Growing In The Apostolic

Growing in the Prophetic
Though I had a powerful encounter with God, I was immediately convinced
by my Presbyterian youth leaders that the experience was a demonic counterfeit.
I concluded that I had been deceived and thus considered my experience
of speaking in tongues as a counterfeit experience. Immediately, I renounced
it and committed to resist anything charismatic. I reasoned that anything
that seemed so real could deceive other unsuspecting people unless they
were warned. So, I set out to warn other “innocent” believers to beware of
“counterfeit” experiences such as speaking in tongues.
For the next five years it became my personal mission to debunk charismatic
theology and rescue from deception those who also had been led
astray by “counterfeit” experiences.
I didn’t like charismatic people any more than I liked charismatic
theology. The ones I had met seemed to boast of having it all. I felt they were
arrogant as well as spiritually shallow. In my estimation, they were lacking
in many things, especially in passion for the Scriptures and personal holiness.
As a young Christian, I was a committed student of evangelical greats,
absorbing myself in the writings of J. I. Packer, John Stott, Jonathan Edwards,
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, A. W. Tozer, and others like them. I took my zeal
for evangelical orthodoxy and my crusade against supernatural gifts of the
Spirit with me everywhere I ministered God’s Word when I spoke at various
college campus ministries throughout the Midwest. My goal was to get charismatics
to denounce their experiences as being unscriptural counterfeits.
Another Terrible Mistake
In April 1976, at the age of twenty, I was invited to a small rural town to give
a sermon for a little Lutheran home group of twenty-five people. The small
town was Rosebud, Missouri, and was a one-hour drive from St. Louis. The
home group attendees were searching for a pastor to start a new church for
them. I did not know that they were involved in the Charismatic Renewal
that was sweeping through the Lutheran church at that time. I accepted
their invitation and taught on the baptism of the Holy Spirit from an anticharismatic
position. This was a sermon that I had taught many times on
college campuses. I took it from John Stott’s little book on the baptism of the
Holy Spirit. I wanted to make it clear to this home group that I didn’t want
anything to do with charismatic heresies.