Part 4 of 6: Pentecostalism … WHY IS THE CHARISMATIC MOVEMENT SO POPULAR?

By David W. Cloud

What in the world is causing so many to be drawn to the charismatic movement? Even cursory study of the Scriptures shows that the movement is in error about such things as healing, tongues, Spirit baptism, union with apostasy, and women preachers, yet multitudes continue to be drawn into the Pentecostal orb. I believe there are seven basic reasons for the popularity of this movement:

Entertainment

One reason for Pentecostalism’s popularity is its entertainment orientation. Jazzed up music and wild antics have been part and parcel with Pentecostalism since the Azusa Street “revival” at the turn of the century. Not content with this, the modern charismatic movement has gone “whole hog” into every sort of entertainment: rock music, drama, the dance, clowns, rap music, you name it.

Charismatic television broadcasters pioneered the slick Hollywood-type Christian performances so common now in large charismatic churches. Charisma magazine is a showcase for this type of thing. The ads just ooze with worldly types of entertainment. And entertainment is always at the very heart of charismatic meetings such as New Orleans ’87 and Indianapolis ’90.

People like to be entertained! So it is not difficult to understand why an entertainment-oriented movement draws good crowds.

Personalities

I believe another reason the charismatic movement has grown so phenomenally is the dynamic personalities who have been attracted to it and who have led it. The charismatic movement exalts men. Sports stars are exalted. Movie stars are exalted. Notice that most of the female charismatic leaders are unusually attractive, and the men unusually handsome.

A movement with powerful, attractive personalities will always pull in big crowds. That’s simply a fact.

But contrast all of this with first century Christianity. The greatest leader in the early churches, the Apostle Paul, was weak in bodily presence and his speech contemptible (2 Cor. 10:10). In the early churches, God chose the weak and foolish things to confound the wise and mighty of this world (1 Cor. 1:25-29). The first century church did not contend with the world on the world’s ground and by the world’s standards. In other words, God did not choose the most highly educated, the most lovely, the most athletic, the most dynamic.

God hasn’t changed his methods, but the charismatic movement is enamored with worldly excellence. That is one of its serious errors and downfalls.

Emotion

Another reason for the popularity of the charismatic movement is the emotional experience it promises. People like strong emotions. That is a major reason why people take drugs and drink liquor. They want an emotional high. They want to feel good.

Pentecostalism has always promised powerful emotional experiences. This is one of its glories. Charismatic testimonies abound in tales about strong emotional experiences.

“I felt the power come up my arm, and move down my spine…”
“I was overcome with joy and began to speak in an unknown tongue and was filled with a tingling sensation for hours.”
You’ve heard these testimonies, I’m sure. The Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International’s magazine, Voice, is a showcase for this type of thing. It contains testimony after testimony of glorious experiences and powerful feelings.

Any movement which can promise such things will grow, regardless of whether or not it is grounded in the Scripture.

Signs and wonders

If you took away the promise of signs and wonders from Pentecostalism, you would be left with a very small movement! Yet what does the Bible say about signs and wonders for this hour?

First, the Lord Jesus Christ warned that an evil generation seeks a sign. The Pharisees sought a sign from him, and Christ answered, “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:39-40).

In spite of this warning, the charismatic movement seeks to offer signs and wonders to our generation.

Second, miracles do not produce faith. 

Charismatics such as John Wimber and Peter Wagner speak of “power evangelism.” Wimber says the world will believe when they see a sign. This is hogwash. Miracles have never produced faith. Christ performed miracles such as this world had never witnessed, yet most of those who saw those miracles with their own eyes turned from Him and did not believe (John 6:66). In Christ’s story about the rich man who died and went to hell, we are taught that it’s not miracles which produce faith; it’s the Bible. The rich man pleaded with Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to speak to his brothers about salvation. Abraham’s reply is instructive: “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Lk. 16:27-31). If men do not believe the witness of the Bible, they will not believe the most fantastic miracles.

This is a fact the charismatic movement has yet to learn. It claims to be a signs and wonders movement. John Wimber calls his healing meetings “Signs and Wonders Conferences.” And any movement which claims the power to do miracles will have a large following.

Healing

Another reason the charismatic movement enjoys great numerical success is its promise of healing. An old television commercial said, “If you’ve got your health, you’ve got just about everything.” That pretty well sums up the philosophy of this world. Man is naturally oriented to the physical. He’ll do just about anything for health and earthly comfort and prosperity. The devil recognizes this, as we see from his statement in Job 2:4: “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.” The devil contended that Job cared more about his health than about the death of all his children and the loss of all his property. In Job’s case the devil was wrong, but in general it is all too true that man’s greatest concern is health and comfort.

Thus any movement which promises healing will do very well indeed. It has always been so. The medical field today with all its healing promise is terrifically wealthy. People will pay outrageous fees for health. Doctors are reverenced almost as gods. Any cult which promises healing has prospered, no matter how unbelievable its doctrine. Christian Science is an example. Its main following has always been from those who sought healing from their many infirmities. Every New Age cult which promises healing prospers. Witch doctors who promise healing prosper. Selling health tonics and supposed remedies for things such as baldness has always been prosperous.

I’ve seen the crowds who attend a Happy Hunter healing crusade or a Wimber signs and wonders meeting. A great many are seeking healing. They come because of the promise of healing. The problem is that the VAST majority go away unhelped. They leave confused and discouraged, filled with questions about why they or their loved ones were not healed.

If they were wise, they would seek a return of their money! The charismatic healers would soon go broke if they offered a money back guarantee! Of course, they would never do that. They continue to offer health and prosperity to their followers, and they continue to have lots of success among gullible, needy humanity.

Ignorance

Another sad reason for the growth of the charismatic movement is widespread Bible ignorance. The average person in the West today is as ignorant of the Bible as a pagan tribal in darkest Africa or a Hindu in India.

Hosea 4:6 contains this sad commentary on Israel of that day: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge …” How appropriate that judgment is for our day. The widespread Bible ignorance of our times has become fertile ground for Pentecostalism.

The Spiritual Deadness of Christianity

Another reason for the rapid growth of the charismatic movement is the spiritual deadness of Christianity. Most of those who have jumped into the wildfire of Pentecostalism have leaped from the coldness of ritualism and bland orthodoxy.

Consider that the greatest number of registrants at New Orleans ’87 and Indianapolis ’90 were Roman Catholics. Episcopalians and Lutherans formed another large group. It is not difficult to understand why members of these denominations would be drawn to charismatic extremes. They are fed up with the dry bones of dead ritualism.

We can see something similar in the evangelical Third Wave. Though not as dead as high churchism, a great number of evangelical churches and institutions are very, very dull spiritually. It is becoming difficult to distinguish theologically modernistic schools from many evangelical ones. Fuller Seminary is an example. There are a great many professors at Fuller who do not believe the Bible is perfect. There are Fuller professors who contend that homosexual and adulterous relationships are not necessarily sinful. There are Fuller professors who support the wretchedly apostate World Council of Churches.

It is not surprising that some within this spiritually barren atmosphere would be attracted to Pentecostalism. At least Pentecostalism has a form of life and of power! In recent years, the most popular courses at Fuller have been those taught by John Wimber on signs and wonders.

The testimony of Charles Kraft is instructive here. Kraft is a Fuller professor who has become involved with the charismatic movement, and he spoke both at New Orleans and at Indianapolis. Consider part of his message at Indianapolis, Friday morning, August 17, 1990:

Good morning. … I am an evangelical and have been for nearly 50 years, and am really happy to report that things like what started happening in the 60s or so in the charismatic movement are starting to happen among evangelicals–among evangelicals who don’t call themselves anything else. I don’t call myself charismatic; some other people do. But I just like to call myself an evangelical who is a little more biblical than I have been before. …

I teach at Fuller Seminary, so a lot of things I will be talking about are things you wouldn’t expect from a professor at Fuller Seminary. But having come back from mission work in Nigeria, and spending my time teaching missionaries and internationals–international church leaders–it began to break into my consciousness that the kinds of workings of God that I was most acquainted with were not everything that was out there. I had been asked in Nigeria if I believed in evil spirits. This was back in about 1958. And I didn’t know any good answers, so I said, “Do you have experience with them?” And they said, “Yes.” And I said, “O.K. I trust you, so I believe in evil spirits.” I still don’t know if I was telling the truth. But I spent a total of about five years in Nigeria and never saw a demon, and that isn’t because they weren’t there. It is because something was wrong with my eyes.

So in the process of interacting with people–I’ve been teaching in the school of mission at Fuller now for 21 years–about 13 years ago, through just becoming alert to the fact that there’s a lot going on out there that we see in the Bible but as evangelicals we didn’t know how to deal with, the opportunity came for us to invite someone to come and teach us about healing. Some of you know the story. We invited John Wimber to come and conduct a course in healing, power evangelism, whatever we like to call it, and my wife decided to attend that course. The course was basically for students, but as faculty members, we could attend. And we began to see healings happen in class. This isn’t ordinarily what you’d expect in a seminary classroom, and eventually we got in difficulty with other seminary faculty because we were actually doing something in class, not just talking about [things].

Consider what Kraft reveals here about the spiritual condition of much of evangelicalism. Here is a veteran missionary, a professor of an influential evangelical seminary, who was not even sure he believed in demons! Kraft might not have been liberal in theology, but he was in practice. Several times in his message, Kraft referred to the pride of intellect which characterized his life as an evangelical leader. The fact is that Kraft represents a large crowd of evangelicals, and like Kraft, they are in danger of falling prey to the charismatic movement.

It is crucial that churches do not lose their first love, that they be fervent in their relationship with Christ and the Bible. If Bible-believing churches would seek Christ daily with great fervency of soul, with prayer and fasting and tears; if they would truly praise God unashamedly and unabashedly; if they would seek to win the lost with great zeal; if they would believe God and pray for healing and for daily blessings–very few members would be lost to charismatic wildfire.

Divinely-imparted Blindness

Another reason for the rapid charismatic growth in this hour of apostasy is divinely-imparted blindness. God warns that if we reject His Word, he will blind our eyes that we will believe a lie. Consider 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12:

“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”

This verse applies directly to the conditions during the Great Tribulation when God will send strong delusion and cause the world to follow the antichrist. This will be a judgment upon the world for refusing to believe the truth. But the application of this principle is true enough today. If men do not believe the truth God gives them, they will be turned over to delusions and errors. This explains why multitudes believe something as strange and unreasonable as Mormonism, or Evolution. It also explains why multitudes are following something as strange and unscriptural as Pentecostalism.

We believe the charismatic movement is a judgment of God upon those who refuse to believe His Word. Someone might say, “Wherein do charismatics not believe the Word of God?” We reply that they do not believe the Word of God about healing, nor about spiritual gifts, nor about prophecy, nor about the Holy Spirit, nor about sound doctrine, nor about the woman’s place in the church, nor about Bible separation.

Comment by Truth Uncensored Afrika: There is no such term as the Great Tribulation in the Bible that refers to end time. The Bible refers to “a falling away” from the Truth first, then the man of sin be revealed. 

 Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand^. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3