The following website has been a great help in wading thru teachings coming out of the charismatic/penticostal camp. You will find numerous articles addressing these teachings using the Bible as the plumbline for truth.

Listen to the 25 min radio interviews that go along with the commentaries as well. They are great.

The following website has been a great help in wading thru teachings coming out of the charismatic/penticostal camp. You will find numerous articles addressing these teachings using the Bible as the plumbline for truth. http://cicministry.org/

Reading Macarthur and, as you said, a bit of the historical heresies that infected the early Church from online sources helped me realize that most (if not all) of the groups who have practiced glossolalia and prophesy over the centuries have been quite aberrant. I believe that Montanism ===> charismania. There’s a gnostic influence, too.

I definitely think the enemy is recycling heretical streams in these last days, and part of the deception is that folks think this was the Christianity of the Early Church. All of the Church Fathers wrote about the miraculous gifts as having been in the past and obsolete by the second century. Try telling that to a charismatic.

The only book I can recommend that is remotely related to the subject is “Are Miraculous Gifts for Today?” edited by Wayne Grudem. It contains four different scholarly positions on spiritual gifts: one cessationist, one open but cautious evangelical, a pentecostal perspective, and a third wave charismatic perspective. I found it to be useful in dividing which ideas actually have some scholarly merit to them and which ideas floating around the church are simply due to a lack of biblical education.

Most of the reading I’ve done on the charismatic movement has been through internet resources. Reading some church history helped me a fair bit because I ended up seeing certain patterns cropping up over and over again, especially with certain heresies that existed in the early church.

That’s very helpful. So the Manifest Sons of God and Government of 12 (G12 structure) and similar dominionist doctrines would be more closely aligned with the charismatic side, correct?

A few years ago, I was researching the roots and beliefs pretty intensely, but there is so much variance within their churches that it’s hard to make general statements. For example, the Word of Faith heresy seems to be growing like wildfire, yet denominations like Assembly of God (Pentecostal) rejects W-F out of hand. As for Oneness Pentecostalism, it’s hard to figure out exactly where that came from – outside of the 3rd century heresy of Sabellianism (modulism). There are so many different branches that it confuses me. “Counterfeit Revival” and “Charismatic Chaos” were the two main books I read (“Christianity in Crisis” as well). Any others you’d recommend?

Pentecostals and charismatics have different historical roots. Pentecostals trace their heritage back to the Azusa St. revival while the charismatic movement didn’t really begin until the 1950’s with Kenneth Hagin and Oral Roberts.

The two movements also have some theological differences. Without getting too complicated, the pentecostals seem to place a much higher value on the scripture as a guide for church behavior. In other words, everything done in a pentecostal church should agree with the scripture. The movement was originally based on a return to scripture so the scripture remains at the heart of it.

The charismatic movement was based more upon personal experiences with God. It tends to place a higher value on revelations, either prophetic or out of the scripture, rather than strict exegesis. It is also much more experience-based than pentecostalism.

Also, pentecostal denominations tend to follow traditional structures of church government within their denominations, whereas charismatic churches often are their own denominations or are only affiliated with a loose fellowship of similar churches. It’s harder to find well-defined accountability structures within the charismatic movement, probably because a bit of accountability would quickly defame many of their favorite celebrity preachers.

Big, fat AMEN. One of the things that used to irk me (even when I was a charismatic wannabe) was their use of the term “Spirit-filled”, which somehow implied that cessationist churches and people were not ‘filled with the Spirit’. Being filled with the Spirit is something we are commanded to be (several times in Scripture); not a performance we’re to produce on demand. The more I’ve studied the theological holes in continuationism, the more staunchly convinced I am that the cessationist position is the only tenable one.

Question: what is the difference between “charismatic” and “Pentecostal”? Was is that the former came out of the Asuza Street ‘Revival’ and the latter had denominational streams before that, or is there an additional distinction? I tend to use the terms interchangeably.

Part of the celebrity mentality is probably due to the advent of television ministries. The rest of it is attributable to a few quirks of charismatic theology.

First of all, there is a common tendency among charismatics (and some pentecostals) to look down upon non-charismatic churches as somehow inferior because they do not exercise certain spiritual gifts regularly.

Second, when you divorce love from the spiritual gifts and forget the purpose of them -to edify the body of Christ and serve as a sign of the continuing redemptive work of Jesus- they eventually become self-serving and God is nothing more than a divine slot machine.

The final point I’ll make is speculation on my part. In general, charismatics seem to have no idea what the qualifications were to be an apostle in the first century. Because of these specific requirements (being an eye-witness of the resurrected Christ and having a direct commission from Him) apostleship is not a gift but an office. Spiritual gifts have no such requirements. According to the Bible’s standards, it isn’t possible for anyone in our era to be an apostle, yet many charismatics give these celebrity ministers the title of “apostle” which is completely unmerited and un-biblical. I’m pretty sure being called an apostle by throngs of people would go to just about anyone’s head and deceive one into thinking he/she has special privileges in the church.

I just found this blog and appreciate your writing. My experience on the fringes of charismania, which lasted about 3 years, was very similar – I noticed the same sorts of double standards, although in a much tinier church with few rich people. I listened to most of the sermons on CD, (my husband refused to set foot in the church, which was a good thing), but when there noticed the people were all like Bobble-heads. Whatever the pastor said was automatically “that’s right” and “amen-ed”. These peeps clearly had no grasp of even basic biblical knowledge, but they claimed they were full of the Holy Spirit. They were full of something, that’s for sure.

It’s been a few years now, and like you, I don’t think about it quite so much. The wounds have begun somewhat to heal, but I’ve become a much more skeptical and cynical person.

I’m adding you to my blogroll – there’s much value in what you’re examining. Critical thinking is completely absent from the charismatic world, and you provide a reality check.