Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012

This week we looked at what the Bible said about spiritual gifts and the ending of the apostolic gifts, particularly looking at 1 Corinthians 13, 8-13. That passage often gets referred to in a wedding context, but there's nothing about weddings in chapter 12, chapter 13, chapter 14. It's in the context of dealing with spiritual gifts. So anyway, we looked at that.

Today we'll be looking at the history of Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Movement. I have a personal history. uh... with that and that has to do with uh... my grandparents uh... were were both grandmother and grandfather uh... assembly of god ministers and and from that background my mom was raised in that background and um... at at my father's leadership uh... left that So at any rate, between my grandparents and my uncle, my mom's brother, have some exposure and background to it. And then the church that I was at and was an elder at and part-time on staff during the 90s was taken over by a charismatic group. the pastor, full-time pastor of the church, accommodated that. So, at any rate, that personal background there. Let's take a look.

We'll be going through Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Movement. Last week we had this handout, Spiritual Gifts Table, and we had this sort of summary chart that we had on the ending spiritual gifts, and the only thing that remains is love. That was Paul's focus point. Let's take a minute to pray and then we'll go into the material here.

Lord, we do thank you that as we come here that you have revealed to us, because you love us, what is the nature of these gifts that have been given. Given, in fact, because you love us too. And Lord, we just pray as we go through this that we would see things from a biblical perspective. We thank you that you are the God of history and in charge of all things. And we thank you that all things will, in fact, be summed up in Christ. And we commit our time to you and trust it to you. We pray in Jesus' name.

You have this on page one as the first slide on your handout. And this shows the first few centuries of the Church after the time of the New Testament. We covered the New Testament era last week in the material that we had there. This covers the time right after the New Testament for the first few centuries. And we'll first want to talk about this guy named Montanus. And that shows up in the second slide here.

He was a self-proclaimed prophet. He was an Asia Minor in the area near what is the Seven Cities of the Book of Revelation, the western end of what we now call Turkey. And so he was stationed there. He had two prophetesses, Maximilla and Priscilla. They had deserted their husbands in order to follow him, which ought to be a red flag. That ought to say, hmm, something's wrong here. But nonetheless, that's what they did.

The other thing that is consistent with the charismatic movement and consistent with my grandmother being seen as an Assembly of God pastor, it's a pattern continued into today, is to have women in a pastoral position. We won't go over it today, however, Scripture does not support that. Anyway, that is consistent with the Pentecostal and Charismatic pattern that continues today.

Phrygia is the region of the seven cities, and particularly the eastern part of that, of Revelation chapter 2 and 3. That's the area in which Montanus carried out his supposed prophetic ministry. They spoke in tongues and prophesied. One of their prophecies was that rather than what the Bible said, they said that Christ is going to come back to where they are. there in what's now called Western Turkey. Not Israel. We say compare that to Zechariah 14, 1-21, Acts 1, 1-12. Where is Christ going to return?

Yeah, Mount of Olives. His feet will touch on the Mount of Olives. That will in fact be the last of the campaign of Armageddon. There's actually an eight-stage campaign oftentimes called the Battle of Armageddon, probably better termed the campaign that includes Armageddon, the last of which will be Jesus touching his feet on the Mount of Olives.

And Zechariah 14 talks about Christ, and in fact it says it is God, Christ coming back to the Mount of Olives, that's what it says in Zechariah 14, and that's what it also indicates in Acts chapter 1. Here are the disciples, eleven of them, seeing Jesus ascend, and they're looking up, and angelic beings say to them, you know, just as you've seen Him ascend, He will return. He will come back in a reverse of what He just did, and He will come to this place, the Mount of Olives. He will carry out judgment, we'll be with Him, He will carry out judgment only by the word of His mouth. Now, when has God carried out things by the word of His mouth? It starts in creation, right? God said, let there be light, and there was light. So, this is another thing pointing to Christ's deity. So here's this guy, Montanus.

This was second century, in other words, the century right after the New Testament era. The church leaders called him a heretic, including Polycarp, a direct disciple of John. This chart we have here is sort of an abbreviated form. Those numbers refer to a larger one-page chart that we had in the handout two weeks ago. But what we see there, here's John. He had disciples, and what we have here based on the size of the arrows and the footnotes, we have some who are certainly disciples of John and some who were, in varying degrees of certainty, likely or possibly disciples of John or indirect disciples of John.

Polycarp was one about whom we're pretty certain that he had direct contact with John. Polycarp was one of those who said, this guy Montanus is a heretic. Doing what he is doing and prophesying what he is prophesying is not biblical. Aside from which, having his two main supports being women who had abandoned their husbands to follow him.

That's not so good. Over 1,000 years later, basically 1,500 years later in round numbers, is the next time we have any substantial mention of tongues and other apostolic era gifts. Let me go back a little bit, make a comment. You see we have Augustine and John Chrysostom. they made comments to the effect that that gift of tongues has ceased. It doesn't exist. So now we have a group called the Commissards. This is a group with a lot of French influence. They're called the French Prophets. Many moved to England in the early 1700s.

Essentially, these guys carried out prophetic and tongues-like behaviors, and then they also carried out military behaviors if you didn't agree with them. Really extreme. So this is the next group, roughly 1,500 years after the time of Montanus. So you had a millennia and a half with no significant recorded instance of the expression of tongues and prophecy and things of that sort. Children allegedly spoke in tongues and prophesied future events and women served as prophetesses in this group. They passed their gift through laying on of hands, which is also a fairly common phenomenon in the Pentecostal and Charismatic groups.

And then, in their meetings, they howled like animals and had all manner of disorder. One of the things that has happened, and it's shown up more prominently since about 1980, and we'll talk about it in a bit, is a lot of animal sounds crop up, holy mooing and holy barking. and holy roaring, things like that. If you haven't seen it, it's quite a sight. But other things, we'll talk about in a bit, mock birthing. So you'll have like several ladies laying down going through mock births and coaches coaching them through birthing the church.

So anyway, that's the sort of thing that happened here and has happened more recently among various people in the church. They were branded heretics and run out of France due to the heretical beliefs and bloody attacks on those who did not agree with them. Now, having said that, you know, branded heretics was sometimes done by people who were pretty unbiblical themselves. It was one of those calling the kettle black kind of things. Now, John Wesley, the originator of the Wesleyan and Methodist church groups. Wesley endorsed Montanus, so we have a stamp of approval on Montanus, and his practices and whatnot in his journals.

His Arminian magazine contained reports of spiritual phenomena of all kinds, demonic possession, people who communicated with the dead, ecstatic jumpers of whales. The ecstatic jumpers were guys who would jump up and down and preach and speak different things while they were jumping up and down in ecstasy. And the female sleeping preachers, they would go about as if in a trance and go about preaching while they were in this trance. So various things like that, he recorded that as valid expressions of the Spirit.

Now, how many of you have some kind of Methodist background? Me too, high school years. And what you're finding is you say, well, wait a minute, I didn't see that. And the reality is almost all of the various groups have been through different sorts of changes. And Methodism in recent decades, in recent times, hasn't displayed this kind of thing as a typical thing.

Nonetheless, it was supported by Wesley as at least an allowable thing. And so what happened is different groups broke off from the groups started by the Wesleys that majored in this and yet Methodism itself didn't continue it. And that's something we'll see here in a little bit. Wesley, like Montanus, gave women leadership positions in the church, and that's one thing you will see in the Methodist church, and that is women in leadership. That, however, has also happened in other mainline denominations with women in leadership.

Now, there was a teaching called Wesleyan Perfectionism, and it's in varying degrees brought forth the idea that you have this first work of grace, in other words, you first believe in Christ, and at that point in time you still have both a new nature and an old nature. That's the Wesleyan teaching.

You have an old nature and a new nature at the same time. That new nature is eradicated at the time when you have a second work of grace. So this is faith in Christ. This is faith in the Holy Spirit. This is a point of total surrender. And from there, you no longer have two natures, but you have one nature.

So this second blessing, or some similar kind of terminology, started with Wesley, carried over into Methodism, the Nazarenes, and Holiness churches. Yes? Can that happen at the same time according to him, or is it two separate acts? Theoretically, yes, but typically they would say they're two different phenomena. Typically they'd say they're two different phenomena.

And the other thing is you'll have different terminology among different groups. There are hundreds of different split-offs from the Methodist group. You have the United Methodist Church here in the US. You've got African Methodist Episcopal, which is a real combination. So you've got that. You've got Wesleyan churches, churches that keep that name, the Nazarenes. which is a break off from the Methodists. So you've got a great number of different groups. Some years ago I read about a conference that had 99 different Wesleyan groups meeting together at a conference.

So does that mean that they justify people who may not have been living the one nature life to be unsaved? Well, what happens is because you're saved and then you have the second blessing, they would say, well, it's obvious you're saved, you believe in Christ, you need to have this second blessing experience which is centered not on Christ but on the Holy Spirit. manifested itself in a different way. Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. I guess you'd say they weren't saved, right?

Yeah, well, and that's part of the difficulty. There is not uniformity and absolute uniformity in this teaching, and a lot of times no teaching is really brought forward. But some of the difficulty with this teaching, as well as, like you may have heard of Lordship Salvation, comes out of John MacArthur and churches that follow his lead. What they would say is, well, if you're in some pattern of chronic sinning, then you must not be saved at all. Interesting, they would be on different sets of beliefs, but they end up saying the same thing.

Yeah, you're not saved or maybe closely related to that, you know, you haven't had the second blessing. You just thought you did, right? So, yeah, the idea is that you have perfect love toward God and man and there is spiritual perfection. You have one nature, you don't have a sin nature at that point.

Now, it's not a biblical teaching, but that's the teaching that developed, and from that developed a lot of different branches of the Methodist Church, the Nazarenes, and a lot of holiness churches of a similar background. Now, one of the things you might have noted is if you've had Methodist background or one of these other backgrounds, Vani has said that she grew up Nazarene, so that's one of the groups.

You may or may not have even heard of this. Yeah, you may or may not have even heard of this. So that's one thing. We can talk about the history of it. The reality is that a great many people never heard of this. And I went, during my high school years, to a Methodist church and I never heard this. So you may have significant Methodist background and never even gotten this message. But this is at its root, at its historic root.

Another thing, when we hear shaker, we usually think furniture. But Mother Anne Lee founded the Shaker Cult in America. They practice speaking in other tongues, prophecy, holy laughter, spiritual drunkenness, being slain in the spirit, and communicating with the dead. What's interesting is they're not a Christian group. They're not really a Christian group. They rejected water baptism, salvation by faith in Christ alone, the Word of God as God's final revelation, and the Lord's Table.

As a matter of fact, if anything, Mother Anne Lee was the embodiment of the return of Christ. Maybe. So you have that pattern. There's her gravestone. Oddly enough, she's not resurrected and she's actually dead and there's the evidence. Here is from a Shaker diary to give you an idea. You have this also on page one of your handout.

And the mighty power of God flowed and filled the assembly, particularly the youth and young people who were exercised wonderfully, capital W. Also the native spirits, the souls of Native American Indians, entered many of the young sisters. Some of the inspired psychics saw thousands of them enter. It seems to be awakening and enlightening day for them. They say they have come to receive the love and blessing of the shiny white folks. They have heard the sounding trumpet calling them to receive and be united with mother's children, mother being Mother Ann Lee, right? With mother's children.

We also united with them in every simple gift from the words of the Shakers, Henry Leo Bullduck. Now, you notice that the Shakers, we got a style of furniture from them. There is no Shaker group, right? And that's because they didn't marry, they didn't reproduce, so we have none.

They're a part of American history. Is there any connection to the Amish at all? No. Not a different historical background at all. The Amish still continue and have continued for generations. The traditions of the Shakers meant that you're not going to have the Shakers around, because they basically were a celibate group. They didn't have marriage, offspring, any of that. So anyway, that gives you some kind of indication. There's only minimally some connection to Scripture among the Shakers. Really not a Christian cult group even.

Now, here's another expression. This happened 1801, so very early 1800s. The Shakers came to these meetings and brought their manifestations with them. It was basically called a revival, but in fact it was various expressions, spiritual expressions, that were sort of paranormal, if you will, but not necessarily anything Christian. Even though the Shakers were a non-Christian cult, they were welcome to the meetings. These are spiritual expressions that are allowable, is one way to put it. The Cain Ridge Revival is often viewed as a genuine move of the spirit by charismatics.

One of the ways of expressing this, what would happen in Israel is you would have an early and a later rain, and then a season with less rain, right? And so the Old Testament talks about an early and a latter rain, and that's R-A-I-N, And so a lot of times charismatic and Pentecostal groups will look at the period of church history to date and refer to these manifestations or expressions as an early or latter reign. In fact, some groups will even call themselves latter reign. You know, we're of this group. We're the latter reign.

Okay, Friedrich Schleiermacher, again about two centuries back, a German theologian, theology professor, he claimed that basically religion is an expression of emotions. That's really what religion is. It's just an expression of people's emotions. Of course, that fit in with a lot of the charismatic and Pentecostal expressions. He was influential in the next generation of German and other European theologians. The real substance is not spiritual, the real substance is just emotional. That's really what it is. It's not spiritual, it's emotional. Another one, and you in some way or another may have heard of this guy, Søren Kierkegaard, early 1800s into the middle 1800s. He was of Lutheran background. He laid the foundation for secular and religious existentialism.

And quite possibly the term that you may have heard is the leap of faith. How many have heard that leap of faith term, right? So this leap of faith idea was one that he came up with. The idea that you verify the truth of whatever you believe by experience, and you have to take this ungrounded leap of faith.

Now, question, is that biblical? Does God ask us to take a leap of faith? No. Are we asked to have faith? Yes, we are. But what is our faith in? Is faith just a blind leap? We jump out into the fog and hope somebody catches us? What is the character of the faith that we are called to have? First of all, the faith has a specific object. We have faith in Christ. We have faith in what God has revealed in His Word.

So we have a specific object of faith, not just a blind leap. Not just, I'm going to jump into the fog and hope something or somebody catches me. However, this was almost two centuries back, but this idea has gone into both church context as well as the secular context. Existentialism is essentially this idea, that I verify by experience, I verify by experience something as being true or not true, which of course can also make it very subjective rather than objective.

What do we have in God's Word and in Christ that's objective? How is that different from just a leap of faith? We have things that God has intentionally revealed. He's intentionally revealed, and in fact, if we look at that, it's not a matter of experience, but it's a matter of reading the content and understanding what God intended specifically to reveal to us. And you can read it, and I can read it, and it's not a matter of experience, it's a matter of what God has revealed. Even the Holy Spirit's work in us is a matter of bringing forth to us from the Word that He's inspired, His truth that is objectively knowable.

Yes? So how would you verify the crucifixion of Christ? I mean, I could see how you could possibly verify something like the Holy Spirit. You could say something happened And so that was the Holy Spirit at work, like others or anything else. But the other things revealed in Scripture, I mean, how do they justify or verify that? Okay, let's think about that.

The authors of the New Testament spoke testimony, did they not? So what we're looking at is the testimony of those who saw and heard. The Apostle John writes in 1 John, he says, what we saw, what we heard, what we have heard from Him ourselves, what we have touched upon, there is testimony, first-hand testimony. So John is not writing, this is something, this isn't necessarily some kind of experience where I've had a leap of faith. He says, I was there at the Day of the Cross. I talked with Christ when He arose.

And so what you have there is first-hand testimony, and it's not just of one of them. It's of a number of them who experienced things together. Remember, Jesus came into the room with the eleven disciples, the twelve less Judas, and they all saw Him together. At first, Thomas wasn't there, and then he was, and then he likewise recognized this.

Yeah? So in other words, if you were a Mormon and you believed Joseph Smith was a prophet, then you could believe in his testimony that he actually, after Moroni, finding the golden tablets, right? Yes, there would be a number of differences, however, and that is only Joseph Smith wrote about what he saw supposedly in the golden tablets. The Apostles, several of them wrote of what they saw.

So you have a confluence of testimony rather than just one guy. Joseph Smith had some guys say that they saw this, but they were not sharers in seeing what he saw on the plates. So there's a difference there. Where you have multiple testimonies that may not be identical but are in agreement, that's of more significance and substance than one guy who says, this is what it says. Especially when they've made, oh, close to 4,000 changes in it since then. This verifying truth by experience is something that our culture has been sold on big time, including Christians. We'll talk about that in a bit.

Edward Irving was another one about the same period of time. He was initially a Presbyterian minister. teaching on the restoration of the apostles, prophets, and the supernatural gifts. So this restoration idea was one that impacted Irving over in Britain, and this restoration idea was also one that helped with Joseph Smith establishing something here in the United States.

And also, how many of you have heard of the Church of Christ, the Christian churches? We've got a Church of Christ right up the street here. Church of Christ, Christian churches, Disciples of Christ, Those were all established by the Campbell brothers about the same time, and initially they actually had debates with Joseph Smith.

There was a whole mindset of all these denominations have gone off track, and so we're going to establish the real thing. So you had several different groups saying, we're going to establish the real thing. The reality is, does anybody need to establish the real thing? Who establishes the real thing? God does. Jesus says, I will build my church. And who places people into the body of Christ? It's the Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12, 13.

So the reality is we don't need to establish and never have needed to establish the real thing. What we do here on earth doesn't make any difference. As a matter of fact, trying to establish something has no biblical foundation whatsoever. Is there any biblical basis for any denomination? There is not. Here's Paul, he writes to the church at Corinth, he says, I urge that you say the same thing. He doesn't say, I urge that you establish something new and different. No. So there is no basis for denominations or establishing some restoration.

Nonetheless, that's what Irving tried to do. So this was what he carried out in Britain, Tongues and Prophecy over there. Irving was later excommunicated by the Presbyterian Church for heretical views on the atonement of Christ and other views and practices. So he had his group where he was the head. And basically, how many of you hear of Edward Irving now?

You don't. It's left with him. One of the things you'll find is many of these groups follow after a man or a group of men instead of following Christ. So that's one reason you won't hear of this group. Joseph Smith was another group that does continue to have a following, which by the way, the Mormon Church at Salt Lake City is not the only one. There are more than a half dozen different Mormon splinter groups. There is the Mormon Church, which is the main one in Salt Lake City. Then there's the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Temple Lot, the Bickertonites, the Cutlerites, and a few others.

So he founded Mormonism. He published the first edition of the Book of Mormon in 1830. He said it was the most perfect of any book, which makes me puzzled as to why they would make about 3,900 changes since that time. But nonetheless, the 7th of the LDS 13 Articles of Faith says, we believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, and so forth.

So the Mormons were, in American history, an early Pentecostal charismatic group. They have, as a part of their organization, apostles. The apostles of the LDS Church. Now I have a piece of Mormon currency shown up here. The Mormon Church initially established what has been called America's Islam. Because the Mormon Church initially was very military.

They established their own currency, they established their own military, they established their own government, and they fought against the United States Cavalry. The last splinter group that had a battle against the U.S. Cavalry was during about the World War I era. That was not the main group that's there in Salt Lake City. It was a splinter group that did that.

The minutes of the meeting, January 22nd, 1833, so this is three years after the Book of Mormon was published, records prayer by Joseph Smith, Jr. after prayer of the President, and by the way, where's President in the Bible? It's not there, right? But that's another term that he came up with, spake in an unknown tongue. He was followed by Brother Zebedee Coltrane and he by Brother William Smith. So the speaking in tongues phenomenon was something carried out by the Mormons early on. After this, the gift was poured out in a miraculous manner until all the elders obtained the gift together with several of the members of the church, both male and female.

Another movement that was another splinter group following a man, following a man, in the late 1800s, early 1900s, was Alexander Dowie. Influenced by Irving's teachings from Britain a while earlier, he preached divine healing and the supernatural gifts of the spirit. Dowie bought 6,800 acres, then built Zion, Illinois as a model city of righteousness a little over a century ago. So this is Zion, Illinois, just north of Chicago. And he saw himself as the first restored apostle to the church. And that, by the way, is a recurring phenomenon. Here's the Mormons have their apostles and now he's a restored apostle.

Declared himself to be Elijah the Restorer. What's wrong with calling himself Elijah the Restorer? What group is Elijah from? Old Testament and specifically the nation of Israel, right? And the Church is a separate entity, correct? So one of the things that you'll find frequently, the case is a confusion between the Church and Israel, among a lot of the Charismatic and Pentecostal groups, this being an example.

He believed in Christ's soon return based on his, Dowie's ministry work. That is, based on what I'm doing, Christ will come soon. Yeah, we've got this city and it's great. We've got 6,800 acres. We've established this city of righteousness. Most certainly, things are going to get so good here that Christ has to come back. Another one instrumental during that time is Charles Fox Parham.

He left the Methodist Church due to his rejection of some of its beliefs and obviously the embracing of some of the other beliefs. He started his own Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, taught on the restoration of the gifts, common to what several groups were doing. Agnes Osman was the first person to speak in tongues in his school, January 1st, 1901, New Year's Day.

Now, it didn't turn out so good, however. Later Parham was arrested for sodomy and became a member of the KKK. During that time, He showed his racism by making William Seymour, and we'll see about William Seymour in a bit here, a black man sit in the hallway and not be a part of the all-white class. Okay.

Parham was viewed as the father of American Pentecostalism, being the first to teach that tongues was the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That is the main theme of the mainline older time Pentecostal groups like the Assembly of God and the Four Square Church and groups of that sort is that tongues is the evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Many of those who still follow that old time Pentecostal teaching are disturbed by those who teach the charismatic teaching of today where you might have any of the gifts, or you might have some gift or manifestation not described in Scripture. So the old-line Pentecostal groups would still hold to that you have to have tongues as an evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And without that, you don't have the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Shortly after that, the Azusa Street Revival. Now notice, here I have William Seymour.

See that in the top bullet up there? Here's the black guy that was forced to sit in the hallway and not allowed to be in the all-white class. Now, he shows up several years later, came to California in 1906. On April 6th, the woman began to speak in other tongues.

Seymour and others began to speak in tongues and prophesy. So he took, even though it wasn't allowed in the previous class, he took this down to Southern California and carried it over there in the Azusa Street Revival. He declared this to be a fulfillment of Joel's prophecy and a sign of the soon return of Christ. Thousands began to come to the Azusa mission to get the blessing. You know, you come here and you get the blessing and therefore express it in tongues.

That was the Pentecostal teaching. The meetings were being overrun by spiritualist mediums, hypnotists and other people involved in the occult had nothing to do with Christ or anything biblical. And so that began to take over. What eventually happened then is you had the establishment, after this time, of the mainline Pentecostal denominations, like I mentioned, the Assembly of God and the Four Square Church being a couple of those mainline Pentecostal denominations.

Now, there are three charismatic waves during the last roughly a century. The first wave, starting from this Azusa Street Revival, Pentecostal movement followed by the founding of Pentecostal denominations, Assemblies of God, Foursquare, etc., generally including manifestations described in the New Testament, or at least somewhat similar to those, and tongues being an evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. By the way, what is the real baptism of the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12, 13, places us into the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit places us into the body of Christ. That's the Holy Spirit. That's Holy Spirit baptism.

This manifestation was what they're, of course, looking for as a genuine evidence of you really got the right thing. But it's looked at as a second blessing rather than something that happens when you believe. The second wave occurred around 1960. It originally started with a guy who had no idea that he was going to start a movement. He was actually an Episcopalian priest, and he began doing this tongues thing. That was the origin of the Charismatic movement. Second wave Charismatic.

Pentecostalism moving into non-Pentecostal denominations. And what we have here is the International Catholic Church. What is it? I forget what R stands for. But at any rate, the Roman Catholic Church began to have a movement and group in the 1960s where they had Pentecostal Catholics. As a matter of fact, my dad's sister was a part of that. So Pentecostal Catholics.

You had Chuck Smith started Calvary Chapel. That's another expression of the charismatic movement, jumping away from the Pentecostal teaching where you must have tongues as an evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, the Calvary Temple is not probably Calvary Chapel, but it's a similar kind of idea, and I think what you'll see is a byline under their sign that's talking about apostolic things, one down the street this way. So we've got one down the street this way that subscribes to that, and then we've got the four square church up the street here.

And another group that I mentioned previously, not charismatic, but from the same time period of origin in the 1800s, is the Church of Christ up the street. Experiencing God, that was Henry Blackaby and Claude King. Experiencing God was actually Southern Baptist, but it talked about getting direct revelation from God. that wasn't from the Bible. So that was something that cropped up in the 90s.

So that's part of a second wave charismatic movement. It said, unlike the first wave, that you didn't necessarily have to have tongues. It might be something else. And it might be other things. You might not even have tongues at all, but you might have some other kind of miraculous manifestation.

So that's the second wave charismatic movement. It's still around. In fact, the first wave charismatic movement, the Pentecostal, old line Pentecostal groups, are still around, but many of them have morphed into second and third wave charismatic groups. And the third wave started with John Wimber in 1980, established the Vineyard Churches, Manifestations not described in the New Testament flowing into other denominations and churches.

Holy laughter, holy mooing, holy barking, holy roaring, holy barfing. At the Vineyard Church in Carson City, there was one gal I talked to and she said, you know, she was sitting there ready for the church to get started and there was one guy over there barfing. on the floor in the church. What's going on there? Oh, he's got holy barfing. So that's what he was doing. Mock birthing, holy spirit glue, where you can't get up off the floor.

Drunk in the spirit, all those kinds of things are a phenomenon that are expressed in this third wave Christianity. I have seen all three of these groups. My grandfather and grandmother were pastors in the Assembly of God Church. I've been to second and third wave groups. I've seen all this stuff. I soon got out of there, but I've seen it.

Indicators of charismatic influence. Focus on personal experience and feelings above objective biblical truths. We use scripture to judge our experience, not experience to judge scripture. We don't add our experiences to scripture in order to arrive at truth. Emotional expression is the key indicator of spiritual impact.

I feel blessed, therefore I must be. One of the expressions that's used, and I've had this told to me, this message or this event was anointed. What the Bible talks about as anointed is always something that is already done to the believer. It's a part of your position.

It's not an experience. Acceptance of subjective revelation from God outside of Scripture. had a fellow come from one of these various groups and give me a personal prophecy. This or that, and the other thing is, this is your character and nature and this is what God's going to do in your life. Lack of equipping so that people are not biblically founded. The focus is on the experiences, not what does the Word of God say, we're going to judge everything by that.

Here are inroads of charismatic influence pleading with the Holy Spirit to come, return, descend, fall upon us or anoint us now. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Take not your Holy Spirit from me. And how do you judge whether the Holy Spirit has descended, fallen upon you, is still with you? How do you feel? Do I feel like the Holy Spirit is with me, descended upon me, etc.? ? Repetitive words or melody lines in songs and prayers. Repeating the same thing as a mantra, as in Eastern religions. Musical performance that overpowers the lyrics, often focusing more on human entertainment than on lyrical content.

We're just, you know, here we are, we're going through, you know, this worship time, and boy, the focus is on, you know, what, you know, boy, we've really got this music that grabs us, right? Phrases like, based in prayer, blanketed in prayer, walls of prayer. We start using word pictures as if walls and bathes and all those kinds of things are somehow of substance. It's the prayer that matters. The prayer of a righteous man avails much. Not the word picture that we attach to it. By attaching some physical expression to the word, that doesn't make it more effective or holy. What's the source? One possible source is psychological.

And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as men of flesh, as infants in Christ for you are still fleshly. That's the same group that he spent chapters 12, 13, and 14 of 1 Corinthians getting them straight on the spiritual gifts. You are men of flesh. Now let's straighten out your spiritual gifts problem here.

The consensus of most social scientists is that glossolalia, tongue speaking, takes place when a person is functioning in some type of altered mental state. And in fact, tongue speaking has been done with every major religion, as well as with atheists. It is something that can be expressed as an altered mental state, not as some spiritual gift, at least in our own time.

Fraud, document cases of fraud. One of them happened in the 80s. Peter Popoff was investigated by a couple of fellows. They had a frequency scanner that would find different frequencies. And so here's Peter Popoff saying things and what they found was that his wife was giving him information. through a little microphone with a receiver in his ear, and was giving him information about the various people that were coming in, so that it looked like he was making these miraculous statements about them.

Somebody with this name has got this thing going on, and he had no direct reason to know why those things were going on or that this person was here. So that one, they used the scanning system to detect that and basically it was a conspiracy between he and his wife using a little bit of technology.

Demons. Scriptures do not say that demons are a source of some false charismatic phenomenon. Similar displays of these in Islam, Hinduism, and Mormonism makes one wonder. Some have documented a number of similarities between third wave manifestations and Hindu kundalini manifestations.

We've got a chart here to look at shortly. Kundalini means serpent power, which is a curious name. Serpent power. Hindu kundalini practitioners say a power comes from a god or goddess. And here is a table, you have it on page four of your handout here, of similarities between the kundalini shaker and third wave. charismatic behaviors and phenomenon. All three of them have this holy laughter phenomenon among them. Jerking kind of thing. Animal sounds. We talk about holy mooing, holy barking, you know, that sort of thing. Holy roaring. Trances.

The Kundalini does not have the slain in the spirit phenomenon, but the shaker and the third wave phenomenon do. Drunk in the Spirit is common between all three groups. Now they attribute different sources. The Kundalini being Hindu attributes this behavior to Shiva. The Shakers have the source as God or Father-Mother. Of course, Mother Anne Lee being the leader and significant one.

And then the third wave charismatic group says the Holy Spirit is the source. Laying on of hands is common between all three groups. What we find in scripture, though, is that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Against such things there is no law. Okay, so I go to this Pentecostal meeting at my uncle's church, since I was spending the night with my cousin, and everybody in the whole room is speaking in tongues. or at least what was supposedly called tongues, right? And then this one lady who is particularly influenced by whatever's going on, goes up on the stage and puts her legs in the air, which wouldn't have been so bad except she had a dress on. And it's hard to attribute this to the Holy Spirit. Anyway, one of the experiences I've been through.

1 Thessalonians 5, 6-8, Titus 1.8, etc. These also talk about self-control, controlling oneself being the phenomenon, not a matter of losing control.

Thirdly, in church gathering, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14.40, but all things must be done properly and in an orderly manner. So, what are we to think? The apostles encountered false religions of every stripe. Many of today's spiritual manifestations and false teachings are recreations of ancient ones. The apostles saw a lot of this kind of thing too.

The focus of believers should be not in the direction of phobia. Let's not just get all phobic about it. By the way, what would be the reason to be afraid of these things if you're a believer? Yeah, I mean, in a sense of, boy, I don't want to get caught up in this, but really as a Christian, is there anything to be fearful of? Not really. you know, this isn't biblical, and so I won't participate. I won't be looking to, hey, let me do this too.

Ah, okay. Yeah. What I'm doing, do I encourage you, you know, is there a point for us to meet, you know? Okay. Yeah, that can be a part of seeking it, is, you know, I want to be like these other folks here, and boy, this sure looks spiritual. Yes? What will they do to me if I don't do a thing? Yeah, if I don't go along with it. Yeah. Yeah.

Not just sitting at the hallway, but when they What will they do to you? Hysteria, animosity, phobia, hysteria, animosity, none of those things are things consistent with scripture. As Christians, we don't need to go into some kind of extreme. We simply need to recognize, hey, this is not biblical and deal with it that way, not as out of our own, you know, extreme emotions in response to that. on what is truth so that we don't get swayed off into that. Yeah, that's right. If you think about it, that's a good point. We're going to look at what is true and know what is true so that we don't get pulled off.

My mom, of course, was raised in this environment and she said there were people who couldn't, no matter how much coaching or anything else, they couldn't speak with the gift of tongues, as it was called. And they just felt horrible. They went into depressions because they just couldn't pull it off. And the reality is some people can do it fairly easily, some people can do it with coaching, and some people can't do it.

I talked to Bob Eccle and he felt it was probably a genetic phenomenon. What's that? The important thing about the gift of tongues currently is that it's not a gift. It is not a language. It is not fake. It is fraud. It's something else, right? Whether psychological, fraud, whatever, it's not a spiritual gift in today's context and hasn't been for centuries. Yes?

I was just going to say that even though we're talking about instances of the Holy Spirit not truly manifesting itself. But when you think of the answer to prayer, that is God and the Trinity working in the lives of people that could have a spiritual manifestation. I mean, you pray for somebody. Why would you pray if you didn't think that there was going to be some kind of outcome that would come from God?

It's for real. Let's catch that. Steve? I guess part of make sure you're being grounded in the word. Because all these things can, if you're not grounded, they can have an influence on you. And also, I don't know what your experience is, but I have family members that are wrapped up in some of this stuff. And it's not just in services, but you can sit down at a church dinner, and it's just so much part of the language that constantly sorting through what they're saying because it's just so much a part of their day.

So talking about prayer, one of the things that we saw in Romans chapter 8 is that both the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and Christ intercede for us. So that's one thing to look at. The thing is, is it possible for the Lord to reveal something specifically to us? Yes, it is. However, everything needs to be first and foremost and primarily in the context of God's Word. Because, in fact, we will seek individual guidance on things. Should I move here? Should I take this job? Should I do this or not? So we will be looking at individual guidance on things. But our prayer needs to be looked first and foremost in terms of what does God's Word spell out?

And certainly nothing, unlike Montanus, who said, no, Christ isn't coming to Israel. He's coming to Western Asia Minor. Everything will be consistent with Scripture. We're not going to get revelations to the contrary. We've got people who are ready to press their nose against the door, so we'd better end it here. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you that you have, in fact, revealed what we need to know. Your Word is complete and has been for more than 19 centuries. And we thank you for that. We thank you that you have revealed it because you love us and care for us. We just pray that as a work of the Spirit, we might know and understand what you've revealed to us. We just pray in Jesus' name. Amen.