So yeah, I guess I should continue this series. Got caught up in some other stuff and didn’t know where to even start this long process of analyzing what I’ve been taught. However, I have solved the where to start problem by compiling a list of common arguments I have heard both for and against manifestations of the spirit and signs and wonders and charismatic stuff in general. Hopefully this will help everyone understand how the other side has gotten to their viewpoint. And since I’m an equal opportunity debunker, I will also provide a counter argument to each point.
Things I’ve heard in Charismatic churches:
If you pray and ask God to come, he isn’t going to send the devil:
This is a perfectly common sense sounding argument. It’s the main one that has kept me open to the idea that strange phenomena might be of God. But supposing there were a situation where an action that was clearly sinful was being used to connect with God (extreme examples include human sacrifice or sex with pagan temple prostitutes as an act of worship). If someone felt they had a spiritual experience during such an activity, we would strongly doubt that it was God they encountered. Now I’m not saying that anything that goes on in churches is remotely like the extreme examples. But I am saying that if what is practiced looks suspiciously like a common pagan practice, maybe there is good reason to question what spirit we’re really encountering.
______ is the devil’s counterfeit for _________ :
Fill in the blanks with something occultic or new age sounding and a much more Christian sounding name for a practice that yields similar results. Again, I believe that there are occasions where this is true (eg. knowledge of the future can come from both God and demonic sources see 2 Kings 6:8-12 and Acts 16:16), but that doesn’t make it always true. This is especially problematic when it is used to defend practices that look a lot like the things God has expressly forbidden : divination (fortune telling), sorcery, witchcraft, casting spells, interpreting omens, or communicating with the dead (Deut. 18:10-11). Nowhere in scripture do we see God using props (cards, dice, drawing lots, etc) to reveal prophecies to prophets. Ancient Israel had the Urim and the Thummim (something the priests used to inquire of the Lord) and while we see both Joseph and Daniel interpreting dreams we need to remember that both of them were forced to work in a pagan context and it was God speaking to pagans when they interpreted the dreams of others (who happened to be either the ruler of the most powerful country in the world or some of their servants).
Sometimes it’s partial (usually used about healings or prophetic words):
The only two scripture passages I’ve ever heard used to defend this are the healing of the blind man who at first saw people who looked like trees walking around (Mark 8:22-26) and Elijah praying for rain 7 times before the cloud appeared (1 Kings 18:42-45). While I believe in persevering in prayer and in practice making people more proficient at certain things (like hearing and recognizing the voice of God), the skeptic in me thinks this seems like a convenient loophole for when it doesn’t work right. An answer that doesn’t really answer anything, especially if 5 minutes ago someone was saying that God wanted to do this in my life but now it is only partially done.
On Earth as it is in heaven-
This is really just one example of Biblical catchphrases that are becoming common in charismatic circles. Although God can bring a moment of revelation through a single verse, I am extremely wary of people who teach based only off of one verse. This particular phrase comes from Bill Johnson’s book When Heaven Invades Earth. He pulls the phrase “Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” out of the Lord’s prayer and interprets that to mean that in any situation on Earth we can command things to change and be just like they are in heaven. This then becomes the catch phrase used whenever people see something that needs changing to kind of say that their view of how it should change is God’s view of how it should change.
God wants to bless us -
Yep and Jesus gave us a list of who was blessed in Matt 5, but those usually aren’t the things we’re thinking of when we think of being blessed. Also worth mentioning is Acts 3 : 26 which talking about Jesus says “[God] sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways”
God’s order may look like chaos to man -
Yet the primary passage on orderly worship (starting in 1 Cor 14:26) is very specific about how things should be done and that only one person should be speaking at a time and they should take turns. If we want to say that this is a cultural restriction then the argument falls apart since if we say that was according to their culture then the definition of orderly worship for us should be orderly according to our cultural standards as well.
It’s in the Bible- Anointing oil, laying on of hands, baptism of the holy spirit and speaking in tongues, prophecy etc. Charismatics will defend it by saying it is in the Bible. Those against them will say that what they are doing is not in the Bible. Most of the stuff I’ve seen is that the ideas and words are in the Bible, but some expand these practices beyond their Biblical use and use them in ways that are difficult to defend from scripture.
Things I’ve heard against Charismatics:
Not the gospel-
Some people want to exclude any sort of supernatural activity from preaching the gospel. They want to boil it all down to facts to believe and things you must do. When a large part of Jesus ministry was healing and casting out demons, we would need some very strong Biblical evidence that such things should not be part of the gospel today in order to exclude them.
God doesn’t do that stuff anymore -
Usually the scripture used to support this position is 1 Cor 13 where it talks about prophecy, tongues, and knowledge will end. Later it says when perfection comes the imperfect disappears. Cessationists interpret perfection here as the complete canon of scripture but I don’t see that in this passage. All I really know is that if perfection has already come, it isn’t really good enough.
It looks like the occult-
This is a valid concern, but it needs to have specifics attached. In some Christian circles, however, anything supernatural is immediately thought to be demonic or satanic in origin. Too often this phrase just means there are supernatural things going on that someone can’t understand so it must be evil because it is supernatural.
It doesn’t make sense -
There’s plenty of things about God and his ways that don’t make sense. Why should this one be treated any differently? Look for correlations and fruit (eg there was a prophetic speaker who came and told everyone who wanted a relationship restored to get on their backs in the submissive dog position to show their willingness to be vulnerable and let God do whatever it takes to restore the relationship. In the year that followed there were many testimonies of restored relationships from the same people who followed those instructions (yes I totally just made this up, I’m not aware of it ever happening)), but just because we don’t understand does not mean it isn’t God or it isn’t working.
Too emotional-
We don’t want to be directed primarily by emotions, but if the greatest commandment is love God with all your HEART, soul, mind, and strength then shouldn’t we expect things with God to get emotional at times if we obey that commandment?
Be sober and self controlled-
This biblical principle is often used to criticize the more unusual or seemingly uncontrollable manifestations. But certainly it is possible for us to soberly choose to do something seemingly crazy because God asked us to.
Determining what is and is not according to God’s word will be the focus of our continuing journey.
Things I’ve heard in Charismatic churches:
If you pray and ask God to come, he isn’t going to send the devil:
This is a perfectly common sense sounding argument. It’s the main one that has kept me open to the idea that strange phenomena might be of God. But supposing there were a situation where an action that was clearly sinful was being used to connect with God (extreme examples include human sacrifice or sex with pagan temple prostitutes as an act of worship). If someone felt they had a spiritual experience during such an activity, we would strongly doubt that it was God they encountered. Now I’m not saying that anything that goes on in churches is remotely like the extreme examples. But I am saying that if what is practiced looks suspiciously like a common pagan practice, maybe there is good reason to question what spirit we’re really encountering.
______ is the devil’s counterfeit for _________ :
Fill in the blanks with something occultic or new age sounding and a much more Christian sounding name for a practice that yields similar results. Again, I believe that there are occasions where this is true (eg. knowledge of the future can come from both God and demonic sources see 2 Kings 6:8-12 and Acts 16:16), but that doesn’t make it always true. This is especially problematic when it is used to defend practices that look a lot like the things God has expressly forbidden : divination (fortune telling), sorcery, witchcraft, casting spells, interpreting omens, or communicating with the dead (Deut. 18:10-11). Nowhere in scripture do we see God using props (cards, dice, drawing lots, etc) to reveal prophecies to prophets. Ancient Israel had the Urim and the Thummim (something the priests used to inquire of the Lord) and while we see both Joseph and Daniel interpreting dreams we need to remember that both of them were forced to work in a pagan context and it was God speaking to pagans when they interpreted the dreams of others (who happened to be either the ruler of the most powerful country in the world or some of their servants).
Sometimes it’s partial (usually used about healings or prophetic words):
The only two scripture passages I’ve ever heard used to defend this are the healing of the blind man who at first saw people who looked like trees walking around (Mark 8:22-26) and Elijah praying for rain 7 times before the cloud appeared (1 Kings 18:42-45). While I believe in persevering in prayer and in practice making people more proficient at certain things (like hearing and recognizing the voice of God), the skeptic in me thinks this seems like a convenient loophole for when it doesn’t work right. An answer that doesn’t really answer anything, especially if 5 minutes ago someone was saying that God wanted to do this in my life but now it is only partially done.
On Earth as it is in heaven-
This is really just one example of Biblical catchphrases that are becoming common in charismatic circles. Although God can bring a moment of revelation through a single verse, I am extremely wary of people who teach based only off of one verse. This particular phrase comes from Bill Johnson’s book When Heaven Invades Earth. He pulls the phrase “Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” out of the Lord’s prayer and interprets that to mean that in any situation on Earth we can command things to change and be just like they are in heaven. This then becomes the catch phrase used whenever people see something that needs changing to kind of say that their view of how it should change is God’s view of how it should change.
God wants to bless us -
Yep and Jesus gave us a list of who was blessed in Matt 5, but those usually aren’t the things we’re thinking of when we think of being blessed. Also worth mentioning is Acts 3 : 26 which talking about Jesus says “[God] sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways”
God’s order may look like chaos to man -
Yet the primary passage on orderly worship (starting in 1 Cor 14:26) is very specific about how things should be done and that only one person should be speaking at a time and they should take turns. If we want to say that this is a cultural restriction then the argument falls apart since if we say that was according to their culture then the definition of orderly worship for us should be orderly according to our cultural standards as well.
It’s in the Bible- Anointing oil, laying on of hands, baptism of the holy spirit and speaking in tongues, prophecy etc. Charismatics will defend it by saying it is in the Bible. Those against them will say that what they are doing is not in the Bible. Most of the stuff I’ve seen is that the ideas and words are in the Bible, but some expand these practices beyond their Biblical use and use them in ways that are difficult to defend from scripture.
Things I’ve heard against Charismatics:
Not the gospel-
Some people want to exclude any sort of supernatural activity from preaching the gospel. They want to boil it all down to facts to believe and things you must do. When a large part of Jesus ministry was healing and casting out demons, we would need some very strong Biblical evidence that such things should not be part of the gospel today in order to exclude them.
God doesn’t do that stuff anymore -
Usually the scripture used to support this position is 1 Cor 13 where it talks about prophecy, tongues, and knowledge will end. Later it says when perfection comes the imperfect disappears. Cessationists interpret perfection here as the complete canon of scripture but I don’t see that in this passage. All I really know is that if perfection has already come, it isn’t really good enough.
It looks like the occult-
This is a valid concern, but it needs to have specifics attached. In some Christian circles, however, anything supernatural is immediately thought to be demonic or satanic in origin. Too often this phrase just means there are supernatural things going on that someone can’t understand so it must be evil because it is supernatural.
It doesn’t make sense -
There’s plenty of things about God and his ways that don’t make sense. Why should this one be treated any differently? Look for correlations and fruit (eg there was a prophetic speaker who came and told everyone who wanted a relationship restored to get on their backs in the submissive dog position to show their willingness to be vulnerable and let God do whatever it takes to restore the relationship. In the year that followed there were many testimonies of restored relationships from the same people who followed those instructions (yes I totally just made this up, I’m not aware of it ever happening)), but just because we don’t understand does not mean it isn’t God or it isn’t working.
Too emotional-
We don’t want to be directed primarily by emotions, but if the greatest commandment is love God with all your HEART, soul, mind, and strength then shouldn’t we expect things with God to get emotional at times if we obey that commandment?
Be sober and self controlled-
This biblical principle is often used to criticize the more unusual or seemingly uncontrollable manifestations. But certainly it is possible for us to soberly choose to do something seemingly crazy because God asked us to.
Determining what is and is not according to God’s word will be the focus of our continuing journey.
