Revival Review: Bad Acting Bites Believers

Lately something has become apparent to me.  Namely this:  radical Charismatics will believe almost anything if it contains a modicum of amusement and at least a passing reference to Jesus.  I don’t know what else to conclude when the unabashed showmanship which is being daily displayed in Lakeland Florida passes for a Christian revival.  Is this sort of formulaic hucksterism what Christianity is all about?  If it is, then man oh man I wish I had taken the blue pill.  Don’t get me wrong-I’m not afraid or intimidated by the goings on down South. I would just hate to think that I’d banked my life on a religion which checks its brain at the door in favor of an experience much less enthralling than Bonnaroo (and with a lot crappier music).  I know I haven’t but even the concept is worth a shudder.  By now I’ve watched a good bit of the Lakeland ‘process’ and am beginning to feel as if I’d seen a continuous loop of a bad SNL revival parody  (SNL would have been funnier though and at least the odd knowledge that ‘this is trying to pass as authentic’ doesn’t trouble me in a bad SNL parody).  Really though, it’s not even very good comedy, I mean, the whole ‘Bam’ old-lady-hits-the-floor thing is only funny the first couple of times, and then…wellllll.  You get my point.

With that said, I am not sure that people are being healed at the Lakeland revival.  Yeah I’ve read the testimonies, seen the x-rays, watched the people fall down on stage, and heard all about William Branham’s healing angel.  I am sure that there are many people who are so enamored with the idea of supernatural healing that they think that they must believe that they have been healed or somehow their faith is impure.  I am sure that many people believe that if they say that they have been healed then they will be, eventually.  I am sure that many people have so strongly tied their Christianity to sight and not faith. 

By that same token, I am painfully aware that this post touches a deep nerve in the radical Charismatic body. It offends one of their most deeply felt desires, that is for one day, in some meeting, prayer group, worship service, conference, that they will get the ultimate Holy Ghost ‘fix’. This is why so many are spiritual junkies (and I was one of them) on a tireless hunt for that definitive experience which will finally tell them that they have arrived as truly ’spiritual’.  Even so, I must emphatically state that ascended spiritual masters are not Christians. Christians live within an effective and certain hope of a future reality. The ‘Not yet’ aspect of glorification (when we will see Jesus and have the power of glorified bodies) is not within our grasp already. Radical Charismatics miss this tension entirely. They suffer from an over-realized eschatology which drives them in continual attempts to lasso the future and bring it into the present.

The various negative responses that I’ve encountered in my last post, ‘Todd Bentley in His Element’, confirm the existence of this radical Charismatic sore spot.  In exposing Bentley’s beliefs I attack the validity of the current great hope for many radical Charismatics.  Seriously, the fact that Paul Cain and Bob Jones endorse Bentley should be reason enough to take pause.    But that is only secondary to the real issue which is this:  The miracles aren’t the main thing. The belief which is promulgated alongside them is.  Miracles fade faith is staid.  Radical Charismatics are brainwashed into believing that surreptitious show business is what God is ‘really doing now’ through self-appointed super apostles, as opposed to meeting men and women (his children) through the suffering, mundane drudgery, minute joys, and fading mortality of this life.  Baby-steps of faith.  I would like to believe that hour by hour, day by day, we become more like Christ as we move into the purposeful future of our glorification-the time of which He has planned.  That’s simply not fantastic enough-radical Charismatics need some canned excitement.   The normal Christian life is too much about faith and perseverance and repentance, not enough about power and miracles and speaking things into existence.  This dichotomy between conviction and impression spawns a false hope driving its victims to project their desire at the earliest presenting opportunity.  Desire for the spectacular becomes so strong that when it is manufactured in live mockumentary via the Lakeland reality show, ahem, “healing revival”, that the first whiff of the miraculous is enough to cause a frenzy.  The frenzy becomes a melee, and the melee becomes a phenomenon.  Now it is simply too big to discredit. 

The Lakeland healing revival will be a footnote in the trainwreck which has become modern and post-modern radical Charismaticism.  Lakeland will end up like Toronto, desperately trying to recapture the ‘move’ of an earlier time.  People will drift away, carried by the high for a time, only to detox hard if they can’t find another fix quickly enough.  Others will come forward and admit to lying about healings, gold teeth, and pins melting out of their legs just like they did at the Airport Vineyard.  Finally, some will be driven out of radical Charismatic practice by the Holy Spirit when the bottom falls out of the experiential entrepreneurship they’ve subjected themselves to.  These will find solace in the beauty of the normal, human existence which the gospel allows for.  Dying daily is not sexy, but it is real.  I’ll take the real thank you.

Video of the week 5/2/08

Due to the exceedingly good posts this week, making it our best week ever, and due to the amazing blog posted just before this one (which you should read right now), the video of the week is not an emphasis this week… as you can tell by watching it.

There’s always tomorrow.

There is a certainty we all live with. One that no matter how hard we push to the outskirts of our minds finds its way back to the foreground of our thought. It finds its way back with every close call, every almost getting hit by the car that you didn’t see coming, every almost choking on that piece of food, and every time we get truly sick. This certainty dogs our steps, waiting to spring upon us like a jungle cat ambushing its prey. No man wants to face it, but all men will. Yes all men will stand face to face with this terrible certainty. All men must look death in the eye sooner or later. And that’s part of the problem isn’t it ? Whether it be sooner or later is not known. No one reading this post knows whether they have 50 years or 10 minutes left to live. In this respect we are all in the dark as to when this dreadful visitor will come calling.

To those without Christ this is a terrible reality. At any minute, any second, that monster death could devour you and take you to an eternity of eternal sorrow unimaginable. Around every corner it could be waiting to haul you in chains before the Most High God and then into its cold embrace for ever. “But I am young” you say and comfort yourself with the greatest lie men ever tell themselves: “It wont happen to me.. Not yet not now.” Your comfort is as hollow as the so called joys the world is offering you. You believe yourself special. You are you after all, terribly unique … (just like every one else). And like everyone else you too will die and you know not when. Even as you read, this could be your last morning. You may have already eaten your last meal, had your last conversation. This may be the last day you hold a gudge over a petty thing; the last day you hate your enemies. This day may very well be the last day of your rebellion against God. Woe to them that say “I will have my way for a time.. I will soe my wild oats and then I will repent in old age.” Woe to them that assume length of year in their pride; them that say “One more day and I will repent and follow Jesus.” Fool, do you not know that tonight your soul may be required of you? You would forfeit your last chance for mercy based on the hollow, untrue promise of a tomorrow that may never come. In truth, some of you reading this have already lived out most of your lives and when death comes there is no more illusion of “It won’t happen to me”. That is why the book of Hebrews proclaims that “today is the day of salvation”, for it very well may be your last and it is a terrible thing to fall unforgiven and rebellious into the hands of the living God. WAKE UP OH SLEEPER OR YOU MAY NEVER WAKE UP AT ALL! Then all your pleasent dreams will turn into all too real nightmares. Now is the time I implore you. Now is the time to lay down your idols and rebellious pleasures and turn to Christ for mercy. Now is the time to take God seriously for He is deadly serious. Now is the day to ask you to save you from your deception and sin. There may not be another.

To those who are His own this is a sober reality that is girded with joy. Sober because of what I have afore mentioned. Sober because this may be the last time you get to glorify God to those who need to see Him for the life of their souls. The last opportunity you have to tell them of Christ. The last time this side of forever you get to tell your loved ones how you feel. The last time you have opportuinty to forgive those who have wronged you, make peace and show charity. This may be the last post you read. The last day you have to tell God he is worthy while sin still pulls at your coat. Let me ask you, brethren, if you knew that tomorrow you would no longer be here, who would you forgive, who would you share the gospel with, how much harder would you love your wives, husbands, (and vice versa)? Would you have more patience with them that you have so little for now? Would you could you make the time to tell Jesus all the things you want to tell Him before you come home? Could you make the time to spend an hour, heck, even a half hour giving thanks and praise to him for His mercy in your life? Would you pray harder for the lost? Would you pray harder for the church? Whose needs would you reach out to meet today if you knew it were your last? It is a sober reality because today may very well be your last. How will you live it?

It is girded with joy because this may be the last time you feel the sting of rejection. The last time you have to tell God is worthy while sin still pulls at your coat. The last time you feel your heart stray as the temptations of sin the world and you flesh tug at your soul. The last time you know defeat. The last time you feel despair. Today may be the day that you walk into eternity as a man walks through an open door into a far greater country with a far greater soul. Today may be the day you with a sigh of relief lay down your sword and weep the words home and rest. Today may be the day you with cleansed eye behold the Savior’s face and feel His smile as He admires His finished work in your soul with satisfaction. Today, this very day, you may find yourself clutching His garment and weeping with a flood of joy as you fully and for the first time comprehend the meaning of grace, mercy, and the love of God. IS THIS NOT OUR GREAT HOPE? Today, you may with the voice of a super nova proclaim the praise of the Lamb in a purity undeserved a mercy unwarranted that will accentuate the joy of heaven with ever growing explosions of praise. This may be the last post I write. The last time I get to thank my hero of a wife for the way she loves me. The last time I get to hold my little ones and tell them that daddy loves them. The last time I have to warn the lost and those who walk the fence of a judgment that they by the grace of God might avoid. The last time I may extend mercy to those who have hurt me and to those that I love. Yet, even though the thought brings tears to my eyes and pain to my heart, the joy that awaits me is so great it far outweighs the sorrow. Now, at last, may we with Paul count these minor and temporary afflictions as nothing compared to the joy of knowing Christ as He has promised we shall.