Average Joey
Puritan Board Junior
A certain couple where I work are involved with an Apostlitic(spelling) church and believe in "slain in the spirit" and prophecying type of stuff.Any good references to check out to use with them?
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Originally posted by Average Joey
A certain couple where I work are involved with an Apostlitic(spelling) church and believe in "slain in the spirit" and prophecying type of stuff.Any good references to check out to use with them?
Originally posted by poimen
Originally posted by Average Joey
A certain couple where I work are involved with an Apostlitic(spelling) church and believe in "slain in the spirit" and prophecying type of stuff.Any good references to check out to use with them?
"Charismatic Chaos" by John MacArthur.
Originally posted by LadyFlynt
Also, your toughest issue with these ppl will be the Trinity as they do not believe in the Trinity. First God is the Father, THEN He becomes the son, NOW He's in the form of the Holy Ghost. To them He is never in more than one form at a time...thus the term "Oneness Pentacostal". They use the term "Apostalic" as a means of staying away from the term Oneness.
I have also seen ppl nearly die from their distorted practices. It's easy to mistake a heart attack and panic attack as being "in the Spirit".
Originally posted by BrianBowman
Joe,
I spent several years in such movements back in the 80's and then for about 1 year in the mid 90's after several more years living as a profligate. There are ususally a number of reasons why people are drawn to these types of Churches. I've listed the ones personally observed below. I'm sure others can comment on good books/Web sites. One I've found to be particularly helpful is:
http://www.discernment.org/.
I list the following with one general caveat. The Charismatic/Pentecostal/Apostolic/etc. movement is not one movement but many. There is a wide range of doctrines taught and experiences/practices can be quite "fluid" over even a few months time.
1) Deep personal grief and/or a sense of powerlessness in life. Some such Churches "pump people up" with a strong focus on experience *without* having to "pay the price" to get rooted in a knowledege of Jesus Christ through the Doctrines of Grace in true sanctification. (It is this "rootedness" that ultimately results in a stable/mature life of peace and Christian service, but many believe they can "short circuit" this long and often painful process with "Pentecostal" experiences).
2) Many Charismatic and "Apostolic" Churches appeal to folks who need physical healing from disease, accidents, etc. Many belief that "personal and corporate faith" determines "what we get" (including health, wealth, a sexy spouse, etc.). Hence there is an emphasis on positive confession, "seed faith", and other such concepts. Almost everyone I've known in the "Word of Faith" movement believes that God is *not* ultimately sovereign and that He rewards people on the basis of the faith _they_ exercise. There is a great deal of misapplication of Scripture relative to this.
3) Although there are a relative handful of Ministers/"Bisphops"/etc. in such movements/Churches that are well educated (e.g. modern theologians Gordon Fee and Wayne Grudem have some loose ties to modern Charismatics, and Pat Roberson and others have advance degrees), many simply "feel called to ministry" and often have little more than a 2-year diploma from a "Word of Faith" oriented "Bible Training Center" (most have a belief that the "traditional Church" is wholly ineffective and even dead; the "frozen chosen" to borrow a quote from one of Matt McMahon's recent sermons). Therefore, it's not difficult to see how they misconstrue the Scriptures.
4) Within these movements, there often much confusion and misunderstanding as what real scholarship in the Bible really means. For example, many Word of Faith "ministers" can quote Scripture profusely and even blend in Hebrew/Greek words as they preach. To the Theologically uneducated this can be very impressive. Some leaders, like Perry Stone, even have advanced education in Hebrew and Greek. They use this, along with their "Power Gifts" (tounges, "prophesy", etc.) to establish their credibility and authority as experts in the Scriptures, which in the minds of their following has the effect of squelching criticism against their teaching.
5) The underlying premise that God is to be experiencef, the Scriptures bear witness to such, and that our Christianity should consist in "power, not in words alone . . . ", etc. etc.
[Edited on 10-12-2005 by BrianBowman]
Originally posted by Rick Larson
A Theology of the Holy Spirit; The Pentecostal Experience and the New Testament Witness by Frederick Bruner
Webmaster recommended this one to me a while back. It's very comprehensive. I'd be surpised if there's a better book on the subject available today.
Whoaa! Holy buckets. I can't believe that price. I can't remember paying that much.
[Edited on 10-12-2005 by Rick Larson]
Originally posted by BrianBowman
Several good posts on this issue can be found at:
http://www.puritanboard.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=12561#pid178071
http://www.puritanboard.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=13133#pid186424
... and I'm sure others as well.
Originally posted by Me Died Blue
The most concise yet exegetically challenging and to-the-point book I have read on the subject is O. Palmer Robertson's The Final Word. It was actually the book that finally convinced me of cessationism, and he does an excellent job at exposing the complete difference between contemporary "prophecy" and "tongues" and the biblical gifts, as well as refuting the arguments for any continuing revelation (from men such as Grudem).
Some of the points revolve around a look at the offices of the New Testament Church. For instance, Scripture always speaks of the church being built on the foundation of the "apostles and prophets" (Eph. 2:19-20; 3:3-5), and there are no apostles left since there is no one who has visibly seen Christ, so it is illogical to assume that there are prophets remaining. Robertson also gives a great deal of exegetical focus to 1 Cor. 13:8-12, the end goal being to show that it is properly interpreted by Heb. 2:1-2, showing that Christ was the final word in this redemptive period. He also explains the unique revelatory, "perfect" nature of biblical prophecy; if one presumes to prophecy, speak in tongues, or give any revelation on behalf of God, they had better be absolutely certain that God is commanding them to speak it, or else they should lawfully die by Deuteronomy 18:20. One also cannot escape the fact that if God still reveals today, His Word in the Bible is insufficient for our instruction and living today, by the very definition of the word "sufficient."
Robertson's small book touches on many, many more categories and subjects than that of course, and his treatment of each does a great job at considering the possible objections and looking at the issues comprehensively. My points above are simply a skeletal example of some of the relevant issues at hand.
As Brian well noted, however, an exegetical case for cessationism may well not even mean much to many Pentecostals due to the faulty, sloppy understanding of systematics, exegesis and the very nature of theology, Scripture and doctrine in the Christian life. So many people in the movement are so entrenched in the centrality of experience that they would be hard-pressed to even begin to tell you what something like Sola Scriptura or exegesis means, and even less how systematic theology relates to the Christian life.
So in order to pave the way for a discussion on cessationism to even begin, you very well may need to take them to Scripture and discuss things like the biblical concept of spirituality itself, as well as the nature and role of revelation as spelled out throughout biblical history.
Regarding possible resources to supplement that Scriptural study with them, as you've probably heard me say before, one book I could not recommend too highly for that is Michael Horton's In the Face of God. That is because it is extremely unlikely that they will be willing to read material by any of the Reformers, Puritans or anyone who is not a contemporary author for that matter - and even if they would, it is doubtful they would be able to apply much of it to their thinking right away. In light of that, as far as contemporary works go, I have yet to see one that does a better job than Horton's of articulating the biblical, Reformed concepts of spirituality and the Christian life, and showing the importance of theology, Scripture and the Church in those things, and is specifically geared toward an evangelical audience that is relatively unfamiliar with them. Horton paints a picture of Christianity that challenges the evangelical, subjective notions of those concepts and the essential doctrines, and does so in a way that presents it all in a gestalt fashion, going beyond the individual doctrines themselves.
Originally posted by Me Died Blue
As Brian well noted, however, an exegetical case for cessationism may well not even mean much to many Pentecostals due to the faulty, sloppy understanding of systematics, exegesis and the very nature of theology, Scripture and doctrine in the Christian life. So many people in the movement are so entrenched in the centrality of experience that they would be hard-pressed to even begin to tell you what something like Sola Scriptura or exegesis means, and even less how systematic theology relates to the Christian life.
So in order to pave the way for a discussion on cessationism to even begin, you very well may need to take them to Scripture and discuss things like the biblical concept of spirituality itself, as well as the nature and role of revelation as spelled out throughout biblical history.
Originally posted by Average Joey
Joey mentioned in his "arguement" about Daniel "dancing in the spirit".Any scripture that you can show?
Originally posted by Pilgrim
I saw something a few years ago that was very surprising when I was engaged in work in the pest control industry. During an inspection, I happened to find myself alone in a UPC pastor's study that contained dozens of MacArthur's Bible studies! I wasn't able to ask him about it, but it certainly was incongruous, moreso than another evangelical leader less opposed to continuing sign gifts would have been. Not to mention that MacArthur's soteriology is Calvinist. But these were mostly the older study guides from Moody Press, where his Calvinism may not have been as prominent as it is now.
In some rural areas around here, I would guess that UPC and Apostolics may be nearly as numerous as Baptists.