Dr. Brown posts 16 harms done by people who dare criticize him...what can go wrong?

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I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. - Romans 16:17-18 (ESV)

For a man who swears that he doesn't have time for his critics, Dr. Michael Brown sure seems pretty obsessed with them. It seems every day he has another ridiculous post or tweet. I'd leave it alone if it were not so dangerous. Late last week he tweeted a list of ways his critics "do so much damage." As usual it is filled with inconsistencies and grievance. Let us reason once more together beloved.

"These are some of the ways that anti-charismatic hyper-critics do so much damage. (I could easily multiple this list)." - Dr. Michael Brown

Let me start by saying there are people out there who believe in cessationism as a response to the abuses seem today regarding the gifts. I am not one of them. I believe in the gifts, just not as they are being abused today. The bible dismisses cessationism out of hand. The issue for me is not charismatics but rather, Charismaniacs, which Dr. Brown represents. A charismatic believes God can use someone to impart healing for example. A Charismaniac believes God always must heal us. A charismatic believes that someone can be prophetic by exhortation through the final revealed will of God found in scripture. A Charismaniac believes in clairvoyance and the modern-day prophets can be "wrong." There is a marked difference. There is a difference between believing in the power of the Holy Spirit and believing there are sneaky squid spirits. What Brown tries to do here is what he always does. He tries to belittle anyone who disagrees with him. Instead of trying to make a biblical point, they must be "hyper-critics." It is clumsy and transparent, however. Onto the list!

"1. They deny the glorious work of the spirit worldwide, often mocking what is sacred in the Lord's sight." - Dr. Michael Brown

I have said this before but if Dr. Brown were on Mount Carmel, he would rebuke Elijah for making fun of the false prophets of Baal's god as being in the bathroom. This is one of the foundational misapprehensions that Brown operates under. False teachers and prophets are ravenous wolves devouring the sheep of the Lord. To Dr. Brown, everyone is a brother if they can spell the name of Jesus correctly. There is nothing sacred about wolves. Dr. Brown once believed IHOP was sacred. He once raved that Ravi Zacharias was sacred. Turns out he was dead wrong. Lastly on this, pointing out error, is not "mocking."

"2. They fail to recognize the massive amount of God-glorifying, Jesus-exalting work done by Pentecostals and Charismatics worldwide." - Dr. Michael Brown

I think this falls along the same line of reasoning. If someone was truly glorifying God and exalting Jesus, I would be first in line to say amen. That is not what we are talking about. One of the tactics Brown employs is to divide everyone into two camps. His camp of charismatic and the other side are the cessationists. It never occurs to him that both could be wrong but by dividing, it is easier to conquer.

3. They freely mock brothers and sister in the Lord, appointing themselves judge and jury.

As you can see, these are fairly repetitive. He wants to sell the notion that he is a sincere arbiter of truth and anyone who disagrees with him must be a mocker. That is an absurd premise designed to try and marginalize his critics. According to 1Corinthians, we are absolutely to judge those inside the church as well as being called to test everything! Brown is trying to conflate the judgment of the false teacher personally, when the reality is the teaching is what is being judged.

"4. They throw millions of healthy babies out with the bad bathwater." - Dr. Michael Brown

Let us be clear. There are many, many god-fearing ministers and ministries who teach correctly and try to do the right thing but they are not found on television. The amount of people who have large national or international ministries is actually quite small compared to the whole body. Brown thinks we are disparaging all Charismatic teachers but in reality it is all Charismaniacal teachers, which is a very small percentage of teachers worldwide. This is a red herring argument, one of Brown's specialties.

"5. They bear false witness against others in the body, thereby breaking one of the Ten Commandments." - Dr. Michael Brown

No Dr. Brown. Disagreement is not false witness, and you know it. Also, we are not talking about people in the body but voracious wolves devouring the sheep. That aside, because we should not bear false witness against anybody anyway, what Dr. Brown is doing is changing disagreement into false witness or splitting hairs. For example, he recently posted that it was bearing false witness to say that he has endorsed Benny Hinn. Except he has endorsed Benny Hinn, multiple times. He went on his television show for a week - what bigger endorsement can he make? When I was on his radio show, he called Hinn a good brother in the Lord. So, it is far from a false witness to claim he has endorsed him.

"6. They spread dissension and division." - Dr. Michael Brown

Jesus did not set up a Kumbaya Christianity. Paul named names of false teachers. Here is today's deep theology found in the key verses above. It is not calling out false teachers that causes division in the body of Christ. It is the false teachers themselves. That is what the key verses explicitly say! Those who cause division contrary to the doctrine you have been taught! The hearts of the naïve continue to be deceived by many of the false teachers Dr. Brown supports. The biblical irony here is that it is Dr. Brown who sows dissension and division into the body every time he defends a wolf. Then in some version of Freudian projection, he blames his critics for what he is responsible for.

"7. They discourage faith and rob hope." - Dr. Michael Brown

There is no hope in Bill Johnson's theology. There is no faith to be placed in Joseph Prince, Benny Hinn or Jennifer LeClaire. These will all lead people away from Christ. Discernment ministries offer hope in the real gospel of Jesus Christ. They actively discourage placing faith in false teaching that inevitably will only lead to saying Lord Lord, when we stand before Christ to give account.

"8. They paint with too broad a brush, thereby condemning the innocent with the guilty." - Dr. Michael Brown

Look, if anyone tries to dismiss all Charismatics, I will agree that is too broad a brush. Each individual person needs to be tested by themselves but after that, who we associate is important. Who we stand on a stage with matters. Well, not so much to Dr. Brown, but it should matter. He is going to appear at a conference coming up with Vlad Savchuk, one of the horrific fake demon slayer false teachers. Watch, a year from now Dr. Brown will claim it is false witness to say he endorsed Savchuk. By the way, the company you keep matters beyond Charismania. I was the first to criticize John MacArthur for allowing himself to be positively interviewed by Brown's boss, Steven Strang. For someone who claims to have such great discernment, you should realize that it is not a good thing when Charisma News endorses your COVID polices.

"9. They deny essential teachings of the word." - Dr. Michael Brown

Nonsense and potentially false witness except Dr. Brown never names names. This is part of the tactic Brown employs. To slander critics by defaming their adherence to scripture. Brown used the bible to try and defend the sneaky squid spirit and his buddy Sam Storms tried to use the bible to defend the claim that Jesus was playing the saxophone at the foot of the bed of some heretic. So, spare me the doctrinal purity gripe. I could easily make the biblical argument that God directs us to expose false teachers and that Brown is denying that by refusing to. I would not make this argument however because it is unfair, as is Brown's assertion here that his critics must be disobeying scripture.

"10. They fail to remove the beam from their own eyes before passing judgment on others." - Dr. Michael Brown

Another poor use of scripture. These verses have nothing to do with judgment and everything to do with hypocrisy. So, if I was engaged in fleecing the flock, I should not be criticizing others that are doing the same. If I liked to pretend to knock people over with my magical suit coat during my free time, I should not criticize Benny Hinn. If I regularly taught God must heal you, stand by dead raising teams, believe in grave sucking, operate a false school of the fake supernatural and pump smoke into my prayer meetings to pretend a glory cloud has fallen, I should not criticize Bill Johnson. Are we getting the point here? Also, once again, correctly stating what someone has said or done, is not "passing judgment."

"11. They often judge superficially, in violation of John 7:24." - Dr. Michael Brown

There is nothing "superficial" about proper discernment. Pointing out that Benny Hinn has made 50 million dollars by lying about God is not a superficial argument. Pointing out that Mike Bickle was a horrible wolf is not a superficial argument. Remember, what is the undercurrent here for Brown is he fundamentally disagrees with the assertion of discernment ministries that his friends are wolves. But they are. He can make no cogent biblical argument, so it always boils down to the fact that "he knows them." To that I say, I don't care. I know their teaching.

"12. They use one set of standards when judging their own camp and another set of standards when judging those outside their camp." - Dr. Michael Brown

This is the latest argument Brown has been making that he thinks is a winner. He calls it the equal weights and measures argument. I reject the premise however that everyone must be firmly entrenched in two camps. He probably gets this from years of writing politically. The reality is that neither extreme, Charismania or cessationism has it right. My standard and the standard of most discernment ministries is to apply the bible to any teacher to determine correct doctrine. The argument as Dr. Brown has been wielding it is essentially the strategy known as whataboutism. So, someone says that Benny Hinn is a heretic and instead of answering that charge, he dives back into church history and attacks Luther for his antisemitic words. He does not do this because of genuine critique of Luther but rather to avoid answering the charge on Hinn. I live in the world that says Martin Luther can be a raving antisemite and Benny Hinn can be a raving lunatic false teacher/huckster. Those are my equal weights and measures. The point however is that one has nothing to do with the other. What Martin Luther said hundreds of years ago does not change if Benny Hinn is false or not.

"13. They call for the violation of explicit New Testament commands such as, "Follow the way of love and eagerly desire the gifts of the spirit, especially prophecy," commands which the word never rescinded." - Dr. Michael Brown

This is an argument against cessationists, to which I kind of agree. We should desire the gifts of the spirit but that does not make Dr. Brown's version of prophecy correct. For example, nearly all of the prophets he respects called the 2020 election for Trump. They said God told them so but he lost by seven million votes. To Dr. Brown, while they were wrong and he has admittedly been critical of them, he still considers them prophets and that is just insane. It is disconnected logically and biblically. It requires a wholly unreasonable view of the New Testament. It literally changes something God instituted without instruction from God to do so.

"14. They tear down more than they build up." - Dr. Michael Brown

This is hysterical. He just spent the first 13 bullet points tearing down anyone who dares to criticize him and then he claims they are the one tearing down. What absolute garbage. Let us be clear here, however. We tear down false teachings like hyper-grace, prosperity gospel, word faith, gold dust, gem stones, angel feathers, glory clouds, angels of abundant harvest, sneaky squid spirits, octopi spirits, psychic parlor tricks, clairvoyance being passed off as prophecy, leg growing schemes, fake healing ministries, 24-7 mandated prayer rooms, the entire IHOP model built by a predator for a predator, cult of personality pastorships, false apostolic authority paradigms, politics disguised as Christianity, the idolatry of dominionism, seeker friendly strategies, purpose driven church heresies, and probably a million other things I forget right now. These things should be torn down and by doing so, we build up the faith in those that were lost under false teaching in the real gospel of Jesus Christ.

'15. They mistake extra-biblical (meaning not explicitly addressed in the bible) with unbiblical, failing to heed the wisdom of Jonathan Edwards, who said, "we ought not to limit God where he has not limited Himself."' - Dr. Michael Brown

It seems we are getting into more minutia now, but I would be very curious what "extra-biblical" teachings he supports. Just saying it is not in the bible as a positive is not good theology. Brown and Charismaniacs do this all the time. Someone points out the sheer stupidity of saying there is a sneaky squid spirit and that is met with, God spoke through a donkey once! Yes, but not so you can be an ass when it comes to sound theology. Can God do whatever you are trying to defend? Of course, he is God! That does not mean He IS doing it. The real problem with extra-biblical, is it eventually gets placed on the same level as scripture. Bill Johnson and the experiential Christianity crew believes that what we experience is just as scriptural as the word and it is most certainly not. That is the larger point here. Why do you feel compelled to always go outside the parameters of scripture?

"16. They reject the spirit's inward transforming work because they don't like the outward packaging." - Dr. Michael Brown

In fairness to Dr. Brown, I can't tell what he is talking about here. I am afraid he may be simply trying to excuse the silliness of Charismania. If you think the gifts of tongues means screaming "shabba" and sputtering sentence fragments that is fine, but it is not biblical. Brown is always sensitive of the criticisms of the Brownsville demonic outpouring because he spoke at it. The outward packaging for this nonsense was convulsing and losing all control of one's body, you know, like when you are demon possessed. There was no "inner transformative" work of the Holy Spirit just like there was not one when people were rolling around on the ground and barking like dogs in Toronto. Brown constantly tries to diminish the arguments made against him and this is also fairly transparent in that regard.

"In short, in the words of Jesus, they strain out a gnat and swallow a camel (Matthew 23:24)." - Dr. Michael Brown

Perhaps discernment ministries just take the word of God more seriously than Dr. Brown. Pretending someone who stole 50 million dollars from the body of Christ while shipwrecking the faith of untold numbers is not straining out a gnat. Prosperity hucksters ruin people's faith every day by lying that God wants to bless their socks of for the right price. Dr. Brown likes to argue that if a teacher honestly believes that God will bless people if they give financially, that somehow makes the teaching more palatable. No, it is not, and it is not straining out a gnat. Exposing demonology hustlers are not straining out gnats. That is the strategy of Dr. Brown. Minimize the criticism to the size of a gnat so that you can pretend you are the one taking the high road when all you are doing is avoiding answering your critics. Remember in closing that Dr. Michael Brown calls himself the voice of moral sanity and spiritual clarity. He hosts a nationally syndicated radio show and has an international ministry. He insists on weighing in on nearly every Christian matter today. There is a reason why he has so many critics. They are not all cessationists. Maybe if he spent less time defending the indefensible and berating his critics, he might have a sliver of credibility. I used to hold out hope for him but that is fading with each unhinged tweet and ranting Facebook post. It gives me no joy to say it but mark and avoid beloved.

Reverend Anthony Wade - April 9, 2024

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.