Strange Fire (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to Wretched Radio. Oh, wait a second.

Where are we, Steve? Welcome to the Strange Fire Conference. Where are we?

My name is Mike Abendroth with Steve Cooley. This is No Compromise Radio. And as we say in the Czech Republic, Steve? Aloha.

Bez kompromisu. Oh, without compromise.

See, I don't know much about the Slavic language, the family of the Slavic language tree, but I do know bez kompromisu. I am. It sounds Spanish. It does sound like it. I learned another word in Czech Republic, and again, you know, German, sometimes it's easier.

Wasser, water. You know, those are easy to pick up. Friend, you know, hund. Freund. Yeah. Hund. Transcendent. That's Czech. That's how they say it. So how do you say it in Czech? Transcendent. Because they just pick it up kind of like email, Wi-Fi.

How does that translate? Yeah, I know. Use it in a sentence. So today, since it's Tuesday, Steve, and you were there at the Strange Fire Conference, I think we have to kind of dissect it a little bit today.

Even though it's post-Strange Fire, it's just kind of an odd fire now. It's just a Kindle.

It's Kindle. You know, I could prove that I went there because I still have the wristband. I didn't wear it today, but yeah. Seriously, I don't know about these wristbands. Tell me about wristbands. They gave us Strange Fire wristbands instead of, like, badges at the conference.

So, you know, that was... Did they have a magnet in them? No, it was just so they could identify you as a Strange Conference attendee.

I heard that they were actually made out of the material they use for mood rings. And then you put it on your wrist, and if you're a charismatic, it would light up red.

Well, that's not true. But they did have two different colors, yellow and white. If you were white, you could go into the sanctuary. If you were yellow... Overflow. Overflow, yeah. How much does it cost for the overflow?

I don't think there was a difference. I think what happened was they somehow over-registered, or maybe they did charge less. I don't know. But they had a totally cool way of getting the book. You went in.

They had these little, like, ATMs. I don't know what they use them for. I think it was part of the child's ministry. So I thought it must be kind of cool because I think you actually... This is my theory, is you check your kids in using these things, and then it prints out a little, like, wristband or whatever.

So, which I thought was pretty sweet, we just punched in our phone number into this thing, and it spit out a... Book? A ticket. No, not quite. A ticket, though, which was refundable for a book.

Well, you know what? I kind of like that. I think back in my day, though, in the nursery at Grace Community Church, when I dropped Haley off for Luke, I'd have to put my wristband in there, and it would spit out a Gary Ezzo book.

Back in your day, was that after you lashed your horse to the post out front?

The Strange Fire Conference and Its Main Impressions

So let's talk about the Strange Fire Conference a little bit, Steve. And you were there, and tell me what were your first impressions, your overall impressions. The Lord would minister to your heart and speak to your spirit.

What were you thinking?

Well, you know, my first thought was, well, the Lord told me. No. You know, I think maybe the most impressive things to me, I mean, there were all kinds of, you know, presentations, obviously, there. I really liked Phil Johnson's.

But the one that really stuck with me, actually, was, strangely enough, was the Strange Fire-ly enough, was the one from Conrad Mbewe. And none of the presentations were overly biblical. I mean, it was unusual for me, you know, to go to like a Shepherds Conference-like event, and it wasn't just Bible, Bible, Bible.

But when Conrad Mbewe gets up there, he talks about how the charismatic movement has impacted Africa. And basically what he said was the so-called men of God, the pastors over there, the charismatic pastors over there, have become nothing but substitute witch doctors.

They're unable to just do anything because God told them. And he related the story of one man who had children with nine or ten different women at his church because, you know, he was the man of God and he could do whatever he wanted.

And he talked about how they actually rape women and beat women out in the mountains. That the one place you don't want to go is into the mountains with these so-called men of God because they just, you know, abuse people.

And he really did, he made a one-for-one. Basically, they've become the witch doctors of Africa, you know, and totally tearing down the name of Christ for so many people over there.

Why the Strange Fire Critique Matters

Well, I watched probably 70 of it online, and I did watch that one. I was encouraged to have somebody from, I think it'd be fair to say, Steve, outside the realm of the normal orbit of Grace Church, Master Seminary, Shepherds Conference guys.

And I appreciate Conrad who ministers there in Zambia and Lusaka year after year. Steve, when people say, well, I didn't really watch it, but this is my critique. I didn't really listen to it all, but this is my critique.

I know to some degree it's fair because I don't really need to read the new Driscoll book to already be bugged that he says, you know, some Protestant cessationists believe in the Father, Son, and the Holy Bible.

And yet he himself props up T .D. Jakes, and so you can criticize us with our view of the Trinity, which is a pretty big deal. And then, so I don't want to be overly hypocritical. How about underly?

Well, I guess for me, the number one thing I hated, and Phil Johnson addressed this, was just to read the allegations that MacArthur painted with too broad a brush. Because they never cite, in all the reviews I read that said, you know, MacArthur went after all the charismatics, said they're all going to hell.

They never cited one quote from MacArthur where he said, where he actually said that. So instead they just generalized and, you know, then condemned the generalization of what he never said. So it's like, you know, I'm going to build a mountain of straw, soak it with kerosene, and burn it down, and prove to you that MacArthur didn't tell the truth.

Steve, what I can't figure out is, since the Bible says we're to examine everything carefully, since the Bible also commends discernment in Acts chapter 17, in church history we have these debates. And so I don't think any thinking charismatic or thinking continuationist could say MacArthur is a liar, and he's a heretic, and he's a false teacher.

And, you know, I know there's some kind of weird fringe person, maybe. But in general, nobody can say that. And so I like it that Strange Fire has brought this again out into the open. And so I want to have other people write books, that is to say, continuationists write books, and kind of give a retort to it so we can define and crystallize these things.

I think it's good for evangelicalism. I don't like it when people say, well, this just divides the church. No, no, no. They're not thinking, I don't think, when they say that.

Charismatic Camp, Roman Catholicism, and False Teaching

Well, and as I said at the conference on a few occasions, you know, does it really divide the church if there are 500 million charismatics across the world? 120 million of them are Roman Catholics. Now, I'm not going to say that none of those people are saved.

But if they belong to the Roman Catholic Church, they belong to a system that does not teach the Bible and teaches a false way of salvation. Then there are the oneness Pentecostals that would also be in the charismatic camp and would also be outside of normative biblical Christianity.

You know, and then you have the word-faith teachers. And you just go on and on. You go, OK, so what are we really talking about? The people who should be potentially upset with MacArthur, who we should really be listening to, are the continuationists who actually believe the Bible.

So it would be a relatively small camp. We would be talking about sovereign grace, you know, people like Piper and, you know, some other people. I mean, it's a sliver of a sliver. We're not talking about hundreds of millions of Christians who should have been offended or concerned by the strange fire conference.

Steve, tell me if I'm thinking correctly or not. I'd like to be consistent, of course. You know, that hobgoblin consistency. Here's what I'm thinking. In cessationism, there are some strange people. We have weird Westboro Baptist people.

We have King James Only people. There are factions of people who call themselves cessationists, and they do believe those signed gifts of the New Testament have ceased. The can is closed. But I will critique them.

I will say things about them. I will say, you know, they're an error about this, that, or the other. But my question to you, Steve, is why is it that so many continuationists, like the Pipers, like the Grudems, like the C .J. Mahaney's, I'm thinking of Wayne Grudem here in particular, and I'll talk about this in a second.

They seem to want to defend charismatics when they shouldn't defend them, right? So there are some things that cessationists shouldn't defend other cessationists on because these people are whacked out.

So when, I guess here's, I'll just lay it on the line. When Wayne Grudem first reads Steve Chalke's book and it talks about substitutionary atonement being divine child abuse, he says it's blasphemy. But then later he recants and says to Adrian Warnock, well, I didn't really I shouldn't have probably used the word blasphemy.

Is it because they're charismatics and so they don't want to blast other charismatics?

Discernment, Continuationism, and the Authority of Scripture

Well, it's like their discernment goes out the window. Titus 1 .9 doesn't apply to their charismatic brethren. I mean you need to refute those who don't teach sound doctrine and we certainly do that with our cessationist non-friends.

You mentioned the people from Kansas or wherever they're from, that knuckleheaded church. But the King James Only folks, I mean there are whole books. Think about James White's book written about the King James Only controversy.

Those are people who would agree with us on that. But they don't agree with us on the major issues. And so like you said, where are the continuationists, not the cessationists is what I should have said earlier, the continuationists who will critique the false teachers, the fakers, the charlatans out there?

And why instead are they actually propping them up and ultimately defending them? And I don't think there's a good answer. I think because they've sort of in some ways put continuationism above the truth, sadly.

It seems to me that that's a priority. So when I hear Phil Johnson and Sam Storms and somebody else was on the radio show afterwards, Michael so-and-so, who was that guy? Oh, yeah.

I can't think of the guy's name. The guy who interrupted Phil Johnson and wouldn't let him talk? Yeah, that guy. Mr. Interrupter.

Always biblical, always interrupting, always in that order. But Sam Storms, who knows his Bible well, he was defending Mike Bickle. And I think he said something to the degree that he was the most godly man that he knows.

And so I can't argue with any of these statements because I don't know the validity of them. But here's another example that in my mind, until I'm corrected, I'm going to still believe it, that the charismatics who know better, like the Sam Storms, like the Wayne Grudems, I respect those men.

They defend people like Stephen Chalke and Bickle. You've seen Bickle before, haven't you?

I've seen Bickle. He was actually the featured Kansas City prophet on the night Tony Miano and I went to Mott Auditorium in Pasadena. And, you know, to observe the Toronto blessing for ourselves. And there were prophecies made, you know, all kinds of prophecies made over pastors and different people.

And then finally, Mike Bickle opened up the Bible and he said Matthew 22. And that was the night, the infamous night, where he gets to Matthew 22, 14. He says, many are called, but few are chosen. He says a better way to understand that is many are called, but few will accept.

And so I thought right away, well, certainly being a teacher, he's going to explain to us why in the Greek, accept is better than chosen. But he didn't do that, actually. And then we got into the carpet time and all the manifestations, so-called, of the spirit and people gnashing teeth and rolling around on the floor and acting crazy and jumping around.

And it was bizarre. Steve, this is a little off subject, but carpet time. I think that if I was a leader of one of those churches, though, I would spend a little bit more money on the carpet that was closer to the, quote-unquote, altar.

Just so there's a little more cushion down there, because otherwise we could run into some serious problems.

Yeah, I would want, you know, like wrestling mats or, you know, maybe like we used to use for judo when I was a kid. You know, these great big thick mats. Mormonism and judoism.

John MacArthur, the Holy Spirit, and the Power of Ministry

Steve, when MacArthur was talking to Jason Allen, who's the president of, I think, Midwestern now, Southern Baptist School. He used to be Mohler's right-hand man, that is Jason. You know, when John says, and I think rightfully so.

Okay, so John's ministered for 42 years as the senior pastor, 44 years, whatever it is now, plus many years before that in college ministry. At the end of the day, don't you have to say, if you're a continuationist, that John MacArthur's ministry could have been so much better if he would only have more of the Spirit's power or authority or indwelling significance or something?

So John's ministry's been lacking?

Well, I do have a little background on that, too, because, you know, when my wife came from, she was at a charismatic church. And when she came to our church, to Grace Community Church, the people at her church, when they found out where she was going to be going, this is exactly what they said about MacArthur.

They said, well, at least he's saved.

Well, I'm happy for that. At least he's saved. Well, when I first met Kim, my wife, we weren't married. Funny how that works.

Yeah, that is odd. I mean, if you meet somebody and you're married, dude, what happened during the wedding?

I think that'd be like a child bride deal overseas.

That would be like some kind of Abrahamic dream thing, you know, where you wake up and... Adam. Yeah, and God pronounced us man and wife. What do you know?

And so I went to church on the way for quite a while with Kim when we were dating, and Hayford was the pastor there. And the day, Steve, that I went to the Sherman Way campus, and Hayford had a bunch of, to use your words, knuckleheads up on stage, and he didn't get up and correct them, I knew there was a serious problem.

And I think it's the same root problem here with some of these other men whom I respect, like Storms and Grudem. It seems like if they say something negative about some of the extremes of charismatic stuff...

I mean, they'd go after Word Faith, of course. They'd go after T .D. Jakes, of course. But some of these other guys, I just think they believe it's hurting the cause of the Holy Spirit, and so they just give them more freedom.

Well, and it's this whole concept of we can't put the Holy Spirit in a box. And yet, you know, I don't know if you saw any of the videos they showed of Bethel Church during the conference. And some of the things that they're doing, you just look at it and you go, OK, this is exactly what Paul wrote about when he said, if an unbeliever shows up and sees this, he's going to think you people are crazy.

Because it doesn't look anything like a worship service. It looks like some kind of, at best, Middle Eastern thing. It looks like a combination between a mosh pit and, you know, some kind of Hindu chanting or whatever.

I mean, it makes no sense at all.

Christian Publishers, Business Decisions, and Discernment

Steve, what's your take as we talk a little bit about Strange Fire, charismatic issues, continuation and cessation? What's your take on Crossway Books? I see Crossway in many ways as an excellent publisher.

I've sent manuscripts to Crossway. I wish they would have published the manuscripts. Don't they do the ESV? Weren't we talking about that earlier? Oh, yeah. Bring that up maybe later if we have enough time.

But I guess it's all tied to Gospel Coalition. It's tied to Crossway. It seems like the publishing wing of Gospel Coalition. And they're promoting these books that are not cessationist. How do I think about this?

Tell me what my mindset should be.

Well, I think we just need to view, even Christian publishers, I think we just have to examine them and see if they're doing the right thing. And many of them don't. It is at the end of the day, I hate to use that phrase, it's a business.

And I think they sometimes make business decisions. We can't I think if we look to publishers to be theologians, to be elders, to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict, I think we're going to be disappointed.

And that's just the sad reality of the publishing business.

Steve, again, I'm just trying to work through this in my mind because I don't want to be overly hypocritical or overly Oh, go ahead. It sells, by the way.

That sells. Oh, there's a book title, Hypocrisy Sells.

In 1700s in New England you would have a lot of Calvinists and then slowly the Calvinists got replaced with a softer, more feminine view of Arminianism and liberal universalism and Unitarianism. And so you'd meet somebody in the early 1740s.

Oh, you're a congregational pastor? Oh, you're a Calvinist. And that was the majority. Steve, don't you think these days that the majority of Christians in the West and probably the East too, in Evangelicalism, cessationism is a minority now.

And so don't we think that the book publishing world will reflect that if most of the people buying books are continuationists? Then what about these cessationists? Because I have friends and I think they should know better.

Well, I don't want to say I'm a cessationist because I just need to leave the door open in case God wants to do something today.

I totally don't get it. And here's what I say. I'll tell you the same thing I told a good friend years ago. It's not God who needs the door held open. It's Satan. Right? Well, I mean, because if the door is shut, Satan can't come into your church.

If you don't permit just anything to go and, you know, just wildly attribute it to the Holy Spirit, then nothing untoward is going to happen. But if you hold that door open and then you want to measure things later and decide whether it's of God or not of God, you're going to have a lot of not of God in your church.

Sola Scriptura, Experience, and the Holy Spirit

Steve, when Dr. Thomas said back at Master's Seminary, and we've talked about this a lot, men, be careful on your elder board not to let charismatics in because it will eventually, as the generations go on, destroy your church.

What did he mean by that? I think he meant a little leaven, you know, spoils the lump. I mean, it really is just kind of holding the door open. You want to be a gentleman. You want to allow, you know, I want to allow the Holy Spirit to do his will.

Well, let's talk about our elder board for a minute at Bethlehem Bible Church. When we come to the elder meetings and we'd like to make a decision and it's 4 to 1 or it's 6 to 2 or it's 3 to 1, what we end up doing is we just have to talk about it.

And we can be firm in our beliefs and we differ, and we can be firm about that as well. But then we can't do anything except let's examine Scriptures. Now we're at an impasse, and so we're going to have to wait.

Sometimes we pull out the dice of decision.

That's right here with my oil of ole, right here, my holy oil. Ole. No, I think that's actually the oil of oy vey. It's a special Yiddish oil. Oil. No, but my point is this, that if we as cessationists think that God has spoken and he's done these miraculous things in the Bible, and now I have a closed canon, I functionally agree with the process and the theology of Sola Scriptura because I think if you're a continuationist, you deny the function of Sola Scriptura.

Yes, you do. No matter what you may say, you do. So now we have to make a decision. And so the Bible is spoken, and so we've got to figure out what God's will is. But what if I say, Steve, you know, God just led me, God told me, God spoke to me, I prayed, God said this, that, or the other, and revealed it, whatever kind of language we want to use.

What do you say then to that? If you say that, I'm going to be like, who kidnapped Mike Avendroth and what did they do with him? Because you mentioned the functionality of it, and this is the truth. Just by way of analogy, when we talk about Roman Catholicism, they have church traditions, church teaching, and the Bible.

And when church teaching or church tradition somehow differs from the Bible, which takes precedence? Well, it's the teaching or the tradition. In the same way with continuationists, they have experience and they have the Bible.

Well, what happens when experience trumps the Bible? The Bible gets the boot, and they can deny that all they want. But that's the truth. When you see some of the bizarre things that are done in the name of the Holy Spirit, and you just go, well, how does that point to Christ, which is the Holy Spirit's work?

How does that, you know, edify the congregation? How does that bring about church unity? How does it do anything that the Holy Spirit does? And the answer is, it doesn't.

Then you're really stuck. Well, then I guess you get guys like John Piper who go speak at the Shepherds Conference eight or ten years ago, whenever it was, and MacArthur wants them to do Desiring God as an overview.

But if the Spirit of God is telling you to do racial reconciliation, then who do you obey, the Holy Spirit or John MacArthur? Well, you remember what he said. What did he say? He said, I'm going to do both.

I just remember going. That means you don't submit to the authority of John MacArthur and the elders, and that means you don't completely submit to the authority of the Holy Spirit. Oh, man. Which one is it?

Yeah. I just was in Poland speaking, Steve, and I said to them, the evangelicals there, and it was a great group of folks, and I was super encouraged, and I said to some of them who are continuationists, I said, you all hate the Roman Catholic system that adds tradition, the magisterium, Pope, ex cathedra, councils, canons, et cetera, because it goes against sola scriptura, and it defames Scripture, yet you're open to God told me, God led me, I had a peace about it, further revelation, and what's the difference?

There is no difference. Functionally, there is zero difference.

Well, my name is Mike Avinroth. There's Steve Cooley here as well in the studio, and we are thankful that you listen. Today's just been kind of meandering through the tulips of charismaticism. But I have a word to close the show.

Yes, yes, why don't you give me that? What's the chapter and verse? I don't have one. Well, if you want to hear from God audibly, I'd like to suggest this in closing, that you read the Bible out loud.

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