This is my Diet of Worms. You
know, when Martin Luther was called before the Roman Catholic
Church at the Diet of Worms in 15... 21. 1521, of course you
would know that. One of these dark suits is not
like the others, let me tell you that. And, you know, I wonder,
you know, it seemed that he kind of copped out. They asked him,
will you recant? And he asked for a day before
delivering the infamous, here I stand, I can do no other, in
both Latin and German so the people could hear it so he couldn't
be killed by the Roman Catholic Church. And I always wondered,
you know, he was such a manly man, what caused him to just... seemingly need to take a day.
Well, first of all, he thought it was going to be a debate,
so he wanted to carefully get his answer constructed. But second
of all, if you've ever visited the church in Worms, it's huge.
And with all the big religious people around, he was probably
scared and intimidated. And that's why this is my Diet
of Worms. I'm horrified to be here with these guys. Are you
kidding me? I've seen this on YouTube for years, and now I
get to be here. Very cool. I just want to let
you know. What's gonna happen, today I'm
going to, there's gonna be two sessions of Q&A, and I'm gonna
try mostly today to be theological, and then tomorrow when we spend
our time together, I'm gonna try to be exceedingly practical.
Now these two are gonna bleed back and forth, but I know that
you are like I am, and you know some people who are perhaps stuck
in this movement, and you'd like to know how to go back and speak
to them, what should you do, where do we draw the lines, associations,
what if it's in my church, how do I respond? Predominantly,
we're going to tackle that tomorrow with a little bit of it today.
And you've also been submitting questions. You should know that
many, many questions have come in. I have them right here on
this phone. And we are going to try to tackle,
in big categories, as many of those as we can. But you should
also know that Grace To You, within the coming weeks, is going
to answer each and every one of your questions on the website.
So be looking for that. Amazing, indeed. By the way,
if you've been at the conference and you've been detached from
your telephone and you're missing Fox News because you're an evangelical
so you miss Fox News, it's part of the deal. You get saved, you
watch Fox, you get a gun permit. Okay, so you... It's true though,
isn't it? It is true, yeah. I just saw that Fox News is reporting
O.J. Simpson wants to become a TV
evangelist. No kidding. A following after
apparently his new favorite teacher, Frederick Price. So we can all
look forward to that in about 28 years when he is finally sprung.
All right. You're up to speed. Are we ready? I'm sorry. Okay.
This is the Strange Fire Conference. Next year we're hoping for strange
water to talk about baptismal regeneration, is that correct? So Strange Fire Conference, I
would like to tackle some words that we hear regularly in the
Charismatic community. And I'm going to use the term
charismatic community in a very broad umbrella sense, initially,
because these are words that we hear a lot. And gentlemen,
I'd like for you to respond. And I would like for us to interact
with their ideas and their theology by showing clips of these individuals. And so for our department who's
working on that, this is going to be clip number 16. And then
we're going to see clip number 20, I want you, in case you haven't,
I want you to see the things that have been spoken about,
not for the purpose of laughing, because some of this is rather
extreme and rather outrageous, but we want to interact with
them in their own words, and the first word that I want to
tackle is indeed the word fire. It's a word that gets used a
lot in charismatic circles, and clip number 16 and then clip
number 20 will show you that. Pick him up. Look at me. Fire! In case you didn't know, this
is Rodney Howard Brown, the self-appointed Holy Ghost bartender. This next
clip is clip number 20. This is Jesus Culture, a group
about whom you must know and we'll be talking about, but this
is a concert that kids are going to in droves. Jesus Culture and
the word fire. About 16,000 kids are in the
auditorium right now. All right. Now that song, by
the way, goes on for 17 minutes. The word fire, calling down fire
from heaven, is a persistent theme that we hear. Theologically,
do we want fire to come from heaven? In the context, and Justin can
point this out too, a lot of the conversation is about feeling
a burning, being set on fire, thereby calling the fire down
from heaven. Theologically, how do we respond
to this prayer to call down fire from heaven? I can only assume
that they're referencing Acts 2, taking an image that is tied
to a larger context. The fire there is defined, as
even we were talking about this morning, in clear and discernible
ways. Essentially, ultimately it was representative of the
Spirit's coming and the Spirit's expression was in the gift of
tongues for a specific purpose, to confirm the Apostles, to confirm
what He was doing, as R.C. said yesterday. now bringing
out a people for himself, confirming that the Jews were in fact going
to be a part of the church. And so it has a context, but
instead it's removed from that context and made to mean something
just strictly experiential. And again, that's a non-repeatable
event. Pentecost, as we heard from R.C.,
Pentecost, and then the subsequent exact same reality occurs in
those different people groups. To somehow turn Pentecost into
this kind of mockery. As if you could literally call
down fire from heaven is not only unbiblical, it's just
folly. But it's more than that. It's manipulation. It's all about
manipulation. mind control. Rodney Howard Brown
is a mind manipulator. From a human viewpoint, even
more frightening is this demonic from a supernatural viewpoint. Fire came down from heaven, of
course, in Leviticus 10 and consumed the worshipers, consumed the
ones who offered the sacrifice. That's the whole point of this
conference. John talked about fire baptism, John the Baptist,
and that was judgment. I really don't...these people
are so abiblical, they're so acquainted with words, Bible
words without Bible sentences, Bible words without Bible context,
Bible words without Bible doctrine. They throw the words around and
they become means by which they manipulate people's minds. Fire
is obviously an incendiary word. It has all kinds of implications
of heat and power and energy. I mean, that's a perfect word
for them to use to manipulate people. The next time fire comes
from heaven, it's going to engulf the world in judgment. God will
not drown the world in water again. but He will end the world
in fire. The elements will melt with the
fervent heat. It's going to be an atomic implosion, the uncreation
when the elements melt with fervent heat. That is fire from heaven. And I don't think anybody in
his right mind would be calling down fire from heaven because
that's...going forward, that is a judgment metaphor after
Pentecost. You will be baptized by the Holy
Spirit and with fire. That's another baptism and that's
a judgment. The second word that we hear
a lot, this is going to be clip number 17, clip number 17. The word anointing is used a
lot and I would like for us to see how the anointing presumably
is applied in a worship service where they are doing the...sorry,
y'all...the Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey. and applying the anointing. This is clip number 17, the word
anointing. ♪ You put your left foot out
♪ You put your left foot in ♪ You put your left foot out ♪ Put
your left foot in ♪ Put your left foot out ♪ Put it in and
you shake it ♪ And you shake it all about ♪ You take your
whole self Now jump in. And this goes on for a long time. He's anointing people. We hear
a lot about different anointings. Could you please define for us
biblically what is the correct understanding to be anointed
and can we be today, and if so, how? Do you want to say something,
Justin? Sure, well Scripture teaches that if you are a Christian,
you're anointed. If you've been regenerated by
God's Holy Spirit, you are anointing, you are anointed. It is not a
feeling, it's not a buzz, it's not an experience, it's a reality.
First John 2, 20, but you have an anointing from the Holy One
and you all know. This is not for a select few,
it's not that some Christians have a super special anointing
that the rest of the common Christians don't have. That is a... division of Christians into classes,
the haves and the have-nots, you know, to say, oh, so-and-so
is anointed, he has a great anointing. If you're in Christ, you are
anointed. There's no division of classes
within Christianity. We are one in Christ, the ground
is level at the foot of the cross. And so this is a false understanding
of a biblical reality. It's used to manipulate people.
It's used to manipulate their emotions and their behavior.
And it's also used to elevate the whatever false teacher you're
looking at, elevate him to a status that is above everyone else.
He has a different source of authority, he has a unique access
to God and he gets divine revelation knowledge from the Holy Spirit,
from Christ, this pipeline from heaven to various false teacher
and that is their way of insulating themselves against biblical criticism. Well if you can't find this in
the Bible, don't worry about it because I have the anointing.
God has spoken to me directly. And so if you can't find it in
Scripture, don't sweat it, it's okay, I've got the anointing.
I've got this inside avenue to God. Regularly we'll hear we
can't critique them because we can't touch God's anointed. JOHN
HATHAWAY Yeah, touch nothing, the Lord's anointed. Yeah, I
think what you have to understand and what Justin's saying is...
The anointing is essentially the promise of illumination from
the Holy Spirit to understand the Word. And we all have that.
We possess not only the Word, but we possess the teacher and
the author of the Word. That is the anointing. That's
why we don't need to turn to human teachers. That's the rest
of that verse. We don't need to be taught from
the vantage point of human wisdom. The anointing we have is the
illuminating work of the Holy Spirit which leads us to a true
understanding of Scripture. Every believer has that. That comes with the resident
Holy Spirit. We would not be able to live
the Christian life if we couldn't understand the Bible. And we
know the natural man understands not the things of God, they're
foolishness to him. But we have the mind of Christ. Why do we
have the mind of Christ, 1 Corinthians 2.16? Because the Spirit teaches
us the deep things of God. That's the anointing. But you're
exactly right, they throw that word around in kind of an Old
Testament sense like a prophet, or a priest, or a king was anointed
in some official ceremony, as if they've been pulled up above
the hoi polloi and they're so elevated that they're beyond
criticism. They have the anointing from
God. I think the other thing to say about that is that is
pagan. That kind of activity has nothing
to do with Christianity. That is a blasphemy of the Holy
Spirit. It is a mockery of the Word of
God. It is a travesty to do that in the name of Christ. I don't
know how those people survive the fire that should come down
from heaven. I don't know...I don't know how God can exercise
as much patience as He does. And if you ever question the
patience and forbearance of God, look at how long that stuff goes
on. Why is God patient? Why is He
forbearing? Because, listen carefully, because
He has people in that Movement yet to be redeemed. And He will
rescue His people from that Movement. Let me...oh boy, I'm gonna argue
with you. Let me play advocate, okay? Here's your problem. You like
organs and cellos. This is our way of expressing
ourselves in worship. Why would you judge something
that is so clearly filled with the Spirit? Because it's just
mindless, emotional hysteria. It's just hysterics. It's mind-numbing
hysteria. It's not about worship. Let me
explain worship in a simple way. The deeper your understanding
of the truth of God, the deeper your understanding of God Himself,
the higher your worship goes. Worship is directly correlated
to understanding. The richer your theology, the
more full your grasp of biblical truth, the more elevated your
worship becomes. Low understanding of God, superficial,
shallow understanding of God leads to shallow, superficial,
contentless hysteria. You can whip that up. You can
create that kind of frenzy. It has nothing to do with worship.
It isn't worship. It's not connected to worship.
It is sheer hysteria and a mindless expression. You've been singing hymns this
week. because there's rich theology in hymns. We don't have to go
hysterical. We want your mind fully engaged. Hymns, I like hymns. I don't
need to hear fire, fire, fire a thousand times. I don't need
7-11 choruses, seven words 11 times over. I need to advance
the doctrine. I need to advance the richness.
I need to deepen the truth and broaden the truth. And hymns
have verses, not just five words repeated and repeated and repeated
and repeated and repeated, but never really with the nuances
of theology. That's not worship. That's not
even Christian. That's no different than a rock concert. A lot of
ways to manipulate people's minds and they have figured out how
to do that. So you're saying the theological depth of Hokey
Pokey isn't what we're looking for. Okay. The next word I'd
like to talk about is the word glory. The word glory is used
a lot. Folks, this is going to be clip
number 18 and then clip number 21. My apologies, but this is John
Crowder. To my surprise, he has grown
in popularity. He's not one of the big boys,
but he continues to find access, as you will see, into churches.
This is clip number 18, John Crowder experiencing the drunken
glory. Whatever that is. I think I'm gonna wreck because You know what they say when you
put two users together? You see, when Winnie gets up
here, and then you expect me to get up and say coherent words
later, afterwards. Oh, Jesus. Oh, dear Jesus. Oh,
Lord. Yes, Lord. I've learned a quick prayer.
I'll teach it to all of you really quickly. Okie dokie, Lord. Okie
dokie. Lord, I love your heavy, drunken
glory. Lord, I love it. Lord, thank
you, Father, for more of the heavy, weighty, drunken glory
in this house today. That's the drunken glory. This
is clip number 21. This is a church we are going
to be talking about in more detail. It's in Redding, California.
I know we have some pastors here from Redding, California. This
is a movement that is very...it's extraordinarily large. It's Bethel
Church and this is...get ready, everybody, you're going to be
in the presence of God. Clip number 21 is the glory cloud
comes down from heaven or the ventilation system. That's it, you've just experienced
the glory of God. Gentlemen? JOHN PARKER I mean,
it's hard to even respond to that, isn't it? It's mind-numbing,
it's blasphemous. You know, I was thinking as you
were showing the clip of Moses, and we were talking about him
this morning as a prophet, he wanted to see the glory of God
and he wanted to have the glory of God declared to him. The glory
of God, I mean, the Hebrew word kavod, it's what makes God weighty. It's what makes Him take our
thoughts and drive us to the ground and, you know, worship.
There's nothing weighty about any of this. It's instead a blasphemy
of Him. And what does God do with Moses?
He shows him a visible display of His glory, but He can't see
the whole thing, He has to hide Him. But the real display of
the glory of God was when He proclaimed His name before Him.
It was propositional glory. It was the truth about His character.
That's what's weighty about God. And this is just... Tom, I had
a thought. If that was the glory of God,
everybody in the building would be dead. Everybody. Even Moses couldn't look on the
glory of God. The only way that the glory of God could be revealed
in the world and people wouldn't die was when it was revealed
in Jesus Christ and it was veiled in human flesh. And when Jesus
went up on the Mount of Transfiguration, God protected the disciples that
were there, and they only went into a coma and not death. when
they saw the glory of Christ. The veiled glory is manifest
in Christ. We see the glory of God. I love
2 Corinthians. We see the glory of God shining
in the face of Jesus Christ. But it's veiled in Christ as
it was veiled to Moses. That kind of folly, that doesn't
get more serious than that. When you start tampering with
the glory of God, and the guy before that, whoever he is, That
kind of behavior, if he hasn't figured out how to do that and
make that up, that's demonic. I mean, that's either him really
adept at pulling that off, or he's under some power and it's
not the Holy Spirit. Before we go any further, I just
think for the sake of fairness, Steve, if you could just stay
out of this for one of these questions. Let the other guys
have a go. I'm saving it all for tonight,
okay? Well, yeah, no, I'll hop in.
The word glory is used basically in two different ways. There
is the intrinsic glory of God and there is ascribed glory. The intrinsic glory of God is
the sum and the substance of all the divine perfections. It
is all of God's attributes. It is the fullness of His eternal
being. And there is nothing that we
can do to add to the intrinsic glory of God nor take away from
the intrinsic glory of God. He is the God who was and who
is and who shall be forever. He is immutably the same from
age to age. And it is the sum of His holiness,
His transcendence, His independence, His autonomy, His sovereignty,
His righteousness, His truth, His love, His grace, His mercy,
His omniscience, His omnipresence, all of the attributes of God
comprise His intrinsic glory. There is a scribed glory which
is the glory we give to God which is to render to Him the praise
and the worship that belongs to Him alone. And the more we
understand of His intrinsic glory, the more we will ascribe to Him
glory. And so, a low view of God leads
to low worship. And a high view of God leads
to high worship and high and holy living. So what we see here
are people who have no knowledge of God, or who have so little
knowledge of God, they don't know enough to get out of...I
mean, that was like a bad fraternity party. It's hard to even know
how to respond to that. They don't even know what the
word glory means, they have no concept, they have no truth regarding
the glory of God. Yeah, and that first guy, I mean,
he does have a strange spirit, a different spirit about him,
small s. Gentlemen, if I could, without
being annoying, which maybe we've already crossed that line, but
I want to bring this way, way down for a moment, okay? Because
I think that most of us see things like that, and we just, because
of theological training, we just look and go, well, that's just
dopey. That's just dumb. But when you engage in a conversation
with somebody who is into that movement, I need more than well
that's and it is and that's how I want to respond equip me to
in a pithy way respond to that to help them understand why it's
done? LAWRENCE Well, first of all,
if they're in that, we may need to be sharing...most probably
need to share the gospel with them and bring them to a saving
knowledge of Jesus Christ. I don't see how a born-again,
converted, regenerated person would stay in that environment
for two seconds, especially given the anointing that we just talked
about. I'd be scared to even be in the building with that
going on, that somehow I'm going to end up being trafficking in
some kind of dark, devilish spirit. Why? Okay, so I'm in this. Okay, I'm in this. I like jumping
around. I don't...why? Why is this bad? David danced before the Lord.
Why is this bad? It's mindless. It's atheological. There is no Christ. I mean, John
this morning spoke of that first principle from 1 John 4, 2 and
3, it's a magnification of the true Christ. I mean, that's just
responding to crowd control, as John said, mind-numbing music.
You're just whipping yourselves up. I think you have to be a
little emotionally unstable to even want to be in that and to
be pulled along into the vacuum of that. JOHN, you know, the
thing with David, it's simply that with every faculty, every
part of his body, every means he had humanly, he expressed
his joy and his gratitude to God. That's very different than
that. And this speaks to an issue,
Todd, that I think Steve nailed. This is why I believe that we
are not dividing the body of Christ in this conference. We are trying to identify the
body of Christ and show that these people aren't part of it.
I think the big issue here... You know, people have been hitting
the Twitter thing all day, and it was kind of interesting, they
told me today that it was the number one hashtag Twitter thing
in the world, Strange Fire Conference. So that's pretty interesting. In fact, I was told that we were
several points ahead of Kim Kardashian. Oh. Now we're relevant. Sweet. So, but one of the criticisms that coming
is, this is divisive, these are our brothers, these are our sisters
in Christ. They're not. Should we be happy about that?
No, we ought to be heartbroken about that. If we want to talk
about fire, then we need to talk about snatching brands from the
burning. And these people need to be rescued. And one of the
reasons that we did this, there's two things in my mind driven
toward this conference. One was the terrible dishonor
of the Holy Spirit so that the reproaches that fall on Him are
fallen on me. Zeal for your house has eaten me up, what Jesus said
when He cleansed the temple. And secondly, the reality that
these people are lost in this system and they're throwing the
word Jesus all over the place. They don't know the gospel. They
don't understand the gospel. So, you know, I got to thinking
about that today and I decided that on Sunday morning here,
I'm going to give a message on the true gospel and who's really
saved because at the end of the day, this becomes the issue.
And I will tell you this, that people can't be saved out of
that movement until they hear the gospel. They can't call on
the one they don't know. They can't know Him unless they
hear. I want to take just a minute
to tag along what John was just saying, is that this is very,
very serious and the people who are in this movement, the vast
majority of them are not saved. And one of the things that so
confuses and so blurs the line... is that they use some of the
same terminology, but the definitions behind that terminology are very,
very different. It's not enough just to use the same lingo. How
you teach it, how you flesh that out. And one of the things that
honestly, and I'm going to...I'm about to blackball myself here.
One of the things that makes it so hard to warn people about
false teachers is when the good guys start associating with the
bad guys. And they give these people...now
what we've seen in these clips is extreme to be sure, but the
same movement, this Word of Faith charismatic movement, certainly
the more as you drift towards the Word of Faith, one of the
things that so confuses people, I cannot tell you how many times
I've heard from people and they ask me, well what about so-and-so,
I saw him with Paul Crouch, I saw him with Marcus Lamb on, you
know, on Daystar and on TBN. It makes it very hard for us
to warn people about the wolves when the leaders of the sheep
are associating with the wolves. And they give them... Let me... Paul Crouch loves to
have the good guys on his set, loves it. because the good guys
give him a level of credibility that he does not have on his
own. And Paul Crouch, TBN, Daystar, Marcus Lamb, these guys are the
tips of the spears that are exporting this theological poison to the
rest of the world. If I could for a moment because
I have the gift of encouragement, Justin. But don't worry, you've
been blackballed for years, bro, okay? Nothing's changed. The fourth word...okay. I suppose I have. The fourth
word that I'd like to discuss is the word dominion, and this
is going to get a little bit theological because it's also
eschatological, it also has end times implications. In brief,
they believe that there are seven mountains in culture, politics,
society, family, the arts, and if the new, from the New Apostolic
Reformation, what do they call the kids, the new warriors? Joe's
army the latter day. Yeah, they raise up these kids
in the New Apostolic Reformation to conquer each one of the mountains
of the seven mountains and then as soon as we conquer the seven
mountains, Jesus is going to come back. It's a dominionist
theology. This is from one of the few books
that actually is critical of anything in the New Apostolic
Reformation from latter reign theology which is also could
be underneath the New Apostolic Reformation. If you don't know,
there's basically three rivers. One is from Toronto, where the
Toronto Blessing happened in Kansas. It's IHOP, not the pancake
store, International House of Prayer. And then the third river,
which flows together into a ocean of sewage, is out of Bethel,
the Bethel Church in Redding, California, with Bill Johnson.
Those are the three streams that form the New Apostolic Reformation. Gentlemen, the church must be
restored and equipped to rule. It must come to perfection. Out
of the purified church will come a spiritual elite core, a corporate
Christ who possesses the spirit without measure. They will purge
the earth of all wickedness and rebellion. They will judge the
apostate church. They will redeem all creation.
First of all, very attractive to young people who want something
to do. You can comment on that if you'd
like, but I would like you to focus on dominion. How do we
biblically take dominion? What are the eschatological implications
of this? And where are they going wrong?
That's post-millennialism that we're going to usher in the Kingdom
by making the world a better place and once we have restored
the earth under the dominion of the gospel, then Christ will
return at the end. And that is certainly contrary
to what we read in the Word of God. I mean, we see that it will
be desperate times at that period before Christ returns, not better
and better. It would be worse and worse.
And so they really have it totally backwards. We cannot usher in
the Kingdom until the King comes back, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. And if you read the New Testament
and try to see that we are to restore dominion in arts and
media and all of that, I mean, that was laughable in the first
century. Like, okay, they're going to
restore... these different dominion hills in the Roman Empire. I
mean, they're just trying to survive for their life and escape
being martyred to death. It's just a false eschatology. I don't think it starts with
a false eschatology. I think it starts with a madness,
an egotistical madness that you actually think you have the kind
of power that could pull that off. And if you tell yourself
that long enough and you get enough people to buy into it,
it gets a life of its own. And I think it is just a way
to dupe people. We all know how young people
are interested in social justice and how Christianity is, even
evangelical Christianity, non-charismatic, has turned away from the gospel. Why has it turned away from the
gospel? If you go to a place that's been through a difficult
time, you go to New Orleans after a hurricane or whatever, and
you start reaching out to people, if you go and sit them down and
say, let me tell you why you need to come to Jesus Christ,
because you're a sinner and you go through the gospel, what kind
of reception are you going to get? You're probably going to
run out of the house. It's going to be very difficult. People
aren't going to buy in. But show up with food. Show up with clothes. They will love you. They will
embrace you and say you're doing this in the name of Jesus. That
kind of stuff is easy. What's hard is the gospel presentation. Well I think they've captured
some of this desire to change the world which is always appealing
to young people, and that's who you see in these things, young
people. and with a kind of crazy megalomania and a kind of a vast
overestimation of the power that they have. They define their eschatology.
I don't think it comes from studying the Bible and coming up with
a post-millennial view. I think it comes from egotism
gone mad, and it may be aided and abetted by Satan himself. If you read about the NAR, you
know, when Rick Perry was running for president and he ended up
at a bunch of NAR, New Apostolic Reformation...by the way, It
is basically built on the fact that there are Apostles today.
Peter Wagner is the leading Apostle, but you can be an Apostle. I
think it was six hundred bucks, you could be an Apostle. And you
send your money to Peter and he sent you a certificate saying
you were an Apostle. So they had divided the state of Texas,
if you remember, into...they had taken every county in Texas
and they had started to take dominion over every county in
Texas. And the big prayer meeting that
Rick Perry attended was a prayer meeting of all these dominionists
trying to take over Texas. And they came up with crazy things
like little demons and all kinds of stuff. There's a sense in
which this is just egotism gone mad. And there's also a sense
in which it may be literally the kingdom of darkness behind
it all. But Steve is exactly right in
saying what the Bible says is the world gets worse and worse
and worse and worse and worse, and Jesus comes and judges the
entire world in a judgment that parallels the Flood in Genesis,
only it's by fire and not by water. AUSTIN HILLS, JR.: : You
know, the passage that immediately jumped to my mind, John, when
you were saying that is out of Daniel. We hear about the kingdoms
that are going to exist and they're going to be all human kingdoms.
They're described later in Daniel, of course, as these vicious animals.
That's what the world is going to be. And then one approaches
the Ancient of Days, the Son of Man, and to Him is given dominion. I think that you've answered
this most certainly in part and perhaps in whole, but why else
do you suppose so many young people are drawn to that, to
being a forerunner generation? I don't think it has anything
to do with what they're saying for most of them. It's the music.
It's all the stuff. They're liberated. It's like
getting drunk. It's like going out and just
getting bombed so you don't have to think about the issues of
life. Shut down the music, totally shut down the music. Turn on
all the lights, and they all need to be white lights, just
like normal light bulbs. Just turn on the lights. Shut
down all the music and have some guy get up there and try to sell
that. Yeah, it's not going to work. You've got to have some
way to manipulate their minds and turn them into zombies. And
that's the very reason all of the healing crusades that I've
ever been to, and I've been to more than I can count almost,
but they've always got the music going. It's this extended, repetitive
music that lulls people into what's essentially like the first
stage of hypnosis, you've altered your...you've disengaged your
mind, you've disengaged rational thought and this emotionally
driven music and people become more susceptible. And there are
a lot of psychosomatic healings. That happens all the time at
Benny Hinn Crusades. But what you don't see are organic
healings that people are actually bona fide medically documented
healed. That does not happen. But people
are very...very susceptible to this emotionally driven music
and it goes on and on, like you said, for seventeen minutes.
And none of this stuff would work without the music. You're
not going to find that kind of music in a Reformed church. You
won't find it. Why? Because that's not who they
are. They're going back to the Puritans.
They're going back through Martin Lloyd-Jones. They're going back
through Spurgeon. They're going back to Calvin
and Luther and Athanasius and Augustine and the Apostles. And
their world is sound theology, Bible exposition, serious worship,
love of God, obedience, discipline, order. That's their world. This
is a completely different stream. This is the world invading the
so-called church and carrying it away with things that have
nothing to do with the Kingdom of God, and nothing to do with
the history of the church, and nothing to do with sound doctrine.
You know, you look at the New Testament and you see two groups
of people, you know, those who are in Christ and those who aren't
and always what you find is that those who aren't in Christ are
driven by their feelings, their emotions, they're driven by their
body's appetites and those in Christ are driven by their minds,
by their understanding of the truth over and over again. This
you know, or you need to know this. It's the mind for us in
Christ. And there's nothing about the
mind in any of that. JOHN, but the attraction is the
same thing in a bar. It's the same kind of thing.
It's sensual, sensual experience that disconnects you from the
realities of life. If I could, and Dr. MacArthur,
I'm going to let you determine when this is going to stop, because
I realize this is going to be very painful, but I chose, if
you would be so kind in the booth, to prepare clip number 19. Clip
number 19, this is Jesus Culture. Jesus Culture is the worship
band out of Bethel Church in Redding, California. They do
concerts all over the world. They sell up 16,000 seaters like
that. Most likely, kids in your church
have Jesus Culture music on their iPads. Almost certain that they're
listening to it in their earbuds. Now, I brought three minutes. three minutes of a 15-minute
song. And let's endure this for as
long as we can because it's one thing to say that it's hypnotic
and repetitious. I think it's another thing to
see it. So we will watch this until either we all pass out
or... Works. Or Dr. MacArthur says,
enough, I can't take it anymore. All right? This is clip number
19, Jesus' culture asking to be filled up. with something. Clip number 19. Fill me up, God. Fill me up,
God. Fill me up to overflow, God. Dr. MacArthur. Dr. MacArthur. Fill me up. Fill me up. OK. All right. That's enough. Okay, I couldn't take it. That was about a minute and that
was 12 fill me ups. Um, this is wildly popular. Now this is the tricky part.
Some of the Jesus culture music is passable. I'm a parent. My child loves it. Am I concerned?
Absolutely you're concerned. I mean, it's...obviously, you
know, it's the old clock that doesn't run is right twice a
day. If they aren't ever...if they don't ever do anything that
is acceptable, then you're not going to buy into what isn't.
I mean, it's just the grease slide. That has nothing to do
with Christianity, nothing to do with God. In fact, I'd be
afraid to put my mind in neutral and start yelling out loud with
that kind of sensual music, fill me up, fill me up, fill me up.
among a group of non-believers who would go from being kind
of normal non-believers living in the kingdom of darkness to
being demon-possessed. I think you're inviting a spirit,
for sure, but it isn't the Spirit of God. It has nothing to do
with Christianity. Again, this is paganism. This
is the Kundalini cult. You can look on the YouTube and
see that kind of stuff. This is paganism. This is what
Hindus do, the mindlessness of this. And I think if you accept any
of it, if you say, well, there's some good in it, you literally
have left your young people open to, I think, to demon powers. I would run from this so fast.
TODD PURDUM This maybe sounds silly to you, but I see this
stuff and I experience this stuff. They've got a few songs. They
maybe have 50 songs. And there's a couple of them, there's nothing
bad in them, and people will just say, well, that one's okay,
it doesn't hurt anything. Does it hurt anything to bring
their music in any way, shape, or form into my church, into
my home, into my kids' earbuds? The music is just an avenue to
get them into their teaching. The music is popular and what
they're wanting to do is they're wanting to draw people in, oh
we've got good music, Jesus culture, Hillsong, we've got good music,
so they use that as an avenue to get people into their teaching.
And Mormons do the same thing. Mormonism doesn't...Mormons don't
approach you with a full bore. list of all their heresies that
they believe. They look very normal, they look Christian,
they look very nice and they suck people in. And it's the
same thing with this. It's to draw people in to their
belief system. And it's sad that today theology
and doctrine have almost become bad words. What we just saw there,
that is a mark, supposedly, of spirituality. You know, it's
a high mark...you're spiritual if you can...but it's It's totally
opposite. JOHN, I would go so far as to
say evangelical non-Charismatic churches are using music that
is unacceptable to draw people in. They're using the music of the
world to suck people in as if somehow people would get saved
because the music of the world is attracting them. It's a big
jump between being attracted by the music of the world and
being regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and the two have no connection.
So I think this is so close to what's in a normal evangelical
environment. This is so close to what people see in non-charismatic,
quote-unquote evangelical churches, that it's a very small step to
getting sucked in because the style is the same. But the theology
inherent in it, as Justin says, is unbiblical. All right, I want to ask... Lawson.
You know, Todd, one other thing too, just the theology of that
little chorus is wrong. We're not filled up with the
Holy Spirit as though we get more of the Holy Spirit. The
whole issue is the Holy Spirit gets more of us. And so it's
totally reversed in Ephesians 5.18, we are to be filled by
the Holy Spirit, not filled up with more of the Holy Spirit.
And it's a total wrong, you know, pneumatology of understanding
of how the Holy Spirit works in sanctification. And as if
that is what you need to do in order to be filled by the Spirit
is just keep repeating that over and over. No, in reality, you
need to die to self, you need to resist temptation, you need
to mortify the flesh, you need to have the Word of Christ richly
dwell within you. Those type of things, buffet
your body and make it your slave, those type of things really are
the precursors to being filled by the...confessing sin, repenting,
turning away from the world, loving Christ, those are the
things that accompany being filled by the Spirit. Let me...let me take you to Bethel
Church in Redding, California. This is clip 22 for the booth,
clip 22. We're going to return to the
word fire, but this is Bethel and I want this to lead us into
more conversations about the kids who are typically attracted
to this. This is a fire tunnel. at Bethel
Church where you are, well, I think getting the fire anointing, feeling
the glory, all of it kind of coming together in a fire tunnel. This is clip 22 at Bethel Church. Okay, I want to explore more
of that, but in general, we've got pastors sitting on the stage.
Pastorally, how grievous is this? It's shocking is what it is.
I mean, you look at that and you think how...we live for the
glory of God. We live to teach the Word of
God and to see Him denigrated in such a way, to act like that
is appropriate. My mind goes immediately to the
first two commandments, the first being you're not to have any
god but the one and only true God. But secondly, the second
commandment isn't primarily about having idols as opposed to the
true God. It's about having a wrong kind
of worship. a human-created worship of the
true and living God. That's what the Second Commandment
is about. Ultimately out of that came the Regulative Principle
and the idea that we don't get to decide how we think God ought
to be worshiped. We don't get to create that.
We are shaped by what the Scriptures themselves teach. You come to
the New Testament, why do we do what we do in corporate worship?
I remind my congregation this often. When we come to worship
God, we don't come to decide, okay, we're going to do this
because we like it or we think it's...you know, it's popular,
it's going on in other churches. We do these things because they're
prescribed by the New Testament for corporate worship. You don't
find that prescribed for corporate worship in the New Testament.
Everything is Word-driven. We sing the Word. We pray the
Word. Read the Word, we preach the
Word. Everything is ultimately Word-focused and there's nothing
that's Word-focused there. It's idolatrous in the sense
of the second commandment. It's a...it is probably also
a violation of the first commandment, but surely a violation of the
second even if they perceive the true God as He's required.
Closely related to the regulative principle or the normative principle,
how we go about worship. one of the most often repeated
responses to what you're saying. Nowhere in the Bible does it
say that the Holy Spirit cannot do that. I know you maybe find
it to be strange, but the Bible does not say that the Holy Spirit
cannot knock people over, cause them to be drunk, cause them
to bark like dogs, or run around on fire. Therefore, who are you
to put the Holy Spirit in a box? My response is God put the worship
of Himself in a box in the Second Commandment, and we have to respect
that box. You don't get to live outside
that box because you want to. He set the standard. He set the
fences. All right, but... JOHN, there
are just two ways. You either have a direct mandate as to how
to worship in the Bible, or you have a model for it. I mean,
there can be elements of worship that are commanded. Paul says
to Timothy, Read the Scripture until I come. Read the Scripture,
okay? That's part of what it means to worship. You also have
examples of what went on in worship. They're regulated. They're regulated
in 1 Corinthians, right? You're doing this, you're doing
this, stop doing this, stop doing this, do this. So you have illustrations
of teaching the Word of God. This is one of my favorite exemplary
principles. Teach the Word of God until people
are so tired they fall out of the window and die. Raise them
from the dead. Bring them back and keep teaching. But you either
have prescription for how to worship, or you have examples
of how to worship. You can't find in the Bible people
barking, falling over, flopping. The only people who were ever
slain were unbelievers who were knocked over by the power of
God. There is no illustration of any believer ever being knocked
down, ever barking like a dog. So the burden of proof isn't
on that. I mean, that's the cheesiest argument there ever is. Since
the Bible doesn't forbid that, you know, why can't we allow
the Holy Spirit to do it? But it is consistent with their
entire view of revelation because they believe that the They will
not prescribe themselves to the fact that the end of the New
Testament was the end of divine revelation. So if God is still
speaking and still talking and most amazingly talking to me
and giving me impressions and revelations, then, of course,
who's to say we can't bark and we can't squirrel around and
wiggle and dive and jump and...yeah, because, you know, hey, revelation
is still going on and it's now coming through me. So, there's
no restraint on anything. AUSTIN WELCH All right, I want
to...because cheesy as it is, that is one of the battle cries. Well, Dr. MacArthur, the Bible
nowhere says that there should be an organ in the church and
you should sing hymns with four-part harmony. Well, I think the Bible
does tell us explicitly in the Old Testament that we are to
use instruments in worship and that, in fact, just the panoply
of instruments is throughout the Psalms. And I don't think
the New Testament cancels that out at all. And I think you can
even show that from the words in Ephesians as well. But we
do have that. An organ is just another instrument. It's a wind instrument, if you
will, if you want to go back before there were electronic
organs, it was a wind instrument. Other wind instruments were used
in the Bible. Pipes and horns were wind instruments. This was a mechanical way to
push wind through horns. That's what an organ was. And
I think the reason that Historically, the church found its way to organs
and instruments was because they were following a biblical pattern.
And that biblical pattern was, as you see it in Psalm 150, to
take every possible means there was. And everything that has
breath should be used to praise the Lord. So whatever it is. And I even think guitars can
be used to praise the Lord. I'm not against that. Modern
electronic instruments. But I think they... And they
are only accompaniment. How can I say that? I think the
primary praise that God wants in His ears is not instrumental
praise, but instrumental praise aids the people of God in their
praise. And I think when you go to many
churches, you sit in the dark and this massive electronic explosion
of sound overwhelms you. But people in those churches
don't know what congregational singing is. They can't hear themselves,
let alone the people around them. This is the other stream that
I talked about, and I'm going to show two clips pretty closely
here. This is clip number eight and then clip number six, clip
number eight and then six. This is the International House
of Prayer. This is, again, Mike Bickle up
in Kansas. And I want you to see a young
lady who visited their ministry for training, for equipping. We'll then try to figure out
what's going on here and what's happening to this young lady.
This is clip number eight from IHOP. Oh, shoot. Oh, the Lord
is so good. Just when the awakening broke
out, we were made to come here. You were made to come here? Well,
not on the Wednesday. We all came because it was our
Sabbath, and we were all excited, so we came to see what was going
on, and I've never seen anything like this before or even heard
about it, and I didn't know that the Lord could work like this.
So you never did this kind of thing before? No. Had you ever
seen it before? No. You've never seen this kind
of manifestation of the Holy Spirit that you're now experiencing?
Yeah. No. No, you never had? No. Oh,
yeah. And then... Because you haven't
stopped shaking since you've been on the platform. Before the platform,
she was sitting over there shaking for the last two hours. Yeah. So this is all, like the last
two months, this is brand new to you, what the Lord is doing?
Yeah, I grew up in a Methodist church. So did I, by the way. I grew up in a Methodist church.
So did I. By the way, at the International
House of Prayer there's a room where they are perpetually praying
24 hours a day, again, eschatology involved. Now, you've been mentioning,
Dr. MacArthur, the Kundalini part of Hinduism. Andrew Strom
happens to be a Charismatic and he put together a very concerned
expose on what's going on. This is clip number six about
Kundalini. Now, this all began with Rodney
Howard Brown imparting a new anointing into a bunch of leaders,
and they spread it around the world. In fact, it spread like
wildfire. How do we know that Rodney Howard
Brown had a pure anointing? How do we know it wasn't a Kundalini
spirit from the beginning? Because it seems absolutely identical
to it. Now one of the very clearest
signs of a Kundalini awakening has always been these Kriyas.
You see this woman involved in the New Age Movement. She's walking
along exhibiting these Kriyas happening in voluntary jerking
motions. And the staggering thing about
it is that we are seeing again and again and again these exact
same type of Kriyas right through the Toronto Movement. This has
always been one of the clearest signs of Kundalini that we know
of. And then he shows the Kundalini
cult in India doing the exact same thing, has a whole range
of those experiences. You know, my heart goes out to
that young girl because if Satan would want to cloak himself in
a most convincing way, he'd put himself in a pretty young lady
like that, that first girl at IHOP. By the way, their history
isn't admirable, as you know, and we write about that in the
book. Bob Jones, the primary guy there, Paul Cain, who's associated
with them. But, I mean, that's the way Satan
would want to dress himself, in another young woman walking
down a road. You know, it's my sense that if Jesus were around,
He would do with those two women what He did in the synagogue
with the demon-possessed person, and He would cry out to that
demon and call that demon out. I mean, I don't know that, but
that would be my suspicion that somebody who says this has never
happened to me before hasn't learned how to do that, like
people kind of learn how to speak in tongues. That's a very frightening
thing. You know, it's just so sad to
think of a place that says it represents Jesus Christ, literally
inducing people into the kingdom of darkness in these kinds of
experiences. And I want to say one other thing. I don't believe
that can happen to believers. I don't believe that can happen
to a Christian. So what we're talking about, again, is backing
up to this reality that this thing is full of people who throw
the name of Jesus around and have jumped into the experience
because they have spiritual needs and anxieties and they want to
belong and they want to be a part, and it's a powerfully overwhelming
experience, like they've never had in their lives, which exposes
them to Satan. But to do it in the name of Christ,
on the one hand, is tragic. On the other hand, it's not surprising
because Satan is disguised as an angel of light. I remember
up in the other building when I first came to Grace Community
Church, talking to a woman and demons started talking in different
voices to me as I was talking with her. And this one demon,
I didn't know what I was doing, I was just a kid. I was only
here maybe a year. And this demon kept...I said,
who are you? And he said, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Kept repeating that. This particular
girl flipped a desk, that's how much strength she had. I knew
I wasn't talking to Jesus. I knew that. So if Satan can
make people think that this is Jesus, that's the ultimate deception. As we close, if I might. I think
what we've seen, and we need to understand this is not a fringe
activity. This is millions of people in
the U.S. of A., millions more around the
globe. And while I believe this is correct,
these teachers and these leaders, these false teachers and wolves
are to be rebuked and they are to be called out. The people
that are following predominantly are simply slaves to sin, they're
slaves to Satan, and they are lost just like we were. And as
we see this, we are grieved by it and that I think as we focus
tomorrow on trying to figure out how to respond to this, might
I suggest it begins with making sure that we're evangelizing
as many people as we can with the gospel of Jesus Christ, because
these people are just lost. So with that thought in mind, that
these are just...they're slaves to sin, they're slaves to the
devil. Dr. Lawson, would you pray for us,
please? Father, it's hard to know how
to even respond to what we have just seen other than, Lord, we are so grateful that
You have made Yourself known to us through Your written Word
by Your Spirit and You have caused us to be regenerated by Your
Spirit. And we praise You and give You
thanks that You have rescued us out of the kingdom of darkness
and have transferred us into the kingdom of light and that
You by Your divine initiative have made Yourself known to us
and the truth has set us free. Father, I pray that You will
use us to rescue people who have been made in Your image, who
have been marred and corrupted by sin, who have become slaves
of Satan, bound in chains of darkness. Lord, I pray that You
would use us and use others in the preaching of the gospel which
is Your power unto salvation, that You would sovereignly overcome
their resistance and that You would bring them to a saving
knowledge of Christ. Lord, I pray that You would give
much wisdom to pastors, to elders, to spiritual leaders to know
how to give counsel to people in their flocks, to know how
in the preaching of the Word of God to even make right and
proper, to show implications from the text of how to unmask
all of these deceptions and these lies and these forgeries. Lord,
again, it just seems that You're giving us over, as in Romans
1, and gone beyond even giving us over to homosexuality, but
now giving us over to a reprobate mind whereby we cannot even reason
and think our way back to You. What we see here is just insanity. It is lunacy. It is irrational. It is illogical. It is mind-numbing. And so, God, we pray that You
would have mercy upon so many people like this. We pray that
that the preaching of the Word of God would go forth with renewed
power. We pray that Your people would
be yet further armed with the full armor of God and advance
into this world and to be able to be used by You to reach people
for Christ. Lord, give us discernment. Give
us penetrating insight. Let us not be caught up in really
the emotional pull and the crowd appeal and pull. Give us eyes to see. Give us
ears to hear. And Lord, I pray that again You
would help us to identify the church, help us to identify true
believers and may we be fortified in the truth and then be able
to reach those who are in dire and desperate need for the saving
knowledge of Jesus Christ. Lord, we do take great comfort
that greater is He who is in You than he who is in the world.
We do take great comfort that the darkness will not extinguish
the light, but that the light will extinguish the darkness.
So I pray that we would be armed and gird our loins with truth.
and that we would shine forth the light, we would not be a
lamp hidden under a bushel, but that we would shine forth the
light into the darkness of this world and that it would please
You, God, to move in a saving, redemptive way in the lives of
so many that are caught up in this false movement. So God, we plead with You that
You would do this, that Your name might go forth, that Your
glory might be properly and rightly put on display. Father, we pray
this in the name of the head of the church, the Lord Jesus
Christ. Amen.