...But the Charismatic movement can't be defined doctrinally. Why? Because it involves Pentecostals, Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, anybody and everybody. So it resists and has resisted any kind of doctrinal definition that is too rigid.
What they all hold in common is an experience which they will call the baptism of the Holy Spirit and they, wrongly, define the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a post-salvation experience that adds something to your Christian life that you previously didn't have and is usually accompanied by signs and wonders, most particularly, speaking in tongues. And we're going to talk much more about the baptism of the Holy Spirit in tongues at a later time…….
Paul was no Charismatic either, believe me. Paul was no Charismatic. He made divine truth the beginning and the ending of his ministry. It was the preaching of the truth revealed to him by the Spirit of God. Acts 17:2, "According to Paul's custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, 'This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.'" He was explaining the Scripture, he was delineating the Scripture. He had an experience. He went to Heaven! But God said, "You are not allowed to," what? "You're not allowed to talk about it." "I don't want anybody basing anything on your interpretation, on your experience." Paul never built his ministry on his visions, his experiences. He built it on what he knew was the revealed truth of God, and he called into question any experience that violated Scripture.
The end of his ministry in the 28 Acts, we find him at lodge, and people were there in large numbers; and he was explaining to them by solemnly testifying about the kingdom of God, and trying to persuade them concerning Jesus, from both the Law of Moses and from the Prophets, from morning until evening. He was in the Scripture trying to prove the truth from the pages of the Word of God.
Charismatics, like Jews of Paul's day have zeal without knowledge. Enthusiasm without enlightenment. They are often approaching truth without their minds, without thinking. Some even claim that God deliberately gives people unintelligible tongues in order to bypass and thus humble the proud human intellect. Beloved, this is a serious and tragic error.
John Macarthur
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