Summer in the Systematics – Pneumatology (Part 9): The Abuse of the Holy Spirit

Transcript

JRS 74
The Abuse of the Spirit
8/24/2025
Selected Verses
Jesse Randolph

In John 14:12 our Lord said these words. This is in the upper room on the eve of His betrayal of course and Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, He will do also. And greater works than these He will do because I go to the Father.” Again, our Lord said those words in the upper room to His disciples in John 14 and when we think about it, what works did Jesus do? Well, we’ve been studying many of those in our morning series in the gospel of Luke and our ordinary course of business, we’ve seen that Jesus, for instance, healed people and He also performed a variety of different miracles as we’ll see ongoing in our study of that gospel.

Perhaps it is not all that surprising that there have been those who even today take Jesus’ Words which were given to His apostles, those in the upper room, and they assume that these words must apply to them today in the same sense as they applied to those disciples in that upper room discourse. For instance, a movement that has really run with that interpretation of this text, John 14:12, is a movement that’s known as the New Apostolic Reformation or the NAR. It’s a global movement. It’s not really centered on any one individual or in any one location. But the NAR has truly spread all over the world with now millions and millions of people subscribing to their ideology and their theology.

Some of the more well-known individual representatives of NAR or New Apostolic Reformation Theology, those who are maybe even more formally recognized as leaders within this spread-out movement include people like these. Bill Johnson. He’s based in Redding California, Bethel Church. Mike Bickel until his precipitous fall recently was at the International House of Prayer, IHOP, prayer not pancakes, down in Kansas City. Steven Furtick, of Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. He has made all sorts of memes and YouTube clips I wouldn’t recommend going to watch them. They’re more for entertainment value than theological weight. Then Todd Bentley is a Canadian revivalist and evangelist who is the head of an organization that’s known as Fresh Fire Ministries. All sorts of wacky stories involving this guy that I won’t have time to get into tonight.

Now, in terms of what this broad group, the NAR or the New Apostolic Reformation affirms and what it stands for. It’s lead by a group of largely men but there are women mixed in as well who claim that they have certain authority and functions that is parallel to the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles. They claim, these folks do that they are receiving new revelation from God, and they claim that they are giving new revelation from God.

Through the years, coming out of these NAR affiliated teachers and NAR-adjacent ministries have been some pretty fantastic stories. For instance, Bill Johnson’s church, Bethel, is the one up in Redding California just north of Sacramental. They have this thing called the “fire tunnel.” What it involves, thankfully it’s not actual fire. That sounds dangerous and violating many different codes, is people walking down the center of two different rows of individuals in the church and the two rows of people that are facing each other, and they have their hands interlocked and creating this tunnel that people walk through. Sort of an archway for people to run through in some sort of moment of spiritual ecstasy. As you make your way through this “fire tunnel,” people are laying hands on you. They’re prophesying over you. They’re praying tongues over you and that’s kind of the jest of the fire tunnel. One ex-Bethel member describes the fire tunnel this way. “So, there’s this thing called a “fire tunnel.” It’s like when you were five years old and your soccer team won, and your parents formed a tunnel for you to run through and there were juice boxes at the end. Only this time there are no juice boxes, but words and gifts from the Lord. It was absolutely as crazy as it sounds.”

Then there’s this practice, in the NAR circles, “holy laughter.” This is originated by and popularized by a man named Rodney Howard Browne in the mid-1990s. What this practice entails surprise, surprise, is a person laughing uncontrollably. It’s usually accompanied by some sort of rolling around on the floor, or falling on the floors, swooning on the floor and presumably all as a result of having been “filled” in an instant with the Holy Spirit. It’s a completely contrived practice that produces nothing but disorder and mass hysteria in a gathered worship setting.

Then there’s this quote from Rick Joyner. He is another NAR adjacent leader. I think his ministry’s called Morningstar Ministries. Don’t look it up. It’s full of garbage. But he’s quoted as saying, “Parting the Red Sea will hardly be remembered as a significant miracle after the things that will be done by those who serve the Lord at the end of this age.” You can just forget that whole Red Sea thing because of what the Lord is going to do through us, he’s saying, as we perform all these signs and wonders.

Now take a wild guess as to what these proponents of signs and wonders and miracles and healings and holy laughter and fire tunnels. Take a wild guess who they attribute their powers and their works and their gifts to. Which person of the trinity do they attribute what they do to? The Holy Spirit. They attribute all of what they are doing to the Holy Spirit, through their words and their actions. These ministers and ministries are placing great emphasis on themselves of course and great emphasis on the people that are saying they are ministering to. But inevitably you’ll see them tie what they are doing back to what they say is the Holy Spirit’s work.

Now what you’ll never hear them say, and when I say “never,” I mean you’ll never hear them say this. Is that the Spirit’s works supposedly through them, is for some purpose bringing glory to Jesus Christ. You won’t see that. You’ll see mention of the Spirit used loosely as they perform these different signs and wonders, but you’ll never see them say, “This fire tunnel I’m running, or this holy laughter I’m engaging in, is all for the purpose of bringing glory to our great God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. They just never say it that way.

That’s interesting because in John 16:14 of the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, “He will glorify Me.” That’s the function of the Holy Spirit. That’s what the Holy Spirit does. He brings glory to the second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ. As Spurgeon notes, “All ministries, therefore, must be subjected to this test. If they do not glorify Christ, they are not of the Holy Spirit.” Ministries like those I just mentioned, do not glorify Christ. They glorify individuals. “Holy laughter” places the focus on the one who is doing the laughing. A “fire tunnel” places the focus on the one who is running through the fire tunnel. The Rick Joyner quote I mentioned earlier, places the focus on Rick Joyner who thinks his miracles will supersede those of the parting of the Red Sea. These are not of the Spirit.

Well, that’s all intro. Notwithstanding the beautiful Fall-like weather we’re experiencing, we are back in our Summer series, Summer in the Systematics and we have tonight’s message and then we have next Sunday nights message and then we’re going put our systematic theology study for the summer on hold until next summer. We will dive back into Revelation pretty soon here in a couple of weeks on Sunday evenings.

Now to be reminded so far on Sunday evenings this summer we’ve covered The Person of the Holy Spirit, (this is all under our study of Pneumatology) The Person of the Holy Spirit, the Deity of the Holy Spirit, The Old Testament Ministry of the Holy Spirit, The New Testament Ministry of the Holy Spirit, The Ministry of the Spirit in Salvation. We’ve looked at The Ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Christian, The Fruit of the Spirit, and then last Sunday night we looked at The Gifts of the Spirit. Tonight’s message, this is number 9, is in some sense part two of last Sunday night’s message. Because what often must be addressed, sadly, when you cover the gifts of the Spirit, are the various ways that the Spirit is abused by those who are saying that they have some miraculous gifts today.

That is the subject of this evening’s message. The Abuse of the Spirit. Again, a sad reality of engaging in any study on The Gifts of the Spirit, is that you necessarily must go into a follow-up study of The Abuse of the Spirit, namely, how the Holy Spirit has been abused over the course of the centuries by certain theological traditions.

Now, to be clear when I use that term “abuse” or in covering this term abuse, we’re not going to be tackling tonight certain heresies related to the Holy Spirit. There were various heresies attributed to the Holy Spirit back in the early centuries of the church, the 3rd and 4th centuries. We are going to be covering more modern-day practices where individuals like the ones I’ve already mentioned or pointing to supposed signs and wonders, and they’re flat-out strange behaviors and even sounds they make as supposedly being Spirit-directed and Spirit-anointed and a sign of being Spirit-gifted. That’s what I mean by “Abuse of the Holy Spirit.” The various movements of men and women who have misappropriated the Spirit and attributed to the Spirit things and activities which are clearly were not of the Spirit.

Now, even though with the extra time, we still have less than an hour here to cover this topic so I can’t possibly get into all the ways that the Holy Spirit has been abused over the course of the last couple of centuries. But what I need to do is tap into one particular vein of church history to flesh out the topic and get us back to even the NAR which we looked at just initially. That vein of American Theological tradition that we are going to get into tonight is that is of Pentecostalism. American Pentecostalism specifically as we trace out how the Holy Spirit has been abused in that movement leading up to the development of the NAR which is impacting churches all over the place today.

Tonight’s going to be a little different in that this won’t be an expository message. This will not be really a sermon at all. I’m not going to be taking a text of Scripture and blowing it out and explaining the whole thing. This is going to be more like a lesson, more like a lecture and really a historical lecture, though driven by scriptural principles like this one. I John 4:1, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

So again, our topic, The Abuse of the Spirit. This fits within our broader topic this summer of Pneumatology, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. But tonight’s message again is going to definitely have more of a historical bent to it as we trace out the historical survey of the development of doctrine. I want to sort of flesh out how is it now, now that we have folks who are saying they’re engaging in “holy laughter” as a result of the Spirit. Or “fire tunnels” because of the Spirit. Or why do we have so-called apostles today because of the Spirit, or tongues-speakers today because of the Spirit. That’s the focus.

Alright, our historical journey, as we trace out the development of American Pentecostalism, starts with this man, Charles Parham. This man was born in 1873, and he died in 1929. He is considered to be the father of or the pioneer of American Pentecostalism. He was a Methodist and Methodism we know traces all the way back to John Wesley. The “Methodists” were originally called “Methodists” because of the methodical ways that they lived their lives. Well, springing out of Methodist theology was something called Wesleyan Holiness theology. What the Wesleyans believed was that a person, a follower of Christ, could ultimately attain perfection in this life. They believed that a person, a Christian, could actually reach this plane of piety and devotion in this life, through their own holy and devoted living. So, a Christian according to a Wesleyan Holiness perspective, could not only be sanctified but they could ultimately be perfected this side of glory.

John Wesley believed these things. He was in the 1700s in England. He affirmed (Wesley did) that it was possible for a believer to achieve the status of perfection in this life. He affirmed that things are more conventional. Things we believe, the deity of Christ, the virgin birth and such. But he also believed, Wesley did, in Christian Perfectionism.

Well and tied into this idea of perfectionism, was the idea of the “second blessing theology.” The idea that a Christian, an obedient Christian, could ultimately receive some sort of second blessing of the Spirit that would propel that Christian toward that target of ultimate perfection. According to the Wesleyan tradition, this event, this second blessing, came in association with this event known as the “baptism of the Holy Spirit.” Now we’ve studied the baptism of the Holy Spirit this summer and we’ve seen that it is a onetime event Biblically speaking that happens when a person is place into Christ the moment they are regenerated. The moment they get saved. Well according to Wesleyan Perfectionism, or holiness theology, this baptism of the Spirit happened to somebody who was already converted. It was a “second event.” Where they received this subsequent, super-charged spiritual experience by way of the Holy Spirit. And it was only through that second experience, that second blessing experience, that the believer could enter into this deeper, holier phase of devotion in their Christian life.

That, Wesleyan Holiness Theology, is what this man Charles Parham believed in. He was a man who not only had a Methodist background but a Wesleyan Holiness background. He believed that Christians though already saved and sealed with the Spirit, would eventually receive a “second blessing” of the Spirit. Parham not only believed that, but he believed that a sign that believers would receive to indicate that they truly had experienced this “second blessing,” was that they would now have the ability to speak in tongues. That was his theology.

Now, by “speak in tongues,” Parham wasn’t “speaking in tongues” that people claim to be doing today. He wasn’t thinking of the sort of “speaking in tongues” that happens allegedly in Bill Johnson’s church there in Redding California. No, Parham, when he was talking about speaking in tongues, what he believed in was that people without any prior familiarity with a known existing recognized language would suddenly be able to speak in that known recognized language as a sign of the Spirit’s working in them.

It would be like if I was preaching to all of you in English, or teaching you in English, like I’m doing right now, my native tongue. Then all of a sudden, I switch over to Mandarin. I don’t have any experience in Mandarin. I don’t have experience in many other languages or German let’s say. All of a sudden, I go from English to German. That would be the equivalent of what Parham thought of as speaking in tongues. Not speaking gibberish but speaking a language, an existing language, a recognized language that was capable of being interpreted or translated. That was the notion Parham had of “speaking in tongues” which is really the apostolic notion of speaking in tongues, what is seen in the Book of Acts. Again, this was the connection to the second blessing which lead to perfectionism in this life.

Well, in the Fall of 1900. That puts kind of a time stamp on when this man ministered. 125 years ago, Parham started a Bible institute in Topeka, Kansas. That’s quite the Bible college. Bethel Bible College it was called, or Bethel Gospel School was another name for it. During the inaugural Fall semester of Bethel Bible College, Parham took leave of his students. He had to leave for a few days and before he left, he gave his students an assignment. He was one of those teachers. The one that he leaves for three or four days and gives you homework as he does so leaving you behind. That’s what Parham did. He gave his students at Bethel Bible College an assignment as he left Topeka. Here was the assignment. He left him this question to answer while he was gone. “What is the Bible evidence of the baptism of the Holy Ghost?” That’s what he left them to contemplate and to think about. Well, when he returned, his students had answered his question and here was the collective answer of everybody in the class. “Speaking in tongues.” So, while he was away, his students had concluded through their reading of the book of Acts specifically, that speaking in tongues was the evidence of having been baptized with the Holy Spirit.

Now one of Parham’s students was a 30-year-old woman named Agnes Ozman. Ozman asked that Parham, her teacher, lay hands on her and pray for her so that she might receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is after he came back of course. According to Parham, this was shortly after midnight, on January 1, 1901. This is how he recounts what happened between he and Ozman. “I laid my hands upon her and prayed. I had scarcely completed three dozen sentences when a glory fell upon her, a halo seemed to surround her head and face, and she began speaking in the Chinese language and was unable to speak English for three days.” To which I say that must have been one crazy New Year’s Eve party down in Topeka, Kansas in 1901. I mean all we do is try to drink sparkling cider and stay up past 10:00. But they were having this happen.

I mean all sorts of questions of course start flooding through our minds. Right away, one has to wonder, how did this guy know that this lady, in Topeka, Kansas in 1901, was speaking Chinese? I mean he wasn’t fluent in Chinese? How did he know? There was no way for him to know. No issue there though because she ended up writing down whatever it was, she was trying to say supposedly in Chinese, longhand on paper. This is what she scrawled out. This photograph was actually published in the Topeka Daily Capital on January 6, 1901. And again, I’m no expert in Chinese or even pretend to be in anyway familiar with Chinese. But that doesn’t look like Chinese to me. That looks like squiggles. I’ve got a 6-year-old. That’s kind of looks like what he’s putting together these days.

Now in this same January 6, 1901, article in the Topeka Daily Capital, it’s hard to even imagine how they did this but there’s exactly as you read it an interview that the reporter conducts with, all it says is a Chinese man. They don’t give the name of the guy, they just say the reporter talked to a Chinese man, apparently in Topeka. This random unnamed Chinese man, this is going to sound insensitive when I say this, I apologize, I’m just quoting it. He says “No understand. Talk to Jap.” Like go find somebody Japanese to figure out what that might say. I guess that was a culturally appropriate way to express yourself 125 years ago in Topeka, Kansas. Basically, he’s saying that’s not my language, try someone else. Try somebody else with a different language.

Regardless of these shady aspects of her story, Agnes Ozman’s story started catching fire. By the way that’s not all that caught fire. This building burned down about a year later after all that. Bethel Bible College no longer exists, either the building or the school. But before that happened this school burned down, Ozman gained quite a following. First, her fellow classmates and then later, her own teacher himself, Parham, started following her and they started asking her about the “baptism of the Spirit” and whether she could impart it to them. Then they all began speaking in tongues or so-called “tongues” and as they did so they kept tracing traced their beliefs back to of course the book of Acts, Act 2 when tongues of fire descended on those who were gathered to hear Peter’s sermon at Pentecost. That group back in Acts 2 received the Holy Spirit that day.

Well, what was happening here in Kansas at the turn of the twentieth century with Parham and Ozman, it’s viewed historically as being the beginning of the modern tongues’ movement in the United States and it’s also viewed as being the beginning of the “classical Pentecostal theology” movement in our times.

Now just a footnote. Though this building remained open for a little bit longer, once it closed, once it burned down and the school closed, the school relocated to another location in Topeka and Parham kept teaching until 1906. Then he started touring the Midwest giving Pentecostal doctrine wherever he went, with that heavy emphasis on tongues-speaking being a necessary component of baptism of the Spirit. Then a footnote to that footnote is that 1907 Parham was arrested in San Antonio for committing acts of sodomy with two young men. Those charges were eventually dropped when no one was willing to testify against him, his whole ministry was done, his reputation was totally shot.

So those are the Topeka, Kansas roots of the American Pentecostal movement. With that let’s go from our neck of the woods in this part of the country, out to my old neck of the woods, the West Coast, California specifically, to something called the Azusa Street revival. We’ve already considered Parham and Ozman.

Another of Parham’s students was a man named William J. Seymour. Seymour was a Baptist minister who had been taught by Parham, taught through Parham, that in order to be baptized with the Spirit a person needs to speak in tongues. He held to the same views, the same theology. Freshly trained in Topeka with Parham this was before Parham’s moral failure. This guy Seymour arrived in Los Angeles on February 22, 1906. And at that point, Seymour became the pastor of Nazarene Church in Los Angeles. On his first Sunday in the pulpit, his first sermon was from, you guessed it, Acts 2:4, “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.”

So, Seymour disciple of Parham claimed in that sermon that speaking in tongues was an initial evidence of baptism in or with the Holy Spirit. His new church there in LA, Nazarene Church, they weren’t buying it. They weren’t convinced. Not only that, but they also really didn’t like his message, and they really didn’t like him. As the story goes, they padlocked the door to the church to keep him out. They just totally kicked him out, fired him, and locked the church doors so that he could never come back. Quite the unceremonious way to ditch your pastor.

Anyway, he was undeterred and then he found this old abandoned African Methodist Church building on 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles from which he could preach his message. It was sort of an old, run-down warehouse. This, though there’s a vehicle out front, a car out front, they still had an old stable out back because this was still at that time in which there were many people still getting places by use of animals. Parking their horse in the stable before you went to hear this message.

But it was in this old, abandoned warehouse on Azusa Street, that a supposed “revival” broke out in 1906. There were reports of people speaking in tongues all throughout this congregation. According to a publication from this era, a newspaper called “The Apostolic Faith.” It’s emblazoned on the front in 1906 that “Pentecost has come.” That was the claim that was being made. It wasn’t just Pentecostal magazines or newspapers that were publishing on the Azusa Street revival, in fact this event was so significant that in the city of LA at the time, even the L.A. Times was covering it.

This is from the Los Angeles Daily times from April 18, 1906. If you can’t make that out, on the left-hand side it says, “Weird Babel of Tongues.” “New Sect of Fanatics is Breaking Loose.” “Wild Scene Last Night on Azusa Street.” And “Gurgle of Wordless Talk by a Sister.” Now when it hits the LA Times it’s a big deal. Something really significant in terms of people’s attention at least was happening at Azusa.

Now later church historians would continue to write about this event for many decades including this man Vinson Synan, who was favorable to what happened at Azusa and believes it was a true movement of the Spirit. He says, “A visitor to Azusa Street during the three and a half years the revival continued would have met scenes that beggared description. Men and women would shout, weep, dance, fall into trances, speak and sing in tongues, and interpret their messages into English. In the middle of it all was ‘Elder’ Seymour, (William Seymour) who rarely preached and much of the time kept his head covered in an empty packing crate behind the pulpit. At times he would be seen walking through the crowds with five and ten-dollar bills sticking out of his hip pockets that people had crammed there unnoticed by him. At other times he would ‘preach’ by hurling challenges at anyone who did not accept his views or by encouraging seekers at the wood plank altars to “let the tongues come forth.” To others he would exclaim, “Be emphatic.” Ask for salvation, sanctification (by the way that word sanctification there is referring to that perfection aspect of Wesleyan theology) the baptism with the Holy Ghost, or divine healing.’”

I mean this is total mayhem is what this is. People were dancing, crying, shouting and singing in gibberish. The pastor was in total lampshade mode, wearing a crate on his head. Wads of cash sticking out of his pocket, just totally chaotic. Nothing like what if they believed consistently with their interpretation of Scripture what I Corinthians 14:40 says, “All things must be done properly and in an orderly manner.” There was nothing “orderly” about the Azusa Street Revival or in subsequent “revivals” which followed in later decades. Those two events, Kansas, Topeka, Parham, Ozman, Azusa. These two events are really seen as the real pillars, the foundational events of modern Pentecostal history and modern Pentecostal theology.

So, what we’ve just went over by the way is known as the “first wave” of American Pentecostalism. The first wave. Now they didn’t call it the “first wave” back then in 1901 or 1906 because they didn’t know that there would be later “waves.” They thought this was it. But historically now looking back on this time, this is called the first wave of American Pentecostalism. There was a second wave and a third wave as we’ll get into a little bit later. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Before we get there, before we get to from the first wave to the second wave, I do want to camp out on one more figure from this first wave era. Her name was Aimee Semple McPherson. Aimee Semple McPherson in 1907, just a year after Azusa at the age of 17, came from Canada. Her name back then was Aimee Kennedy, that was her maiden name. She attended a revival meeting in 1907 that was put on by some Pentecostals. It was there that this young woman Aimee met a Pentecostal missionary from Ireland named Robert James Semple. It was soon after that meeting where she met Robert, that she says she committed her life to Christ, and it was also right around this time that she was persuaded by the whole Pentecostal approach to Scripture. In her words, these were successive events, like one after the other getting saved and having a Pentecostal experience. But they were separate events.

She would say she was converted by putting her faith in Jesus Christ, but then soon thereafter, she had this second experience where she was baptized by the Holy Spirit. Here’s how she put it. The second event, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. She says, “My lungs began to fill and heave under the power as the Comforter came in. The cords of my throat began to twitch, my chin began to quiver, and then to shake violently, but oh, so sweetly! My tongue began to move up and down and sideways in my mouth. Unintelligible sounds as of stammering lips and another tongue, spoken of in Isaiah 28:11, began to issue from my lips. This stammering of different syllables, then words, then connected sentences, was continued for some time as the Spirit was teaching me to yield to Him. Then suddenly, out of my innermost being flowed rivers of praise in other tongues as the Spirit gave utterance (Acts 2:4), and Oh I knew that He was praising Jesus with glorious language, clothing Him with honor and glory which I felt but never could have put into words.” So that is her report of what she calls her second blessing or spirit baptism experience.

After that experience, Aimee and Robert were married and that was in 1908. Soon after that they left overseas to go to China to become missionaries. There, in China, they both contracted malaria right away and that actually led to Robert’s passing away very quickly. So, she was now a young widow, and not only that, but she was also pregnant and penniless when her husband Robert died. She would eventually re-marry, marrying a man named Harold McPherson. That’s how she became known as “Aimee Semple McPherson.”

It was during that second marriage, to Harold McPherson, that Aimee reported that she heard some sort of voice. At this time, what happened, this is again just her report, she was battling appendicitis. She was in pain and shaking and all the rest, and in that moment of pain she heard some sort of audible voice. The voice was telling her apparently that she had to go preach. As she would tell the story later, once she internally accepted the call of that voice telling her that she had to preach, the pain from her appendicitis went away right away immediately. Meaning, she was now of the belief that she not only had a call to preach (I will reserve comment on that one, for now) but she also had a gift to heal. So, she was now a commissioned, she thought preacher and healer. Now what Aimee Semple McPherson did not have the gift of remaining married. Because she divorced husband number two and then she divorced husband number three and that didn’t stop her from answering her supposed call though to go be a preacher/healer type. She traveled all over the country preaching revivals through the ministry that she started. The Foursquare Gospel Church. I’m sure many of you have heard of that. The Foursquare Gospel Church. She conducted healing services all over the country. That was a big part of her ministry, and her ministry was truly a lightning rod.

On the one hand, she had become very popular during her time. In the 20s especially. People in her heyday, in the mid-20s, would have put her up there in terms of popularity with people like Babe Ruth, Charles Lindbergh, Jack Dempsey and Ty Cobb. She was an American celebrity.

But what she became known for, Aimee Semple McPherson, in the end was controversy. See she, Aimee, was based in Los Angeles. That was the home of her ministry. Really in Hollywood and being in Hollywood and being in LA, she was very much committed to showmanship. She knew how to draw a crowd. She knew to “wow” a crowd. She knew how to keep a crowd. You look back on the history of her ministry, her healing ministry, her spirit directed ministry she would say. One of the most incredible instances of showmanship that she engaged in was faking her own kidnapping and death. She went missing in May of 1926. As she would tell the story later, somebody apparently approached her with a cloth covered in chloroform, just like in the movies, put it over her mouth and hauled her down to Mexico. As she told the story, she was down in Mexico, this innocent kidnapping victim for more than a month. That’s how she told the story later. Well while she was missing for something like 36 days of course, it’s like if Babe Ruth goes missing people have a big problem with that. They’re wondering where did he go or where did she go. So, people really wondered what had happened to her. Here's a newspaper article from that time. “Aimee McPherson believed drowned.” They even had a memorial service for her. They thought she was gone.

But then, suddenly out of nowhere she appeared a month and a half or so later and she appeared near the Arizona/Mexico border near Douglas, Arizona. This was huge news. Because after all these days of being missing, this mega-celebrity lady preacher was suddenly saying she’s back. She’s back in the spotlight. Back from the dead. And then she of course made her way back to Los Angeles where the cameras were, where all the fanfare was. This is her return, her own little “triumphal entry” back into Los Angeles. This event when she came back to LA, gathered more people than when the president of that time, Woodrow Wilson, visited LA. It was a huge event.

Again, as she told the story, she was just this innocent kidnapping victim and as she told it, her captors had left her alone in Mexico and she escaped and ran for the border and made her way to Douglas, Arizona. And she was a hero. Well, the district attorney of L.A. County had different theory. His theory was that Aimee had actually run off with a new love interest. A man named Kenneth Ormiston who was the engineer for the radio station that broadcast Aimee’s sermons. And the two, after several weeks away together of being in their little lovers’ den and their tryst, eventually started feeling bad about what they were doing and felt ashamed, and they concocted a plan whereby this guy Kenneth would drive her to the Arizona/Mexico border and say “tell them you were kidnapped.”


Well, the District Attorney didn’t like that. Learning of this news, in fact they invested over $500,000, in 1926 dollars, into this investigation as to what she actually had been doing for that month or so. They filed criminal charges against her for conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice. She faced up to 42 years in prison for what she was doing. The charges were dropped when witnesses got sideways, but for many that really sunk her ministry. She still tried though for many many years after. I think about a decade more she kept going out and performing so called healings and so-called preaching and all the rest before she eventually died of an overdose sleeping pills. So that’s Aimee Semple McPherson. Part of this first wave of American Pentecostalism.

Just to make sure we’re still tracking. I mentioned that this is a historical study. We’re just tracing the pillars of the development of Pentecostalism. She fits within that first wave. We will get into the second wave now as we think of what happened after this era.

Ok second wave of Pentecostalism. Actually, before I get there, I do want to mention another thing. Before any of you call your Methodist uncle and say “oh no what are you doing? What have you gotten yourself into? Are you a “Pentecostal?” I do want to draw a distinction between Methodism and Pentecostalism. I at least want to make a distinction between the two. There is a relationship between Methodism, back to John Wesley and the Methodist Church and Pentecostalism in that Pentecostalism sprung forth from Methodism but there are differences as well between Methodism and Pentecostalism. So don’t go calling your uncle who’s Methodist a Pentecostal. Ok?

The similarity is that both systems of theology do teach that there are two phases to the Christian life. Two fundamental phases. There’s salvation and then there’s some sort of second thing that happens. Some sort of second event that happens. For the Methodists, this is where the difference comes, the Methodists influenced by John Wesley, they would say that “second thing” is perfected holiness. Perfection. For the Pentecostals, those influenced by Parham and Agnus Ozman and even Aimee Semple MacPhearson, they would say that that “second thing” is experience. An experience with the Spirit, specifically. Getting even more specific some sort of manifestation of one of the unique gifts that was demonstrated in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost, like speaking in tongues.

Unlike traditional Methodism, Pentecostalism isn’t marked by holiness being the second thing that we undergo, instead they are experiential. They are looking for some second blessing that’s driven by some sort of tongue speaking and the like.

Now we can move on to the second wave of Pentecostalism. Which is known by some as “New Pentecostalism” or even “Charismatic Renewal.” This second wave of Pentecostalism formally started at St. Mark’s church in Van Nuys, California. It was an Episcopalian Church in 1960. This guy’s name is Dennis Bennett, and he was the clergyman at St. Mark’s in Van Nuys. Formally he was known as a “rector.” That would be the name of his position in the Episcopalian Church. Dennis Bennett.
And this man, Dennis Bennett on a Sunday in 1960, announced to his congregation there in Van Nuys, that he had been baptized with the Holy Spirit as he had spoken in tongues. That’s what he got up and said that Sunday morning to his Episcopalian Church.

What initially followed was this initial outburst in the church where others began, or said they began speaking in tongues. Now it drew attention not just from his little congregation there at St. Mark’s, but it drew attention from the people outside the church as well. Local news stations in LA were picking up the story. Newsweek, Time picked up the story. But not everyone was approving, including his own church. There was initial three-week outburst of people saying they wanted to be like him and speak in tongues too. But eventually they got tired of him and like William J. Seymour, the guy back from Azusa, they kicked him out. I don’t know if it was a padlock or not, but they said enough with the tongues speaking. Just get back to being a pastor.

So, he faced opposition. He eventually resigned his pastorate. And it only took him three weeks to find something new. He was somewhat a celebrity at this point and there’s actually correspondence between and Episcopal bishop up in the Pacific Northwest area. Bennett was in Southern California, recruiting him to come take on a pastorate in the PMW in Seattle specifically. There’s this correspondence I found where this bishop up in Seattle says to this guy Dennis Bennett, “Look, Dennis, what about coming here. Bring the fire with you!” Bennett obliged. He said he would “bring the fire” and he accepted a position at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Seattle and kept promoting these same teachings up in that part of the country.

The reason his story is worth telling, again we’re just laying out the pillars of historical development here. The reason his story is worth mentioning is that his story represents the beginning of this second wave of American Pentecostalism. Phase one is Parham, phase two is this guy, Bennett. While there are some common features between the second wave and the first wave, like tongues speaking being so called “evidence” of being baptized with the Spirit. There are a couple of distinctions between the two as well.

For one, with this second wave the practice of tongues speaking, began to jump across denominational lines. So, with this second wave you now had so called Pentecostals or Pentecostal theology types moving over into the Lutheran world. And even into the Presbyterian world in certain denominations. Out of the Episcopal world.

Another key feature of this wave of Pentecostalism is that it was during this time that this view of continuation of certain gifts of the Spirit, tongues, miracles, prophecy, etc., began to become more commonly known as “Charismatic” theology. That word, “Charismatic” as we saw last week when we look at the charisma, the word that refers to these grace gifts, actual grace gifts that God has given a believer. That word Charismatic comes from that word charisma.

Well, this Charismatic movement after Bennett, he’s around 1960, then spread to universities. It made its way to various universities in the 60s and 70s. Yale University in October of 1962, had some event where “tongues speaking” apparently was breaking out on campus there at Yale. It moved into Dartmouth and Princeton, even onto the West Coast and Stanford. And then the movement exploded yet again in the late 60s, early 70s, as there were now reports of charismatic theology being found on campus at Catholic schools. So now you have the phenomenon of charismatic Catholics developing around this time.

By 1977 the Associated Press reported that there were some 10 million Charismatics in the United States. That’s nearly 50 years ago. Meaning there are many millions more today. By this time, the late 70s, there were now three wings of the American Pentecostal movement. There were the Classic Pentecostals, those of the Aimee Semple McPherson/Charles Parham variety. There were Protestant Charismatics, those who could be main line denominational yet charismatic. Then you had like I just mentioned, the Catholic Charismatics. John MacArthur was writing books against all of them, all at the same time, late 70s, early 80s.

Alright so that’s the second wave of American Pentecostalism. Now we want to get into the third wave which is also known as the “signs and wonders” movement. Also tied into what we’ll get into in a moment, the “Vineyard” movement. It began in the 1980s with this very friendly-looking guy, John Wimber and C. Peter Wagner. Now those in this movement, this third wave movement, they believed that the Gospel could not be effectively communicated to unbelievers without some sort of supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit, like through prophesying or like through healing. Now there’s still tongues speaking associated with this third wave that we’re going to talk about. But during this third wave you see more of a focus on prophecy and healing as different or new manifestations of how the Spirit is working, they say, in believers today.

Let’s go back to very friendly looking John Wimber. Through the classes that he was teaching at Fuller Theological Seminary, he was teaching his students how to minister the power of the Holy Spirit in supernatural ways. Wimber was also a church growth guru back in those days, in the 80s specifically. In 1981, he delivered a lecture at Fuller Seminary titled, “Signs, Wonders and Church Growth.” From 1982-85, he taught a class at Fuller called, “The Miraculous and Church Growth.”

Now back over to C. Peter Wagner. These guys are really interlocked. They crossed paths all over the place in the 1980s. But Wagner is actually the one who’s credited with coining the phrase the “third wave of Pentecostalism.” In fact, here are his words. He says “I see historically that we’re now in the third wave. The first wave of the moving of the Holy Spirit began at the beginning of the century with the Pentecostal movement. (we saw that) The second wave was the charismatic movement (that’s Dennis Bennett) which began in the fifties in the major denominations. Both of those waves continue today.” He continues on and he says, “I see the third wave of the eighties as an opening of the straight-line evangelicals and other Christians to the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that the Pentecostals and charismatics have experienced, but without becoming either charismatic or Pentecostal.”

Back to Wimber. Again, these guys are like Batman and Robin in the 80s. Back to the 70s though, Wimber was on the staff of a church called Yorba Linda Friends Church. And though he had a successful ministry at that church, it was more of a mainline evangelical church, he became dissatisfied over time. This is back to the 70s. And this guy Ken Sarles in an ariticle he writes for a theological journal in 1988, he’s tracing out Wimber’s development. How he went from an ordinary mainline pastor to this front-end leader in this charismatic or Pentecostal movement. Ken Sarles speaking of Wimber writes, “After encountering what he considered to be miraculous divine healings, he began to question his previous conviction. His experience led him in a new direction. Frustrated as a pastor of a fast-growing evangelical Friends church, Wimber left to join Wagner in doing church-growth consultations for the Fuller Evangelistic Association. The turning point for Wimber came in 1977 when his wife Carol was dramatically healed of what she called a ‘personality meltdown.’ While asleep she dreamed that she was filled with the Holy Spirit and then woke up speaking in tongues! This produced a change in Wimber’s attitude from skepticism to openness concerning divine healing.” And the rest, as they say, is history.

Because now convinced that miraculous healing was something to pursue and seek as a gift today in the church age, Wimber felt compelled to start a new church. It was actually a home Bible Study of 17 people, is how it started, with a specific focus on bringing miraculous healing and supernatural gifts to church life. The church that he started went on to become what is known as the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, located in Anaheim, California. The Vineyard Movement, and the Vineyard Church movement was really a pillar of this third wave of Pentecostalism in the 80s and on into the 90s. What they were all about, the Vineyard Movement, was what they called “Power Evangelism.” They believed in the permanency of all spiritual gifts, signs and wonders and tongues and the like, they believed in the continuation of all the gifts. And so they believed that as you evangelize the unbeliever, you don’t just give them the gospel, repent and believe in Jesus Christ and be saved, but you demonstrate like the apostles would, some sort of sign or wonder to show them you have the power to, there’s power behind the message that you’re proclaiming. Power Encounters they called them.

Bring it back full circle, C. Peter Wagner. We’re coming back to him because you might remember at the very beginning of tonight, I gave you some full color photos of some individuals from today in this movement called the New Apostolic Reformation who are preaching all kinds of wacky ideas, the NAR. Well, C. Peter Wagner, it all begins with him, C. Peter Wagner’s brainchild, was the NAR.

What happened was though he was very enthusiastic about that third wave, with Wimber and Vineyard in the 1980s, eventually C. Peter Wagner got frustrated. He thought the third wave had failed. They tried it but it didn’t work. I have to say that it’s a pretty remarkable statement to say that the so-called work of the Spirit failed. If you’re saying this is all Spirit empowered but you say whoops it failed, well then maybe it wasn’t Spirit empowered to begin with. Just a thought. But that’s what Wager claimed. He thought that the Third Wave had failed; and so, what he advocated was a new movement. This is in the mid-90s thereabouts. And what Wagner saw as the missing link was the necessity of having each of the offices mentioned in Ephesians 4:11, energized and all operating and functioning what he called the Fivefold Ministry of the offices. He believed specifically that by bringing back the offices of apostles, and prophets, there would be this Fivefold Ministry now of the Spirit that would be energizing churches. It would be a true movement of the Spirit and that missing piece of the puzzle that the first three waves had neglected. The key in other words was let’s bring back the apostles, let’s bring back the prophets. He called it “Second Apostolic Age.”

A major piece of the puzzle for Wagner as he attempted to get this new theological idea and this new theological movement of the ground, a major piece of the puzzle was this guy, who you saw a picture of at the very beginning, Bill Johnson. Bill Johnson in 1996, took on a role at a fledgling Assemblies of God church in Redding, California, known as Bethel. It was a small church at that point. Johnson had been highly influenced by John Wimber, having gone to some of Wimber’s signs and wonders conferences back in the late 1980s. Around the time that Bill Johnson took over at Bethel, C. Peter Wagner recognized Bill Johnson as an apostle and endorsed his ministry. Then Bill Johnson’s church, Bethel, started growing dramatically. In fact, today his church boasts of over 10,000 members and these are folks who refer to Bethel as their home church.

The Bethel church has spawned the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. That’s their Bible college to learn and grow in how to conduct all these different signs and wonders. In 2001, Bill Johnson’s son, Brian, started Bethel Music, which is promoting all sorts of repetitive songs, very popular songs that you’ll see sung in many different churches that maybe don’t have a music pastor as discerning as our music pastor, Andrew. But Bill Johnson is fundamental to this development of this new apostolical reformation under C. Peter Wagner’s leadership. Now like I mentioned Bill Johnson has been called an “apostle” by C Peter Wagner, not by God.

Biblically speaking, we have to remember, and we saw last week as we were looking at the true gifts of the Spirit, those offices of apostle and prophet, the two offices that C. Peter Wagner says we have to regain to have that fivefold ministry of the Holy Spirit. Those offices of apostle and prophet were in every way foundational in the early church. Those offices existed before the canon of Scripture was formally closed and recognized. Ephesians 2:19-20 speaks of the foundational role of those offices. “You are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone.” But once their foundational role was accomplished and once the canon of Scripture was completed and closed, the offices of apostle and prophet passed off the scene.

Not only that but with respect to apostles, there were certain prerequisites to being an actual apostle in apostolic times. For instance, those who are apostles were those who had seen the resurrected Lord. Some in the NAR movement who call themselves apostles, they will claim that they’ve seen the Lord in a vision of some sort. You think of Paul’s vision at Damascus, on the way to Damascus, it’s much different than whatever vision these folks say they’re experiencing. Paul’s vision was exceptional. It was verifiable. It was witnessed by those who were there with him, and then it was confirmed by the Christians at Damascus who witnessed his healing from blindness, right after that vision.

The NAR so called apostles, they’re having these private visions and you’re just relying on their testimony for whatever it is they say they saw. Another qualification of an apostle is that they must have received a specific commission from Christ. Like those who were first commissioned during the apostolic era. The NAR apostles, their commissioning has come from mere men. Men like C. Peter Wagner; quite different. And then apostles, they had the ability to perform miracles. True miracles which attested to their apostolic authority as sent ones from Jesus Christ. They were spectacular miracles, they were verifiable miracles, and they never failed in attempting these miracles.

Well in contrast of those so-called miracles of the NAR apostles, these are all based on second-hand reports of things that may have happened. They’re unverified, and in most cases they’re just unspectacular. Whenever there’s a failure of the miracle by an NAR apostle, what inevitably would happen is they’ll blame the person who witnessed the so-called miracle for not having enough faith. So, the NAR claims to have restored the office of apostle. They also claim to have restored the office of prophet, apostles and prophets to complete that fivefold ministry. Like apostles the prophets, the true apostles and prophets they were foundational, and they were there to survey specific purpose before the close of Scripture. The close of the canon of Scripture. They were foundational and so same issue. In trying to reopen this office the NAR is really going against the purpose of the apostolic and prophetic offices.

Then there’s the issue of the lack of accuracy to the actual prophecies that the NAR folks are trying to put out there. We must remember that when the prophetic office was still active in the church, in apostolic times, the New Testament believers, the early believers were called to test the Spirits to see if what was being told them was truly of God. That’s what we see in I John 4:1, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Well, there’s a whole host of so-called prophecies that these so-called “prophets” of the NAR have totally botched and totally gotten them wrong. Things in recent history like Trump and would he be elected or reelected or would he be impeached. Or COVID-19. It had all kinds of wacky prophecies that were dead wrong on modern day historical events.

Of course, you go back to the Old Testament. The surest sign that determines if somebody is a false prophet is their batting average in the prophecies they declare and those that are actually correct. Deuteronomy 18:22, “When a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which Yahweh has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously.” That’s what we have with the NAR, fueled by the zeal of C. Peter Wagner, who saw the success of modern-day spiritual revival as being tied to the resurrection, so to speak, of the offices of apostle and prophet. We now have men and some women masquerading as apostles and prophets, wielding these made-up powers which they attribute to the Holy Spirit. What they are doing, sadly, is pointing people away and tragically so from the actual ministry of the Spirit. They’re pointing people away from what it means to truly worship in the Spirit. When you’re worshipping in the Spirit the focus is not again on whatever amazing experience you had or those incredible signs and wonders you perform or bringing glory to yourself. Again, the focus of the Spirit is bringing glory to Christ. John 16:14, “He will glorify Me.” Jesus said.

Now is the Spirit at work in believers today? I guarantee you somebody will comment on this at some point. Not from our church of course and say you’re putting God in a box. You’re minimizing, you’re demeaning the work of the Spirit today. You’re robbing God. You’re taking away from His power by saying He doesn’t do certain things today. Is the Spirit at work among believers today? Absolutely He is. Of course He is. It’s what we’ve been studying all summer. But the way that He works among us today is not through fire tunnels, and not through holy laughing. Not through Shekinah glory clouds or angel feathers falling from the auditorium ceiling. It’s not through men and women who call themselves prophets and apostles. Instead, the Spirit ministers to us by, He works in us by the very things we’ve been studying all summer. By regenerating us, baptizing us, sealing us at the moment of conversion. Then once we’re saved, by instructing us, guiding us, teaching us, leading us, and conforming us into the image of our Savior Jesus Christ. So, there’s plenty that the Spirit does today and there’s plenty to give Him praise for, for all that He does in our midst as followers of Jesus. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this chance this evening to do something a little different. More of a historical survey of the development of doctrine that is contrary to what Your Word reveals. God, I know that sometimes lessons like these can be a bit cumbersome. It’s not the diet that we’re used to but part of the role here is to Titus 1:9, not only instruct in sound doctrine but to refute those who contradict. Tonight’s message has been more in that latter spirit to call out bad teaching, poor teaching, wrong teaching about Your Spirit. Help us to take what we’ve learned this evening and not just this evening but all summer long. And rejoice in knowing you through your son Jesus Christ. And rejoice in knowing that we have the Spirit living in us. And rejoice in knowing that He conforms us, He teaches us, He prepares us, and He makes us to be more like our Savior the Lord Jesus. We pray that Your Spirit would work in us this week as we strive to live by the Spirit and walk in the Spirit, demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit as we grow in grace and knowledge of our Savior. It is in His name we pray, Amen.