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You are the perfect person to ask this question. IF you decide to answer it.

Last weekend I was surfing the channels and came across Donnie Swaggart, Jimmy's son, preaching at Family Worship Center. I decided to watch it, since we have been having this discussion here for a couple of weeks. Just to see what, if anything, has changed in the pentecostal/charismatic movement. Nothing like getting it from the horse's mouth, if a person wants to know something. Anyway, his ENTIRE sermon was on being filled with the Holy Spirit, with signs accompanying. I'm not kidding you, his ENTIRE sermon. There was not a SINGLE reference to the Gospel of the Grace of God. There was not a SINGLE reference to spreading the good news of the finished work of Christ. NOTHING BUT the filling of the Holy Spirit, and describing to those who had not already received, HOW TO receive it. ("It comes from the pit of your stomach. You completely relax and let your mouth relax. And the language will start. You may not know what you are saying, but someone somewhere knows.") O.K. so people start coming up the aisles. And he asks the "sponsors" to stand behind those who were seeking the filling. ("Men with men. And women with women."). So far, everything I had witnessed in 1983 was still happening.

But then, something very UNUSUAL was said by "brother Donnie". "If anyone who has been filled but feels they have become less effective, you may be in need of a REFILLING of the Holy Spirit. I'm asking anyone who wants a REFILLING of the Holy Spirit to come forward now."

WHAT????? A REFILLING? Where does THAT come from?

I tell you what it sounds VERY similar to, QUix: the RC Mass. For a REFILLING of Christ in you.

You all are one "miracle" or "wonder" away from seeing visions, not of Mary telling you to follow her Son, but from "Christ" telling you to follow those who have visions, and dreams, and prophecies, and miracles, and fillings and refillings. You know, just to make you "stronger" for the work ahead.

I'll ask you again, since you did not answer the last time, do you think you are going through the tribulation, and need these things in order to endure to the end?

Sooooooo . . . If my understanding remotely matches the description . . . your EXPERIENCES taught you to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

And are you not basing your acceptance of doctrine based on YOUR experiences??????

I find it exceedingly ironic that you should appear to be criticizing someone for doing something, or believing certain things based on their experiences, when in fact, the whole pentecostal/charismatic movement is built on experience over Scripture.

It's *experience* which is used to justify the slain in the Spirit phenomena, it's *experience* which is used to support the theology of a prayer tongue and that it's more effective than praying in any native language, it's *experience* which is used to justify holy laughter, it's *experience* which is used to excuse people making animal noises, it's *experience* which is used to allow tongues without interpretation, it's *experience* which is used to believe everything that someone claims is from God really is from God without exercising the discernment of an ice cube to determine if it's so, it's *experience* which is used to justify the teaching that tongues is THE evidence of being baptized (filled) in the Spirit, and the list goes on.

There is no Scripture to support most of what is taught in Pentecostalism today, and yet it's accepted based on the only thing left, experience (in the end becoming the traditions of men), and the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes on when anyone questions it and provides solid Scriptural refutation of it.

BTW, where's yours in support of prayer language, slain in the Spirit, tongues is the evidence of the baptism of the Spirit?

EXPERIENCES taught you to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Impressive.

We shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water but neither do we drink the dirty bath water.

What is called a new openness, by allowing God to do whatever he wants AKA.... “don’t put God in a box” ....is really spiritual liberalism in disguise...... Certainly God has done many things in the past in unusual ways, often times not the way we would expect..... The issue is not can God do certain things but will He do them..... For He will never contradict His own word or principles but cooperate with it to accomplish His goals. ....So we must look for His ways that are conducive to His nature to be sure it is God.....

...... For if we attribute something to God when in fact it is not God, we have put Him in a box!