The Hump of the Camel

The complex web of people I examined in my last post seems to show that the leaders of extreme Charismatic and Pentecostal movements share a similar profile as well as a personal network- indeed, a profile that also matches the ancient historical originators of heterodox cults like the Montanists or the Valentinians. This may be summarised by saying they are con-men who appear to have become so detached from truth that they partially believe their own hype – deceiving and deceived, as Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:13.

There’s an interesting discussion between journalist Roman Balmakov and Christian commentator Eric Metaxas here. They discuss Metaxas’s call to metaphorical arms to the American Church to rescue their nation from the rapidly escalating decline, on the basis that the Church is the only institution that has a coherent enough ideology not to have been completely captured by the various totalitarian tendencies with which we have all, apart from the most obtuse, become familiar since 2020.

When I put up my three part offering on Pentecostal/Charismatic theology in March, I had no idea it would lead to such a long series (twelve posts prior to this one). That’s how relevant issues multiply when you start researching something.

In the last couple of posts (and more generally in my recent focus on Pentecostal theology) I’ve made mention both of revivalism, as the perennial hope of many Evangelicals, especially on the Charismatic wing; and apostasy, specifically in connection with prominent worship leaders, but I might equally have included church leaders and ordinary people.

At my last church, one of my fellow elders liked to introduce hymns with the back-story of those who had written them. You may be familiar with some of them.

I occasionally wonder how isolated communities of ancient (and sometimes rather esoteric) Christian denominations have survived under the servitude of Islam since the incursion of the Arabs many centuries ago. Supernatural perseverance aside, what factors prevent such populations simply capitulating to the dominant religion, with all the cultural advantages, and fading away over the generations? What makes a twentieth generation Egyptian pig farmer, denied education because he is a Coptic Christian, carry on?

In researching my recent posts on charismatic theology, contemporary Christian worship music and so on, I came across the fact that yet another serious sex scandal has hit the New Apostolic Reformation movement, this time involving the International House of Prayer in Kansas City and its leadership. Whatever else this shows it demonstrates that holding the (claimed) longest prayer meeting in history, not counting Count Zinzendorf’s famed Moravian one, doesn’t of itself guarantee the integrity of a ministry: as in most things spiritual, as well as in the world, the devil is in the detail.