Tongue Tied, Part 2 (John MacArthur)

The following is an excerpt from the preface of the Chinese edition of Charismatic Chaos. It explains the origins and early history of the charismatic movement. With the Strange Fire conference rapidly approaching, we believe it is appropriate to share this material with you. This is the second of two excerpts; part one is available here. —GTY Staff
by John MacArthur

From the day he announced to the world that Agnes Ozman had written in Chinese until the end of his life, Charles Parham tirelessly sought to perpetuate the mythology he had invented. Despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary and without a shred of evidence to support his claims, he remained insistent that the gift of tongues would revolutionize Christian work overseas and accelerate the church’s efforts to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission. Several years after those original Pentecostal missionary teams had come home under clouds of failure and disillusionment, Parham was still painting a shining picture of success:

We have several missionaries in the field who have the gift of tongues, who not only speak the language and understand the natives, but can use the language intelligently; it has become a gift to them. . . . It is a known fact that scores of infidels have been converted through hearing people speak distinctly in other languages. ^[1][Charles F. Parham, The Everlasting Gospel (Baxter Springs, KS: Apostolic Faith Bible College, 1911), 68]

None of that was true, of course.

The movement Charles Parham helped start has grown to massive proportions today. Multiple millions claim to be able to speak in tongues. But charismatics and Pentecostals still cannot communicate with people from different language groups (or even with one another) unless they have learned whatever language they wish to use. More than a century after Parham claimed his students were speaking Chinese, not one documentable case of the Pentecostal gift of tongues has ever occurred. Charismatic tongues have been repeatedly recorded and analyzed by linguists, and they have none of the characteristics of language. Modern Charismatic tongues are indiscriminate syllables and sounds spoken or sung in rapid succession, conveying no discernable meaning at all.

That is not the biblical gift of tongues. At Pentecost, people heard the apostolic gathering speak in recognizable languages (Acts 2:6, 11). The tongues described in the New Testament were always capable of translation (Acts 10:46; 19:6). Indeed, the meaning of any message delivered in tongues was a vital aspect of the gift itself. No one was even supposed to speak in tongues without an interpreter (1 Corinthians 14:27).

With all the controversy surrounding Charles Parham, in the wake of so much scandal and so many unfulfilled promises, especially once the total failure of his missionary strategy was evident, it may seem amazing that the Pentecostal movement managed to stay alive at all, much less gain the kind of following we see today. But by the time Parham had been arrested on sodomy charges in Texas, his teachings were spreading like leaven.

One of Parham’s early disciples was William J. Seymour, an African-American holiness preacher who had sat under Parham’s instruction in Houston, Texas. In 1906, Seymour was invited to lead a series of meetings in California, and while preaching in a ramshackle building in Azusa Street on the edge of downtown Los Angeles, he began to teach some of the distinctive doctrines he had heard from Parham. He taught, for example, that the only biblical evidence of Spirit baptism is the gift of speaking in tongues. Within weeks, dozens of people at Azusa Street were manifesting glossolalia, and the fame of the Pentecostal movement spread from there. Pentecostalism had at last gained a significant foothold, and from Azusa Street it ultimately expanded across America.

Going back to the apostolic era, the church has of course always been troubled by false teachers claiming supernatural gifts who are driven by ungodly passions—“people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain” (1 Timothy 6:5 ESV). (That is a picture-perfect description of people who have sold out to the Word-Faith heresy.)

But at its heart, the charismatic movement is uniquely American in character. It had its genesis in the American heartland, and from its very inception it was the fruit of a unique style of religious fanaticism that thrived on the American frontier. With an abundance of untrained, unaccountable, and often self-appointed prophets and itinerant preachers roaming freely, superstitions and aberrant doctrines spread virtually unchecked.

The charismatic movement was exported from America to the rest of the world by an aggressive public-relations campaign, employing several media networks that are devoted mainly to raising money. Large amounts of whatever funds are raised are spent to enable lavish lifestyles for charismatic televangelists. The culture of charismatic religion seems to breed rank charlatans who deliberately flaunt immoderate lifestyles and expensive appetites in order to entice people with the false promise that if they will donate more money than they can afford, God will be obliged to make them rich, too.

The prosperity of the charismatic televangelist fraternity is illusory. So are the miracles they pretend to perform and whatever degree of holiness they want their viewers to think they have attained. Indeed, superficiality and phoniness have been the besetting sins of the Pentecostal and charismatic movement since its inception.

Why is that? Well, as we have noted already, it is a simple matter of fact that modern charismatic tongues are nothing like the Pentecostal gift of tongues described in Acts 2.

Charismatic doctrine therefore requires its followers to suspend biblical discernment and embrace a variety of “spiritual gifts” that have no basis in biblical teaching. That makes the movement a perfect hunting ground for frauds, false teachers, and charlatans. Indeed, Pentecostal-charismatic history is littered with an extraordinarily high percentage of leaders and celebrities who have shown themselves to be doctrinally corrupt and morally decadent.

In short, charismatic teaching fosters willful gullibility while subtly but systematically undermining the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. That is a recipe for spiritual and doctrinal disaster.

In short, charismatic teaching fosters willful gullibility while subtly but systematically undermining the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. That is a recipe for spiritual and doctrinal disaster as I’ve documented in the chapters that follow.

The first edition of this book was a relatively thin volume titled The Charismatics, published in 1978. A decade or so later, the so-called “Third Wave” was making headlines. Charismatics and evangelicals alike were intrigued with signs and wonders, extrabiblical prophecies, and strange manifestations such as “holy laughter.” At that time I wrote several additional chapters, more than doubling the size of the book. The expanded work was retitled Charismatic Chaos and released in 1992. It has now been more than twenty years since that second edition was published. The book has never gone out of print and remains in great demand, even though some of the trends it deals with were much more popular in the early 1990s than they are today.

People sometimes ask whether I have changed my stance since then. The answer—emphatically—is no. Scripture, of course, hasn’t changed, and my understanding of what the Bible teaches on the charismatic issue hasn’t changed materially, either. My commitment to the authority and sufficiency of God’s Word hasn’t changed. If anything, my convictions are clearer and more settled than when I first began addressing this issue in the 1970s.

I’m also frequently asked whether I think the charismatic movement has changed for the better as more people in the evangelical mainstream have either embraced charismatic doctrines or made an uneasy truce with our charismatic friends. Few leading evangelicals today seem to have the will or the interest to wade into controversy over the charismatic question these days. I’m convinced that is a serious mistake, and the drift toward acceptance of charismatic beliefs and practices is a sign of decline and a harbinger of apostasy in the evangelical movement.

Some of the people critiqued in this book (including John Wimber, Kenneth Hagin, and Oral Roberts) are no longer living. But the movements and the doctrines they taught are alive and well and still causing chaos. The leaven of their influence is still spreading. Christians confronted with their teachings are easily confused by them, and those seeking a critical and biblical analysis of popular charismatic claims will find that such resources are scarce.

So I’m very grateful that this new edition of Charismatic Chaos is being published in Chinese. My prayer is that it will provoke discussion, encourage discernment, and equip more believers worldwide to resist the tsunami of fraud and confusion that seems to follow the charismatic movement wherever its tentacles have reached.

---

Available online at: http://www.gty.org/resources/Blog/B131010
COPYRIGHT ©2013 Grace to You

 

AMEN. CMR.

 

 

Tongue Tied, Part 1 (John MacArthur)

Tongue Tied, Part 1

Wednesday, October 09, 2013

The following is an excerpt from the preface of the Chinese edition of Charismatic

Chaos. It explains the origins and early history of the charismatic movement. With

the Strange Fire conference rapidly approaching, we believe it is appropriate to share

this material with you. Part one is excerpted below; check back tomorrow for part

two. —GTY Staff

by John MacArthur

The charismatic movement began at the start of the twentieth century under the

tutelage of Charles Fox Parham. He was an eccentric preacher of dubious moral

character who was infatuated with fringe ideas, mysterious phenomena, and an

aberrant theology known as Holiness doctrine. The story of Parham’s quest for

the gift of tongues is briefly told in chapter 1, but some background on Parham

and the events that gave birth to the charismatic movement might be helpful as

a way of introducing this new edition of Charismatic Chaos to Chinese readers.

In 1900, Mr. Parham founded Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas, specifically

to train Holiness missionaries. He believed if his students could recover the

Pentecostal gift of tongues, they would be able to take the gospel to all nations

without any need to learn languages. He further became convinced that the gift

of tongues was the only true sign of Holy Spirit baptism. Soon his fascination with

speaking in tongues became an obsession. As the year 1900 drew to a close,

Parham urged his students to spend several days in fasting and prayer, seeking

the restoration of that apostolic gift.

On New Year’s Day, January 1, 1901, one of Parham’s students, Agnes Ozman,

began uttering random syllables. Those who heard her concluded she was

speaking Chinese (though none of them knew any Chinese dialect). For the rest

of the day, she seemed unable to speak in English, and she wrote with a kind of

stylized scribbling that Parham and his disciples judged to be Chinese. The

students were convinced their prayers had been answered, and that what they

were witnessing was the very same miraculous phenomenon described in Acts 2.

Within days, however, a sample of Miss Ozman’s writing was published in a

newspaper. It provides objective proof that Parham's claims were totally false.

It is a scrap of paper covered with crude, indecipherable, artificial hieroglyphs

that clearly have nothing in common with Chinese characters. In fact, like the

random syllables she spoke, Miss Ozman’s writing has none of the characteristics

of any language at all.

Parham nevertheless insisted that Miss Ozman had spoken and written Chinese.

In fact, Parham himself and at least thirty other students now claimed that they

too had received the gift of tongues. In the face of careful scrutiny and hard

questions, Parham defiantly enlarged his original fiction:

He announced that the students had spoken many languages. He himself had

received the capability of preaching in German and Swedish, Agnes Ozman in

“Chinese,” and others in a variety of languages including Japanese, Hungarian,

Syrian, Hindi, and Spanish. Parham noted that “cloven tongues of fire” appeared

over the heads of speakers. Sometimes interpretations followed such as “God is

love,” “Jesus is mighty to save,” and “Jesus is ready to hear.” [1][Gary B. McGee,

“The Revivial Legacy of Charles F. Parham,” Enrichment Journal (Summer 1999)]

Parham zealously advertised the phenomenon, insisting it was a momentous

breakthrough in missionary strategy. At least six months after numerous

language experts had stated that Agnes Ozman’s scribbles bore no likeness

whatsoever to Chinese writing, Parham was still feeding newspaper reporters

his own highly embellished version of events. A typical report from that time

cited his very words:

"We are expecting thousands of ministers, evangelists and other people from

all parts of the United States who desire to become missionaries to attend.

There is no doubt that at this time they will have conferred on them the “gift

of tongues,” if they are worthy and seek it in faith, believing they will thus be

made able to talk to the people whom they choose to work among in their

own language, which will, of course, be an inestimable advantage.

The students of Bethel College do not need to study in the old way to learn

the languages. They have them conferred on them miraculously. Different

ones have already been able to converse with Spaniards, Italians, Bohemians,

Hungarians, Germans, and French in their own language. I have no doubt

various dialects of the people of India and even the language of the savages

 of Africa will be received during our meeting in the same way. I expect this

gathering to be the greatest since the days of Pentecost." [2](“New Kind of

Missionaries: Envoys to the Heathen Should Have Gift of Tongues,” 

Hawaiian Gazette, May 31, 1901, 10)

Parham was lying, of course. But his students naively accepted his assurance

that the sounds they were uttering were legitimate foreign languages. Their

teacher had admonished them not to entertain any doubts or put their “gift”

to the test. Therefore over the next decade, several teams of missionaries

under Parham’s influence went overseas expecting to be able to preach

and converse in languages they had never studied.

The failure of the Pentecostal missionary strategy was immediate and

spectacular. An article published in 1909 described the fiasco in these words:

"Missionary S. C. Todd, of the Bible Missionary Society, has made

investigations personally in three mission fields and among four groups of

well-meaning but deluded people who have gone from this country to Japan,

to China, and to India expecting to preach to the natives of those countries in

their own tongue; but in no single instance have been able to do so. They

have needed an interpreter in even the commonest affairs of life.

"Some of them are in absolute destitution and are dependent on their Christian

brethren there for the necessaries of life and are as helpless as babes. In

some cases they are in danger of losing all faith in the supernatural in religion

and drifting into infidelity and sin." [3][A. E. Seddon, “Edward Irving and

Unknown Tongues,” The Homiletic Review (New York; Funk and Wagnalls,

1909), 109]

Failure and scandal seemed to sully everything Parham touched. Less than

a year after its founding, Bethel Bible College in Topeka closed permanently.

Five years later, newspapers across the country reported that some of Parham’s

followers in Illinois had beaten an invalid woman to death in an effort to drive

the demon of rheumatism from her body. Before the shock of that story

subsided, Parham was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, and charged with

sodomy. He wrote a confession in order to obtain his release but later

recanted his own admission of guilt.

He had discredited himself in every conceivable sense. His reputation never

fully recovered from the scandals.

But Parham was relentless, and he always seemed to be able to attract

willing disciples. When he died in 1929, more than 2,500 followers attended

his funeral, even though it was held in a remote Kansas town during a fierce

blizzard.

(Please return for part two tomorrow.)

 

Illuminati Insider on Satanic Charismatic Movements

                   (Read the post online for better viewing & lots of resources)

     The man in this short video is John Todd, a major Illuminati insider and high priest of witchcraft, who became a Christian, started revealing secrets, and was subsequently murdered by them. Before taking his life, they tried every possible way to discredit him by framing him for false crimes, spreading lies about him and many other things. This is how dangerous he was to their new world order because of the things he revealed. I can't think of another individual against whom such a prolonged and vicious campaign of lies was targeted, and he survived numerous murder attempts. They desparately wanted to shut him up. Eventually they did.

     Over the past decade many other people have come forward and confirmed everything he said. Of course, the things he reveals about the charismatic movement, rock music and other satanic influences in the church were recognized by many Christians when all of this began to infiltrate the Church; that was back in the days when Christians had discernment of such things through the Holy Spirit. Now almost everyone accepts it. ALMOST everyone .....

   Satan's plan was always to infiltrate the church. That is the way he always operates: Divide and conquer. Holy Scripture says, "Come out of her, my people." Some will heed this warning. Most will not.