
that compels its adherents to shun any and every
criticism of the
movement. In fact, as you know, Benny Hinn said if
anybody criticizes
him he wants, "to get a Holy Ghost machine gun and
blow their head
off!"

Without some exacting corrections in the movement's doctrinal
foundations it
will become a clearly identifiable cult, if it is not already
so. It
certainly is the closest thing on earth to the greed cults of the
New
Testament era which the apostles bluntly labeled heresy. Now, I know that
is
a serious verdict, but I think there is ample evidence to bear it out.
At
almost every turn the Word-Faith movement has tainted, twisted, garbled, misunderstood, corrupted, or obliterated the crucial doctrines of Christian faith. Let me help you with that by looking at some of them.

First of all,
The Word-Faith movement has the wrong god! It has the wrong
god. I believe
that it is fair to say that the god of the Word-Faith
movement is not the God
of the Bible. Word-Faith teaching, in effect, listen
to this, sets the
individual believer (are you ready for this?) above God,
and turns God into
Santa Claus, or a genie, or a valet who is there to do
whatever the Christian
tells Him. See, these Word-Faith teachers are their
own supreme authority.
Kenneth Hagin, who is patriarchal in this movement,
wrote this booklet
called, "How To Write Your Own Ticket With God." He tells
about seeing a
vision of Jesus and he says to Him,

Dear Lord, I have two sermons I
preach concerning the woman who
touched your clothes and was healed when
you were on earth. I
received both of these sermons by inspiration.

I am quoting him. Later on he quotes what Jesus told him in reply, Jesus
said,

You are correct, My Spirit, the Holy Spirit, endeavored to get
another sermon into your spirit but you failed to pick it up.
While I am here I will do what you ask, I will give you that
sermon
outline. Now, get your pencil and paper and write it
down.

That's what
Jesus said to him, he says. Hagin claims to have received
numerous visions as
well as eight personal visitations from Jesus. Hagin has
written, "The Lord
Himself taught me about prosperity. I never read about it
in a book; I got it
directly from heaven." That claim is a lie: outright,
I'll show you why a
little later. You see they believe or they want every
body else to believe
that God is giving this information to them. Do you
understand beloved that
if you do not have a closed Canon, and if Scripture
did not end with the Book
of Revelation, if you believe that God is still
giving revelation--there is no
way to stop the flood.

Everybody is claiming God speaks to them.
Fortunately, for the Word-Faith
people, God is telling them exactly what they
want Him to say. They have
created God in the image that they want Him to be.
For example, they have no
concept of God as sovereign. Scripture says in
Psalm 103:19, "The Lord has
established His throne in the heavens; and His
sovereignty rules over all."
What that simply means is, God's in charge of
everybody and everything. God
is the blest and only sovereign, the King of
Kings and Lord of Lords (1 Tim
6:15), yet in the volumes of Word-Faith
material that I have read, I have
not found one reference to the sovereignty
of God--not one! The reason is
clear: they don't believe He is sovereign.

Jesus, according to Word-Faith teaching, has no authority on earth: it is all delegated to the Church. Kenneth Hagin says this in his book entitled, "The Authority of the Believer," which, by the way, has long sections which were taken verbatim from other books written by other people: and he says that he got them from God; it is just not true. But he says that Jesus has no authority, He delegated it all to the Church; we are in charge of God and we are in charge of Jesus.

Furthermore, Word-Faith theology teaches that God is
bound by spiritual laws
that govern health and prosperity. God is bound by
some laws; by some
principles. If we say the right words, or if we have the
right faith, God is
forced to respond however we determine. Robert Tilton
claims that God has
already committed to take His part in a covenant
relationship with us. We
can make whatever commitment or promise to Him we
want, quote, says Tilton,

Then we can tell God, on the authority of His
Word, what we
would like Him to do. That's right, you can actually tell
God
what you would like His part in the covenant to be.

In the Word-
Faith system God is not Lord of all: He can't work unless we
release Him to
work; He is dependent on human instruments; He is dependent on
human faith;
and above all, He has to act in response to human words to get
His work done.
Charles Capps (sp.) has written, "It is in your power to
release the ability
of God." In other words, "God is Stuck--until we speak
His orders!" On the
other hand, according to Charles Capps (sp.) "Fear
activates the devil." If
you succumb to fear, even doubting a little, he
says,

You've moved God
out of it. You have stopped God's ability
immediately. Maybe it was
just about to come into
manifestation, but now you have established
Satan's word in the
earth, "That it is not getting any better, it is
getting worse."
You have established his word.

What he is saying is,
"If you have fear, you release the devil to work; if
you have faith, you
release God to work. So if you are afraid of Satan, you
have bottled God and
set Satan loose," (My, you are a powerful person!).
According to Charles
Capps, in his book, "The Tongue--A Creative Force," God
has turned over His
sovereignty, including (listen to this) His creative
authority, to people.
Capps has written,

In August of 1973 the Word of the Lord came unto me
saying,
[Just that is frightening. This is the Lord speaking to
Charles
Capps] "If men would believe me, long prayers are not
necessary.
Just speaking the Word will bring you what you desire. My
creative power is given to man in word form. I have ceased, for
a
time, from My work and have given man the book of My creative
power.
For it to be effective man must speak it in faith Jesus
spoke it when
He was on earth and as it worked then, so it shall
work now, but it must
be spoken by the body. Man must rise up
and have dominion over the
power of evil by My words. It is my
greatest desire that My people
create a better life by the
spoken word, for My word has not lost its
power just because it
has been spoken once. It is still equally as
powerful today as
when I said, 'Let there be light,' but for My word to
be
effective, man must speak it; and that creative power will come
forth performing that which is spoken in faith."

Simply saying, in other
words what he is stating is this, "You have the
ability (if you have enough
faith) to create with your words. You want
money? Create it with your faith
filled words. You want healings? Create
it with your faith filled words."
It escapes my how one of these popular
Word-Faith teachers could possibly be
5 Million dollars in debt; can't he
just speak it into existence? And then on
the other hand, why pray at all if
your words have so much creative force?
Why pray? What's there to ask for?
You really come up with a denial that
you need to seek anything from God;
after all, God has given the sovereignty
to you, He's yielded up His creative
power to you; it's not His word anymore,
it was His word the first time, it
is your word now. Speak it into existence,
you don't need Him--you're
sovereign.

Another of their teachers, Norval Hayes
(sp.), says it is better to talk to
your checkbook, talk to your disease, or
talk to whatever predicament you're
in than to turn to God in prayer! I'm
quoting,

You aren't supposed to talk to Jesus about it; you're
supposed
to talk directly to the mountain in Jesus' Name (whatever the
mountain is in your life). Stop talking to Jesus about it; stop
talking to anybody else about it; speak to the mountain itself
in
Jesus' Name. Don't say, "Oh God, help me. Remove this
sickness from
me," say, "Flu, I'm not going to let you come into
my body! Go from me
in the name of Jesus! Nose, I tell you,
stop running! Cough, I tell
you to leave in Jesus' name!" Say,
"Cancer, you can't kill me, I will
never die of cancer in Jesus'
name!" [I'm quoting him further] Do you
have a financial
mountain in your life? Start talking to your money.
Tell your
checkbook to line up with God's word. Talk to your
business.
Command customers to come into your business and spend
their
money there. Talk to the mountain.

You laugh at this,
and I understand that, but there are a lot of people who
don't laugh at this--
they are believing this. Norval Hayes (sp.) has several
publications and one
of them titled "Putting Your Angels To Work" which
indicates that you are not
only sovereign over this world but you are
sovereign over the angelic world as
well. Hayes also teaches that believers
can exercise dominion over the
angels, quote,

Since angels are ministering spirits sent to minister to
and for
Christians [he reasons], we can learn how to put them into
action on our behalf. We believers ought to be keeping those
angelic creatures busy! We ought to have them working for us
all
of the time.

And so I think it is fair to say that Word-Faith theology denies
the
sovereignty of God, removes the need to pray to God for any relief from
burdens or needs and gives the Christian himself both dominion and creative power. In my judgment it is human pride at its ugliest. Worse, it is
idolatry and the new idol is self, and God is dethroned. To follow this wrong-God concept a little further, the Word-Faith movement teaches that when you become a Christian you become part of a race of little gods. Kenneth Copeland has explicitly stated what many Word-Faith teachers more subtly
imply. This is what Kenneth Copeland writes,

He imparted in you, when
you were born again . . .Peter said it
just as plain, he said, "We are
partakers of the divine nature."
That nature is life eternal in absolute
perfection, and that was
imparted, injected into your spirit-man and you
have that
imparted into you by God just the same as you imparted into
your
child the nature of humanity. That child wasn't born a whale,
he was born a human--isn't that true? Well now, you don't have
a
human do you? You are one. And you don't have a god in
you--you are
one!

Copeland teaches that Adam was created in the god-class; that is, Adam
was a
reproduction of God! Listen to what he says,

He was not
subordinate to God--Adam was walking as a god! What
he said "went,"
what he did "counted"; and when he bowed his
knee to Satan and put Satan
up above him then there wasn't
anything God could do about it because a
"god" had placed Satan
there. Adam, remember, was created in the god-
class, but when
he committed high treason he fell below the god-class.

"On the cross," according to Copeland, "Jesus won the right for believers to
be born again back into the god-class. Adam was created, not subordinate to God, but as a god; he lost it, and in Christ we are taken back to the god- class." In saying that, Copeland believes that Jesus, quote,

Won
healing, He won deliverance, He won financial prosperity,
mental
prosperity, physical prosperity, family prosperity. He
said He would
meet my needs according to His riches in glory by
Christ Jesus, and I am
walking around and saying, "Yes, my needs
are met according to His
riches in glory by Christ Jesus."
Glory to God, I am coveting to the
"need meter"; I am coveting
to the I AM; Hallelujah! And I say this
with all respect so
that it don't upset you too bad, but I say it
anyway; when I read
in the Bible where He says "I AM" I just smile and
say "Yes, I
AM too!"

That is so blasphemous that it ought to make every
true child of God cringe,
yet it is typical of Word-Faith teaching. For any
human being to call
himself the "I AM," "YAHWEH" the eternal saving, sovereign
God, is blasphemy.
In the face of criticism for some of his statements about
the deity of the
believer, Copeland appeared with Paul and Jan Crouch on
Trinity Broadcasting
Network's program "Praise the Lord!" and he was there to
defend his teaching,
and this is the following conversation that ensued,

Paul Crouch said: God doesn't even draw a distinction between
Himself and us.

Kenneth Copeland said: Never, never, you never
can do that in a
covenant relationship.

Paul Crouch: Do you know
what else that has settled then
tonight? This hue and cry and
controversy that has been spawned
by the devil to try and bring
dissension within the Body of
Christ that we are gods--I am a little
god!

Kenneth Copeland: Yes, yes!

Jan Crouch: Absolutely, He gave
us His name.

Kenneth Copeland: The reason we are . . .

Paul
Crouch: I have His name! I am one with Him! I'm in
covenant relations.
I am a little god! Critics be gone!

Kenneth Copeland: You are anything
that He is.

Paul Crouch: Yes!

Paul Crouch, head and "On Air" host of
Trinity Broadcasting Network and
therefore one of the most powerful
influential people in religious
broadcasting today, has reaffirmed repeatedly
his commitment to the "little
gods" doctrine of Word-Faith, quoting him,

That new creation that comes in the new birth, is created in
His
image. It is joined then with Jesus Christ. Is that
correct? And so
in that sense (I saw this many years ago)
whatever that union is that
unites Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
He says, "Father, I want them to be
one with Me, even as You and
I are one in Us," so apparently [that's]
what He does: He opens
up that union of the very Godhead and brings us
into it.

We become part of the Trinity in that view. Other Word-Faith
teachers have
reiterated the heresy. Charles Capps (sp.) writes,

I
have heard people say, "Those who confess God's Word and say
the
promises of God over and over are just trying to act like
God." Yes!
That's exactly what we are trying to do, act as God
would in a similar
situation. What did He do? He spoke the
thing desired.

Or O'Palk
(sp.), another of them, wrote, "Until we comprehend that we are
little gods
and we begin to act like little gods, we cannot manifest the
Kingdom of God."
Robert Tilton also calls the believer, "A god kind of
creature designed to be
as a god in this world. Designed and created by God
to be the god of this
world." Other of their popular preachers, Maurice
Serullo (sp.) had this
televised conversation with Dwight Thompson, you see
him on Channel 40
frequently,

Maurice Serullo (sp.): See when God created us in His image
He
didn't put any strings on us--did He? He didn't make us
puppets.

Dwight Thompson: No, not at all!

Maurice
Serullo: He didn't say, 'Maurice, raise your hand,
raise your, you know,
and then here we are. We have no
absolute, no control over us.

Dwight Thompson: No, no, no!

Maurice Serullo: He made Dwight
Thompson, he made Maurice
Serullo a small miniature god. Of course!
The Bible says that
we are created in the image of God, His likeness.
Where is that
god-likeness? He gave us power. He gave us authority.
He gave
us dominion. He didn't tell us to act like a man, He told us
to
act like a god.

Benny Hinn adds,

The new creation is
created after God in righteousness and true
holiness. The new man is
after God, like God, godlike, complete
in Jesus Christ. The new
creation is just like God. May I say
it like this, "You are a little
god on earth running around."

And then Hinn responded to criticism of such
teaching this way, he said,

Now are you ready for some real revelation
knowledge? Ok, now
watch this! He laid aside His divine form so one
day I would be
clothed on earth with the divine form. Kenneth Hagin has
a
teaching; a lot of people have problems with it, yet it is
absolute truth. Kenneth Copeland has a teaching, many
Christians
have put holes in it, but it is divine truth. Hagin
and Copeland say,
"You are god, you are gods." "Oh, I can't be
God!" Hold it! Let's
bring balance to this teaching. The
balance is being taught by Hagin;
it is those who repeat him
that mess it up. The balance is being taught
by Copeland, who
is my dear friend, but it is those who repeat what he
says that
are messing it up. You see there brother, when Jesus was on
earth, the Bible says that He first disrobed Himself of the
divine
form. He, the limitless God, became a man that we men
may become as He
is.

You'll notice in this that they land on the verses that indicate that we
enter in and participate in some of the things that are true about God. But they take it to the extreme where we become God. We do participate in the
love of God, don't we? And in the righteousness of God, and enjoy the grace
of God, but are not God. Hagin says,

If we ever wake up and realize
who we are we will start doing
the work that we are supposed to do,
because the Church hasn't
realized yet that they are Christs, that's who
they are. They
are Christs.

Now, we are not only God--we are Christ!
Thus, have the Word-Faith teachers
agreed to dispose God and to put us in His
place. From that basic error flow
all the fallacies. Why do they teach that
health and prosperity are every
Christian's divine right? Because, we're
God--we deserve it! Right? If I
am God I deserve prosperity. Why do they
teach that a believer's words have
creative and determinative force? Because
in their system we're God, and God
could speak things into creation, and we're
God so we can speak them into
creation. They have bought Satan's original
lie. The serpent said to the
woman, "You surely shall not die, for God knows
that in the day you eat from
this fruit, your eyes will be opened and you will
be like God." That was a
lie. Man will never be like God. We will be a
glorified man--not God. The
idea that man can be like God, is and always has
been the satanic lie. It
was the very lie . . . listen to this, [that]
brought the devil himself down.
He said, "I will be like God."

Two proof
texts are often used by the Word-Faith teachers to support their
teaching. In
Psalm (you need to listen to this, this is their case here), in
Psalm 82:6 God
says to the rulers of earth, "You are gods; and all of you are
sons of the
Most High." They quote that all of the time, Psalm 82:6, you
might want to
turn to it. And we will close with just a look at the two
texts they use, and
we are going to take it up next week. Psalm 82:6, God
says to the rulers of
earth, "You are 'gods'; and all of you are sons of the
Most High." And so
they say, "See, God says we are gods!"

A simple reading of the Psalm
however, says something very, very, different
than that. If you look at the
Psalm it will reveal to you that those words
were spoken to ungodly rulers who
were on the brink of judgment: ungodly
rulers on the brink of judgment. Look
at verse 7, (they never want to read
verse 7), "Nevertheless, you will die
like men; and fall like any one of the
princes. Arise, O God, judge the
earth." What is this? There is a note of
irony. God looks at these rulers
and they have been rendering unjust
judgments. Back in verse 2 they have been
judging unjustly; they have been
showing partiality to the wicked. They have
been, rather, doing injustice
than justice and He says, "Look, in your own
eyes you think you are gods, but
you are going to die like . . ." what?
"Men." How could you ever rip that
6th verse out of that context and make it
an affirmation that a Christian has
become a god? Far from confirming their
godhood, God is condemning them for
thinking they were gods!

Word-Faith
teachers will immediately turn to their other favorite proof text,
John
10:33-34. Guess what? This is where Jesus quotes Psalm 82:6, so if you understand Psalm 82:6 you don't have a problem understanding John 10. "The Jews answered Him, 'For a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy because you being a man make yourself out to be God.'" And then Jesus
answered them, "Has it not been written in your law, 'I said you are gods.'" Don't fail to notice Jesus' purpose for choosing that verse. It would have been a very familiar one to the Scribes and Pharisees. They would have understood that that verse was an condemnation of wicked rulers, and Jesus is simply echoing the irony of the original Psalm. Walter Martin wrote an excellent comment on this, He said, "Jesus mocks the people as if to say,
'You
all think you are gods yourselves. What's one more god among you?'"
Oh, the
irony. You are going to stone me for claiming to be God, you all are
claiming
the same thing. What's one more god? The sarcasm.

Walter Martin says,
"Irony is used to provoke us, not to inform us. It is
not a basis for
building a theology." Further he says, "It is also pertinent
to an
understanding of John 10 that we remember that Satan is called the
"ruler of
this world" by no less an authority than Jesus Christ, and Paul
reinforces
this by calling him the "god of this age." We can make a god out
of anything:
money, power, status, position, sex, patriotism, family, or as
in Lucifer's
case--an angel. We can be our own god; but to call something
deity or to
worship it, or to treat it as divine is quite another thing.
Then it is being
by nature and in essence deity. Jesus is not calling them
"God" in the true
sense; He is saying that you have made a god out of
yourselves just like the
people in Psalm 82 who felt the blast of God's
judgment. God said to the
rebellious Israelites in Isaiah 29:16, "You turn
things around! Shall the
potter be considered equal with the clay" (Isaiah
29:16). Does the clay think
it is equal to the potter?" According to the
Word-Faith movement, what's the
answer? "Yes, if not superior." They have
the wrong god.

Well, they have
some other things that are wrong and I'll tell you what they
are next Sunday
night, and we will start with the fact that they have the
wrong Jesus.

Father, even as we talk about these things we are thrown almost into
disbelief, not because we are not used to error but we are not used to error being received by people who say they belong to the truth. We are shocked
that so many Christians who would affirm their belief in the truth will identify with the terrible heresies of this movement. We feel like
evangelical Christianity has become absolutely undefinable, it is so
amorphous
that it has no boundaries. It is inexplicable. We almost feel
like we have
to pull out of the whole thing and start all over again. Lord,
so many are
confused, so many led astray. We just pray that somehow Your
truth will reach
them and that they will worship you as the sovereign God and
not turn You into
their valet, but fall on their face in your presence and
plead for the
privilege to suffer if need be for your sake, sickness, poverty,
or death, if
You so will. That like the Apostle Paul they would rejoice to
suffer, they
would be thankful for persecutions, distresses, deprivations, if
it is your
will because you are sovereign.

Father, help us to know that we are at best
men and no more. Men who have
been touched with the transforming grace of
Christ. Men in whom the Holy
Spirit live, but we are men and no more,
redeemed men and as men we must be
humbled before God. We grieve Father, that
You have been so dishonored, so
humiliated that such a terrible reproach has
come on your Holy Name from
those who teach and believe such foolish things.
And we ask that You would
be exalted and bring a halt to this degrading
teaching for the Savior's sake
we ask. Amen.

Transcribed by Tony Capoccia
of

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