Warnings from God against Charismatics - PH69-02

Advanced Bible Doctrine - Philippians 3:7-10

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit

So this thing of being in Christ is the greatest and the most precious thing in all the universe. This is what the apostle Paul in this passage, in Philippians 3:9-10, is telling us. He esteems this above all his previous celebrityship. A clear understanding, therefore, of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is the ground for all of your spiritual peace; for all the progress you'll ever make as a Christian; and, for all the achievement that you will ever enjoy, both in the natural realm and in every other area of your life spiritually. If you are wrong (if you are mistaken) on the baptism of the Holy Spirit, everything else about your life is going to be out of order.

Satan's Distortion of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit

Of course, all of this issue comes to bear in our day upon the very popular and highly promoted Pentecostal charismatic movement. This movement is the brainchild, as we've been trying to show you, of Satan. This whole movement rests upon the misinterpretation of the doctrine of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This misinterpretation is the result of a systematic distortion over a period of many years on the part of Satan. It is amazing that no matter how much you talk to charismatics, they will not yield their mistaken understanding concerning the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I've asked other people who've been deeply in the movement, "What do these people say when you take them to Scripture and say, 'Now, look. Here's what the Bible says. Let's take 1 Corinthians, 12:13. What do you think it means?'" And their uniform answer is that these people just back off; they evade it; and, they will not come to grips with it. They just will not accept the fact that the central concept upon which the whole charismatic movement is built is in error.

So the baptism of the Holy Spirit is the thing that is the critical theological issue of our day. If you understand this, you will understand what's going on in churches today, and you will understand what God wants you to do.

This movement, as you know, is geared to experiences for the senses, but these experiences are, in fact, not from God, but from Satan and his demons. They are experiences to people who have fallen into the trap of permitting their emotions to dominate their souls. The adherents of the charismatic movement blindly ignore Scripture. They move in a make-believe world of their own negative volition. The whole total contradiction (that is quite obvious to anybody who wants to see it) between the New Testament miracle era and the pseudo miracle era of the Pentecostal charismatic movement today is just pathetic to behold. It's obvious. It's quite evident that the two are not the same at all.

The great satanic distortion of the baptism of the Holy Spirit was very cleverly approached by Satan in the form of exalting this doctrine. That's the way Satan did it. He said, "I'm going to dignify the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I'm going to tell people that this is so important. I'm going to get the attention of Christians on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But in the process, Satan had a joker in the deck, and that was to distort the doctrine all out of its scriptural meaning. So Christians drifted away from being instructed in the Word of God for one reason or another – maybe because pastor-teachers weren't doing their job, or maybe because they weren't attending church where the pastor-teacher was doing the job of teaching. For one reason or another, as people drifted away from the Word of God, Satan was able to pull off this monstrous distortion on this pivotal doctrine.

So the result today is the religious monstrosity, created by Satan, known as the Pentecostal charismatic movement. That is a shocking statement on the surface. However, if you have been following carefully for the last few sessions with us, I think that you have begun to see (as many of you have privately indicated to me) that that indeed is a true statement. It is a shocking statement at first, when you realize how many sincere people have been trapped in it. Yet when you go back and start drawing the historical chain of events by which we arrived at where we are today in this movement, it isn't too hard to see the hand of Satan behind the scenes.

The Origin of the Charismatic Movement

The second link in the chain that Satan then created was bringing Charles Finney on the scene with his intensely emotional revival technique in the early 19th century. He capitalized on Wesley's concept of complete sanctification following salvation. As a matter of fact, Charles Finney associated this sanctification, in effect, as part of salvation. Finney said that if you do not have sinless perfection, you don't have salvation, and you're not going to heaven. You can see how this kind of a thought would be able to manipulate the emotions of people into a terrific frenzy.

The third link was the Holiness Movement of the later 19th century. The Holiness movement popularized the idea of calling this second blessing of sinless perfection the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This notion was, furthermore, dignified by evangelical celebrities. One of those that we pointed out to you was a man called R.A. Torrey, who was president of the Moody Bible Institute. R.A. Torrey actually took the position of John Wesley – that after you're saved, you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit (rather than as the Scripture indicates that you receive this baptism at the point of your salvation).

I want to show you that I'm not misrepresenting these men. So I want to read you a statement from R.A. Torrey's book that I've called your attention to on what the Bible teaches. Now, mind you, that Torrey was the president of the great Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. This is what helped Satan's cause so terrifically. That is because when Torrey came along with this concept, it gave dignity to the Holiness movement from a biblical frame of reference, which they didn't have before.

Torrey says in his book, "Sixth Proposition: The baptism with the Holy Spirit causes one to be occupied with God and Christ and spiritual things. The man who is filled with the Holy Ghost will not be singing sentimental ballads, nor comic ditties, nor operatic arias while the power of the Holy Ghost is upon him. If the Holy Ghost should come upon one while listening to the most innocent of the world songs, he would not enjoy it. He would long to hear something about Christ."

I read that quotation to you to show the extent of this concept of sinlessness. Here is an old line fundamentalist telling you that if you were a Christian who has advanced to the point of having the baptism of the Holy Spirit, you wouldn't go around humming tunes from The Sound of Music. The minute you found your mind singing one of those tunes, you would say, "Lord, forgive me. I'm sorry. That was sinful." But this is where the idea originated that, if anything is fun, it must be sin. Have you ever heard somebody say, "Oh, that was a good meal at that restaurant? I enjoyed that so much. That must have been terrifically sinful." I've heard them say that. They gauge how sinful a thing is by how much they enjoy it. Well, there may be a certain amount of truth to that. However, what Torrey is saying is that you're just going to go around in some kind of a holiness glow.

Here's what he said: "How do you get to the baptism of the Holy Spirit? That naturally is the critical question. The first step is that we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord. The second step in the path that leads into the blessing of being baptized with the Holy Spirit is renunciation of sin. A controversy with God about the smallest thing is sufficient to shut one out of the blessing. Mr. Finney tells of a woman who was greatly exercised about the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Every night after the meeting, she would go to her rooms and pray way into the night. One night, as she prayed, some little matter of head adornment came up (a matter that would probably not trouble many Christians today, but a matter of controversy between her and God), as it had often come up before as she knelt in prayer. She put her hand to her head and took the pins out of her hair, and threw them across the room and said, "There. Go!" And instantly the Holy Ghost fell upon her. It was not so much the matter of head adornment as the matter of controversy with God that had kept her out of the blessing.

"The third step is an open confession of our sins and our acceptance of Jesus Christ. The fourth step is absolute surrender to God. What does obedience mean? Someone will say, 'Doing as we are told.' Right. But doing how much that we are told – not merely one thing, or two, or three, but all things. The fifth step is an intense desire for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. The sixth step is definite prayer for the baptism with the Holy Spirit. The seventh and last step is faith. Anyone who will accept Jesus as their Savior and their Lord; put away all sin out of their life; publicly confess their renunciation of sin and acceptance of Jesus Christ; surrender absolutely to God; ask God for the baptism; and, take it by simple faith in the naked Word of God, can receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit right now. The seven steps given above lead with absolute certainty into the blessing."

Now, with that kind of a statement from the president of Moody Bible Institute concerning the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the Holiness movement had it made. That's why, as we have pointed out to you, the theological line of instruction to this day in the Holiness Pentecostal charismatic movement is: Wesley; Finney; and, Torrey. He gave them the dignity that they needed.

Well, the last link was the outbreak of gibberish tongues. This was an external evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit which began in the twentieth century. It was the thing that launched what we call the Pentecostal movement. It was based upon Acts 2:4, which was the coming of Pentecost.

Warnings from God

1. Sinless Perfection

   For example, warning number one was the warning of Bible doctrine against Wesley's idea of achieving instantaneous sinless perfection after salvation. Now, this was a great and an important point to Wesley – this idea of instantaneous holiness. I'm reading a book called A Theology of the Holy Spirit, written by Frederick Dale Bruner. On page 324, he says, quoting Wesley, "It is also a plain fact that this power does commonly overshadow them in an instant, and that from that time, they enjoy that inward and outward holiness to which they were utter strangers before." It was a very important point with Wesley that you could come to the point where you now enjoyed freedom from sin. However, the Bible makes it clear that the Christian never loses his old sin nature until he meets Jesus Christ face-to-face. For that reason, in 1 John 1:8, John says, "If we say that we have no sin" (and that is singular, meaning 'old sin nature'). "If we say that we have no old sin nature, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." We are never free of the old sin nature, as long as we are in the human body.

   1 John 3:2-3 add another important point, and that is that sinless perfection is achieved only when we meet Jesus Christ face-to-face. Then indeed we become people who can never again sin. 1 John 3:2 says, "Beloved, now we are the children of God. And it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as he is. Every man that has this hope in Him purifies himself, even as He is pure." What these are saying is that when we see Jesus Christ face-to-face, we, who are already His children, will now take on His complete character of selflessness. Those of us who know that someday we are going to be sinless, therefore, now seek to live as those who are pure – those who avoid sin, though knowing that we have an old sin nature which cannot be removed and will not be removed until we meet Jesus Christ.

   Now it is true that all Christians have died positionally to the old sin nature in Christ, so that its absolute control over the believer is broken. In Galatians 5:24, we have this pointed out to us. Paul says, "And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh (the old sin nature) with the affections and the lusts." In Colossians 3:3, Paul says, "For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." What he means there is that we are dead positionally toward the old sin nature. For this reason, Romans 6:1-14 tell the Christian to reckon himself to be dead to the old sin nature. He isn't in experience dead. It isn't that he cannot sin, but he can now control the old sin nature. Therefore, we should live as those who do not have to be slaves to sin. While the old sin nature may be controlled through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, the presence of the old sin nature can never be eradicated (Galatians 5:16-23).

   So when John Wesley, in effect, was seeking something more with God, he fell into the satanic trap of the notion of sinless perfection which, if he had studied the Word of God more accurately, he would have been preserved from falling into that mistake of sinless perfection; that is, sinlessness in experience. He did not distinguish between positional truth and experiential truth. The Christian's experience obviously regularly contradicts this idea of sinless perfection. John Wesley was well aware of the fact that what he was teaching as to what a Christian could come to was being contradicted by experience. This is because some of the folks who would stand up in the meeting and testify to the fact that they had achieved sinless perfection, and were thanking and praising God for it, were subsequently quite obviously doing things that were wrong.

   Well, here's how Wesley met this problem. Quoting from Bruner's book on page 328, he quotes Wesley. "Wesley says, 'We secondly believe that there is no such perfection in this life as implies an entire deliverance, either from ignorance or mistake.'" I want you to notice that the solution for the sins that Wesley observed was to call them "mistakes." Continuing: "Either from ignorance or mistake, in things not essential to salvation, or from manifold temptations, or from numberless infirmities, wherewith the corruptible body more or less presses down the soul. We cannot find any ground in Scripture to suppose that any inhabitant of a house of clay is wholly exempt, either from bodily infirmities, or from ignorance of many things, or to imagine he is incapable of mistake or falling into diverse temptations."

   So what he is saying is that as long as you have this human body, this corruptible body, you will fall into certain infirmities that are natural to being a human being. These, however, are not called sin. They are called mistakes. He goes on and says, "Certainly sanctification in the proper sense is an instantaneous deliverance from all sin, and includes an instantaneous power then given always to cleave to God. Yet this sanctification, at least in the lower degrees, does not include a power never to think a useless thought, nor ever to speak a useless word. I myself believe that such a perfection is inconsistent with living in a corruptible body. For this makes it impossible always to think right. While we breathe, we shall, more or less, mistake. If, therefore, Christian perfection implies this, we must not expect it until after death. I want you to be all love. This is the perfection I believe and teach. This perfection is consistent with 1,000 nervous disorders which that ... perfection is not. Indeed, my judgment is that, in this case particularly, to overdo is to undo. That to set perfection too high, so high as no man that we ever heard or read of attained, is the most effectual (because unsuspected) way of driving it out of the world."

   So all along the line, what Wesley is doing is trying to provide a way out for the fact that obviously people don't live up to sinless perfection. So he is saying, "Well, God does free you from sin, but you have certain mistakes that are just natural infirmities." Here's how he finishes: "But we may carry this thought farther yet. A mistake in judgment may possibly occasion a mistake in practice. Yet, where every word and action springs from love, such a mistake is not properly a sin. However, it cannot bear the rigors of God's justice, but needs the atoning blood." So as you read the actual teachings of Wesley, you realize that he was aware of the fact that there was a problem with what he was claiming a Christian could come to. Yet, he didn't realize that God in heaven was yelling down, saying, "John, you got the Scriptures distorted. Straighten that concept out. It is not of Me that you are teaching this. This is Satan. Satan has a master plan and you're the first step in it. John, get that straightened out because a great deal of disaster is going to follow if you persist in the concept of a second work of grace, of sinless perfection."

   Well, what did Wesley conclude about this teaching? I'll read it to you in his own words. How did he look upon this doctrine? He says, "This doctrine is the grand depositum which God has lodged with the people called Methodists, and for the sake of propagating this chiefly, he appears to have raised us up." In John Wesley's opinion, this doctrine of sinless perfection was very definitely of God. "Furthermore," he says, "God has raised up the Methodist church to propagate the concept of sinless perfection."

   Now, when you go back to the Word of God, and you see that the Word of God says, "No, the sin nature is always there. You never lose that capacity to sin. You can control that capacity to sin with the indwelling Holy Spirit once you are a Christian, but you never lose it until you come face-to-face with Jesus Christ. Then," the Scripture says, "we become like Him in sinless perfection." Had he followed through the clear warnings of doctrine, he would not have made this mistake. That's what God was teaching. Yet, Wesley, taking something that came from Satan's distortion said, "This is of God, and God has called us to propagate this doctrine." Isn't that frightening? You could not have accused John Wesley of being insincere, or being some kind of charlatan. He was a fine and a great Christian. Yet, when he drifted away from sound interpretation of doctrine, from the basic principles that guide us to the interpreting of the Word of God, Satan was able to interject a false concept that has had monumental repercussions to our very day.

2. Eternal Security

   Well, there was secondly another warning. This was the warning of Bible doctrine to Wesley concerning eternal security of the believer. There are many verses in the Bible, and we shall not read them, but you should pursue them on your own: Romans 8:1; John 10:28-29; and, 1 John 2:1-2. All of these teach that being born again spiritually is irreversible as being born physically. Once you are born into the family of God, you cannot be unborn again. Now these verses are very clear. Yet, John Wesley, because he misunderstood the baptism of the Holy Spirit, did not understand the permanency of a person's salvation. So he taught that you could be saved today and lost tomorrow.

   Now, this was very important to Satan's plan. He had to convey the impression that nobody was secure in their eternal life. When people are not secure in their salvation, then you can manipulate them emotionally. If people are secure in their salvation, you cannot manipulate them emotionally – very readily. The believer is permanently joined to Jesus Christ by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That's what 1 Corinthians 12:13 tells us. That's what Galatians 3:27 tells us. That places us in union with Christ. If Wesley had understood the baptism of the Holy Spirit, he would immediately have seen that it's not possible for a person to fall back out of Christ once he has been joined there by God. 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us that all the old relationships in Adam have been terminated, and those relationships have been made permanently new in Jesus Christ. So we have been transferred from being in Adam to being in Christ.

   2 Corinthians 5:18 tells us that the baptism into Christ is entirely the work of God, and therefore, cannot be undone by man. It is what God has done in exchanging our sin for the imputed righteousness of Christ. Furthermore, 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us that the grace of God has imputed to us the absolute righteousness of Christ. And that happens when you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When you are baptized into Christ, you receive His righteousness. The scriptural distinction of being in temporal fellowship is where a Christian could sin and fall out of his fellowship with the Father in time, and need to use 1 John 1:9 to come back into the inner circle. Wesley failed to recognize the difference between that and eternal fellowship, which is salvation, out of which a Christian could not fall.

   So the fear of losing salvation sent a lot of Christians out, seeking a life of sinless holiness. They felt that if they were sinless, and if they could satisfy themselves that they had received sinless perfection, then they were assured that they were also saved and going to heaven. As long as a person possesses sinlessness, then obviously he is born again now.

   The seeking of such reassurance inevitably took the form of the desire for emotion. Let me quote again from Bruner's book on page 325, and I'm reading on this page from a footnote of John Wesley, in one of his writings called "Plain Account." The question is put to Wesley, "Is there no danger, then, of being thus deceived? Answer: Not at the time that he feels no sin. So long as he feels nothing but love animating all his thoughts and words and action, he is in no danger."

   Now the question was, is there no danger that I could think that I am sinlessly perfect and be deceived about that? That is, of course, how exactly thousands of Christians think. I had one of our members this week telling me about a visit with his home folks, and how they very carefully put a little pressure on him to try to convince him how dangerous his situation was in assuming that because he had been saved once, he was secure in salvation. They were trying to help him to understand that he could not be certain of his salvation.

   Well, the question is put to Wesley, "Could I be deceived that I am sinlessly perfect?" And, as one of the members of our man's family said to him, "I am sinless. I know that I have become sinless." These people really believe this. Now listen to how Wesley answered the question, "Could I be deceived on that?" He said, "No. As long as you feel no sin, and as long as you feel nothing but love animating all of your thoughts and words and actions." Do any of you feel any sin right now? Do you feel love flowing through you right now? Do you feel love controlling everything you think and do?

   That's important. I'm quoting the words of John Wesley. Notice the critical words of this sentence where he is using the word "feeling" twice. His majesty the devil is sitting in the background. He's rubbing his hands and he's saying, "That's it, John. Feeling. That's what it's all about."

   I remember when the entertainer Pat Boone recently spoke to a group of Billy Graham's evangelists who were meeting together. Pat Boone said, "You know, he's a great leader in the charismatic movement." He said, "It's a great feeling of love." He said, "And that's what it's all about, isn't it? Your feeling." I said, "Man, you couldn't have said it more exactly. That is what it's all about – the devil working upon feelings."

   So we are not being unfair when we go back to Wesley and say that the sinless perfection idea lent itself to manipulating the feelings and the emotions of people so that they could feel convinced that they had this kind of perfection, because experience denies that you have this. You have the suspicion about yourself that you're not all that hot, and therefore you have to justify it with some other word like "mistake," so that you can maintain the delusion.

   Well, the doctrine of the Word of God is not based upon feeling. This is an open invitation to Satan. Instead, doctrine is based upon the Word of God itself. Paul indicated this in 2 Timothy 1:12, where he says, "For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed onto Him against that day." I know whom I have believed. And that's why Paul says, "I know I'm going to heaven. I have taken the gospel; I have believed what Jesus Christ has offered to do for me; I have trusted in Him as Savior; and, because I have done that, and I know that God does not lie, I'm going to heaven. I don't feel like I'm going to heaven. Maybe today I do, and tomorrow I don't.

   Knowing

   But I know something on the basis of doctrine. That is so clear. All the Word of God is based upon knowing something. Nobody has ever gone to heaven except on the basis of a head knowledge and a head decision to believe in Christ as Savior. The only way anybody gets to heaven is through a head decision. But there is no such thing as a head knowledge and a heart knowledge. The heart in the Word of God is the mentality. If you believe with the heart, that means you have believed with the mind, and the only way you're going to get into heaven is by an action of your brain. So the apostle Paul says, "It's not by some emotion that I know that I'm going to heaven. It's because I know that I have believed a God who does not lie, and I have received His Son.

3. The Baptism of the Holy Spirit

   There was a third warning that God was giving from heaven. He was shouting down that Bible doctrine concerning the baptism of the Holy Spirit should have warned Charles Finney against equating this concept of the baptism of the Holy Spirit to sinless perfection. It was Finney who brought the idea of tying sinless perfection and the baptism of the Holy Spirit together. Wesley didn't do that. That was Finney's idea. And Finney, if he had paid attention to what the Word of God teaches, would not himself have fallen into this trap.

   Again, I'm reading from Bruner's book on page 333, where he quotes Charles Finney. Finney says this: "But again to the question, can man be justified while sin remains in him? Surely he cannot, either upon legal or gospel principles, unless the law be repealed. That he cannot be justified by the law while there is a particle of sin in him is too plain to need proof. But can he be pardoned and accepted and then justified in the gospel sense, while sin (any degree of sin) remains in him? Certainly not. For the law, unless it be repealed, continues to condemn him while there is any degree of sin in him. It is a contradiction to say that he can both be pardoned and, at the same time, condemned. But if he is all the time coming short of full obedience, there never is a moment in which the law is not uttering its curses against him. Cursed is everyone that continues not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them."

   So Finney was saying, "Unless you had the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and have received sinless perfection, you cannot be saved." He went even further than Wesley. He tied sinless perfection to salvation? Now, that was frightening. Can you imagine what this was going to do to people? This was going to shatter the human soul, as people would be looking at themselves and saying, "Am I going to heaven? God, I don't even want to walk out into the street. I might be killed. I'm not sure. Where do I stand?" And then to get assurance, what did they go for? Finney's emotionalism: "If I could feel some emotional ecstatic, I'll have the assurance that I have been cleansed, and that I'm going to heaven – that hell will not be my destiny." Well, this was very frightful.

   You may pursue this for yourself. If you will read, for example, Romans 10:4, you will discover that Jesus Christ is the end of the law for those of us who trusted Him. Paul says, "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes." Finney says, "The law is still judging you." But the Bible says, "Jesus Christ was judged for us. And the law that condemned us (and our sin, that is) was applied to Jesus Christ. Therefore, the law no longer can condemn us." Romans 3:26 should have warned Finney: "To declare, I say at this time, His righteousness, that he might be just in the justifier of him who believes in Jesus" – the justifier of the person who does no more than believe in Jesus as Savior.

   Romans 4:6: "Even as David also described the blessedness of the man to whom God imputed righteousness apart from works." And yet all the works that Finney and Wesley sought for this sanctification, and all the means to secure it, were the means of human works. Being in Christ through the baptism of the Holy Spirit constitutes salvation. 1 Corinthians 1:30 says, "But of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who of God has made unto us wisdom; and righteousness; and sanctification; and, redemption." Why are you these things: righteous, sanctified, and, redeemed? Because you are in Him. That's the phrase that we began with here in Philippians, when the apostle Paul says, "The greatest thing in life is to be in Christ. And the way you get in Christ is through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Well, Finney's notion lent itself to highly emotional type revivals, which he was conducting, and Satan was able to push the distortion of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit one step further.

4. Speaking in Tongues – Languages vs. Gibberish

   There should have been the warning of Bible doctrine which declared that the gift of speaking in tongues was foreign languages. We have this in Acts 2:6-11. The Greek word "dialektos" indicates real languages. There is no difference between this and the languages spoken of in 1 Corinthians either. God in His grace has to this day not permitted charismatics to speak in real foreign languages. He has restricted Satan from doing that. No interpreter in the charismatic movement today can be verified as interpreting the gibberish that they speak.

5. The Purpose of Tongues

   Bible doctrine teaches the basic purpose of tongues was a warning sign to the Jewish people of the impending fifth stage of the cycle of God's discipline upon their nation. We begin in Leviticus 26:32-39, which spells out this fifth stage of discipline, which is dispersal from the land of Israel. Isaiah 28:11-12 warns that this is coming upon the people of Israel. 1 Corinthians 14:21-22 quotes Isaiah, declaring that now God in causing the Word of God to come to Jews in gentile languages through the gift of tongues, is establishing for them that they are about ready to be sent out of their land in dispersion. Of course, that was fulfilled in 70 A.D. These Scriptures are connected. You must realize that there is no longer a purpose for the gift of tongues today. That has been declared.

6. The Ceasing of Tongues

   Bible doctrine declares that the gift of speaking in foreign languages would cease when the New Testament was completed 1 Corinthians 13:8-10). That which is referred to as "the perfect thing" there was the New Testament canon. Again, the grace of God was warning that tongues today in the gibberish form is counterfeit. The New Testament canon is complete, so you couldn't have tongues today. There is no purpose for the gift of tongues today. In this context, prophecy also is declared to come to an end. Yet the charismatic movement claims to give prophecy today.

7. Women Leadership

   Bible Doctrine warned that women were not to lead men in spiritual things. 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 forbids the teaching of a woman in a public service where men are present. 1 Corinthians 11:3-10 call for the subjection of the woman to male leadership in spiritual things. Of course, it all began in Genesis 3:16, where God told the woman, "Because you have stepped out of line and created this disorder in the human race, which has brought the nature of sin into humanity, henceforth, you will be under the authority of a male. You are not structured to be leader in spiritual things. You will not lead the man. The man will lead you."

   Now, the whole charismatic movement, if they would accept this Scripture, would immediately close its doors tomorrow, because it is, in majority, shot through with female leadership. This is contrary to the Word of God. So they should realize that the movement they have is not of God, but of Satan. The speaking in tongues would not have come through Agnes Ozman, a woman. It would have come through a man, if Satan had had his choice. Instead, because God forced Satan to use a woman, it was God shouting from heaven, "This is not from Me. This is from Satan."

8. Tongues vs. the Baptism of the Holy Spirit

   Bible Doctrine informs us that speaking in tongues is not the sign of having received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is so clear, and yet this is consistently what the charismatics claim today. It started with Wesley, and they still do it today. The Bible tells us that all believers have been baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ at Salvation. 1 Corinthians 12:13 tells us that, and we're going to exegete that verse in detail.

   Yet not all believers in the New Testament had the gift of tongues. 1 Corinthians 12:30 tells us that in the Greek. It says, "Do all speak with tongues?" The way that this is stated in the Greek indicates that that the answer to the question is negative. They do not all. Therefore, here are two things that should have clued the charismatics today into the fact that every believer is baptized with the Holy Spirit, but not all believers speak with tongues. Therefore, tongues could not be the sign of having received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Here God was again shouting his warnings that this notion is false.

9. Healing

   The New Testament healings, which are associated with speaking in tongues, is another one of the miracles. Again, they are miracles of healing, which are not organic; not instantaneous; not complete; and, not verifiable as they were in the New Testament. So God, in His grace today, is preventing Satan from enabling the charismatics ever to perform an organic healing.

   This week, I got a couple of objection letters to the letter we sent out concerning the Nolen special. (The response has been tremendous to that special. The requests have been pouring in.) One objection letter followed the same old argument. They even used the paper I wrote my letter on to give me a rebuttal. What they said was, in effect, "I knew a woman who was healed of cancer. Why don't you believe God?" Here is the old tiresome cliché, "I know a woman. I heard of a woman. Yet I don't want to listen to Dr. Nolen," who has examined these same women and realizes, on the basis of a doctor's examination, that nobody has been healed. God is preventing the devil from bringing about organic healings.

   Consequently, it is God's way of shouting from heaven, "Christians in the charismatic movement, get out. What you are in is a monumental hoax created by Satan over a matter of 100 years of careful planning. You are now the current victims of his plan. What you are claiming is not Me. It is of Satan." Yet, no matter how God seeks to speak to them, they are no better off than the poor rich man in Luke 12, who found himself in the torments of Hades and said, "I've got five brothers who don't believe. Send a miracle experience back. Send this Lazarus back alive, and let him tell them that this is for real." God said, "No, if you will not believe the Word of God as Job did, and count it more important than your daily food, you will get no direction from Me."

   Understand that, Christian, or you will hurt yourself. God will give you no direction outside of the covers of this book. So if you're looking for something else, and if you're going to argue about this issue on experience, then you're already dead. People who have insisted on experience have put their hands to their ears and said, "I don't care, God, what You're saying in Your word. I don't care how that compares to the experience before my eyes. I know they're not talking in real languages. I know they're not really healing organic diseases. I don't care. I'm still going to pretend that it is so."

   As the Scripture says, "Those that would be ignorant, let them be ignorant." God, in His grace, has given warnings both through doctrine and through experience, that the charismatic movement is a great satanic hoax. But if you will not listen, then you will someday face the consequences of great loss of reward, as you discover how you have wasted your life while you thought you were pursuing God. I hope that will not be your case.

   Dr. John E. Danish, 1973

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