Charismatic Post Mortem…pt 1

Charismatic Leader Lou Engle Kissing the feet of a Catholic Priest

In the early 1960’s, there was a very profound revival which spread across the globe, among mainstream, nominal Christians, which came to be known as the Charismatic movement.

It is not the purpose of this article to debate the validity of this movement, for the author is fully aware that very early on, there was ecumenism, false teaching and outright compromise with Roman Catholicism, which has caused many to understandably discount the movement entirely as a Satanic counterfeit, and false revival.

Having said that I, I know for a fact that hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions, of nominal Christians, Atheists, and unbelievers, were suddenly faced with the reality of a personal salvation, based upon the blood of Jesus, and their lives were transformed in every scriptural sense.

To these millions, Jesus became real, “religion ” became vital and the Holy Spirit seemed to invade dead, formal and lifeless churches in a Sovereign way. People began to speak of JESUS, and pray in his name, and not “Christ” as they had before.Prayer became spontaneous, fervent and passionate.

The name ‘Charismatic’ refers to the ‘Charisma” , the “Graces”,i.e. gifts given to the church as outlined in Romans 12, I Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4. There was a re-emphasis, for a brief time, on the endowment of the Holy Spirit, as in the book of Acts. Jesus said in Acts 1:8, “You shall receive power,’dunamos’ when the Holy Ghost comes upon you and you shall be my witnesses…”.

Worship took on an entirely higher dimension, congregations lifted their hands, and sang songs to Jesus, and the Father.Charismatics would weep and “sing in the spirit”( as in I Corinthians 14:14-15) in an un-coordinated , ethereal harmony of voices.

Unbelievers who came into Charismatic meetings may or may not have known what was going on around them, but I have heard this time and again, and even experienced it for myself, they knew that God was on the receiving end of those prayers and Psalms. As Paul said of the unbelievers visiting the church in I Corinthians,

And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.( I Cor 14:25)

The primary literature of the movement was the testimony book, such as “the Cross and The Switchblade”, “God’s Smuggler”, “They Speak With Other Togues” and “9:00 in the Morning”. I also remember reading the monthly Full Gospel Businessmen’s magazine, which was nothing but the testimonies of people from all walks of life who had been transformed by the power of the gospel, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

One of the beautiful things about the movement also was the Scripture song revival, Charismatics sang a lot of songs which were scriptures set to simple guitar chords, such as “Seek Ye First The Kingdom of God”, “As the Deer Panteth for the Water”, and “They Sang the Song of Moses”. There were dozens of these songs written and this was how we learned a lot of scripture!

I came to Jesus at the tail end of the movement, and have never seen anything like it since, it seemed in the ate 1970’s every where we turned, people were coming into the Kingdom of God. I remember walking into an Assembly of God church( The first non catholic church I ever visited) and hearing and seeing charismatic worship, people from all walks of life, lifting hands, adoring and worshipping Jesus, and singing to God in tongues and understanding. I had never seen or felt anything like it, and knew nothing about it, other than that God was real!

But also by then , the enemy had been sowing tares among the wheat, for from the beginning, Satan attacked the revival. Shortly after mainstream Protestant churches were reportedly coming to life, finding Jesus and the reality of the Holy Spirit, Notre Dame University chapel services were ‘visited’ by a counterfeit Pentecost. I say counterfeit because the earliest reports of were of worshippers giving utterances in tongues, of which the ‘interpretation’ was given by the virgin”Mary”!

Millions of Catholics read the Bible for the first time,(or paraphrases of it called “The Way”), and found the salvation of Jesus, and the reality of God, because of the Charismatic movement.What many of us observed right from the start, was that those Catholics who saw right away the contrast, and left the Roman system, tended to live and survive as Christians.

On the other hand those Catholics who stayed in the Roman Church, hoping through the Spirit, to change it, eventually died, for Babylon cannot be healed. In fact many Charismatic catholics became more Roman Catholic than even the standard catholics.

The Roman Catholic Church has had long experience in resisting the Holy Spirit. Rather than openly resist the Charismatic movement, the Catholic church embraced it, co-opted it and eventually smothered it.The Vatican set up a “dialogue”with Charismatic leaders, even appointing some of them as ‘delegates’ to vatican assemblies and conventions. Bob Mumford and David Deuplessis come to mind as those who allowed the Roman religious politicians to flatter and co-opt the movement.

From 1967 on, no charismatic gathering would be without the nuns, Priests, and even friars worshipping among the people and in some cases giving teachings and calling for “Unity”. The problem with “Unity” between the true and the false, is that only the false has anything to gain by it.Sooner or later the ‘good’ is bowing down before the ‘false’ as seen in the picture above.

We could speak of other very awful mixtures which came in early to the movement, such as the Word Faith, Kingdom Now heretics, who promoted themselves as teachers, the horrible “Toronto Blessing” ,Pensacola (Fake) Revival, which gave us the abominable Todd Bentley, The “Prophet” craze, and the mystical revival, all of these have contributed to the death of something which was sent as a gift from heaven to a secularized, world weary society.

Here is where it ends, as far as I a concerned. A “Charismatic leader” Kissing the feet of an agent of Rome. Rome still persecutes true Christianity! Rome has the blood of untold millions of precious children on her hands, and will still refuse to meet with her own victims! Rome is the purveyor of statue worship, Marian apparitions which are demonic, necromancy, and the denial of salvation by faith and grace alone!

Roman Popes have embraced literally every false religion, including the Dalai Lama, the Muslims(Popes are seen kissing the Koran), and Bhuddists. (Have you seen the Pope’s latest commercial advertisement?

Lou Engle, the current leader of “Azusa Redux” lay on the stage to be able to kiss a Priest’s feet!

Kissing the feet???? Really? Jesus never told his disciples to kiss anyone’s feet. Washing feet is one thing, but kissing them? That is an act of worship and deep humiliation in itself.

Let this be a sign and a wonder….flee Babylon! Get out of the Charismatic churches, they have gone astray, you will be worse off for going there, they hav died spiritually, and are blind guides, leading their followers into the ditch!

I have more to say about the Charismatic post mortem ahead…