The Hump of the Camel

On the YouTube podcast I did recently for Leaving the Message I tentatively suggested that the Anglican clergymen who largely popularised the Charismatic Movement in Britain were reacting to a rather stiff, starchy and unemotional Evangelicalism (though there were quieter rumblings amongst Pentecostals and other Free Church people going back to the 1950s, already exposed to the US Latter Rain Movement).

In previous posts I’ve covered ground already trodden by many others in pointing out the dangers to individuals and churches of doctrines of Holy Spirit baptism and spiritual gifts that cannot be sustained from Scripture. I’ve also done a few posts (like this one) on how the theology of revival deeply associated with Pentecostalism, which has become the entire “evangelical” model, can actually pitch us against revival happening in other ways, through the Sovereign Lord’s wisdom and power. But today I want to make the claim that the Pentecostal/Charismatic “reclamation of the Holy Spirit” has paradoxically promoted a very low and limited understanding of the the third Person of the Trinity.

In my reply to Steve’s comment on my most recent post, I explain why I’m concerned about the doctrinal errors of even moderate Charismatics. Essentially, my point is that Satan uses apparently small deviations to corrupt entire churches, because contrary to the Hypercharismatics’ advice to “eat the meat and spit out the bones,” discernment is a gift that many immature believers, and not a few mature ones, do not possess.

I anticipate our church’s annual Nativity Service with the trepidation probably shared by anybody not having angelic, or at least haloed, children in the church, and undoubtedly less anxiety than those adults roped in to dress up in tea-towels for the grown-up lines. But this year’s, yesterday, was actually an uplifting surprise.