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July 23, 2019

Setting the Record Straight on Charismata, Cessationism, and Abuse of the Gifts (Part 1)

By Anthony Wade

An explanation of my position on the gifts of the Holy Spirit...

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All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. -- 1Corinthians 12:11 (ESV)

We live in a very polarized society where we can get 32 flavors of ice cream but only two coherent strains of political thought. This forced binary culture insists there are only two positions and you must decide what side you are on. Once the decision has been reached you become anathema to other side. It is all very artificial and all very carnal in nature. It plays to our basest elements of humanity in that the other side becomes what is wrong. The other side becomes who we blame for our ills. What we lose sight of as Christians is that the other side still matters to God. There is a reason why He has said we are to be but pilgrims and sojourners in this world beloved. That said this devotional is not about politics, where these divides are largely seen, but rather on the topic of the Charismata. The Charismata is a fancy word for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, with the primary outline found in 1Corinthians:

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. -- 1Corinthians 12:4-10 (ESV)

So, there are nine gifts listed here and there are other sets of passages that deal with other gifts but this is the agreed upon main section dealing with the Charismata. The false binary choice often presented here is you either believe in the current manifestation of the gifts or you are a cessationist, meaning you believe the gifts ceased at the end of the Apostolic Age. Let us start there. I have researched this topic and find the bible incompatible with the cessationist position. It fails from the basic logical underpinnings. Let me bullet point some facts:

* We believe in a God that sees all time.

* Paul wrote many letters, some included explicit details of the gifts and their usage in church

* Some of these letters were written after 60 AD.

* The Apostolic Age ended around 100 AD, with the death of the Apostle John

* The canon of scripture would not be agreed upon for hundreds of years

* The bible itself would not be readily available for a thousand more years

So, the cessationist position must believe that a God who sees all time would divinely inspire Paul to write in great detail about all of these gifts knowing they would become obsolete in 40 years of the writing and knowing the bible itself was a thousand years away? That makes absolutely no sense.

It is not enough to just outline these facts and walk away because I understand why so many are lured into cessationism. They see the ridiculous abuses of the Charismata and realize that cannot be right. They see parlor tricks and psychic games being passed off as the gifts and are righteously offended. They see every other person claiming to be an apostle or prophet and see through the huckster's charade. The problem on the Charismatic's side is a complete lack of discernment. If you honestly believe there is a sneaky squid spirit sitting on your friend's head stalking her, you do not need a pulpit -- you need to up your meds. If you can look at the tapes from Brownsville, Toronto and Lakeland and think this mish-mash of carnal and demonic manifestations had anything to with God, then I am not even sure the meds can help you. Yet these things are routinely accepted every single day within modern Pentecostalism.

So, with all due respect I do not accept an unbiblical position that the gifts of the spirit were only for a 40 year window before the end of the Apostolic Age. Likewise, I do not accept the unbiblical position that says as a Charismatic I am to abandon all sense of reason. Just because God CAN do something, does not mean He IS doing something. I do not accept the abuses of the gifts seen in church today. There is a better way. What if we were to do the work of a Berean all the time? That we never accepted anything at face value just because the person expressing it is perceived to somehow be "on our side." Paul rebuked Peter when he was being a hypocrite yet for many cessationists the thought that John MacArthur might be wrong is never seriously considered. The same goes on the Charismatic side as any manifestation that appears spiritual is automatically assigned to the Holy Ghost without testing the spirits, as the bible implores us to do! The better way I have discovered is in realizing the gifts of the spirit are widely abused within the churchianity model of American Christendom. The way we have been taught is simply wrong and it is time to realize that for three very important reasons:

1. We lose credibility with the lost every single day

2. We lose out on the true power of the Holy Spirit in our lives and the church

3. We operate under a different spirit than the spirit of God

That last one ought to give us pause. There are other spirits in this world beloved. When the primary worship leader of the apostate group Jesus Culture claims a waking visitation from Jesus who whisked her away to the throne room where she met the Father face to face we can only draw one of two conclusions. We know from the bible that she could not meet the Father face to face and live, so she is either lying or she was dealing with demonic spirits. Disguised angels of light. I do not think that Kim Walker-Smith was lying so the demonic answer is all we have left. Let us walk through the gifts as outlined in Corinthians and reason together.

The first gift referenced is the word of wisdom. This gift is clearly a spoken gift involving the dissemination of some form of wisdom. It is not often proclaimed in the church but it is routinely used and abused as such; "I have a word from the Lord for you." How many of us have experienced this phenomenon and wondered why God spoke a word meant for me -- to someone else. The obvious problem with this display of wisdom is that it denies the sufficiency of Scripture. So, God disclosed all in His final revealed will in the bible but forgot this one little nugget He then decides to tell to sister so and so? And how many instances of this occur every Sunday across the country? How much are we alleging God forgot to reveal? The premise is absurd. What a true word of wisdom is however is the ability to interject actual Scripture appropriately into any situation. By appropriately, I mean we do not wield Jeremiah 29:11 as a catch all band aid for believers when it was clearly written to the Babylonian exiles. We do not eviscerate Malachi 3 to prop up unbiblical tithing practices, ignoring all context and reason. We point people wisely to the correct counsel of God. This is not a gift many have in my opinion because we want to interject our own biases upon the text and that is most unwise.

Next up is the ever-confusing word of knowledge. Most agree that this spoken word is one of unknown knowledge being imparted to someone by God to convince someone else that God is trying to speak to them. The problem is the way this is abused in Charismatic circles today. I think of Shawn Bolz, the resident false prophet from Bethel Church in Redding California. Shawn engages in cold readings where he pretends to be given information about people in the audience from God, while looking at his smart phone. I remember him doing it at the Send conference this year. The Send had collected all of the information from the attendees, so the name would not be hard to get. Using social media, obtaining names of friends and family, location of residence etc. would be easy to get. I remember watching the heretical Holy Ghost movies where the psychic trick of stating common letters to see if someone reacts -- God is showing me someone with the letter R -- yes I do know someone with a letter R! This is nonsense beloved and it needs to be called out every time. A true word of knowledge is more intimate than this. It is when God imparts a piece of information that you could not have received from any other source to bring glory to His name! It is used to establish trust and not to be used as some parlor trick.

The gift of faith is possibly the least spoken about gift. Now everyone has been given a measure of faith so what makes the gift different? It means a supernatural faith that goes beyond your average every day allotment of faith. I can think of one or two people I know who have been given this level of faith through the Holy Spirit. No matter what life throws at them their faith is unmoved. They are able to express that faith in biblical terms and without sounding self-serving. It is the brother or sister who sleeps through the storm because they know who controls the wind! It is a faith that transcends words and if people would ever obtain a slice of the peace that comes from it, then I would think it would soon become the most coveted spiritual gift.

Within Charismania, faith is less abused because it is less discussed in the capacity of a gift. Faith is abused however in terms of blaming people for their lot in life or their current problems. Like the wonderful counselors Job had, these people possess an almost anti-faith that they are always in a hurry to share. You don't seem to get healed? Must be your lack of faith. I remember reading a comment thread on Joel Osteen's Facebook page once about a man who was facing the sheriff padlocking his house in two weeks. The answers from the Osteenites were horrendous. They were all based on the false teaching they walked under. You just have to have faith! Speak your faith! Where is your faith! A congregant from Kenneth Copeland's church was diagnosed with cancer but she refused treatment because she thought it would be showing a lack of faith in God. Instead she just kept upping her tithes until she died shortly from the cancer.

Fourth on the list is the always controversial gift of healing. Let's deal with the false first. Charismatics have abused healing more than any other gift other than prophecy. Whether it is Benny Hinn knocking waves of people down with his suit coat or Todd Bentley punching a man with stage four pancreatic cancer in the stomach, we have seen it all. Part of this nonsense stems from the false belief that God must heal everyone. Places like Bethel and IHOP preach this heresy that completely robs God of His sovereignty. Then you have your run of the mill scammers like Todd White. Todd appeared in the first Holy Ghost movie where he performed the growing the shorter leg scam at a Korn concert. In other scenes, wannabe "healing evangelists" scour the foreign city they are in looking for suckers to ply their trade on. They are never in emergency rooms practicing their healings. It is always some public park after midnight stalking some 20-something woman "suffering" from generic symptoms that are easily assuaged through the power of suggestion. I read an article this week from the head of Charisma News bragging about someone else who claimed to have a 99% healing rate for people who need spinal alignment. Huh? Then you have the David Taylor's of the world using audience plants to throw away their crutches and walk out of their wheelchairs. These charlatans are not lost on the world. Christianity becomes mocked and derided often because it deserves to be so.

Which brings us to actual healing. Can God still heal today? Even Cessationists will say yes. They just object that He would choose to do so through any person. Yet even James says to call the elders of the church to lay hands and pray the prayer of faith for healing. There is no biblical proof to support healing cannot be provided today through a human vessel. I would agree it may be more prevalent in societies that are less corrupted in doctrine than the United States. Perhaps it takes the faith we see in the underground church in China or the unshakable faith of Christians in the Middle East facing beheading for not renouncing Christ. Either way, I have witnessed God's healing power on more than one occasion. I have also seen the answer of no, on far too many occasions. God however, remains good and faithful and loving and merciful.

Miracles are closely tied with healing as healing is always miraculous. Church history is littered with tales of the miraculous, well after the year 100 AD. I have witnessed personal miracles in the lives of friends. I think most cessationists would agree that God is still in the miracle business but would once again balk at Him using man to achieve the miraculous. With the amount of abuse in the church today I understand why. The explosion of false signs and lying wonders churches such as Bethel and IHOP cheapen real miracles. Fake gold dust, gem stones, gold teeth fillings, glory clouds and angel feathers are not miraculous! You cannot however throw out the baby with the charismatic bathwater. I know families who have been told their child would be born still born or severely damaged and instead of aborting they had faith and received prayer and the child was born perfectly healthy. How many of us know someone given a terminal diagnosis only to live 20 more years? Or someone who was cancer diagnosed one day and the next, after prayer, the results dumbfound the medical experts because it is now gone! We essentially agree on the miracle so let us not squabble on the details of how God performed that miracle. I would stand with Cessationists proudly denouncing anyone taking credit for the miraculous works of God.

Number six is prophecy. The most abused gift today. Churches like Bethel operate supernatural schools to teach people to be prophets. I watched a training video once from Bethel for their worship leaders where they were taught that all worship leaders are prophetic! The key verse cannot be clearer. Only the Holy Spirit apportions the gifts as He sees fit! Modern day prophecy is nothing short of clairvoyance. It is Shawn Bolz with a smart phone or the Kansas City prophets declaring a 65% accuracy rate makes you a solid prophet! In the Old Testament that made you a dead false prophet! I watched an itinerant false prophet once lay hands on nearly everyone in the congregation and was imparting absolute nonsense claiming it was God speaking. Go on Charisma News any given day and get 20 conflicting prophecies. God is not schizophrenic. Type in the word prophet in your Facebook search function and see how pervasive and often comical it has become.

With such egregious abuses of the gift of prophecy it often feels futile to fight back but God did not specify that prophecy will cease while the other gifts remained. The truth is that I have seen the gift or prophecy correctly carried out in service. Unfortunately, it is often preceded by the gibberish tongues (which we will get to). There were two people in my old church who understood you did not need tongues to proceed a word from God. These prophetic words were always directly taken from Scripture because the bible is the final revealed will of God. Their words were not adding to scripture but rather amplifying it. These words were often penitent in nature and not the sugar coated pablum you see falsely prophesied today. I think within these parameters, one can flow in the prophetic and display the gift of prophecy. I am not dealing with the office of prophet or apostle here specifically because I find them to be stumbling blocks for many people on both sides. The truth is that by the definition of apostle you can make a case that our current missionaries are apostolic. Either way, anyone who is a genuine prophet or apostle is too busy bringing glory to God's name to care one iota about bringing glory to their own name.

Number seven is the gift of discerning between spirits. Now, every believer has a measure of discernment that should grow as they mature. This gift is not speaking to the ability. It is also not speaking about visions into the spirit realm. It is the ability to discern solid doctrine from false doctrine. That is one reason why a ministry such as mine is referred to as a discernment ministry. One would hope that everyone could see through low hanging false doctrinal fruit such as Benny Hinn, Mike Murdock, or Kenneth Copeland. Others however need good testing and often this gift to see the truth. Joseph Prince sounds about 85% right but the other 15% will send you straight to hell. Understanding how Dr. Michael Brown is a gatekeeper for the NAR requires discernment. There are plenty of preachers out there that sound right until you peel the layers back. It would have been considered evangelical anathema to call Francis Chan a false teacher just five years ago but now he should be avoided at all costs. Why would God do away with this crucial gift to the body? He wouldn't. He didn't.

Except the Charismaniacs abuse this gift as well. We see this in false deliverance ministries and the creation of all sorts of high-sounding nonsense. Jennifer Leclaire lives right inside this false understanding of the discernment of spirits. She thinks she can command legions of angels as she wages war against "marine demons" and the sneaky squid sprit! The sadly ironic thing is that the false is the polar opposite of the intention of the truth. These false spiritual battles are firmly grounded in someone's imagination and not scripture where is the actual gift of discerning spirits never is supposed to leave the guardrails of the Word of God.

That bring us to the final two gifts -- tongues and the interpretation of tongues. As this devotional has already gone on too long and the topic of tongues is the most difficult among the gifts, we will save it for a part two in this series. I do hope I have clarified my position on the gifts and Cessationism, as I have received several questions. I understand that the world and unfortunately the church wants us to make forced binary choices, but the truth is often somewhere in the middle. I refuse the Cessationist position that does not line up with Scripture, but I equally refuse the abuses we see in the Charismatic Church today. I am beholden to no singular train of thought as authored by man. Only the bible.

Reverend Anthony Wade -- July 23, 2019



Authors Bio:
Credentialed Minister of the Gospel for the Assemblies of God. Owner and founder of 828 ministries. Vice President for Goodwill Industries. Always remember that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

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