The Third Wave
by Dr. John F. MacArthur

This is a somewhat difficult task that falls to me this evening to discuss with you in the series on Charismatic chaos, some of the matters with regard to a movement known as the Third Wave. I cannot by any means, consider all of the issues, nor can I speak of all those who represent that movement, but I do wanna give you some perspective so that you can be alert and aware in regard to what is happening. Of all of the elements of the Charismatic movement that are contemporary to us today, this one is getting the most press. Of all the questions that are asked to me by people who write and call with regard to issues facing us in the Charismatic movement, this is the most commonly discussed one. The main figure in what is know as the Third Wave is a man by the name of John Wimber who is pastor of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Anaheim. He is the major figure in this movement that has come to be known as the Third Wave of the Holy Spirit. It is sometimes called the Signs and Wonders Movement. And this latest Charismatic tide seems to have swept across the globe in the last decade. It is literally everywhere in the English speaking parts of the world. The term the Third Wave was coined by C. Peter Wagner who is a missions professor at Fuller Seminary and the author of several books on church growth. He is really the leading proponent of the Third Wave philosophy and methodology. According to Wagner, he said, "The first wave was the Pentecostal movement, the second wave was the Charismatic movement, and now the third wave is joining them." By that he means, an inundating wave of the power of the Holy Spirit manifesting itself in visible ways. And while acknowledging the Third Wave's spiritual ancestry, that it is the third of those three, Wagner nonetheless rejects the label Charismatic and Pentecostal. In fact, most of the people in the Third Wave don't wanna be identified in that way. Wagner says, "The Third Wave is a new moving of the Holy Spirit among Evangelicals who, for one reason or another, have chosen not to identify with either the Pentecostals or the Charismatics. Its roots go back a little further, but I see it as mainly a movement beginning in the 1980's and gathering momentum through the closing years of the 20thCentury. I see the Third Wave as distinct from, but at the same time, very similar to the first and second waves. They have to be similar because it is the same Spirit of God who is doing the work. The major variation comes in the understanding of the meaning of baptism in the Holy Spirit and the role of tongues and authenticating this. I myself, for example, would rather not have people call me a Charismatic. I do not consider myself a Charismatic. I am simply an Evangelical Congregationalist who is open to the Holy Spirit working through me and my church in any way He chooses." He refuses the label Charismatic not primarily because of any doctrinal distinction, but primarily because of the stigma attached to the name. It's important for me to mention that to you because if you talk to someone in the Third Wave, they might endeavor to distance themselves from classic Pentecostalism or more contemporary Charismaticism, but the fact is that they're basically the Third Wave by their own admission of the very same kind of theology.

It is accurate then to see the Third Wave as a part of the whole Charismatic movement as we know it. While it is true that many who identify with the Third Wave will avoid using the term Charismatic and they'll even avoid using Charismatic jargon when writing or speaking about spirit baptism or other issues, basically the theology is the same. The terminology may change, the theology is for all intense and purposes, identical.

Most Third Wave teaching and preaching that I've listened to, that I've read echoes standard Charismatic theology, and therefore, in evaluating the Third Wave, we would assume that it is safe to say that the other issues that we've been discussing, that we find un-Biblical in the Charismatic movement are generally true of this movement as well, although there may be some individuals in the movement who would vary from that.

So at its very core, it is an element of the Charismatic movement. At its core, is an obsession with sensational experiences, a preoccupation with the Charismata, that is tongues, healings, prophecies, words of knowledge, visions and ecstatic experiences, and that is, of course, where we find the indisputable link between the Third Wave and the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements. In all three movements, there is a major absorption with these supernatural, sensational kind of power encounters or power displays as they like to call them. They deemphasize what you and I would know as the traditional means of spiritual growth, prayer, Bible study, the teaching of the Word and the fellowship of other believers. They don't intend to do that and they wouldn't do that in statement or even in print, but because of the very surpassing emphasis on the sensational experiences, those matters tend to get pushed significantly, if not all together, into the background. Pentecostals, Charismatics and Third Wavers all will affirm that any Christian who is not experiencing some supernatural events, some supernatural giftedness, some kinds of healings, some kinds of prophecies, words of knowledge or manifestations of the Spirit of God, invisible, tangible ways, is really stuck at a low level of spiritual progress, is denying the full power of God and denying himself the blessing of God.

Now, while those in the Third Wave would like to distance themselves from the first and second wave because of its excesses, the truth of the matter is the Third Wave has not manages to avoid any of the excesses that are characteristic of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. In fact, there are some in the Charismatic movement who wanna distance themselves from the Third Wavers because they feel that they go to excesses that even those Charismatics wouldn't go to. A visit, for example, to the Vineyard would reveal to you all the commotion of many people speaking in tongues at the same time. It would reveal to you intense kind of emotional experiences going on where people were falling on the floor and laying in prone positions for as long as an hour, some people with their limbs extended. It would reveal to you people giving multiple prophecies, some of them rather bizarre and some of them with poor grammar, and yet, claiming they come from the Lord. There would be likely an experience in which they would clear the floor of chairs and they would be dancing around in a completely liberated fashion in any form that they would choose to do that with people, again, perhaps falling over, climbing on chairs, dancing on the top of chairs and doing all of the things that once were associated with we used to call holy rollers. In fact, pastor of Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa told one researcher, "John Wimber has absorbed every aberrant teaching developed by the Pentecostals into his teaching." Now, all I want you to understand is that the Third Wave people very often wanna see themselves as mainline Evangelical. They wanna distance themselves from the Pentecostal Charismatic excesses, and yet, it seems to be true that the excesses that occurred in both the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements are very characteristic of the Third Wave as well.

What makes them a bit different is that they can line up some teachers and leaders that appear to have more academic credentials than has been true in the Charismatic and Pentecostal movement. That may mean that in the future there will be some correctives that'll come to some of those excesses which as of yet has not taken place. But despite all of their claims to the contrary, Third Wave apologists have had astonishing success in selling their movement as a non Charismatic phenomena. Unsuspecting churches, and I think unsuspecting denominations have opened their doors and their pulpit to Third Wave teachers. I think because of their academic credentials and because they claim not to be in the line of the Charismatics, but in fact, they are.

If you look very closely at the Third Wave, you will see in it a very same kind of things you see typically in a Charismatic movement. And so I wanna do a little bit closer inspection and as I said, we can't by any means exhaust this in the next half hour or so as we examine it, but I'll try to put you in touch with some of the issues that need to be addressed in a much more comprehensive way than I'll be able to do tonight, but I hope I can give you enough information to set you in the right direction.

I wanna just consider maybe four of the promises that the Third Wave makes that need to be inspected rather carefully. The first promise they make is that they are experiencing supernatural signs and wonders and that these signs and wonders come at a rather proliferated rate. That is to say, they're not abnormal, they're not uncommon, they're not few and far between, but rather, they are normal, common and very often come in a flurry. They believe that fantastic signs and wonders demonstrate the genuineness of their movement, the fact that we cannot turn our back on it because supernatural things are happening all the time. Miraculous phenomena at the very heart of the Third Wave, credo and experience, Third Wave people are persuaded they're having miracles, they're having visions, they're speaking in tongues, giving prophecies, predicting the future, reading people's minds. That is, they can stand up in a meeting and tell you your home address, your mother's maiden name and all of those kinds of things that we have always associated with people like the Amazing Kreskin and others who purvey a certain kind of magic, a certain kind of con art or whatever you wanna call it. But they're into these very same kind of things. In fact, it's interesting to me that one of their leaders said that the key to his really buying into and believing this whole thing was when one of their prophets stood up and told him, and told the whole audience his mother's maiden name and the true first name of his father who was only known by a nickname. And so, they believe that these kinds of things are happening. That there are healings, that there are resurrections from the dead, and they frankly view Christianity without those things as impotent, adulterated by the western materialistic mindset. And unless we can escape the western materialistic mindset and catapult ourselves into the third world paradigm and begin to think in terms of mystical phenomena, we're gonna be locked in to a very shallow kind of Christianity.

Signs and wonders also would be the key, they believe, to Third Wave evangelism. Third Wavers say that unbelievers must experience the miraculous in order to be brought the full faith. Merely preaching the Gospel message, they believe, will never reach the world for Christ. One of their leaders has said that, "We cannot evangelize the world with the simple Gospel apart from signs and wonders." This, in spite of the fact that Paul in Romans 1 says that, "The simple Gospel is the power of God and salvation to everyone who believes." But merely preaching the Gospel, they believed, isn't gonna do it. It'll never reach the world for Christ. Most people will not believe without seeing miracles, they say, and those who do will be inadequately converted and therefore, stunted in their spiritual growth. John Wimber himself cites Elijah's confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel as a classic example of power and counter, where the power of God vanquishes the power of evil.

Similar signs and wonders say Third Wave gurus are the chief means we will be using to spread the Gospel. And so what they're doing is traveling all over the world, endeavoring to teach the church how to do signs and wonders. And you will hear them openly confess, even the leaders at the highest level, and those that are kind of developing into their next generation of leaders, that they are learning how to do miracles. They're learning how to heal the sick, raise the dead, read minds, tell people their addresses and phone numbers and their names of their parents. They're learning to do that. They're learning to call out healings, they're learning to read behind somebody's face and see the sin that is in them. They're learning to do that because that's very essential if they're gonna convince the world that the message is from God.

Modern miracle workers have yet to call down fire from Heaven as did Elijah, but they may be working on that as well. Third Wave aficionados tell of some fantastic signs and wonders. Wimber, for example, reported an incident where a woman's toe which had been cut off supposedly grew back. He described another woman in Australia whose cleft palate closed up miraculously three days after God gave him a word of knowledge that she would be healed. Wagner recanted a report from Argentine faith healer who's in the movement by the name of Carlos Anacondia, who said two particular manifestations of the Holy Spirit came to impress unbelievers more than anything else in his crusades. A falling in the power of the Spirit and filling teeth on a fairly regular basis, decayed teeth are filled and new teeth grow where there were none before. Interestingly enough, according to Anacondia, most unbelievers' teeth are filled and very few believers get their teeth filled. Now, I don't know why he said that or even why that's supposedly true, but I have another question. Why does God fill teeth instead of just give them new teeth as long as He's gonna do it?

But, nonetheless, whether you're talking about these people, whether you're talking about Wagner or Wimber, they are convinced that these miracles are happening. They're at least trying to convince us they're happening. Both of them are convinced, for example, at least from what they say, that many dead people are being raised from the dead, many of them, not just some, not just a few, but many. And it is really difficult to resist a conclusion that either these are utter fabrications that have just grown with the telling or that these people are so caught in the wish that these things come to pass that they've convinced themselves that in fact they do. In the two cases that I mentioned to you from John Wimber, he maintains that medical doctors witnessed the events, yet he offers no documentation. And you have to ask the question somewhere along the line why don't they publish proof that these events really took place. It would seem to me that if people are being raised from the dead at a fairly regular clip through the year, some of these people could show up somewhere and there could be some evidence, particularly if they had been in the grave for several days like Lazarus because somebody would have been there to see them put in the ground. And we wonder why they don't publish the proof of these things, phenomena such as digit and limb replacement, the healing of birth defects, supernatural dentistry and raising the dead. It seems to me it would be rather easy to document. It would certainly help bring about the kind of worldwide response the Third Wave people say they're hoping to have.

To borrow from one of them, you can only imagine if they could take four quadriplegics and instantly heal them of their quadriplegia, four who were well known by many and had been known for years to be in that condition, and they could step out of the wheelchair and be absolutely, 100% whole, it wouldn't seem too difficult a thing to present the evidence for that and it would seem to me to be quite a powerful statement. But a pattern has begun to emerge from the Third Wave literature, and that is this. The truly spectacular miracles always seem to involve nameless people. Real peoples' miracles tend to be mundane and hard to prove, _________ involving back pain, inner healings, migraine relief, emotional deliverance, ringing in the ears, maybe some internal problem that is stated but not verified. And the only time you ever get a detailed step by step, carefully laid out description of a healing situation is an occasion when the healing doesn't happen. You hear rather oblique references to the healing that did happen and the rather detailed descriptions of the ones that don't. A prime example is Wagner's account of his friend Tom Brewster, a paraplegic who believed in healing. Brewster was so hopeful that God would heal him that he even distributed a declaration of expectation to his friends, an expression of his faith that he would one day walk. That faith never wavered, Wagner says, though it had been almost 30 years since a diving accident left him confined to a wheelchair. But the miracle never came. Brewster died after unsuccessful bladder surgery. It's difficult to read that account without noting how markedly it contrast with the many supposed miracles that these Third Wave people recount. The most dramatic miracles come with only sketchy details and almost nearly are always unanimous. Rarely do they ever involve people who are known personally to those who report the miracles. You understand that. They're not firsthand, and whenever you hear the story told about the firsthand, it seems to have a sad ending. Perhaps the most significant man in the life of John Wimber was a British Anglican who died of cancer much to the great dismay and concern and sorrow of John.

A group of five medical doctors, Christians attended a recent conference the Third Wave had. These men were hoping to establish the truth of the claims that miraculous healings were taking place. One of them, Dr. Phillip Seldon, reported, and I quote, "The fact that John Wimber knew we were present and observing, they have served to tone down the claims which we understand were made at previous conferences. Mr. Wimber himself referred to bad backs and indicated that people could expect pain relief, but no change which could be documented by a doctor. He admitted he had never seen a degenerated vertebrae restored to normal shape, and as I suspected, most of the conditions which were prayed over were in the psychosomatic trivial or medically difficult to document categories, problems with left great toe, nervous disorder, breathing problems, barrenness, unequal leg lengths, etc., bad backs and neck." The doctor concluded and I quote, "At this stage, we are unaware of any organic healings which could be proven."

Now, what explanation is given for people who are not healed because we know that many people must go there who have real problems, right? I mean, if you hear that miracles are being done and you're looking for that to happen in your life, you're gonna go. And people do not get healed obviously. The reasons given are some people don't have faith in God for healing. Another reason, personal unconfessed sin creates a barrier to God's healing power. Another one they say is persistent and widespread disunity sin and unbelief in bodies of believers and families inhibits healing in individual members of the body. In other words, they will say, "Well, you don't have enough faith to be healed. Your lack of faith is hindering God." Or they will say, "You have unconfessed sin in your life and you put a barrier between you and God." Or they will say, "You're going to a church that doesn't believe in healing so you're not gonna get healed as long as you're in that environment." Or they will say, "Because of incomplete or incorrect diagnosis of what is causing your problem, you do not know how to pray correctly, and if you don't know what your problem is, you can't pray correctly to get it fixed, it won't get fixed or it might not." And some people, they say further don't get healed because they assume God always heals instantly and when they don't get instantly healed, they stop praying, so they don't get healed.

Oddly enough, John Wimber himself said, and I quote, "I never blame the sick person for lack of faith if healing doesn't come." That's a contradictory statement. Evidently, he's still trying to piece together the theology of this. He struggles because he said also, and I quote, "I have a continually and expanding group of disgruntled people who have come for healing and don't get it."

Now the reality is with the Third Wave with all of its emphasis on signs and wonders, it has produced nothing really verifiable that qualifies in the New Testament sense as an authentic sign or wonder, at least nothing that they have made available. Jesus' miracles must after all be the standard by which we make an evaluation, right? No one before Jesus or since has performed as many signs and wonders as He did during His earthly ministry. His miracles were strikingly different from those produced by the modern signs and wonders movement. None involved psychosomatic infirmities. All were visible and verifiable. They were in short, true signs and wonders.

We learned some other things about the miracles from our Lord's ministry, chiefly that miracles do not necessarily produce faith in an unbelieving heart. Say that again, they do not necessarily produce faith in an unbelieving heart. I don't wanna say that there aren't times when God can use or has used the miraculous to produce or assist in producing faith. Faith is a gift from God, but it is possible that a miracle has been a component in God bringing about that faith. But that is not necessarily what happens. And that certainly cannot be guaranteed to happen. In fact, in the Gospel of John, Jesus did many signs and many wonders. In fact, He proliferated that entire nation of Palestine with signs and wonders. And the people were able to see them and even to participate in them, such as in the feeding of the great multitude.

The net effect of all of that tremendous, tremendous miracle working enterprise could be summed up in the words of John 12:37, "But though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him." There is no guarantee that because there are miracles, there will be saving faith. It is true that as I said, God may use miracles to bring about faith. In Acts 9, you might wanna look at it for a moment, in Acts 9:32, Peter was traveling through all those parts, writes Luke, came down to the saints who lived at Lyda, found a certain man named Anneus who had been bedridden eight years, for he was paralyzed and Peter said to him, "Anneus, Jesus Christ heals you. Arise and make your bed," and immediately he arose. And all who lived at Lyda and Sharon saw him and they turned to the Lord. If you were to read into the next section in Joppa, there was a woman there named Tabitha or Dorcas. She died and Peter and was used to bring her back to life. And in verse 42 it says, "And it became known all over Joppa and many believed in the Lord." We don't wanna say categorically that there would never be a time when God wouldn't cause some miraculous act to be a component in the producing of faith, but that seems to be the minority effect. The majority seemed not to have such a response. In spite of all, Jesus' miracles raising the dead, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, having authority over demons, the people rejected Him, the people crucified Him and at the time of His death, there were only about 120 followers gathered in the upper room, and that after several years of miraculous acts.

The Gospels contain numerous examples of people who witnessed Jesus' signs, who witnessed His wonders and yet remained in utter unbelief. He rebuked the cities where He performed most of His miracles, He rebuked Corazon, He rebuked Bethesda, He rebuked Capernaum because they didn't repent and because they had seen so many miracles, and He even says that they were worse off than Sodom and Gomorra because Sodom and Gomorra, as bad as it was, would have repented if it had seen as much as they had seen. John 2:23 tells us that many believed in His name because they saw the signs, yet the kind of belief was not a saving belief. Jesus didn't consider them true believers, according to verse 24. In John 6:2, a record says that a great multitude was following Him because they were seeing the signs which He was performing on those who were sick, and yet in verse 66 when He began to teach them and He began to speak about the spiritual issues that confronted them, it says, "That many of the same crowd withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore." So, there are times when whatever kind of believing they did was not believing unto salvation. In John 11, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, a monumental miracle, absolutely monumental. Even His enemies couldn't deny it, according to John 11:47, but far from believing in Jesus, that simply accelerated their desire to plot His death. Things weren't really much different than that in the book of Acts in the early church. In Acts 3, Peter and John healed a man who'd been lame from birth, and again, the Jewish religious leaders didn't deny the miracle had occurred, according to Acts 4:16. They couldn't deny it, but their response was far from saving faith. They ordered the apostles to stop speaking in the name of Jesus.

Go back into the Old Testament and you can examine the record of Old Testament signs and wonders. They didn't produce saving faith either. Pharaoh's heart was hardened despite the powerful signs and wonders God did through Moses. The entire generation of Israelites who witnesses those same miracles died in unbelief in the wilderness. It didn't seem to lead them to any great spiritual level of devotion. Despite all the miracles performed during the time of Elijah and Elisha and those times when God acted miraculously at other seasons. Both Israel and Judah failed to repent and were ultimately carried away into captivity. In fact, the very account that John Wimber sights as Biblical justification for power encounters, Elijah's confrontation with the prophets of Baal as an example, the revival produced out of that amazing act by which God sent fire from Heaven and burned up stones and water. The amazing, amazing miracle produced a very short live response, and within a few days, Elijah was hiding for fear of his life, and Baal worship continued until God finally judged Israel.

Now, that is not to say that signs and wonders were not important when God used them. It is not to say that they never were used by God to be a part of the production of faith. But that was not the normal result. They often attracted people's attention so the Gospel message could be saved, and people hearing that message were saved, but miracles and signs and wonders in themselves did not produce saving faith. And so when they say they promise signs and wonders, it's questionable whether the signs and wonders are really legitimate and it's questionable the signs and wonders are necessary for producing saving faith since that is not their purpose in the Scripture generally.

Secondly, they make the promise of powerful evangelism, power evangelism. What they're really doing, and this follows the first point, is being powerful in terms of turning people to God. My conviction on this however, is that what they say is powerful evangelism lacks very often the very necessary element of evangelism which is a clear proclamation of Gospel truth, the saving message gets badly corrupted and sometimes even omitted. Third Wave books and Third Wave testimonies are filled with anecdotes about people who supposedly became Christians on the basis of some miracle they saw, some supernatural wonder they saw with little or no mention of the Gospel having been proclaimed to them. In fact, in the book Power of Evangelismwhich was John Wimber's main book and sort of set this thing in motion, it's the main textbook on evangelism, there is no reference in that whole book to the cross of Christ or the doctrine of the atonement. I understand now that some are endeavoring to instruction in that matter so that he can understand that and that there is a revision of that book coming out which will delineate a clearer doctrine of the atonement and the true Gospel, but up until now, it hasn't seemed to be necessary for the expansion and explosion of the movement.

Soteriology or the doctrine of salvation, and accurate Gospel message can hardly be considered as a major thrust of this movement. And all the fuss about the signs and wonders, the content of the Gospel seems to have been given second place. One report goes like this, a serious consideration by observers in one of the seminars was that there was no Gospel in the so called evangelistic meeting. A cross of Jesus was not simple, the atonement was not explained and mankind's need in the provision of redemption not even cursorily treated. Believing himself to be following the example of Jesus and the apostles, John Wimber called out for those who needed to be healed, bad backs, gotta mention short legs, neck pain and a whole host of diseases. People were asked to stand and team members dispatched to pray for them, while on the stage John demanded that the Spirit come and after a few minutes of silence, several screams were heard and people sobbing. A little later, it was declared that people had been healed and God had given a token as a sign to those who did not believe. In short, they were asked to base their decision on what they had seen or rather the interpretation of what they had seen and the sacrifice for sin through Christ didn't even get a mention. I left wondering what faith people would have been converted to that night. It didn't seem to resemble New Testament Christianity. I realize that may be but the observation of one individual, but it seems as though in reading the material, this is a somewhat common thread that Peter Wagner says that he marvels that Argentine evangelist Omar Cabrerra has people saved and healed before he starts preaching. It's a question to me how can you get saved before you hear the message, but not a question that seems to bother some of them.

Most of the Third Wavers believe that miracles are more effective than the Gospel message preached. That preaching is limited, and I shared some of that with you a few weeks ago. That somehow preaching is a very poor way to get people to come to Christ, the least of all ways desirable. Wagner further writes, "Christianity began with 120 in the upper room. Within three centuries, it had become the predominant religion of the Roman Empire. What brought this about? The answer is deceptively simple. While Christianity was being to unbelievers in both word and deed, it was the deed that far exceeded the Word in evangelistic effectiveness." That's a remarkable statement. That the deed is more powerful than the Word seems to me to fly in the face of Hebrews 4 which says that the Word is sharper than any two edged sword and is able to pierce to depths that nothing else can pierce. The Anglican Michael Harper says, "Miracles help, people believe." The question is believe what? Is the Gospel being clearly, carefully delineated? In fact, it has been said that those of us who don't do signs and wonders and perform miracles are doing what they call programmatic evangelism instead of power evangelism. It is insipid, it is powerless, vapid kind of evangelism. What is needed is power evangelism, supernatural encounters. Those are the things that bring people to Christ.

Two fallacies at least lurk in that kind of thinking. Both render it utterly ineffective in winning people to genuine faith in Christ. First, when modern miracles become the basis for an evangelistic invitation, the real message of the Gospel somehow becomes incidental. And you would have to be in a meeting where you would see the swept away attitude of people who are so deeply lost in an emotional experience, and this may not always be the case, but often the case, that a clear message might not come through. There is often a mystical, ethereal Jesus who replaces the historical, Biblical one. And the focus of faith becomes faith in the miraculous instead of faith in the Savior Himself. Those who put their trust in modern miracles are not saved by that faith no matter how earnestly they may believe they are. You're only saved by putting your faith in Jesus Christ.

And secondly, power evangelism seems to me to be an un-Biblical concept. Faith comes from hearing, doesn't it? And hearing the Word of Christ, it is the Gospel, not signs and wonders that is the power of God and the salvation. And do you not remember what Luke 16:31 says? "If they did not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though someone rises," what? "From the dead." Despite the many signs and wonders that Jesus performed, Jesus didn't practice that kind of power evangelism. In fact, He repeatedly rebuked those who demanded signs. Matthew 12, Matthew 16, Mark 8, Luke 11, Luke 23, John 4, He rebuked the sign seekers. The emphasis of Jesus' ministry was not miracles, but preaching. He often preached without doing signs, without doing wonders. And then in Mark 1:29-34, we read that Jesus did many miraculous healings in Galilee. Verse 37 tells us that Peter and the others found Him the next morning and excitedly said, "Everybody's looking for you. They wanna see more of this. They wanna see more signs and more wonders." And Jesus said this, Mark 1:38, "Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby in order that I may preach there, for that is what I came out for." He came to preach, therein lies the power. Preaching the Word was more important than the signs and wonders. I believe the Third Wave is advocating a different approach is out of balance with the Bible in that regard.

Well, there's more to say, just briefly let me share two thoughts with you. They also promise a Biblical orientation, but I'm very much afraid of the fact, and by their own admission, that they have many errors in their theology. And as I spoke to several of them this week, I asked the question if God is giving signs and wonders, is it to authenticate His message? Which the answer has to be yes, then would you explain to me why the people who claim to be doing the signs and wonders are the ones who have and errant theology? Why would God be authenticating error? It would seem to me that if God was going to give somebody the ability to do signs and wonders thus to draw people to His message, He would give such a gift and ability to one who was most capable of articulating accurately the proper message. And by their own admission, they realize that there are many theological inaccuracies, Biblical inaccuracies in the movement, and that poses the unanswerable query as to why in the world God would want to be using miracles to authenticate those who as of yet, don't even have their theology straightened out.

John Wimber will be the first to admit that they're still accumulating a theology. He made the statement that we're drawing together our experiences so we can frame up a theology. And it seems odd to think that God would be vindicating such, and authenticating such.

Furthermore, they're committed to the fact that the Bible is not enough, that there must be further communication from God. One of their leaders says, "That to believe that the Scripture is the end of God's revelation is a demonic doctrine," a demonic doctrine. Quoting from him, "In order to fulfill God's highest purposes for our lives, we must be able to hear His voice, both in the written Word and the Word freshly spoken from Heaven. Satan understands the strategic importance of Christians hearing God's Word, so he has launched various attacks against us in this area." Ultimately, this doctrine, that is believing that the Scripture is the end of revelation is demonic, even though Christian theologians have been used to perfect it. So, Christian theologians who have perfected the idea that the Scripture is the end of God's revelation have perfected a demonic doctrine because God is still speaking and there is a great thirst for new revelation that I believe composes upon the movement a low view of Scripture's sufficiency.

Well, let me just give you a final note. There's much more to say about that. You can read it in my book when it gets here in a few months. There's just one other thing to note and so much more that I would like to say. They claim also an evangelical heritage. They claim also an evangelical heritage. If you listen to them, you would believe that they are in the mainstream of evangelicalism, that they are committed to a traditional Biblical theology, and yet, that's not true. Statements of faith and creeds are just not a part of that movement. John Wimber's Vineyard is typical. I'm quoting from one writer, "Another disturbing aspect of the Vineyard's ministry is their lack of any written statement of faith. Because Vineyard members come from a variety of denominational backgrounds, the leadership has avoided setting strong doctrinal standards. This de-emphasis of doctrine is also consistent with a leadership whose backgrounds theologically include association with the Quakers who typically express the inner experience of God and minimized the need for doctrinal expressions of one's understanding of God." That's from the Christian Research Institute.

There's no way that they can connect up with historic, traditional, evangelical, orthodox theology because they don't codify doctrine, they don't develop creeds and theological statements, so how do they know where they stand? And yet, in spite of that, they wanna position their movement in the mainstream of historic, evangelicalism. They wanna emphasize conservative even fundamentalist roots, but that does not bear out under examination. The movement is broadly ecumenical, syncretic. There is an evangelical veneer, but the wide embracing of all kinds of experiences. Now, it's possible this could change. There may be some winds of change. There may be some doctrinal direction and structure coming, but at the present time, this is true. To reinforce that may I say, Wimber is as comfortable with Roman Catholic dogma as he is with evangelicalism. He himself defends the Catholic claims of healing through relics. He advocates a reunification of Protestants and Catholics. A former associate says, "During a Vineyard pastor's conference, he went so far as to apologize to the Catholic Church on behalf of all Protestants." In a seminar on church planting, he said, "The Pope, who by the way, is very responsive to the Charismatic movement and is himself a born again Evangelical, is preaching the Gospel as clear as anyone in the world today." Now you can see that there is some confusion. In their book on power evangelism, he gives a catalog of individuals and movements. When he wants to seek to establish signs and wonders, he reaches back and he identifies himself with a whole list of people, Hilarion, a Fourth Century hermit, Augustine, Pope Gregory the Great, Francis of Assisi, the Wall Densons who opposed the Pope and were persecuted by the Dominicans. Vincent Farrar who himself was a Dominican, Martin Luther Ignacious of Lyola, John Wesley and the Jansen, the Catholic sect. It's a hodgepodge of all kinds of things. In a booklet published by the Vineyard, he adds, "The Shakers," they were a cult that demanded celibacy and thus, went out of existence for obvious reasons. He puts himself in line with Edward Irving, a discredited leader of the Irvingite sect in 19 Century England. He also identifies himself with the supposed miracles and healings worked by an apparition by the Virgin Mary at Lourdes. So, you can see the heritage is not at all evangelical, but quite confused. Even Wagner wants to link himself with contemporary positive possibility thinking, as well as with the fourth dimensional thinking of Korean pastor Paul Young Be Cho. It's a hodgepodge of many, many things.

All of this to say we need to be alert, we need to be aware, we need to test all these things by the Word of God. My only hope and prayer for these people is that someone may come to them, someone who can lead them to a proper understanding of the truth, pulling them away from this immense preoccupation and domination that comes to them from experiences. Experiences can be so deadly because they cannot always be certain that they come from God.

Well, much more to be said. I guess what I could say in conclusion is don't be swept away by the Third Wave. And remember this, the only true test of whether a person or movement is from God is not signs and wonders, but true test is teaching in conformity to this Book. And the highest expression of God's power in the world today is not some spectacular, unusual sign or wonder. The highest expression of God's power in the world today is the transformation of a soul from darkness to light, from death to life, and equally wondrous is the tranquil godliness of a Spirit controlled believer.

Let me just say this in closing. I don't believe for one moment that we have ministered here at Grace Church for 22 years without the Holy Spirit. And I don't believe for one moment that we have never known the power of God. I shared with these gentlemen with whom I spoke on Friday that we see the power of God again and again. We saw it tonight, didn't we, when we heard the testimonies week in and week out. I see it in the transformation of your life. I see it in the transformations of your marriage. For the last several weeks, I've been praying for a marriage in our church that was coming apart at the seams, really sad. Grieving, and I saw apart from anything that I did, apart from any intervention by me, God put that marriage together in a glorious way. We've seen that again and again. I talked to a mother and a father who have prayed for a wayward son and God brought that son back to the point where that son embraced Christ and embraced his family in Christ. I don't for one moment search because I haven't ever known the power of God in this ministry. And I just affirm that, not for my own sake, not to bring credit to me, but so that no one would discredit what Christ has done here and what His Spirit has accomplished. Nothing that happens in the supernatural dimension happens because of me or you. It's out of our league, but I will not yield to any who would assume that what we have experienced here is a cheap version of the real power. Many of you have come to faith in Christ here. Many of you have grown in your knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and have been used of God in many ways in spiritual service to the benefit of your own spiritual growth and maturity because of the ministries here. Many have gone out of this place, conducted powerful ministries all over the world, and they go on even today. And I guess all of that to say, to be real honest with you, I'm not lookin' for anything because I've already in my life lived through Ephesians 3:20, "And I've seen God do exceedingly abundantly all I could astro think." And to be honest with you, my faith is strong enough to accept that this is the evidence of the power of God and I don't have to have more proof. Some people say they have the faith for all of that. I think they have doubt looking for proof very often, and I wanna affirm tonight my gratitude to God and to the Holy Spirit and to the Lord Jesus Christ and what they've accomplished in this place, and what they've accomplished through the teaching of the Word and faithful ministry that God has given to this church here and around the world. And I wanna give God all the glory for all of it and I wanna acknowledge along with you that He has done it, and we have never ministered for a moment feeling that He wasn't here. In the fullness of His power, accomplishing His work for His own glory, and He's done it in an orderly way, without chaos and without confusion and we praise Him for that.

Does God Do Miracles Today?
John MacArthur

In our ongoing study of the Charismatic movement today, I wanna jump right in to a subject that I know I can't completely cover, but I want you to learn to think biblically about this because I'm very concerned about it. Today, we hear an awful lot of talk about miracles, somebody says, "I had a financial need and a miracle happened. The mailman came and in the mail was a check for just the amount of money I needed. It was a miracle." Or you hear someone say, "I went to the mall and there was a parking place right by the entrance. It was a miracle." Or a mother might sense something wrong in an adjoining room and investigate just in time to stop her little toddler from putting a paper clip into an electrical outlet, and say, "It's a miracle." Or maybe you were thinking and praying for somebody and just seemingly at the time you were doing that, the phone rang and it was the very person you were thinking about, and they were right there to be encouraged and you say, "That was a miracle." Well, we call those things miracles, but they're not miracles. A miracle is a supernatural event which has no human explanation. More than that, a miracle is a supernatural event which suspends natural law. In other words, natural law stops and is suspended while God acts, moves back out and then the natural course continues. When you find a place to park at the mall or when you catch your little toddler just at the right moment, or when you get a check for what you needed, or when a friend calls at precisely the right moment in time, those would be acts of providence, those would be acts whereby God is simply orchestrating natural events, not suspending the natural, but controlling the natural so that it does what He wants it to do.

A miracle then is an extraordinary event wrought by God that cannot be explained by any natural means. That would be the technical definition. It might sound something like this. A miracle is an event in nature so extraordinary in itself and so coinciding with the prophecy or command of a religious teacher or leader as fully to warrant the conviction on the part of those who witness it, that God has wrought it with the design of certifying that this teacher or leader has been commissioned by him. Now, that takes us to another dimension, and I wanted to read that. That's from Augustus Strong written way back in 1907, and what he is saying there is that anytime a miracle occurs, it is associated with the certification of a teacher or a leader commissioned by God.

Theologians prior of course to the Charismatic movement, the Pentecostal movement and this century, were united in the understanding that miracles did not happen randomly, they did not happen through history in a willy-nilly sort of way. God did not do them capriciously or whimsically. There wasn't a continual flow of miracles at all times and places through church history, but rather, miracles, that is God stepping in to the natural world, suspending natural law, doing something that had no natural explanation, pulling back out again and letting natural law then run its course, did that only in certification of especially commissioned teacher.
In fact, miracles in Scripture, all the way from Exodus through Deuteronomy to Nehemiah through the Psalms, Jeremiah, Daniel, into the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, John, Acts, Romans, 2 Corinthians, Thessalonians and Hebrews, miracles are called signs and wonders. They are signs, and what are signs for? A sign is to point to something, and what were they signs of? They were signs authenticating a divinely commissioned teacher. When God supernaturally, superhumanly suspended natural law and acted in human history, He did so as a sign to point to a teacher who was speaking for Him.

I've collected through the years a very large file of supposed miracles. They range all the way from 1977's newspaper article about Maria Rubio of Lake Arthur, New Mexico who was frying tortillas in her kitchen. She noticed that one of them seemed to have the likeness of a face etched in the burn marks. She concluded that it was Jesus and even built a crude shrine to the tortilla. Thousands of people visited the shrine of the Jesus of the holy tortilla and concluded it was indeed a miracle. "I do not why this has happened to me," Mrs. Rubio said, "but God has come into my life through this tortilla." From the Chicago Tribune. In 1980, in Deptford, New Jersey, Bud Ward, the town's fire department photographer was driving with his wife when he accidentally took a wrong turn. Noticing flames in an abandoned chicken coop behind the Naples Pizzeria, he pulled into the parking lot and began taking pictures. When the slides came back from Kmart, Ward's nine year old daughter noticed what seemed to be an image of Christ in one of the photographs. Word of this discovery spread and soon people from all over New Jersey were talking about the pizza Jesus of Deptford Township. Several people knelt and prayed under the image projected from the slide and others asked that the image be projected onto their chests. Hundreds believed it was a true miracle. Again, according to the GloucesterTimes.

Such apparitions are seen as miracles. In August of 1986, in Postoria, Ohio, the image of Jesus seemed to appear every night in the shadows and rust marks on the side of a soybean oil storage tank. Hawkers sold thousands of, "I saw the vision," t-shirts and coffee mugs to those who came to see the miracle. Nearly a year later, Arlene Gardner of Estill Springs, Tennessee, noticed that when her neighbors turned on their porch light, the image of a face appeared in the glow reflected off her freezer. She believed it was the face of Jesus, although several observers said it looked more like Willy Nelson. Arlene and her husband were so convinced it was a true miracle they quit the church when the pastor expressed skepticism.
Well, evidently, skepticism is a rare commodity these days. People's hunger for the mysterious and the astonishing and phenomena is a little unsurpassed in the history of the church. It's pretty popular stuff in the secular world and it's found its way into the church. Eager to witness miracles, many people seem willing to believe that almost anything unusual is a genuine heavenly wonder. The problem with that is it poses a severe danger for the church because it plays right into the hands of Satan, doesn't it? False wonders and false signs, false miracles, extremely believable ones, the Bible tells us will be the primary tool of Satan in the end times. Jesus said, "False Christ and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders so as to mislead if possible even the elect." Then He added as if knowing that many would ignore the warning, "Behold, I have told you in advance," Matthew 24:24-25.

Surely, in the light of the warning of Jesus and the warnings of the apostle Paul in the New Testament, we should have a healthy skepticism on the part of these supposed miracles. Now, I want you to understand. I am not by nature a skeptic. I am not a naturalist and a humanist and an anti-super naturalist. I believe in miracles, and I believe that every miracle recorded in the Bible literally happened exactly as the Bible described it. I believe, for example, that Moses and the Israelites actually walked through the parted Red Sea and didn't get their feet wet or muddy. I believe that Elijah raised a widow's young son from the dead and that fire called down from Heaven was actually heavenly fire and consumed water. I believe with absolute conviction that Elijah made an axe head float, an iron axe head. I believe that all the healings, miracles, signs and wonders attributed to Jesus and the four Gospels happened exactly and precisely as they are recorded there, and I believe the apostles literally performed all the miracles which the New Testament described. That's not all. I believe God can still do miracles. I believe all things are possible with God, as Matthew 19:26 says. "His power has not diminished in the least since the days of the early church."

But even though I believe all of that, and I believe that if God chooses to do something miraculous, He can do it. I am convinced that most of the miracle signs and wonders, if not all, being claimed today in the Charismatic movement, have nothing in common with what we know about Biblical miracles. They do not fit the Biblical criteria. And I am persuaded by both Scripture and history that nothing like the New Testament gift of miracles, noted in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 is operating today. The Holy Spirit has not given any modern day Christians miraculous gifts comparable to those He gave the apostles.

Now, in spite of that, many Charismatics are making quite remarkable claims. Oral Roberts, for example, speaking at the Charismatic Bible Ministry Conference in 1987 said, and I quote, "I can't tell you about all the dead people I've raised. I've had to stop a sermon, go back and raise a dead person." No less in authority than Dr. C. Peter Wagner, professor of church growth at Fuller Seminary, School of World Mission, believes such things do happen, and I quote him, "I too, now believe that dead people are literally being raised in the world today. As soon as I say that some ask if I believe it is normative. I doubt it would be normative in any local situation, but it probably is normative in terms of the universal body of Christ. Even though it is an extremely uncommon event, I would not be surprised if it were happening several times a year," end quote. John Wimber of the Vineyard lists raising the dead as one of the basic elements of any healing ministry.

Now, with the supposed large number of people being raised from the dead, you would imagine that somebody could manage to come up with one who could give testimony to the validity. But not one modern occurrence of raising the dead can be verified. Say, what about Oral Roberts' claim that he's raised many people? Well, he was challenged to produce the names and addresses of the people he raised, and he balked. Later, he recalled only one incident more than 20 years before when he had supposedly raised a dead child in front of 10,000 witnesses, "During healing service," he recalled, "a mother in the audience jumped up and shouted, 'My baby's dead.'" Roberts said he prayed over the child and, "It jerked, it jerked in my hand." Roberts conceded that neither that child nor others he said he had brought to life had been pronounced clinically dead. "I understand," he hedged, "there's a difference in a person dying and not breathing and a person being clinically dead." Well, what are we supposed to make out that confusion? It's certainly a far cry from Jesus raising Lazarus who had been four days in the grave. And if this Dr. Wagner supposes dead people are literally being raised several times a year, wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that he would bring one along so we could meet him or her. The truth is those who claim miracles today are not able to substantiate their claims. And like the miracles in the New Testament which were usually done with large crowds of unbelievers watching who would be skeptical, modern miracles typically happen either privately or in some religious meeting where there are a lot of people who are in a wild kind of frenzy expecting a miracle where it's a lot easier to fabricate one in the imagination.

And the types of miracles that are being claimed today are absolutely nothing like New Testament miracles, absolutely nothing like them. In fact, the types of miracles today could be distinctly seen as different than New Testament miracles. Jesus and the apostles instantly and completely healed people born blind, a paralytic, a man with a withered arm. All obvious and disputable miracles, even Jesus' enemies didn't challenge the reality of His miracles that He had the people there to verify them. He raised the dead, of course, as we well know. They never did a miracle that was slow, they never did a miracle that took time, they never did a miracle that was less than permanent. By contrast, most modern miracles are partial, gradual, temporary, sometimes reversed, and almost impossible to verify.
And the only instant miracles today seem to be those that deal with psycho-somatic diseases. People with visible disabilities are rarely if ever helped at all by modern faith healers. I recently watched a televangelist interview a man he had supposedly healed of lameness. The man said he was free from his wheelchair for the first time in several years, however, the man was walking with crutches and had heavy braces on his legs. That's not a miracle at all like any in the Scripture. No modern miracle worker claims the kind of unequivocal success seen in the ministry of Christ and His apostles.

Now, there are some in the Charismatic movement who try to defend the supposed miracles which are not verifiable by saying that Jesus Christ is same yesterday, today and forever, so it's the same Jesus today. The Holy Spirit is still with us today and therefore, with Him, we have the age of miracles. David Du Plessiswho is sort of the patriarch of the movement, who has been called Mr. Pentecost, believed, he's dead now, that the age of miracles never ended and that we're still in the age of miracles, and that he said that the miracles and events described in the book of Acts should be normative throughout the church's history. And it is that view that most Pentecostals and Charismatics hold. That whatever the Holy Spirit did in the past, He is still doing now; that miracles go on and on as long as there is the Holy Spirit. They say the Holy Spirit never changed. They say the early church changed. It became doctrinal, it became formal, it became ritualistic, and so the Holy Spirit pulled back His power and now after nearly 2,000 years, He's released it again. The thing that always amazes me is if the Holy Spirit were going to release His power, why would He release it to authenticate the people who teach bad theology? If He wanted to authenticate anybody with miracles, you could be sure it would be those who were the truest and the purest and the most profound and Biblical and the most skilled and dedicated teachers of the Word of God who were teaching the truth.

Many Pentecostals and Charismatics talk about the restoration of the New Testament Holy Spirit power through their movement. They say they're doing again what the apostles did in the first century. Is that true? If so, why do modern revelations, visions, tongues, healings and miracles differ so dramatically from those done by the apostles? And why is it that they're associated with people who do not understand properly the truth of God? And if miracles and signs and wonders are so vital, then why is it that for nearly 2,000 years the Holy Spirit didn't do any? You mean there weren't even a few people around who would have been worthy of such? Should Christians today expect miracles? Is Oral Roberts right when he says, "Everyone of you out there should expect your miracle today"? Are we supposed to be able to do miracles, heal people, raise the dead?

Well, in answer to all of this, we need to take a look at Scripture and I wanna give you just a fast look, overview at this matter of miracles that I think will set your thinking in the right frame. Most Biblical miracles happened in one of three relatively brief periods of Biblical history. You need to note this. Most Biblical miracles happened in three relatively brief periods of Bible history, the days of Moses and Joshua, during the ministries of Elijah and Elisha and thirdly, in the time of Christ and the apostles. None of those periods lasted much more than 100 years. Each of them, each of the three experienced a proliferation of miracles unheard of at other times in God's redemptive history. But even during those three times, miracles were not just normal, every day occurrences that happened to anybody and everybody. The miracles that did happen in the time of Moses and Joshua involved Moses and Joshua. The miracles that happened in the time of Elijah and Elisha happened around the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. And the miracles that happened to Christ and the apostles and through them, happened through their ministries. There weren't just miracles happening all over everywhere to all kinds of people.

And aside from those three intervals, the only other miracles recorded in Scripture are very, very isolated events. It is true in the days of Isaiah, the Lord miraculously defeated Sennacherib army, then healed Hezakiah and turned the sun's shadow back, 2 Kings 19:20. It is true in the days of Daniel, God miraculously preserved Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the furnace, Daniel 3. But those are very uncommon and very unusual. It is true that God did miraculously preserve Jonah in the belly of a great fish. But for the most part, those are very isolated, and miracles that those didn't happen to God's people as a course of life.

Now, God of course, at any time can inject Himself into the human stream supernaturally and do a miracle. But He chose to limit Himself primarily to three periods of history, and very rarely will you ever find a miracle in the times in between. The rest of the time, God just works through providence, doesn't need a miracle, He can work through providence. The reason He did a miracle is because a miracle can only be attributed to God. It can only be explained supernaturally and there were times when that was crucial.

Let me give you some points. Three characteristics of the miracles in Scripture will help you understand this. One, miracles introduced new eras of revelation. Miracles introduced new eras of revelation. All three of those periods of miracles were times when God gave His written revelation. Moses and Joshua, the time of the giving of the law. Elijah and Elisha introduced the prophetic office, the prophetic age, and all of the books of prophecy, major prophets and minor prophets. The New Testament obviously, Christ did miracles, the apostles did miracles. That introduced the era of the New Testament revelation. So, whenever God was going to pour out His Word, He wanted to certify certain prophets and teachers of His Word, to authenticate them.

Moses was given the power to do certain miracles that people might know he spoke as God's spokesman. There was no other way to explain what God used him to do other than God was doing it and therefore, this was God's man and when he spoke, he spoke for God. And the same was true in Joshua's case when he wrote his book.

You come to Elijah and Elisha and the miracles that attended their ministry as they were the prophets of God, and they were introducing a very long era of prophetic literature. As God revealed through the prophets of which really they were sort of the introducers. And even if those rare miracles that occurred in other eras involve people who were used by God to write Scripture. Hezakiah's healing involved Isaiah. The three men in the fiery furnace involved Daniel. Those two were what we call major prophets who spoke and wrote for God. Moses performed many miracles in an attempt to convince Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go, to convince Pharaoh that this was not some normal man. This was not some natural man, but this was God's man who spoke for God.

Miracles seem to accompany the Israelites on the their journey out of Egypt and miracles came in their journey through the wilderness to remind the people of God that God was their God and that Moses was God's spokesman. How else would they know who to listen to? They certainly didn't want to listen to Aaron or anybody else. And even when God gave His law to Moses on the mount, Moses' encounter with God was accompanied by signs so dramatic, fire, smoke, a trumpet, a thundering voice, that even Moses himself knew it was the voice of God and Hebrews 12 says he was fearful. And thus began the first period of revelation. And Moses recorded the truth of the Pentateuch, the five books, and Joshua wrote the book that bears his name.
Other books were added intermittently after the time of Moses and Joshua, Samuel probably wrote Judges and 1 and 2 Samuel. David wrote the Psalms, Solomon penned most of the wisdom literature, but those books were not accompanied by the great outpouring of miracles that had distinguished the days Moses and Joshua. They were kind of a continuation in some ways of that revelatory era.

Second major cluster of miraculous events accompanied a new era of Biblical revelation, the age of the Old Testament prophets. Following Solomon's reign, a nation of Israel divided into the northern kingdom Israel, a southern king of Judah. The northern kingdom quickly deteriorated because of idolatry and hit a low point under King Ahab. You remember his wife Jezebel. At that time God raised up two spokesmen, Elijah and Elisha. The prophetic office in their lifetime was marked by dramatic miracles to certify them as the spokesmen for God and to call back the people to God. The prophets that followed them were the continuation of that era.
Then when that era closed out and the Old Testament was done, there was a 400 year period of silence in which no prophet spoke for God and no miracle is recorded to have occurred. Then came the New Testament and the first miracle was a virgin birth, and then the miracles began to flow out of the life of Christ, and then began to flow out of His apostles. Why? Because it was a new era of writing the revelation of God, the New Testament. Always, the miracles were associated with a certification of those who were giving us God's revelation.

Second point, and that is the point we just led into. Miracles authenticated the messengers of Revelation. They only happened in three eras and they authenticated the messengers of Revelation. Elijah raised the widow's dead son and what was the widow's reply? Verse 24 of 1 Kings 17, she said, "Now I know that you are a man of God and that the Word of the Lord in your mouth is truth." That's a very important verse. That's the whole purpose, so that anybody listening to Elijah would know this man is a man of God and in his mouth is the Word of the Lord and it is true.
You come into the New Testament of John 10, Jesus having a confrontation with the Jewish religious leaders. They challenged Him. "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you're the Christ, tell us plainly." Jesus said, "I told you and you don't believe. The works that I do in my Father's Name, these bear witness of Me." He was saying, "The miraculous works that I do authenticate Me and My message as being from God."

In his Pentecost sermon, Peter told the crowd that Jesus was a man attested to them by God with miracles, wonders and signs. And the same kind of power belonged to the apostles. You'll remember that on Paul's first missionary journey, he and Barnabas were ministering in Aconium and it says they were speaking boldly with reliance on the Lord who was bearing witness to the word of His grace, granting that signs and wonders be done by their hands. The love of that is always the intention of the miracle. God does not need to do miracles for everybody to accomplish His will. He does not need to do miracles for every Christian every day to prove His love. He does not need to do miracles every day to make people believe He exists. He only authenticates the Word and when the authenticated Word is revealed, there is no need any longer to authenticate a preacher. You can find out whether he speaks for God by comparing him with this.

And God can still control everything without ever doing a miracle through providence. It's foolish to assume that everybody should be able to do a miracle, that we can go to a seminar in four days and learn how to do miracles. It's equally foolish to assume that God's gonna do miracles for you every day. People who keep saying they saw this miracle and that miracle have got caught up in the fact that everything is a miracle and their definition of miracles lacks greatly Biblical parameters.

The apostles performed miracles, signs and wonders in Acts 5. Why? To call attention to the fact that they were supernatural servants of the living God who spoke the truth. In Acts 15, it says the whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. These things that mark an apostle, signs and wonders and miracles, Paul said to the Corinthians, were done among you. They mark an apostle.

Moses, Joshua introduced an era of revelation. Elijah, Elisha introduced an era of revelation. Jesus and the apostles introduced an era of revelation and with all the spokesmen and no written Word, with all the spokesmen, God had to authenticate the right spokesman and so He gave them the power to do supernatural things in order that people might know this is no human, mortal teacher. This is a man of God who speaks the truth.

Thirdly, and tied right in with the others. Miracles are designed to call attention to the revelation. Miracles are designed to call attention to the revelation. God did the miracle so the people would listen to the Word and see it as His truth. The miracle didn't stand alone, that's the point. God doesn't do miracles for miracles' sake. The purpose of the miracle was the effect of the miracle. For example, the miracles Moses did in Egypt were meant to enlighten two groups, the Israelites and the Egyptians. In Exodus 7, we read about Moses' first miracles and it was then that the Israelites started to believe in the power of their God. Pharaoh was a hard case. He didn't believe until the tenth miracle, the death angel. Then he finally let them go. But the purpose of the miracle was not just to stand on its own, but the purpose of the miracle was to get people to understand that God had something to say.

The miracles of Elijah and Elisha were effective in convincing both believers and unbelievers that what these men spoke was the Word of God and graphic illustration of that can be seen in 1 Kings 18 where Elijah defeated 400 prophets of Baal before a large crowd of Israelites and the Scripture says, "When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces, they said, 'The Lord, He is God. The Lord, He is God.'" They believed.

In the New Testament, miracles and signs were again used to confirm believers and convince unbelievers. John said the miracles of Jesus were done so that, "You might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and believing you might have life in His Name." And the same was true with the apostolic miracles.

Only three eras always to authenticate those who spoke the revelation of God and always with the purpose of pointing to the revelation so that it is the revelation that is the important thing. Beloved, I submit to you that if you have this book in your hand, you have what is the end product of God's miraculous intervention. This is the purpose for which He did the miracles. You posses this, you don't need the miracles. You have what God intended them to produce, and that is why Jesus said it as simply as it could be said, "If they do not believe Moses and the prophets," that is Scripture, "they will not believe though someone be raised from the dead." You must remember the people of Israel who saw the miracles of Moses, the whole generation died in the wilderness in what? Unbelief. You must remember that the people who heard the prophets speak for God for the most part refuse to believe. One whole kingdom apostatized, the northern kingdom, and in the southern, only a remnant. All those who saw the miracles of Jesus did not believe. Only a small group, and when it came down to it in the book of Acts, there were 120 of them dedicated enough to believing the Lord that they were waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Miracles have never produced wholesale belief. They can't. They are intended to point to the truth and it is the truth which produces faith. Of course, as the Spirit energizes it. Now the question comes, are miracles necessary today? When the Old and New Testament were completed, God's revelation was finished. Through many signs and wonders, He has authenticated the voracity of this book. Anybody who reads it can see that it's true.

Does God have to keep doing miracles? Is there a need for ongoing miracles to substantiate the Bible? Should everybody with faith claim a miracle? Does God do miracles on demand? Are the phenomena that are occurring today hail to signs and wonders and healings really necessary and authentic? The answer to all those questions is no. Nothing in Scripture indicates that the miracles of the apostles' age were meant to be continuous. You keep reading in the book of Acts and you'll get to the part in the book of Acts where you finally say to yourself, "I haven't read a miracle in a long time," and you'll finish the whole book and never see another one. They had begun to cease even during the book of Acts.
Charismatic believe that the spectacular, miraculous gifts were given for the edification of believers. Does God's Word support that? No. They were not given for the edification for believers. They were not give to edify Christians. They are a sign for those who do not believe, for those who need to see that this is God's Word. Whether you're talking about tongues or healings or miracles, they served as signs to authenticate an era in which God was giving new revelation and people needed to listen. B.B. Warfield, that great Presbyterian professor, a past generation, writing in 1898, said, "Miracles do not appear on the pages vagrantly, here, there and elsewhere indifferently without a signable reason. They belong to revelation periods and appear only when God is speaking to His people through accredited messengers, declaring His gracious purpose. Their abundant display in the apostolic church is the mark of the richness of the apostolic age in revelation." You realize, don't you, that between 36 and 95, all 27 books of the New Testament were written and so there was a proliferation of authentication because of the vast volume of literature being revealed in a brief period of time. Warfield goes on, "When this revelation period closed, the period miracle working had past by also as a mere matter of course. God the Holy Spirit has made it His subsequent work not to introduce new and unneeded revelations into the world, but to diffuse this one complete revelation through the world and to bring mankind into the saving knowledge of it."

Abraham Kuiper, B.B. Warfield actually wrote in 1918, Kuiper wrote this in 1898. Abraham Kuiper, the Dutch theologian writes, "It has not been God's way to communicate to each and every man a separate store of divine knowledge of his own to meet his separate needs, but He rather has spread a common board for all and invites all to come and partake of the richness of the great feast." I wanna stop in that quote to say that is such a very important rebuke to the contemporary Charismatic movement which assumes that God talks to everybody individually, has special revelation for everybody, separate information for everybody to meet everybody's individual need. That is not the case. Abraham Kuiper is right when he says, "He has spread a common board for all and invites all to come and partake of the richness of the great feast. He has given to the world one organically complete revelation, adapted to all, sufficient for all, provided for all, and from this one completed revelation, He requires each to draw His whole spiritual sustenance. Therefore, it is that the miraculous working which is but the sign of God's revealing power, cannot be expected to continue and in point of fact, does not continue after the revelation of which it is the accompaniment has been completed." Great statement, great statement.

In Acts 7, as Stephen preached his famous sermon, he talked about Moses who performed wondrous signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness and, "received living oracles to pass on to you," Stephen said. Know how God's Word draws the parallel between Moses' signs and the living oracles, the direct revelation from God which He was to pass on. Hebrews 2:3-4 confirms that the validation of the New Testament writers was purposed to cause folks to see them as the agents of God's revelation. "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation after it was at first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard God bearing witness with them by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit." He was authenticating the apostles, the writers of Scripture.

Does God promise miracles for everybody? No, He never has; it's not their purpose. You hear Charismatics say, "God has a special miracle for you today." No, He doesn't. "You better be seeking your private miracle. If you're not getting it it's because you don't believe strongly enough." Not true. By the way, Jesus didn't do any private miracles. They were all public, and they were as I said, to authenticate the one who spoke for God.

There's so much more that can be said about this, and there'll be much more in the book, but I just wanna wrap this up in the last five minutes or so. If you're going to say that God is doing miracles today, then, and be Biblically consistent, you're going to have to say that God is also what? Giving what? Revelation. And if God is giving revelation, it will be coming through the people who are what? Doing the miracles. And I will say this for the Charismatics. They're at least logically consistent in that sense. They've got the whole package. God is giving revelation, He's still giving it. The people who are getting it have miracle power, in their view. And what is the next logical step? To call them apostles, and that's what they're doing.

We're now having a pretty common movement in the Charismatic movement, labeling people as apostles, Earl Polk, quite a prominent Charismatic, teaches that certain individuals have been called to be apostles. Jack Dear, former professor at Dallas Seminary, the chief theologian of John Wimber's movement, isn't certain the apostolic ministry is functioning today, but he told a workshop in Sydney, he is convinced that apostolic power is coming. Listen to this, "And the new apostolic age will be greater than the first."

We're gonna get the whole package back, new apostles doing new signs and wonders, receiving new revelation to produce a new Bible? You wanna look at this very carefully, beloved. This almost looks like a plot to deceive the whole church, doesn't it? The apostolic office isn't for today. The church was founded on the apostles. Ephesians 2:20, they were the foundation. You don't put the foundation on the 20thstory. The apostles were all eye witnesses to the resurrection, eye witnesses to the risen Christ. They were chosen personally by Jesus Christ. They were authenticated by miraculous signs. They had absolute authority, and they were given an eternal, unique place of honor. Revelation 21:14 says that, "Heaven, the city of the new Jerusalem, has a wall with 12 foundation stones and on them are the 12 names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb." There were only 12. You can argue who the 12thwas. Some say Mathias, some say Paul, Judas being excluded. You might wanna say Mathias, and Paul was an apostle in due time, kind of an addendum. But the point is, there are only 12 of those honored places. Each of them will rule over one of the 12 tribes of Israel in the kingdom. There's not room for more than 12, folks. They're a special breed, they had no successors. The age of apostles is over 'cause the age of authentication is over because the age of revelation is over.

You say, "Oh, MacArthur, you have a weak view of God." No, I don't. I have a strong view of God. I think He's consistent with Himself and I think He's true to His revelation. Jerry Horner, associate professor of Biblical literature, Oral Roberts said, "Who in the world wants a God that's lost all His zip?" Well, has God lost His zip? Has He done nothing significant in 2,000 years? That's hardly the case. He's got plenty of zip. In fact, He's able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all you can ask or think, according to the power that works in us. He had a special purpose for the eras of revelation. He has a different purpose now, just as powerful, just as wonderful. Don't buy into the deception that there's something beyond the Scripture because that's what this deception is saying. That there's somebody getting a revelation, that there's somebody with apostolic authority, that miracles are supposed to be happening all over the place. It's not true. It's not consistent with Scripture.

Proper Biblical Interpretation
John MacArthur

Tonight we have the great privilege I think of looking at a subject that is important to all of us. I'm not gonna be dealing with the specific text, although we'll cover a number of texts before we're through tonight. But I wanna carry on our special study of Charismatic chaos looking and evaluating the Charismatic movement from the Word of God by focusing on the issue of interpreting the Bible. One of the things that allows for the Charismatic movement to continue to move ahead is that it is engaged in misinterpretation of Scripture. I know that's a strong thing to say, but it's true. The movement continues really at an amazing pace, not only in America but around the world. And as it moves and catapults itself along, it does so at the expense of Scripture. There is in my judgment, very little understanding in the Charismatic movement a proper Bible interpretation. Much of what exists in the Charismatic movement could be eliminated with just some very simple, straightforward, basic understanding of how to properly interpret the Bible. It falls technically under the title hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is a theologian's word to explain the science of Bible interpretation, and hermeneutics is a crucial building block in discerning theology. In fact, the absence of hermeneutics or misunderstanding of it feeds the Charismatic movement. Pentecostals and Charismatics tend to base much of their teaching on poor principles of Bible interpretation.

One of their own, a Pentecostal by the name of Gordon Fee has written this, "Pentecostals, in spite of some of their excesses, are frequently praised for recapturing for the church, her joyful radiance, missionary enthusiasm and life in the Spirit. But they are at the same time, noted for bad hermeneutics. First, their attitude toward Scripture regularly has included a general disregard for a scientific exegesis and carefully thought out hermeneutics. In fact, hermeneutics has simply not been a Pentecostal thing. Scripture is the Word of God and is to be obeyed. In place of scientific hermeneutics, there developed a kind of pragmatic hermeneutics. Obey what should be taken literally. Spiritualize, allegorize, or devotionalize the rest.

Secondly, it is probably fair and important to note that in general, the Pentecostal's experience has preceded their hermeneutics. In a sense, the Pentecostal tends to exegete his experience." This is not as I said, the appraisal of someone hostile to the movement, but the appraisal of one who is himself a Pentecostal. His assessment is right on. You only have to watch the typical Charismatic television program to see exactly what he's talking about. You might of watched along with some of us in horror. Sometime back if you happened to be watching the Trinity Broadcasting Network, they were interviewing a guest on one of their talk shows, and he was explaining the Biblical basis of his ministry of possibility thinking. This is a quote, "My ministry is based entirely on my life verse, Matthew 19:26, 'With God, all things are possible.' God gave me that verse, Matthew 19:26, because I was born in 1926."

Obviously intrigued by that method of obtaining a life verse, the host grabbed a Bible and began thumbing through it excitedly. "I was born in 1934," he said. "My life verse must Matthew 19:34. What does it say?" Then he discovered that Matthew 19 has only 30 verses. Undeterred, he flipped to Luke and read Luke 19:34, and they said, "The Lord hath need of him." Thrilled, he exclaimed, "The Lord has need of me, the Lord has need of me. What a wonderful life verse. I've never had a life verse before, but now the Lord has given me one. Thank you, Jesus, Hallelujah," and the studio audience began to applaud. At that moment, however, the talk show host's wife who had also turned to Luke 19 said, "Wait a minute, you can't use this. This verse is talking about a donkey."

That incident, while being absolutely ludicrous and bizarre, gives you some idea of the willy-nilly way that some Charismatics approach Scripture. Some of them, looking for a word from the Lord, play a sort of Bible roulette. They spin the Bible at random looking for something that might seem applicable to whatever trial or need they are facing and they find a verse and say, "Well, the Lord gave me that verse." And then the Lord supposedly gave them the interpretation of it.

These are silly and foolish ways to approach the study of the Bible. Perhaps you've heard the familiar story of the man who wanted guidance about a major decision. Started to close his eyes and not knowing where to look, wanted God to answer him. In the dilemma, he opened his Bible, put his finger down to get guidance from whatever verse his finger happened to land on. His first try brought him to Matthew 27:5, "Judas went out and hanged himself." Thinking that verse was really not much help, he determined to try again. This time his finger landed on Luke 10:37, "Go thou and do likewise." Still undeterred and not ready to give up, he tried it a third time and his finger landed on John 13:27, "What thou doest, do quickly."

Now, I certainly don't wanna vouch for the authenticity of that particular account, but it does make an important point. Looking for meaning in Scripture through some mystical process is a way to get an ill-gotten theology. Looking for meaning in Scripture beyond the historical, grammatical, logical understanding of the context is unwise and dangerous. It's possible, of course, to substantiate almost any idea or any teaching from Scripture if you take it out of its context and twist it around. I remember hearing about the preacher who didn't think women should have their hair up on their head because a woman's hair should be down, so he preached against what used to be called bobbed hair, women having their hair up on their heads. His text was top not come down, taken from Matthew 24 where it says, "Let those on the housetop not come down." So, if you just pull out, if you just pull out exactly what you want, you can probably get it. We laugh at that because it sounds so bizarre, but that is precisely the process that many are using to substantiate their experiences or to invent their theology.

Now the task of hermeneutics is to realize, first of all, that there is a God given meaning in Scripture, apart from you or me or anybody else. Scripture means something if means nothing to me, understood? It means something if it means nothing to you. It means something if it means nothing to anybody. It means something in itself, and that meaning is determined by God, the Author, not by one who is going through some kind of mystical experience. The interpreter's task then is to discern that meaning. To discover the meaning of the text in its proper setting, to draw the meaning out of the Scripture, rather than to read one's meaning into it. The importance of careful, Biblical interpretation can hardly be overstated. We spend three or four years at the master seminary trying to teach men how to do this because it is the heart and soul of effective ministry. In fact, I would go so far as to say misinterpreting the Bible is ultimately no better than disbelieving it. So what do you mean by that?

Well, what good does it do to believe that the Bible is God's final and complete word if you misinterpret it? Either way you miss the truth, right? It is equally serious along with disbelieving the Bible to misinterpret it. Interpreting Scripture to make it say what it was never intended to say is a sure road to division, to error, to heresy and to apostasy. In spite of all of the dangers of misinterpreting the Scripture, today we have these casual people who approach the Scripture whimsically without any understanding of the science of interpretation and make it say whatever they would like it to say. Perhaps you've been in one those Bible studies where you go around the room and everybody tells you what they think the verse means? Or worse than that, "Well, to me this verse means," so-and-so. In the end, what you get is a pooling of ignorance, unless somebody knows what it means apart from them. The truth is it doesn't matter what a verse means to me, it doesn't matter what it means to you, it doesn't matter what it means to anybody else, it doesn't matter if it means anything to anybody else. All that matters is what does it mean? What did God intend to say? Every verse has intrinsic meaning apart from any of us and the task of Bible study is to discern the true meaning of Scripture. That's why I can come to you week after week, month after month, year after year and explain to you the meaning of the Word of God, apart from any personal experience I'm having. That's irrelevant.

The task of the interpreter is to discern the meaning of Scripture. In 2 Timothy 2:15 it says, "Be diligent," or study, "present yourself approved to God as a workman who doesn't need to be ashamed because he's handling accurately the Word of Truth." If you don't handle it accurately, you oughta be ashamed of yourself. And if you're gonna handle it accurately, you have to be diligent, you have to work hard at it. Clearly handling Scripture involves both of those things, hard work and diligence. It must be interpreted accurately, and those who fail to do that have reason to be ashamed.

Now, there's so much to say about this that I can't give you a whole course on hermeneutics. I teach some of that in the seminary as well as other professors and I'm not intending to give you a seminary course, but let me just suggest three errors that need to be avoided that are not always avoided in contemporary interpretation. One, and they're very simple, do not make a point at the price of a proper interpretation. It's like the preacher who said, "I have a good sermon, if I could just find a verse to go with it." Do not prescribe your theology and then try to make the Bible fit it. You might have a good thought, good idea. It even might be that the principle that you have in mind is true, but do not allow yourself to make the point at the price of a proper interpretation.

Remember reading years ago, a good illustration of this found in the Jewish Talmud. One Rabbi was trying to convince his people that the primary issue in life is concern for other human beings. That's good, good point. We oughta be concerned about other human beings, but he wanted to illustrate it and so he took 'em to the Tower of Babel and he told them that the stones of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, the building of that through the carrying of those stones illustrated his point. He said that the builders of the tower were frustrated because they put material things first and people last. Now where is that in Genesis? "Well," he said, "as the tower grew taller, it took a hod carrier or a stone carrier many hours to carry a load of stones up. The higher it got, the longer the walk." And he said, "If a man fell off the tower on the way down, nobody cared because you only lost a man, not the bricks. But if he fell off on the way up, they mourned because the bricks were lost. And that," said the Rabbi, "is why God confused their language, because they failed to give priority to human beings over bricks." Now, none of that can be found in Genesis 11, none of that can be found in the Bible. In fact, it totally skews the meaning of Genesis 11. It is true, people are more important than bricks, but that is not the point of the Tower of Babel. Genesis 11 says absolutely nothing about the importance of people or bricks. The point is God is more important than idols, and God will judge idolatry.

I remember being at a Bible conference in Wisconsin one time. And I got into the Bible conference with another well known preacher, and we were preaching every night, and one day we were eating lunch, and I said, "What are you gonna preach on tonight?" He said, "I'm gonna preach on the rapture of the church." I said, "Really? The rapture of the church, great. What's your text?" He said, "John 11." I said, "What?" He said, "John 11." I said, "John 11, the rapture of the church isn't in John 11." He said, "You wait and see tonight." I said, "Fine, fine." That night he preached on the rapture from John 11. That's the resurrection of Lazarus. He allegorized it, Lazarus was the church, Martha was the Old Testament saints and Mary was the tribulation saints and he got this thing goin'. And the people were just sitting there saying, "Deep, deep." You know, they were just thinkin' this is the profoundest thing. They couldn't find it anywhere. They thought he was goin' deeper than they had capability to go. And afterwards he said to me, "Have you ever seen that in John 11?" To which I replied as kindly as I could, "No one has ever see that in John 11." And he took it as a compliment. The next night he said, "John MacArthur told me that no one but me had ever seen that in John 11."

Now, I don't wanna argue with the rapture of the church, but I will argue that the rapture of the church is not in John 11, and if you're gonna make John 11 say something that is true, then you're just as likely to make John 11 say something that what? That isn't true. That is not the way you approach Scripture.

God has not hidden His truth from us, but its meaning is not always instantly clear. It demands hard work. That's why in 1 Timothy 5:17 it says that, "Those elders who labor in the Word and doctrine are worth of double honor," because it's hard work. That's why God has given teachers to the church so that we can work hard and understanding God's Word correctly, instructing people in the Scriptures through persistent, conscientious labor in the Word.

Now, today we have, frankly, a lack of respect for the work of gifted theologians, a lack of respect for the hard work of gifted expositors who have spent years studying and interpreting Scripture. In fact, that lack of respect tends to be somewhat charismatically characteristic. They tend to sort of look at all of us that way. I think I read you of the letter from the lady who said, "Your problem is you're too much into the Bible. Throw away your Bible," remember that, "and stop studying." You see, Charismatics place more emphasis on letting people in the congregation say whatever they think Jesus is telling them the verse means, and to listen to what one writer calls, "Airy fairy theologians." There's a vast difference, by the way, between the whimsical kitchen table interpretations of laymen, the teaching of skilled men who work very hard to rightly divide the Word.

I heard a radio interview with a Charismatic woman pastor. She was asked how she got her sermons up? She replied, "I don't get 'em up, I get 'em down. God delivers them to me." That's an all too familiar thing. I can promise you that God has never delivered one to me. I haven't gotten them down. I've had to 'em up. Some people even believe it's unspiritual to study. After all, some say, taking another verse out of context, didn't Jesus say, "For the Holy Spirit will teach you and that very hour what you want to say," so you just go into the pulpit and whatever comes into your mind, you say? And that's why they invent their theology as they speak because they have no idea what's going to be said until they hear it. We should be greatly concerned about this ad lib approach. You never ever make a point true or false at the price of a proper interpretation. Otherwise, you are the final authority and not the Word of God.

Secondly, don't spiritualize or allegorize the text. Some people think the Bible is a fable to teach whatever you wanna get across. A myriad of illustrations of this. I remember back when Jerry Mitchell was on our staff and a young couple came into him for counseling, marriage counseling. He began to talk with them and after about 30 minutes, he said he'd been married only six months and you're already on the edge of a divorce? Why did you ever get married? You're miles apart. "Oh," said the husband, "it was a sermon the pastor preached in our church." "What was the sermon?" "Well, he preached on the walls of Jericho." "Jericho? What does that have to do with marriage?" "Well," he said, "God's people claimed the city marched around it seven times and the walls fell down." And he said, "If a young man believed God had given him a certain girl, he could claim her, march around her seven times and the walls of her hear would fall down. That's what I did and we got married." "That can't be true," he said. "You're kidding, aren't you?" I remember him sayin' that. "You gotta be kidding." "No, it's true. And there were many other couples that got married because of the same sermon." Some people believe their marriages were made in Heaven. That was made in an allegory and a bad one at that. That's the kind of interpretation that has gone on since the early days of the church, continues today, especially in the Charismatic movement.

Remember listening to a series on the book of Nehemiah. The whole purpose of the book of Nehemiah by this Charismatic preacher was to teach Charismatic doctrine. Jerusalem's walls were in ruin and that was representative of the broken down walls of human personality. Nehemiah was the Holy Spirit, the king's pool was the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the mortar between the bricks was tongues. And what Nehemiah's teaching is the Holy Spirit wants to come rebuild your broken walls through the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. I had an opportunity to talk to that preacher about that and we had an interesting conversation. I tried to show him that that was nothing but the invention of his own imagination, read from the New Testament back into the Old, but never the intention of Nehemiah, to which he agreed. That kind of preaching is a form of hucksterism, and as I said, "You may come up with the truth that you teach, but if you spiritualize the text to do it, then you legitimize spiritualization of any text which leaves you with any fanciful conclusion."

Well, the correct approach you probably need to go to Jesus and remember that when He was walking on the road to Emmaus, He said, Luke did, the beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in the Scriptures. The Word explained is hermeneual from which we get hermeneutics. He carefully interpreted the Old Testament. He used hermeneutics. He's a model of a teacher, used sound interpretive methods.

So, when we teach the Word of God, when we come to the conclusions that we come to, we wanna be certain that we don't make severe errors, one, by making points at the price of proper interpretation, two, by somehow concocting or spiritualizing something that isn't there, and three, and I've already talked about this, by superficial study. Superficial study is equally disastrous. But I've said enough about that not to have to say more.

Now, if that's the case, if we are to avoid doing that, how do we then interpret the Scripture? Let me give ya five sound principles, alright? If you work through these, you'll be on the way to rightly dividing the Word. Principle number one we'll call the literal principle, the literal one. When we go to the Bible, this is so basic, we assume that God is talking to us in normal speech, k? Normal language, normal, common, everyday communication. In fact, the theologians used to call it usisloquindi in the Latin, meaning the words of Scripture are to be interpreted the same way words are understood in ordinary daily use. If it says horse, it means horse, if it says he went somewhere, he went somewhere. If it says house, it means house, if it says man, it means man, and not everything is to be extrapolated off into some mystical spiritualization, allegorization or whatever. He is literal.

We understand Scripture then in the literal sense of language. Now there are figures of speech, there are simile, metaphor, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, whatever else, ellipses. All of the figures of speech will be there. There may even be sarcasm. There may even be exaggeration as a device. There may be symbolism such as the symbolism in the prophetic literature which is obviously symbolic, clearly symbolic. But it is in the normal language of speech. We use symbols in our language. We say, "That man is as straight as a pine tree," or "that man is as strong as an ox." Well, we're using a symbol to make a literal point or statement. So then, when we interpret the Bible, we're not hunting for some extrapolated, mystical experience.

Now the Rabbis really got into this. They started to look for this long centuries ago. In fact, they used to say, some of them said that Abraham had 318 servants. Nothing in the Bible says that, but they said the secret meaning of the word Abraham is in the Hebrew there's only three consonants in Abraham's name: ba, ra, m. All the rest are vowels or breathing points. So, if you take ba, ra, m, in his name, they had numerical equivalents in the Hebrew language and add 'em up you get 318, so the secret meaning is he had 318 servants. Now they were into all that kind of stuff and even got more bizarre than that.

There was occasionally of course, figurative language in Scripture as I said, but they're quite evident to us in the normal course of understanding language. Scripture was not written to puzzle people. It was not written to confuse them. It was written to make things clear to them. Even parables are nothing more than illustrations. They're not riddles. They're illustrations, and in most cases, Jesus explained their meaning. And in all cases, He said that the meaning would be revealed to those who belong to Him by the Holy Spirit. So, we can't abandon literal interpretation and favor of mystical, allegorical, metaphorical kinds of interpretation to discard all hope of achieving accuracy and coherence, and throw us into some imaginary field. I would venture to say that most Charismatic preaching is imagination run wild, proof texted. They have, at least the popular part of it. I don't know whether most is a fair thing to say, but the popular part of it that I hear has much imagination and very little hermeneutics. When you do not take the time to discern the literal meaning, you are not serving Scripture by trying to understand it, then you are making Scripture your slave by molding it into whatever you want it to say. So, we start with a literal principle. It's literal language.

Secondly, an historical principle. Now, when the Scripture was written, they understood what was said, clearly. Just like the Constitution, when it was written everybody understood what they meant. Here we are a few hundred years later tryin' to figure out what they meant. Why? Because history's different. Time has past, culture has changes, circumstances have changed, and even language has changed, modes of expressions have changed, patterns of life have changed. And so we're trying to get in touch with an old document and reconstruct what it must have meant to them when it was written. Same is true of the Bible, only it's much older than the Constitution. Any ancient document demands interpretation. And so what do we have to do then to interpret it? We have to reset it in its historical context.

I'm always amazed when I hear someone say, "John 3 must be goin' to the water and the Spirit means must be born physically, and you must be born spiritually." Have you heard that? When a woman has a baby, there's water, we say, "The water breaks and the baby's born, that's born of the water, and spiritually, you're born of the Spirit." The problem is that in the Jewish context, that wouldn't have been said because the Jews didn't say, "The water breaks." So, what you've done is taken an American colloquialism and read it into an ancient book that would mean absolutely nothing to those people. The question is when He said, "You must be born of the water and the Spirit," what water would they think about, right? What water was in the historical setting? The only water and spirit they would think about in their Jewish context, particularly Nicodemus, would be that of Ezekiel who said, "The day is coming when God's gonna wash you with clean water and put His Spirit within you," and he would have put it that context, the context of the new covenant, not some colloquial American expression for human birth.

We must then understand the need for the historical principle. When Jesus walks in, for example, to the temple courtyard and said, "I am the Light of the world." Why did he say that? Did He just go around saying strange things at strange moments? "I'm the Light of the world," and somebody would say, "What did He say that for?" Well, why would He say, "I am the Water of Life. Whoever drinks of this water, out of his belly shall flow rivers of _____?" What is He talking about? Why does He outburst with these obtuse remarks? No, when He said in John 8, "I am the Light of the world," He was standing in the temple courtyard and there was a huge candelabra that had been lit for eight straight days in the feast of lights, and it had just gone out the day before, and He walks in to that very setting and says in effect, this thing has gone out, but I'm the Light of the world and I never go out. And when He said, "I'm the Water of Life," they were going to the hallels and they were celebrating the water that came out of the rock in the wilderness, and He said, "There was water then, but it was temporary, I am the Water, and you drink this water, you'll never thirst, but you'll be a gushing well of water." Always the context gives the meaning.

We've got to go back, what are the historical features? What is the characteristic of the city in which the believers lived who heard this? What was going on there? What were the politics? Who was ruling? What were the social pressures? What were the tensions, problems and crises that they were going through? What was the culture of the day? What was life like? What were customs like? I spend a great amount of my time researching all of that information so that when I get in the pulpit, I can make something clearer, and I'm always amazed, in fact, it happened a couple times this morning. People came to me and said, "You know, that passage is so clear. It's so clear. I wonder why I've never seen it before?" The reason it was clear, the reason you understood it is because I fed you the context in which it had its significance. It seemed simple and clear to you, a lot simpler than you know. It is simple to the one who was there and heard it the first time, but it is more complex to me as I have to discern what they heard and how they heard it. That's part of the process. To answer the cultural, historical question, you use Bible dictionaries and books on history and Bible handbooks, and commentaries, and books about Bible customs and so forth and so on.

Third principle, grammatical principle. You go to a text of Scripture and you have to approach it grammatically. This is called syntax, S-Y-N-T-A-X. Lexicography is the study of words, syntax is the study of the relationship of words. You have to learn about verbs and adverbs and adjectives, and you have to learn about infinitives and participles, and you have to learn about prepositions. You have to learn about conjugating verbs and you have to learn about cases for nouns and substantives, ablative and genitive and all of that and accusative, nominative. You learn all the structure of language. You have to learn about antecedents about relationships. You have to learn about conditional and non conditional clauses.

You know what makes this really difficult now in seminary? The latest statistics that I've seen regarding our seminary, we get the cream of the crop, we get the finest young men coming out of the universities of our nation. One out of four of the men coming into the master seminary, one out of four can pass the basic English exam, one out of four. They can all talk English, they can all read English, they just don't understand the structure of language, and because they don't understand the structure of language, you can't teach them a foreign language until they do. We have people today who will never be able to understand the structure of the foreign languages Hebrew and Greek because they don't even understand the structure of English trying to interpret the Bible. Now, grammar's not anybody's favorite subject. Sorry, those of you who teach English. Grammar is just grammar, it's just there and you have to learn it. But it is essential in interpreting the Word of God.

People say to me, "What's the first thing you do when you prepare a message?" The first thing I do is study the Biblical text in the original language and learn the grammar and understand all the word relationships, go over sentence structure and grammar so I know exactly what is being said, what modifies what and how it all fits together. In fact, more often than not, when I preach to you, the main idea that I'm trying to get across to you is contained in the main verb and the supporting ideas are contained in the participles that modify the main verb. Now, you can do this for yourself by reading commentaries which will help you in the process, by doing inductive Bible study, breaking down into diagramming sentences. Remember that terrible thing you used to have to do that nobody does anymore? But that's all a part of discerning grammatical construction.

And another principle, let's call it the synthesis principle, the synthesis principle. The old reformers use the expression scriptura scripturum interpretator. What that means is Scripture is its own interpreter, and you use the synthesis principle. What does that mean? That I always interpret a given passage in the Bible in the light of the rest of the Bible, right? I don't come across a passage and say, "Wow, this is a new doctrine taught nowhere else in the Bible." Wait a minute. If you think that passage is teaching a doctrine that is taught nowhere else in the Bible and appears contradictory to other things taught in the Bible, you've misinterpreted it, right? Because Scripture will be consistent with itself, why? One perfect author wrote it all. Who's that? God. Scripture will interpret Scripture. The Holy Spirit won't disagree with Himself, and you can interpret the Word of God by the Word of God. That is a very, very essential thing.

And then, one more principle, fifthly, the practical principle, the practical principle. The final question you ask, you go through this whole process starting out, alright, what's the literal meaning here? Then you move to what's the historical background, the context. What are all the grammatical components here? How does this synthesize with the rest of Scripture. You hear me do that, don't you? I make a point and then I show you other verses where that point exists in order to see that this is the Scripture teaching and elucidating on its own truth. And then, the last question you ask is so what? What does it mean to me? What does it have to do with me? How does it apply to my life? But you never ask that question until you've gone through all the other steps, right? Most people today read the Bible and then say, "Alright, what does this mean to me," and they skip all the stuff in the middle. By the way, I would recommend to you a helpful little book. If you wanna good tool that's excellent for you, that's Dick Mahew's book, How to Interpret the Bible. It's a paperback, it'll be a tremendous tool for you. I know we have it in our bookstore and you can go in and buy 'em all out tonight.

Now, in the process of this, one more thing I need to say. And these five principles of interpreting Scripture, there's another component and that's the principle of the Holy Spirit and illumination. Even when I have taken it literally and worked through the grammar and reconstructed the history, and when I have delved into all the terms and the words and synthesized it with all of Scripture, all of that effort would come up empty if it weren't for the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit because He alone knows the things that are coming from God, 1 Corinthians 2 says. And He is the One who teaches them to us. He is the anointing, in 1 John 2:27, that teaches us all things. Remember that verse, 1 John 2:27? John says, "The anointing which you have received from Him abides in you. You have no need for anyone to teach you, but as His anointing teaches you about all things and is true and not a lie, just as it has taught you, you abide in Him." It's not telling us we don't need teachers and it's not telling us we don't need those who guide us because He's given to the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, teaching pastors, and even teachers to teach us. And he's given us some the gifts of teaching and preaching so that we can be taught. But it is an assurance that we can know the difference between the heresy that is being discussed in 1 John 2, and the truth regarding the Gospel of Christ because we possess the Spirit. It doesn't guarantee that we're gonna have the correct interpretation of every verse in the Bible even though we do nothing. It doesn't mean we don't need human teachers. It just means, regarding the Gospel, regarding the basic truth of Christ, we can discern by the Holy Spirit's leading truth from error.

Now, in closing, just a suggestion, four texts are commonly misinterpreted by Charismatics. And I'll just apply what we've learned tonight to those four very briefly to help you understand how easily they could be rightly understood. The first one, I want you to turn to it. We're not gonna do all that we could do because you can buy my commentary or get the tape on the passage and go through it in detail, but Matthew 12 is a good starting point because they use this quite often to intimidate Christians. In Matthew 12, you have the record of the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and you'll remember that Jesus said, "Anything could be forgiven you, anything said against the Son of Man, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven you." If we had the time, we could read from verse 22 all the way on, but just go down to verse 31. Jesus says, "Therefore, I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven." Now, what is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? Well, if you listen to two very, very popular Charismatics by the name of Charles and Francis Hunter, well known husband and wife team who've written numbers of books and speak on the road all the time, this is what they say. They say that anyone who questions tongues, and this is pretty much what you hear from the Charismatic movement, anyone who questions tongues or any other aspect of the Charismatic movement is blaspheming the Holy Spirit. They imply that any critics of the Charismatic movement are perilously close to being condemned by Christ for such blasphemy. Is that what this is teaching? They use this verse to support that. Does a challenge to Charismatic error equal blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? When someone denies that tongues are for today or that the baptism of the Spirit is a post salvation experience, has that person committed the unpardonable sin? Not according to this passage. In this text, remember, a demon possessed man was born blind and dumb, brought to Jesus and He healed him? The Pharisees heard it, they said Jesus cast out demons by Satan, remember that? By Beelzebub, which was their name for the lord of the flies, the Philistine satan, the prince of evil spirits, they were saying Jesus does what He does by the power of Satan.

Now, according to the principles and interpretation which we've just learned, the first thing to do would be to look at the literal meaning of the passage. The Pharisees were literally saying Jesus Christ got His power from Satan, alright? We understand that. Let's move to the historical principle. Jesus' ministry had been going on for two years, and during that time He performed numerous miracles that proved to everyone really, should have proved to everyone, that He was God, He was the Messiah. The conclusion should have been He is God. Their conclusion was He functions under the power of Satan. They concluded the exact opposite.

Using the synthesis principle, we'll go a step further. We check other parts of the Bible and we find that at His baptism, Jesus received the Holy Spirit, and after being baptized, the Spirit of God descended as a dove, came upon Him. And then we learned that when Jesus went out and performed His miracles, it was the Spirit working through Him. He had yielded Himself up to the Holy Spirit. And so, it was the Holy Spirit working in Him, casting out demons by the Spirit's power. They were coming along and saying He did by Satan's power. Blasphemy then against the Holy Spirit was attributing the works of Christ done by the Spirit of God to Satan. That's what blasphemed the Holy Spirit. It was being exposed to the full revelation of Christ's deity, seeing His miracles, hearing His teaching and concluding He's satanic. For that you can't be forgiven. Why? Because if you have seen it all and heard it all and you conclude that He's satanic, you can't get saved, right? Because you've concluded exactly the opposite about Christ. That's the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit in Matthew 12, doesn't say anything about tongues, doesn't say anything about the contemporary Charismatic movement.

We know that all of us, as sinners, resist the Holy Spirit. All of us who are convicted by the Holy Spirit and fight back at that conviction are resisting and in one way or another, blaspheming Him, but still we can be saved. The only way you can blaspheme to the degree where you couldn't be saved is if you had had all the revelation and you concluded the opposite of the truth. You're unsavable because in order to be saved, you have to acknowledge Jesus as God, right? First of all, the sin against the Holy Spirit referred to there as an historical event. And secondly, if there was some application to us, it would simply be rejecting Christ when you have full knowledge.

Look at another one, Hebrews 13:8. This is a very brief one, but again, it's a classic illustration of the way they work. Almost every Pentecostal church you'll go into, certainly in the past this was true, will have a verse in the front of the church, the back of the church on a plaque somewhere. It'll be Hebrews 13:8, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today forever." Have you ever been into a Pentecostal church and seen that? It is in most all of them or was. "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever." Now, why is that important? This is what they say. If Jesus baptized with the evidence of speaking in tongues yesterday, then surely He's doing it today and He'll be doing it tomorrow. And so they use that to say whatever Jesus did in the past, He's doing now, He'll be doing in the future. The silliness of that interpretation is the tongues never started until Acts 2, so though Jesus is the same yesterday, throughout all the yesterday of His eternal existence, He didn't do that. You see how obvious that is? Then you say, "Now, wait a minute. In the yesterday He did miracles." No, no, no, not in the yesterday of His eternal existence. Before the world began, He wasn't doing miracles, and before the world He wasn't sending the Spirit in clove and tongues of fire. You see, what you have here is a statement about the eternal, immutable essence of Christ. That He is eternal yesterday, today and forever and unchanging in His essence, not that He has always is and will always do everything the same way.

Well, we don't have time to look at the other Scriptures. One favorite they like says that these signs will follow those that believe. They'll cast out demons, speak with new tongues. They love to emphasize that. They're not so hot on picking up snakes and drinking deadly poison. And then it says it'll not hurt them if they drink it and they'll lay hands on the sick and they'll recover. They say, "See, we can heal the sick," and "See, we can speak in tongues," and "See, we can cast out demons." But they don't advocate picking up poisonous snakes and drinking deadly poison. It's just, in fact, how they handle that is, I need to just tell ya how they handle it. The hunters, for example, say, "Well, that only counts if you pick up the snake accidentally." Is that what it says in Mark's gospel, if you happen to pick up a snake accidentally? Or it only matters if you drink the poison accidentally. In fact, they write do you notice the Bible says, "If we drink anything poisonous," it means, "Accidentally it won't hurt us. Hallelujah, best insurance policy we know of."

The problem with their interpretation is it's not literal. There's no accidentally there. Furthermore, historically he's talking about the apostolic age and those who responded to the ministry of the apostles. They even go so far as to make the silly remark, and of course, we all know that the biggest snake is Satan, and when he bites us, God delivers us from his deadly poison which just allegorizes the thing, spiritualizes it. They play fast and loose.

The concern that I have is to share with you just the sense that there's an awful lot of irresponsibility in dealing with these texts and for your sake and mine, we need not, listen carefully to me, we need not just to criticize the movement. We need to be able to go beneath and to show where the critical flaws lie.

One text in closing, and you know it very well, 2 Timothy 2:15, just to remind you so you're armed if you get into any conversation with folks like this. "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who doesn't need to be ashamed," then the last phrase, "handling accurately the Word of Truth." Beloved, this is where we must lay down the law. We must protect the integrity of Scripture by demanding a proper interpretation. That phrase, "handling accurately," means cutting it straight. Paul was a tentmaker, in order to make a tent, he had to cut a lot of pieces of material, either hide or woven hair. If he didn't cut the parts right, like making a dress or a shirt, that the hole didn't fit together. You cut the parts right, you sew 'em together, it works. And he's saying if you don't cut the pieces right, the whole theology doesn't fit together, and what you've got is people hackin' up the pieces and putting together an obtuse bizarre theology that does not make sense, is not coherent. We must know how to rightly divide the Word of Truth because if we don't, mishandling the Scripture and not interpreting it properly just feeds endless confusion. And that is why there is so much Charismatic chaos.

Father, thank you for our time tonight and looking over these sayings and considering some of the basics of Bible interpretation, make us faithful, and Lord, help us again to realize that many people in this movement love You and are victimized. They're victimized by these foolish interpretations that are given to them very authoritatively by people who sound convincing. We pray that Your Spirit will give them great discernment. We know that Your Spirit will grant them to discern if they're true believers, between heresy about the Gospel and the truth of the Gospel, and we can only ask that somehow Your Spirit will lead them to true teachers who will teach them the right interpretation of Scripture so that they will not be confused, and thus, miss the privilege and opportunity of spiritual growth and giving You glory You deserve. Lord, thank You for giving us exposure to those who rightly divided the Word so that we can follow in their stead. Make us faithful to that Word which rightly understood must be applied, and all for Your glory, in Christ's Name, Amen.