Replies

Au contraire, my Friend. I’ve attended Assembly of God churches many times. I did eventually quit and go back to my Baptist roots, but the years of my fellowship among them were mostly a positive experience. I understand and do not want to get tangled up in a prolonged discussion about whether the gifts have ceased, but I don’t see any Scripture that creates an absolute barrier to modern works of the Holy Spirit that would resemble those of the early Church.

OTOH, the reason I quit this church, among other reasons, is that A) tongues was being “taught” in classes (utter nonsense, if you’ll pardon the pun) and B) while many of the purported prophetic utterances were wholesome, Biblically sound encouragements, others drifted off into obvious error and were not being corrected by church leadership.

See, to me, as an attorney and a Christian, that’s bad, but it’s a far cry from the charge of paganism, which I regard as a serious and specific charge that requires specific and credible evidence. Paganism is an identifiable set of theological beliefs and is accompanied by practices that support those beliefs. Some of those practices have abandoned their pagan roots and been grafted into Christian practice, such as Christmas trees. Other practices actually occurred in both a pagan and a Christian setting, such as tongues, and as a result have an entirely different meaning and mode of operation for Christians.

So, unless you can show me anything in Muthee’s prayer that gives credence to pagan deities, or pagan monism, or at least something that has zero basis in New Testament teaching, then I have to consider the case unproven. I think hard-core Word of Faith teaching is provable error, and that you can trace it, with some effort, to a pagan theory of monism. But that is not evident in or obvious to most folks who attend these groups. They are, or were when I was going, basically just Baptists who believe God can and still does the miraculous among His people if they invite Him to do so. I have nothing against them for believing that, but I do wish they would do the discipline that goes along with that, using Scripture to defend against the encroachment of error. Like Paul, I would rather know what everyone was saying than have to worry whether a given tongues-speaker was God-impelled or self-propelled.

Therefore, in general, I’ve concluded that while some incidents here and there do bear the marks of the truly miraculous, most of what goes on in these fellowships is driven, not by the incursion of an insidious paganism, but by the desire to be as much like the early church as possible, even if they have to do a little pretending to make it so. I don’t think the pretending is harmless, but many of them were and are excellent people, with whom I would gladly share a fox hole in battle, and who would give the shirt off their back to make your life and mine better. So writing them all off in a single stroke is not as straightforward for me as it apparently is for you.

Peace,