Evidence for God from Science

MacArthur argued at the Strange Fire Conference held at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, Calif. on Oct. 16-18 that Pentecostal-influenced preachers like Bishop T.D. Jakes and Joel Osteen are advancing a prosperity gospel that is "spirit-centered" when it should be Christ-centered, as well as other controversial remarks.

"If the Charismatic movement was being produced by the Holy Spirit, the glory of Christ would prevail everywhere," said MacArthur in one morning conference session. "It would be Christ-dominated and everyone in the movement would be bowing the knee to the true Christ in belief of the true Gospel."

When prominent theologian John MacArthur set off a heated debate in the Christian community about his unfavorable view of the Charismatic movement during his Strange Fire Conference last week at his church, some might have wondered what exactly is the Charismatic movement?

MacArthur went so far as to accuse the movement of offering God "unacceptable worship" that "blasphemes the Holy Spirit."

Below readers can get a primer on Pentecostals and Charismatics, who are estimated to number up to nearly a billion people who can be classified as being a part of or having been influenced by this movement within the Christian community.

CP asked the Rev. David Housholder to give a list of "Ten Things You May Not Have Known about Pentecostals/Charismatics." Housholder is the founding pastor of Robinwood Church in Southern California, and holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and is a Fulbright Scholar in New Testament and Philosophy at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhems-Universität in Bonn, Germany.
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2. Pentecostalism is quintessentially American. It began (although there were pre-shocks for centuries) in the multi-ethnic Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, Calif. It is arguably our most influential export of any kind.

3. The churches planted by American mainline denominations (Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, UCC, etc) in the global South are overwhelmingly Pentecostal/Charismatic in their piety. For instance, a Lutheran from Ethiopia (Mekane Yesus) would certainly be considered Pentecostal if visiting here in the U.S.

4. Pentecostals/Charismatics are diverse. They run the spectrum range from Oxford/Cambridge blue bloods in the Kensington neighborhood of London to snake handlers in Appalachia. The current Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is a product of the largest congregation in the Church of England, Holy Trinity Brompton, which is one of the most influential charismatic congregations in the world. And not just economically diverse. If you find yourself in a multi-cultural congregation in the U.S.A. on a Sunday morning, the overwhelming probability is that you are sitting in a Pentecostal worship service.

5. Pentecostals are not anti-intellectual. The unofficial "Pentecostal Pope," Jack Hayford of Los Angeles, is a Bible-scholar's Bible scholar. Oral Roberts University, Regent Seminary (Virginia Beach) and Southeastern University (Lakeland, Florida) are some of the key centers of higher learning for the movement.

I respect John MacArthur. I've not experienced his ministry - directly or from radio or print sources - but I know enough to respect his ministry.

Jac3510 wrote:With all that said, MacArthur is the really dangerous one. I do not respect his ministry. He is hardly a scholar, and he is very wrong on a wide variety of issues. He is not a particularly clear thinker and is little more than a theological bully.

I know it isn't fun to have your beliefs smeared by someone, especially someone who is something of a noted speaker. But for what it is worth, I wouldn't worry too much about what this guy has to say. This is just par for the course for him.

PeteSinCA wrote:Calling a Christian leader dangerous is something I do very carefully.

jlay wrote:MacArthur preaches a false Gospel of works. He ought to worry more about the plank in his own eye.

PeteSinCA wrote:There is no "good" time for Christians to be "biting and devouring" one another, but at a time when Christianity is coming under anti-Christian pressure in the US, what MacArthur is doing is particular grieving to me.

How do we expose error without dividing the Body? How do we hold to our convictions while honoring those who differ with us? In the aftermath of the Strange Fire conference, these are questions we cannot ignore.

Paul issued this strong warning to the Galatians: "For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another" (Gal 5:14-15).

Here are five important principles to follow if we want to avoid unnecessary casualties.

1) We really do need each other. ...
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2) Surgeons cut carefully. ...
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3) Don't be hasty to call others false prophets or false teachers. ...
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4) Before we differ with each other we have to understand each other. ...
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5) Major on the majors. ...

This weekend was a weekend of deep spiritual contrasts in Southern California.

Two hours ago, I was out at the end of the Huntington Beach Pier on my surfboard. We were participating in a "paddle out" in memory of Chuck Smith, one of the main leaders of the Jesus movement.
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It is traditional to do paddle outs in memory of surfers who have died, this may have been one of the biggest paddle outs….ever.
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Contrast this with what was going on up on the other side of Los Angeles, at Grace Community in the San Fernando Valley.

A big crowd of serious theologians, overwhelmingly men, met at John MacArthur's church for the "Strange Fire" Conference.

Whereas the Jesus movement looked for ways to include people whom the church was not including (hippies, '68 flower child counter-culture, etc), MacArthur's movement seems bent on figuring out how to exclude a large majority of us Christians from the movement we are already in.

2:8 For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; 2:9 it is not from works, so that no one can boast. 2:10 For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them.

“Strange Fire?” Fundamentalists and the Holy Spirit
October 28, 2013 By Roger E. Olson

“Strange Fire?” Fundamentalists and the Holy Spirit

Just this month fundamentalist-Calvinist pastor John MacArthur, host of the “Grace to You” radio program and author of numerous books (including Strange Fire: The Danger of Offending the Holy Spirit with Counterfeit Worship [2013]) hosted an anti-Pentecostal, anti-charismatic conference in Southern California called “Strange Fire.” You can check it out by simply googling that phrase and visiting the conference web site.

To be sure there are excesses and aberrations among Pentecostals and charismatics. Some of them deserve the label “strange fire.” When I was growing up in the thick of the Pentecostal movement we sometimes talked about “wild fire” in certain Pentecostal churches. We distinguished between that and the true “fire” of the Holy Spirit that enlivened and energized Christians to live holy lives and witness to the lost. Occasionally, in response to people like MacArthur (who has been bashing Pentecostals and charismatics for decades) we said “Better wild fire than no fire at all.” After visiting some so-called Pentecostal churches and charismatic meetings I’m not so sure about that, but I have deep qualms about conferences like MacArthur’s.

MacArthur talks about the danger of offending the Holy Spirit with “counterfeit worship.” I agree that there is that danger. However, I wonder if MacArthur and others (like R. C. Sproul) who spoke at his conference have considered the danger of offending the Holy Spirit by opposing a worldwide renewal movement that, for all its flaws, has brought millions of people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ? And by attributing the Holy Spirit’s gifts to unholy passions and imagination (if not to Satan)?

Frankly, in my considered opinion, cessationism (belief that the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased with the close of the apostolic age and the completion of Scripture) is simply silly. It’s exegesis of its only allegedly supporting biblical passage, 1 Corinthians 13:8-13, is simply tortured. It’s blatant eisegesis.

I can’t help but suspect that there’s more than a bit of God envy going on the fundamentalists’ loud protestations against the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. They doth protest too much and too loudly and on such thin grounds. Every large and widespread religious movement has its extremes and aberrations, including fundamentalism! And yet, to listen to these men (and a few women) you’d think every Pentecostal and charismatic was a religious fraud and/or fanatic worthy of nothing but disdain.

The reason I suspect these fundamentalists of God envy is that their own movement (cessationist) is on the ropes, so to speak, dwindling and fighting for survival, while Pentecostalism and charismatic groups are thriving worldwide. Sociologists of religion inform us that Pentecostalism (in its various forms) is the fastest-growing and largest Christian movement in the world. Protestant Christianity in the Global South is dominated by Pentecostals and charismatics.

One Pentecostal response to the Strange Fire conference has come from the General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God George O. Wood. I am including it here. It is a model of generosity of spirit in the face of backstabbing by fellow conservative Christians. I fear I could not be so kind and gentle. In fact, I would like to issue a warning to the Strange Fire folks that they may be in danger of offending the Holy Spirit themselves. Sounding a warning about excesses and aberrations rampant in some Pentecostal and charismatic quarters is one thing; condemning the whole movement as “counterfeit” is simply verging on sinning against the Holy Spirit.

Here is Wood’s response to Strange Fire:

From the General Superintendent’s Office

Statement Regarding Strange Fire Conference

Recently, Dr. John MacArthur and Grace to You Ministries hosted the Strange Fire Conference at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. Dr. MacArthur believes that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit ceased with the close of the Apostolic Era and that the Pentecostal and charismatic movements are therefore theologically aberrant at a foundational level.

By contrast, Pentecostal and charismatic Christians believe that “the promise [i.e., the gift of the Holy Spirit] is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:39). With this promise comes the evidential sign of speaking in other tongues and power to be witnesses of Jesus Christ “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8, 2:4, cf. Luke 24:49). Consequently, following the Apostle Paul’s teaching, we “eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 14:1).

While there have been isolated aberrations of behavior and doctrine over the past century among those who self-identify as Pentecostal or charismatic, the movement as a whole has proved a vital force in world evangelization—a fulfillment of the promise Jesus made to His disciples in Acts 1:8. On behalf of the 66 million adherents and 360,000+ churches in the World Assemblies of God Fellowship, I thank God that the faith and life of the Acts 2 church are still being believed and experienced today.

The Assemblies of God celebrates 100 years in 2014 and remains committed to the full authority of God’s Word. As a founding member of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Assemblies of God has sought to cooperate in the Great Commission with Christians of like-minded faith, even when they are not Pentecostal and charismatic and we remain committed to that collaboration.

We trust the time will come when Dr. John MacArthur and those who share his perspective will acknowledge the great contribution that Pentecostals and Charismatics are making in the evangelization of individuals without Christ. We pray God’s blessings on their efforts to share His gospel with a lost and dying world. Pentecostals and charismatics are their co-laborers in this effort so we ask that they would similarly pray for God’s blessing on us as we seek to fulfill the Great Commission that God has given us all.

George O. Wood
General Superintendent, The General Council of the Assemblies of God
Chairman, World Assemblies of God Fellowship

Quote below from this blog by Michel Brown who cites Edwards:
http://askdrbrown.org/great-comments-by ... scernment/

During the Great Awakening in the 1740′s, many critics of the revival pointed to the unusual manifestations that were taking place. Jonathan Edwards, the greatest theologian and philosopher of the day, had some wise words for pastors and leaders back then, and they remain wise counsel for us today.

He noted that “those ministers of Christ and overseers of souls, that busy themselves, and are full of concern about the involuntary motions of the fluids and solids of men’s bodies, and from thence full of doubts and suspicions of the cause, when nothing appears but that the state and frame of their minds, and their voluntary behaviour is good, and agreeable to God’s word; I say, such ministers go out of the place that Christ has set them in, and leave their proper business, as much as if they should undertake to tell who are under the influence of the Spirit by their looks, or their gait. I cannot see which way we are in danger, or how the devil is likely to get any notable advantage against us, if we do but thoroughly do our duty with respect to those two things, viz. The state of persons’ minds, and their moral conduct, seeing to it that they be maintained in an agreeableness to the rules that Christ has given us. If things are but kept right in these respects, our fears and suspicions arising from extraordinary bodily effects seem wholly groundless.”

This is the counsel he gave:

“The influence persons are under is not to be judged of one way or other by such effects on the body; and the reason is because the Scripture nowhere gives us any such rule. We cannot conclude that persons are under the influence of the true Spirit because we see such effects upon their bodies, because this is not given as a mark of the true Spirit; nor on the other hand, have we any reason to conclude from any such outward appearances, that persons are not under the influence of the Spirit of God, because there is no rule of Scripture given us to judge of spirits by, that does either expressly or indirectly exclude such effects on the body, nor does reason exclude them. . . .

“Some object against such extraordinary appearances that we have no instances of them recorded in the New Testament, under the extraordinary effusions of the Spirit. Were this allowed, I can see no force in the objection, if neither reason nor any rule of Scripture exclude such things . . . . I do not know that we have any express mention in the New Testament of any person’s weeping, or groaning, or sighing through fear of hell, or a sense of God’s anger; but is there any body so foolish as from hence to argue that in whomsoever these things appear, their convictions are not from the Spirit of God? “.

. . Why then should it be thought strange that persons should cry out for fear, when God appears to them, as a terrible enemy, and they see themselves in great danger of being swallowed up in the bottomless gulf of eternal misery? The spouse, once and again, speaks of herself as overpowered with the love of Christ, so as to weaken her body, and make her faint. Cant. ii. 5, “Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love.” . . . From whence we may at least argue that such an effect may well be supposed to arise from such a cause in the saints, in some cases, and that such effect will sometimes be seen in the church of Christ.

“It is a weak objection, that the impressions of enthusiasts [fanatics] have a great effect on their bodies. That the Quakers used to tremble is no argument that Saul, afterwards Paul, and the jailer did not tremble from real convictions of conscience. [Did you catch that? Edwards is saying that just because there are abuses and imitations, that does not invalidate the genuine!] Indeed all such objections from effects on the body, let them be greater or less, seem to be exceeding frivolous; they who argue thence, proceed in the dark, they know now what ground they go upon, nor by what rule they judge. The root and course of things is to be looked at, and the nature of the operations and affections are to be inquired into, and examined by the rule of God’s word, and not the motions of the blood and animal spirits.”

To be sure there are excesses and aberrations among Pentecostals and charismatics. Some of them deserve the label “strange fire.” When I was growing up in the thick of the Pentecostal movement we sometimes talked about “wild fire” in certain Pentecostal churches. We distinguished between that and the true “fire” of the Holy Spirit that enlivened and energized Christians to live holy lives and witness to the lost. Occasionally, in response to people like MacArthur (who has been bashing Pentecostals and charismatics for decades) we said “Better wild fire than no fire at all.” After visiting some so-called Pentecostal churches and charismatic meetings I’m not so sure about that, but I have deep qualms about conferences like MacArthur’s.

MacArthur talks about the danger of offending the Holy Spirit with “counterfeit worship.” I agree that there is that danger. However, I wonder if MacArthur and others (like R. C. Sproul) who spoke at his conference have considered the danger of offending the Holy Spirit by opposing a worldwide renewal movement that, for all its flaws, has brought millions of people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ? And by attributing the Holy Spirit’s gifts to unholy passions and imagination (if not to Satan)?

While there have been isolated aberrations of behavior and doctrine over the past century among those who self-identify as Pentecostal or charismatic ...

And do everything in a decent and orderly manner. 1 Corinthians 14:40, NET

Do not extinguish the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt. But examine all things; hold fast to what is good. 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21, NET

PeteSinCA wrote:

And do everything in a decent and orderly manner. 1 Corinthians 14:40, NET

This verse is Paul's summation of an entire section about practical and proper usage of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in assemblies for worship and teaching. In a brief sentence Paul makes two points: 1.) Do everything (the context details what that means); 2.) in a decent and orderly fashion. As I understand this verse and its context, services in which the entire congregation (+/-10%) is speaking in tongues simultaneously are out of order, a misuse of a gift of the Spirit (on at least two counts - the chaotic simultaneity and the lack of interpretation). Conversely, to teach against or forbid the (proper) exercise of spiritual gifts such as prophecy or speaking in tongues also violates this verse (and the rather direct and specific verse 39).

This wasn't Paul's first and only time in this "territory":

Do not extinguish the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt. But examine all things; hold fast to what is good. 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21, NET

Same basic balance: do not forbid; guard against abuse and falsehood. I think Olsen, in his blog, was alluding to verse 19, and I would have to agree that MacArthur is taking dealing with a real problem so much farther that he is extinguishing (or quenching) some of the work of the Holy Spirit (or at least trying to, though the Holy Spirit is a bit bigger than John MacArthur). Looking around Grace Community Church's webpages about what they believe (quite verbose, IMO), I think [url=http://www.gracechurch.org/distinctives/scripture/]this statement from a webpage about the sufficiency of Scripture, "Contrary to what many are teaching today, there is no need for additional revelations, visions, words of prophecy, or insights from modern psychology," violates verse 20 (as well as being a straw man argument - no Pentecostal or charismatic close to the mainstream of those movements claims a word of Prophecy is equivalent to Scripture).