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 PrintableVersion Counterfeit revivalCOUNTERFEIT REVIVAL Jesus warned that: ‘False prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect’ (Matthew 24.24). We are living in days when the Charismatic Renewal movement is making claims about a worldwide revival evidenced by signs and wonders. Surely the time has come for God’s people to ‘test the spirits to see whether they are from God’. In his book Counterfeit Revival, Hank Hanegraaff, American author of Christianity in Crisis, makes the case that Christians are being misled, and that what we are seeing is not of God but of men, of the flesh. By quoting some of the leaders/prophets of the New Wave sweeping from the Vineyard Movement, Toronto and Pensacola, Hanegraaff shows them to be false prophets and false shepherds. They are condemned from their own mouths. Let readers judge for themselves whether what follows is from God or from men. Toronto blessingIn July 1979, Rodney Howard-Browne, who was to play a major role in the Toronto Blessing, gave Almighty God an ultimatum: ‘Either you come down here and touch me or I am going to come up there and touch you’ (p.22). Trinity Broadcasting Network president, Paul Crouch, ominously warns critics to: ‘Get out of God’s way. Quit blocking God’s bridges, or God’s gonna shoot you if I don’t’ (p.98). In his book The Father’s Blessing, John Arnott conveys a conversation he had with Jesus Christ. During the dialogue, Arnott asked Christ what he would like to do when they met. Christ allegedly responded: ‘Oh, John, I just want to wash your feet’ (p.104). The foot-washing episode took place hours before the atonement and was a visual aid to teach the disciples a valuable lesson about the nature of true leadership and the Saviour’s work of redemption. Now that Christ is risen, ascended and in glory at the right hand of God, we will bow before him, not he before us! Again, in The Father’s Blessing, John Arnott recounts a vision of his wife, Carol: ‘Jesus brings her a bouquet of lilies, after which they “run and play and have a wonderful, intimate time together”. Carol and Jesus then get married’ (p.114). No neutral groundThat the New Wave will cause a rift in Christendom equivalent to nine on the Richter scale is made clear by ‘prophets’ Larry Randolph, Bob Jones and James Ryle. Larry Randolph, speaking at the Toronto Airport Vineyard, declared that there are only ‘two groups of people in the church today’. He categorised them as: ‘Those that are affected by what God is doing and those that are offended by what God is doing. The neutral ground is dissipating by the hour. You can’t stand in the middle any more and say: “Well, I don’t know. Maybe it’s God, maybe it’s not.” You’re going to get rolled over.’ Randolph says the song the Holy Spirit is currently singing is: ‘I’m a steam roller, baby, and I’m going to roll right over you’. Jones and Ryle agree. They predict that the party God is presently throwing for his people will soon give way to a bloody civil war. On one side of the war will be ‘blues’ who readily accept new revelations from God. On the other will be ‘greys’ who rely solely on the revelation God has already given. (The colours allude to the uniforms in the American Civil War.) Joyner dogmatically declares that both believers and unbelievers alike will think that it is the end of Christianity as we know it, and it will be. When the ‘greys’ are finally eliminated, there is going to be ‘an entirely new definition of Christianity’ (pp.94,95). Although I don’t like the colour, I have to say that I am an unashamed ‘grey’. I believe that, with the closing of the canon of Scripture, God completed his revelation to mankind on this earth. The ‘new revelations’ coming from the mouth of New Wave ‘prophets’, therefore, show them to be false prophets. ‘The prophet today comes with the Word of God (the Scripture) that contains all that God has purposed to reveal to mankind. The prophet does not add to that revelation; he applies God’s truth revealed in Scripture to the particular needs of the present’ (Trust your Bible). To do that, of course, the prophet (or inspired preacher) needs the ministration of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit and the Word are, as it were, yoked together. Without the Spirit, the Word is ineffective. So it is time for us ‘greys’ to take the Holy Spirit back from the false prophets and false shepherds of the New Wave. Marks of false shepherdsIn Ezekiel 34 the Bible describes the hallmarks of false shepherds as: 1. They feed themselves, not the sheep Ð they look after number one (v.2). The principle tasks of the true undershepherd are to: 1. Feed the sheep and lambs: meat for the one, milk for the other (John 21.15,17). It is important to concede that a sovereign God may, from time to time, use New Wave ‘prophets’ for his purposes. Paul surely foresaw this as he wrote Philippians 1.15-18. The fact that some may be being saved through their preaching should give us cause to rejoice but not to accept them as genuine shepherds of the flock of God. Finally, in his trenchant foreword to Counterfeit Revival, Tom Snipe, formerly a pastor with John Wimber, gives a solemn warning for pastors. He writes: ‘Most pastors I know have bouts of insecurity, performance anxiety, and periods when they are unsure that they have made the right ministry decisions . . . The most effective entry point into the church for any “new” teaching is through the pastor.’ What a responsibility this lays upon the leadership of our churches! Tony Staite© Evangelicals Now - December 1997 |
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