Charismatic Movement

LOL! It's okay to write your opinion even if not everyone agrees with it :) That's why there are these theology forums…to discuss :)

How??????

I agree with SBG.

My Mom and Dad recently had an… interesting interview at Bethel Church… I won't say any more… Let that speak for itself!

What's Bethel Church? How was it an interesting interview?

Bethel is the center of the Charismatic movement, and it's in the town that Mom and Dad grew up in.

Let's just say that they got a first-hand view of what goes on in the Charismatic churches…

Healing by the laying on of believers' (especially church leaders') hands seems to me completely Biblical (James 5:16; Num 12:13; Mark 16:16-18). I agree that mass and even individual healings from terrible diseases and the like are unusual in most (if not all) countries today, but I don't think that is disproof of anyone's claims, only good reason to search out such claims carefully. Our God heals His people, from the sicknesses of the body as well as those of the soul (Hosea 6:1-2; Isa. 57:17-19; Jer 17:14; Deut 32:39; Matt 13:15 etc.) and as Christians we should expect Him to.
Additionally, the sort of healing that you (Sarah) write about could easily be attributed to the immune system. People are generally healed from colds, headaches, the flu, broken bones and like illnesses over a short period of time and almost never die or are permanently harmed because of them. I have no clue what a torn rotary cuff is so I can't say anything about that :). In the Bible, miraculous healing is usually from things like leprosy, demon possession, blindness, paralysis, death, and other things that you don't just "get over". There is a great deal of difference between the two kinds. For one thing, some people can imagine that they are healed from a cold, but you don't imagine that you are healed from leprosy.
So although when such healings occur we should bring glory to God and praise His name, I wouldn't call them exactly miraculous or refer to them similarly to the gifts of healing the apostles had or those given to believers in Mark 16. For my part, I disagree with the Charismatic beliefs but pray often for the healing of people from all sorts of sicknesses, from colds to strokes to cancer, and consider that quite consistent.

Wow. You just put my thoughts into words! I agree with everything you said! :D

Wow. You just put my thoughts into words! I agree with everything you said! :D

Ditto!

Wow. You just put my thoughts into words! I agree with everything you said! :D

DITTO!

Thanks for your reply Evie! I do have a question for you, though. Suppose someone was having problems with chronic headaches. The headaches would always go away after a few hours, but then come back. Suppose a group of other believers prayed for that person, and there were no more headaches after that. Would you attribute that to the immune system, or would you say that it was too unlikely to have been healed naturally? Thanks in advance for your answer!

What if it were both? If a group of believers prayed over the person with chronic headaches and he was soon healed, I would attribute that to God using natural processes in the person's body in a supernatural way to heal him. It could be called a miracle, because God literally did heal him, but such a healing is not in the same category as healings from leprosy, blindness, etc. Does that make sense?

As SBJ said, I would attribute it to the work of God, possibly by use of the immune system, though I would have no problem saying that it was by God's supernatural power. However, I would still consider it in a different category from the illnesses/diseases I mentioned above.

OK, if anyone is puzzling themselves over who on earth "SBJ" is:
I am very sorry, Saved by Grace (SBG), for abbreviating your name incorrectly! Although I would like to imagine otherwise, I know myself a little to well to totally disbelieve that I did that!

U know u can edit ur comments right? :) it could stand for Saved By Jesus! :) lol

That would work too, I guess! Only it doesn't have that good "Calvinistic" ring to it. Yes, I know I can edit my comments. I just wasn't sure if it would have the "Edit: …" thing at the beginning. Is that just something you all do sometimes for clarity?

No, when you edit your comment it doesn't have "EDIT" at the beginning…that's just something we do for clarity :)

OK, thanks.

Sure :)

I think some of us might be leery of accepting these things as of God when they do happen, because of the multitude of false teachers and their shows of healings which don't come from God.
However I think praying for others healing is biblical, James 5:16.

So, do any of you think that people can speak in tongues today? People can do healings today?

I would say, Can, but rarely do. It's all (if genuine) from God. Many such things are either plain foolishness, (some speaking in tongues, 'drunk in the holy ghost',) or a con for money or popularity, which is often accompanied by heresy (prosperity preaching), and leads many away from God.

I would have to say yes. We just got back from a prayer meeting called "Miracles in the Marketplace" about an hour ago, and while I don't know where the "Marketplace" part of their name came from, the "Miracles" is pretty self-explanatory. There were no tongues (as far as I know), but we did have a few healings and a whole ton of prophecies. There were also a couple words of knowledge that happened. If you're not sure what those are, take this as an example: The main reason we went to the meeting was to get prayer for my little brother. A couple of other people were prayed for, and then the leader said, "There's a little boy in the back in a red sweatshirt who needs prayer." So, everyone was looking around the back to see who he could be talking about. As it turns out, Zeke happened to be wearing a read shirt that evening. And no, we didn't tell anyone that he needed prayer. To quote Ashley M., "It was totally God." :-)

I agree completely! On Tuesday we saw someone "speaking in tongues" and it was just a lot of gibberish and stuff.

So, do any of you think that people can speak in tongues today? People can do healings today?

I'm not sure. We were with a family, and the little boy had a huge bandage on his head, so naturally we asked what happened.

The mom told us that he had jumped off of his dresser the day before, and had hit his head on the corner of his bed. She heard it, and went up, and she said that blood was spurting out of his head. She panicked, because her husband was traveling, and so she put her hand over it and commanded it in the name of Jesus to stop. She said when she took her hand off, it had stopped spurting. Then she started to shave his head so that she could work with the wound, and she said when she was done shaving it, the bottom edges of the wound had already fused together.

I don't know what to think of it; what do you think?

Hm…I don't know. I'll have to think about it.

So, do any of you think that people can speak in tongues today? People can do healings today?

I don't think people have ever been able to do healings. It's Jesus that does them. If you're meaning (which I think you are) just calling upon Jesus' name to heal them and having faith that He will, then I think they can. Jesus did say that whoever asked something of God, believing that it would be given to him, he would receive it.

Faith is just such a very important aspect. I don't know that God would give someone the power to heal in Jesus' name if they didn't have complete faith that He would.

Check out Mark 16: 17 and 18. This is part of e great commission, which applys to us today. What do you who do not believe in the carismatic movement think about that?

Well, since you asked, I think there are two options:

1. This was just for the apostolic age, those who were in the initial surge to go into all the world and preach the gospel. God gave them the signs that He did so that He could use those signs to encourage belief in their message as they went out and preached "foolishness" that no one had ever heard before – especially not the Gentiles, which formed the majority of their audience.

2. The vast majority of textual critics and Greek scholars, both conservative and liberal, would argue that Mark 16:9-20 does not belong where it is traditionally placed in Scripture at the end of Mark's Gospel, if it even belongs in Scripture at all. There are many reasons to believe that it doesn't. This article explains many of the reasons: http://www.gotquestions.org/Mark-16-9-20.html

I see what you are saying, but the New Testament is the new covenant, and it applies to us as well as those at the time of Jesus.

That does make sense, but what about Matthew 17:20?

I see what you are saying, but the New Testament is the new covenant, and it applies to us as well as those at the time of Jesus. That does make sense, but what about Matthew 17:20?

Okay… There are certain exhortations, however, in the New Testament where context informs us that the commands were for a specific audience. For example, when Paul tells Timothy to take a little medicine for his sickness in 2 Timothy 4. So I wouldn't say that everything in the New Testament automatically applies to us. And I think the progression seen in the Book of Acts makes it clear for us that the more…exotic, I'll say…parts of Mark's account of the Great Commission would have applied specifically to the generation of apostles that was founding the church. Paul, for example, handled a serpent in Acts 28. I'm inclined to believe that his case was a specific fulfillment of the words of Jesus in Mark 16 (if they were really His words), and that they didn't have much of an application beyond that. Jesus was just listing some of the works that would be accomplished by His apostles as they went throughout the world and kickstarted the growth of the early church among the Gentiles.

Not really sure how Matthew 17:20 applies. Of course God can accomplish anything, according to His will, through us, when we put our full faith in Him. But I don't believe that passage is about physical impossibilities and miracles as much as it is about spiritual impossibilities and miracles. God will use us to enact regeneration and salvation, to move spiritual mountains for His kingdom. When we trust Him with all of our beings, He will work through our faith to save sinners and sanctify saints. He will accomplish all His holy will through us and as a result of our faith.

How exactly would you define the word charismatic? I think I may want to clarify this before I respond to you post.

Just want to throw these two things out to be thought on.

And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
John 14:13

About a year ago, a girl at our church, maybe 20 had been in a car crash maybe 5 days before, and broke three different bones. She was sitting in church, and she felt someone touch her casts and I think said something. She looked behind and saw no one. Two days later at a check-up, all three bones had been completely rejoined! I could give you several other stories of miraculous healings, including one of my own brother who should have been dead years ago.

Charismatic is a difficult word to define, because there are so many branches of it. Some don't believe in the Trinity. Some believe that the gospel is about God's desire to make everyone physically prosperous, wealthy, and healthy. Some believe that Jesus' death on the cross should mean that Christians ought never to be sick or suffering. Some believe that one cannot be saved if they don't receive a "second blessing" of the Holy Spirit that causes them to speak in tongues. Others believe that you don't have the Holy Spirit at all if you can't speak in tongues. Some believe that baptism is necessary for salvation. Some believe that professing Christians who are not healed of physical ailments do not have enough faith.

So I would have a really hard time narrowing it down to any one definition. But I can say that I disagree with all of the above positions.

With regard to Matthew 12, notice I said that I don't think the passage is as much about physical healings as it is about spiritual healing. That doesn't mean I don't believe that God heals people today. But I also don't believe that it is always His will to heal people of their physical ailments. Paul lived, presumably, his entire life with a thorn in his flesh, something that God refused to take away from him, in order to teach Paul that His grace was sufficient. Job was allowed to lose everything and to experience terrible physical torment. And this was directly from the hand of God, despite all that Job had done to be regarded as righteous. God often uses sickness and physical suffering to teach us.

So of course healing can be in God's will. But 1 John 5 helps us to understand that even when we pray for things, those things must be in the will of God for Him to answer positively. Sometimes, healing isn't His will for us. And we need to be willing to accept that. Of course, there may be other times where there isn't enough faith; I get that, and I agree. But that's not always the case. So I don't think we can take verses like John 14:13 to mean that God will always do whatever we ask. Jesus specifically says that He answers prayers that will glorify the Father in the Son. So if a positive answer to prayer wouldn't glorify His Name, then He's not going to give it to us. It's as simple as that. We have to trust His judgment and not automatically assume that people just don't have enough faith when they aren't being healed.

Ok. I do not in any way believe any of those statements. What I do believe is that believers today can heal others through God, and that he still speaks to us today. It seems that some on here do not believe that.

I wouldn't say that the believers are involved in the healing, no. I believe God does the healing of His own volition.

I also don't believe God speaks today through prophets, apostles, or whatnot. We have His Word, and His Word is absolutely sufficient for every good work – everything we need to know. I don't believe He has spoken audibly since the close of the canon with the book of Revelation. If He had, that would be further infallible revelation from God, and we are not given any impression, based on the end of the Bible, that that would continue.

While at G3 Conference 2016, I had the privilege in hearing Pastor Todd Friel give his talk about the IHOP (International House of Prayer) and the Charismatic Movement. I was impressed, and astounded. (angel feathers, really!) I agreed with everything he said. I would highly recommend you listening to it if you wanted to know all there is to know about IHOP and the Charismatic Movement.

So I realize the last time someone posted anything on this topic was quite a while ago, but I just wanted to ask a question I've been wondering for quite a while. I've read a lot of comments and I see some people believe that speaking in tongues was reserved for the apostolic age/ first century, and I was just wondering if those who believe that have a Biblical reason for why that is so? I cringe when I hear people talk about how much they speak in tongues because I believe most of that stuff is not true, and it bothers me when people's main focus is healing or speaking in tongues rather than holiness and being a true follower of Christ, but I'm super hesitant to scrap tongues completely when it seems so clear in the Word that speaking of tongues is a legitimate gift of the Holy Spirit. Again, this is a genuine question that I've wondered about for a long time because I know many believers who I believe are committed to the truth who take this position, so I assume they have a Biblical argument for why they believe that. I'd really appreciate an answer. Thanks!