God's Word makes it clear that not everything that glitters is gold. We are called to investigate the overwhelming traditions and the latest trends. We are to use the truth of the Scriptures to determine which are "true"—-and which are just "fool's gold.
The charismatic movement of the past quarter-century has made an impact on the church unparalleled in history. But one legacy of the movement is confusion and mushy thinking.
In Charismatic Chaos, John F. MacArthur calls for biblical evaluation and analyzes the doctrinal differences between charismatics and non-charismatics in the light of Scripture.
“My principal concern, writes John MacArthur, is to call the church to a firm commitment to the purity and authority of the Scriptures, and thereby to strengthen the unity of the true church.”
To tough questions that seem to divide, Charismatic Chaos provides tougher answers that strive to unite. This book tackles such questions as – Is experience a valid test of truth? – Does God still give revelation? – Prophets, fanatics, or heretics? – Does God still heal? – What should we think of the Signs and Wonders movement? – Does the Bible promise health and wealth?
This message is part of a series concerning a book – called “Charismatic Chaos” – by Dr. John F. MacArthur, Jr. He published this book in 1992. This is the tenth message in the 13-part series.
THIS MESSAGE IS NOT MY PROPERTY
All rights to this message are property of “Grace to You” (Copyright 2006 John MacArthur, all rights reserved).
Few things are more destructive than misinterpreting God’s Word. A wrong interpretation can lead to physical harm (e.g., handling snakes based on Mark 16:18) or spiritual harm (e.g., consternation over one’s salvation in the absence of speaking in tongues).
Aside from misunderstanding the text as it is written, misinterpretation often happens when we ignore, or are ignorant of, the historical background of the text. We can easily forget that the divine words we read in each biblical account rise out of the milieu of each human author’s cultural context. And when we do, we run the risk of wrongly assuming why the authors wrote certain things, and what they meant, and how it applies to us. On the other hand, Scripture becomes so much clearer and more profound when understood in its original context.
Christ’s warning to the lukewarm Laodicean church takes on a new flavor when we understand how the city of Laodicea sat on an aqueduct of putrid water that was neither hot nor cold (Revelation 3:14–16). Exhortations to the suffering Philippians carry a greater force once we realize that Paul wrote them from his prison cell (Philippians 1:28–30). And Christ’s confrontations with the Pharisees are all the more condemning when we understand the blasphemy and hypocrisy of their works-righteousness (cf. Luke 20; John 8:12–59).
The modern trend of Christian contextualization is antithetical to a historical interpretation. Rather than taking the audience back to the original setting of the text at hand, many of today’s preachers labor to sever the biblical text from its historical moorings and transport it into a contemporary setting. Hence the explosion of sermons based on pop culture, racy subject matter, and social justice. Even the WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) juggernaut is symptomatic of this problem, by speculating about what Jesus might do, rather than examining what He did do.
Moreover, such an approach relegates the biblical text to the role of supporting cast in the preacher’s consumer-driven production. And when Scripture no longer holds primacy, the ability to play fast and loose with the biblical text grows. Nowhere is that trend more evident than in churches where growth is measured numerically rather than spiritually. By widening the narrow gate, seeker-sensitive churches have filled vast auditoriums with people who do not understand the cost of faith and repentance. Instead of being sensitive to the only true Seeker, they have pandered to the preferences of unbelievers.
Recently we discussed the dangers of a man-centered theology of salvation. Seeker-sensitive pastors routinely provide a path of least biblical resistance for the unbeliever to gain entry into God’s kingdom. And for many, Romans 10:9 is the shortcut they’ve been looking for: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Paul could never have imagined his glorious, hope-filled promise would be exploited 2,000 years later as a two-step altar call formula—simply confess and believe. It has become a comfortable, spiritual Fast Pass for people who have no interest in submitting to the lordship of Christ.
Joseph Prince, a mega-church pastor, best-selling author, and TBN regular, offers this cheap invitation to those who visit his website:
The Bible tells us how to be saved and have eternal life: Believe in our hearts that Jesus died for our sins and was raised from the grave, and confess with our mouths that He is our Lord and Savior. . . . To be saved and to receive all that Jesus has done for you, you can make Him your Lord and Savior today by praying this prayer: “Lord Jesus, thank You for loving me and dying for me on the cross. Your precious blood washes me clean of every sin. You are my Lord and my Savior, now and forever. I believe that You rose from the dead and that You are alive today. Because of Your finished work, I am now a beloved child of God and heaven is my home. Thank You for giving me eternal life, and filling my heart with Your peace and joy. Amen” (emphasis added). [1]
Unfortunately, Joseph Prince’s textploitation is nothing unusual in the current evangelical climate. Regardless, reading the rest of Romans would be far more beneficial than tuning into Prince’s next broadcast. Paul made it clear elsewhere that our confession and faith are proven false if there is no fruit of repentance in our lives (Romans 6:1–18).
So with that in mind, what do we make of Paul’s simple confession of faith? Is it really all that’s required for salvation? This is why the original context is vital.
Paul wrote his theological magnum opus to Christians whose lives were under constant threat from the Roman government. The god-complex carried by deluded emperors developed into a cult of Caesar among the residents of Rome. Citizens needed to express their primary allegiance to their self-deified ruler by confessing “Caesar is lord.” Failure to do so was usually met with a grizzly death.
Paul’s readers needed to be encouraged to remain steadfast in their faithfulness to Christ under the threat of execution. The promise of salvation through confession and belief was never intended to provide a ticket to heaven by jumping through two easy hoops. It was the promise of eternal life to Christians who could very well lose their physical life because they confessed Jesus—not Caesar—as Lord.
The greatest tragedy of Prince’s mishandling of Romans 10:9 is that he has taken a profession of faith that cost many Christians their lives and turned it into a profession of faith that avoids any personal cost whatsoever. It may create more converts, but what exactly are they converting to?
John MacArthur warns strongly against treating Romans 10:9 as a minimum requirement for salvation. He points out that words like “Lord” and “believe” are loaded with implicit meaning that far exceeds a path of least resistance into God’s kingdom:
Many people acknowledge that Jesus is both the Son of God and Lord of the universe. But Paul is speaking of the deep, personal, abiding conviction that, without any reservation or qualification, will confess . . . Jesus as Lord, that is, will confess that Jesus is the believer’s own sovereign, ruling Lord, in whom alone he trusts for salvation and to whom he submits.
James teaches that even demons acknowledge truth about God. In a purely factual sense, they are completely orthodox in their theology. “You believe that God is one,” he writes. “You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder” (James 2:19). In other words, demons are monotheists. Satan and his fallen angels are also confirmed creationists, having watched God form the heavens and the earth simply by speaking them into existence. . . .
James’s point is that men can hold such demon belief, belief that is theologically correct but that does not include reception of Jesus as Lord. People may be well aware of their sin, be under deep conviction about it, and even have a great emotional sense of guilt from which they long to be delivered. But they do not repent and forsake the sin that causes the guilt, nor do they trust in the Savior who can forgive and remove the sin. Speaking about such people, the writer of Hebrews gives one of the most sobering warnings to be found in Scripture: “For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame” (Hebrews 6:4–6). [2]
In other words, a person can verbally confess Christ’s lordship and affirm His resurrection, and still go to hell. Confession and belief are not hoops to be jumped through. They are the affirming signs of genuine repentance from sin, true saving faith in the resurrected Savior, and authentic obedience to His commands.
A woman wrote to me, seething. “You resort to Greek translations and fancy words to explain away what the Holy Spirit is doing in the church today. Let me give you a piece of advice that might just save you from the wrath of Almighty God: put away your Bible and your books and stop studying. Ask the Holy Ghost to come upon you and give you the gift of tongues. You have no right to question something you have never experienced.”
A radio listener, after hearing my teaching on 1 Corinthians 12–14, wrote, “You people, and especially ministers of the Gospel, who claim that speaking in tongues is not for today are, in my opinion and all those who do, grieving the Holy Spirit and missing a blessing from God. To me—it is as ridiculous as if an unsaved person tried to persuade you that you absolutely cannot be sure that you will enter heaven. . . .If you haven’t experienced it—you can NOT tell someone who HAS that it doesn’t exist.”
Both of those letters reflect the tendency to gauge truth by personal experience rather than Scripture. There is little doubt that most charismatics, if they are honest with themselves, would have to acknowledge that personal experience—and not Scripture—is the foundation of their belief system. As much as some charismatics might want to give the Bible a high place of authority in their lives, the Scriptures too often rank second to experience in defining what they believe. As one writer puts it, “Experiences with God provide a basis for their faith.”
That is exactly backward from how it should be. Our faith should provide a basis for our experiences. A true spiritual experience will be the result of the quickening of truth in the Christian’s mind—it does not occur in a mystical vacuum.
Non-charismatics are often accused of opposing emotion and experience. Let me state as clearly as possible that I believe both emotion and experience are essential outgrowths of genuine faith. Many of my own spiritual experiences have been profound, overwhelming, life-changing events. Please do not think for a moment that I would defend a cold, inanimate religion based on a barren creed or some empty ritual.
In an authentic spiritual experience, emotion, feelings, and the senses often become intense, transcending the normal. These may include strong feelings of remorse over sin, a mighty sense of trust that surpasses the pain of a traumatic situation, an overpowering peace in the midst of trouble, the overwhelming sense of joy related to confidence and hope in God, intense sorrow over the lost, the exhilarating praise in understanding the glory of God, or heightened zeal for ministry. Spiritual experience by definition is an internal awareness that involves strong emotion in response to the truth of God’s Word, amplified by the Holy Spirit and applied by him to us personally.
Charismatics err because they tend to build their teachings on experience, rather than understanding that authentic experience happens in response to truth. Too many charismatic experiences are utterly detached from —and in some cases contrary to—the revealed plan and operation of God indicated in Scripture. When these become the basis for one’s beliefs, there is almost no limit to the kinds of false teaching that can emerge.
We see this in many charismatic books and television programs. Visions, dreams, prophecies, “words of knowledge,” private messages from God, and other personal experiences determine what is taught. Scripture—when used at all—is typically employed for proof texts or twisted to fit some novel opinion.
Often passages of Scripture are so mauled that they are made to mean the antithesis of what they actually teach.
Kenneth Copeland, for example, claims he gets many of his novel interpretations by direct revelation. Teaching on the account of the rich young ruler in Mark 10, Copeland was clearly seeking support for his own notion that God wants his people materially wealthy. Jesus’ words in verse 21 seem clear enough: “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess, and give it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” Copeland, however, claims God revealed to him that this verse actually promises earthly, monetary dividends. Copeland says, “This was the biggest financial deal that young man had ever been offered, but he walked away from it because he didn’t know God’s system of finance.”
Charismatics have no way to judge or stop testimonies like that because in their system experience validates itself.
Instead of checking such experiences against the Bible for validity, typically charismatics try to get the Bible to fit the experience or failing that, they just ignore the Bible.
How many charismatics taught to believe that God is giving them or their leaders fresh revelation, simply put their Bibles permanently on the shelf?
Please take the time to watch is video. It will be well worth your time.
Fool's Gold Today 