The Death Of Jan Crouch

[NorrinRadd]

I have to confess, the word of faith peeps are great entertainment.

I saw what you did there. ;-)

[NorrinRadd]

I'm glad someone pointed out that it's a satire site, because I really might not have known that from the "quotes," and even if I went to the page itself, I almost certainly would not have had the patience to scroll down to the bottom to see this:

"The Babylon Bee is Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire."

[Raphael]

I'm glad someone pointed out that it's a satire site, because I really might not have known that from the "quotes," and even if I went to the page itself, I almost certainly would not have had the patience to scroll down to the bottom to see this:

"The Babylon Bee is Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire."

They often have some really funny ones on there.

[NorrinRadd]

I didn't know it was a satirical site, I've never heard of it.

So I am not defending what they said. However, for the third time, it is horribly close to what the WoF teachers DO say.

I don't know if my friend's mother was told to not seek treatment. But it was obviously what she took away from the teaching she was sitting under.

They get conflicting messages. I started attending a WoF church about 4 years after I got saved, and continued there for close to 10 years (so I was there ca. '84 to '94). I read and listened to materials from numerous Faith preachers, mostly Dad Hagin. We were taught that we should not deny the reality of sickness (which would be Christian Science), we deny it has a right to exist in believers' bodies. We were not to go around "claiming" or "confessing" that we are NOT sick, while at the same time coughing and sneezing out gobs of goo, but rather to confess that we ARE healed by His stripes. We were absolutely to take advantage of modern medicine when necessary, but we were also encouraged to "build our faith" with the goal of not needing such natural medicine.

[NorrinRadd]

I am angry because of the lies these people tell to those who are hungry for an easy road to wealth and health, which is never delivered. They twist scripture and they preach a different Jesus and a different gospel. The people that follow them are like the crowds who followed Jesus because He fed them and healed them. And so many left Him when He was arrested and crucified. They were ONLY there for the miracles.

This movement is pervasive and the roots of it are evil. I am sure that there are a great many sincere pastors and followers who think they are ok. But they still need the truth proclaimed to them.

As I said earlier, it is too late to reach Jan Crouch. But it is not too late to reach the hundreds of millions of others worldwide who need the truth proclaimed to them.

If you want to know about the damage this movement does, then I urge you to watch these:

http://www.gty.org/Resources/strangefire/messages

All the messages are free to watch or listen to. And the information they hold is invaluable regarding this vile movement.

Do you know if there are transcripts available? I won't take the time to watch videos, but I would be willing to read a few transcripts, even though I consider J-Mac to be at best a marginally reliable source.

[mossrose]

Do you know if there are transcripts available? I won't take the time to watch videos, but I would be willing to read a few transcripts, even though I consider J-Mac to be at best a marginally reliable source.

If you click on the title of each message, the transcript is there below the video.

John does only 2 or 3 of the messages in the series. If nothing else, read Justin Peters' messages. He has spent his life on this issue. I am not sure if he mentions it here, but he has Cerebral Palsy and was taken to a faith healer as a teenager, where his father was told that if money was given to the so-called healer that Justin would be healed. Of course, that didn't happen. His father realized it was a sham and left.

You need to click on the Seminar Sessions tab for Peters' messages.

[mossrose]

They get conflicting messages. I started attending a WoF church about 4 years after I got saved, and continued there for close to 10 years (so I was there ca. '84 to '94). I read and listened to materials from numerous Faith preachers, mostly Dad Hagin. We were taught that we should not deny the reality of sickness (which would be Christian Science), we deny it has a right to exist in believers' bodies. We were not to go around "claiming" or "confessing" that we are NOT sick, while at the same time coughing and sneezing out gobs of goo, but rather to confess that we ARE healed by His stripes. We were absolutely to take advantage of modern medicine when necessary, but we were also encouraged to "build our faith" with the goal of not needing such natural medicine.

Maybe they weren't as bad 20 years ago.

[NorrinRadd]

If you click on the title of each message, the transcript is there below the video.

John does only 2 or 3 of the messages in the series. If nothing else, read Justin Peters' messages. He has spent his life on this issue. I am not sure if he mentions it here, but he has Cerebral Palsy and was taken to a faith healer as a teenager, where his father was told that if money was given to the so-called healer that Justin would be healed. Of course, that didn't happen. His father realized it was a sham and left.

You need to click on the Seminar Sessions tab for Peters' messages.

Thank you! I will check them out forthwith.

[NorrinRadd]

Maybe they weren't as bad 20 years ago.

There have always been wingnuts like Hobart Freeman. And IIRC, C&MA founder A.B. Simpson was more hardcore about "faith" healing than even most of the Faith preachers.

Even with the big names of the '80s, the mixed messages easily led to confusion and foolishness. We were plainly told to go to doctors and use medicine when needed, while at the same time encouraged to "build our faith" by "believing" for healing of "minor" issues. And for those of us who read a lot of Hagin, there were his assertions along the lines that "I haven't had so much as a headache in 40 years -- and I wouldn't admit it if I did!"

[NorrinRadd]

You need to click on the Seminar Sessions tab for Peters' messages.

Ok, I'm reading through the "Spiritual Shipwreck..." one, and I am frankly unimpressed. I find him to be in error in every paragraph so far.

[mossrose]

Ok, I'm reading through the "Spiritual Shipwreck..." one, and I am frankly unimpressed. I find him to be in error in every paragraph so far.

Until you can prove him wrong then I will believe him over you.

[NorrinRadd]

Until you can prove him wrong then I will believe him over you.

Define "prove."

[mossrose]

Define "prove."

Come on, you know exactly what I meant. You say he's in error in every paragraph so far. Show me where he's wrong and show me proof that he's wrong.

[NorrinRadd]

Come on, you know exactly what I meant. You say he's in error in every paragraph so far. Show me where he's wrong and show me proof that he's wrong.

If you mean "proof" in the sense of "See here he claims that Brother Tootybooty is a three-headed monkey, and these pictures clearly show that Brother Tootybooty only has two heads, not three," then I generally can't provide that kind of incontrovertible evidence.

I will assume you are sane enough to mean "proof" in a much looser sense. I'm happy to cite several of my areas of disagreement with him, and to explain why I disagree.

Here is the PDF.

The first paragraph from the body (i.e. just after the prayer and intro paragraphs):



1) I object to the "heretic" qualifier of "jerking and shaking." If he were ONLY referring to Hindus and Kundalini, fine. But his point is that in his mind, there is no difference between Kundalini and Charismaticism.

2) I object to the whole premise of the paragraph, which is that because to him Kundalini and Charismatic Christianity "look" similar, they must BE similar. This is an argument from opinion and perception, NOT Scripture.

3) I object to the certitude with which he declares that we Charismatic Christians are operating by some spirit other than the Holy Spirit. This is foolish of him, as it at the very least tiptoes at the "blaspheming the Spirit" line.



Here Justin and Apostle Whats-his-face are talking past each other. The latter's point is that the supernatural inherently transcends intellect, and those who insist on everything "making sense" are hindered by that attitude; however I agree that the "disconnect your head" phrasing is unfortunate. The former is one of those people hindered by excessive reliance on intellect. We do, after all, "walk by faith, not by sight." In Acts 19 and Gal. 3, Paul did not ask anyone to accurately recite some catechism, but rather based his conclusions on whether they had received the Spirit.




It is true that there is an unfortunate anti-intellectualism afoot. It is equally true that there is an equally noxious hyper-intellectualism afoot. It is the sort of thing that prizes doctrine to the *exclusion* of experience, something the Bible never tells us to do, and leads to the sort of silly Bibliolatry that claims we can "only" know Jesus by knowing His word.



I understand his discomfort with the notion of "apostles," especially when individuals go out of their way to claim the label for themselves. But if Scripture supports his conclusion at all, it does so weakly at best. The "capital A" thing is silly. First, of course, as far as we know, the Greek texts were written ONLY in capitals, so all apostles were "capital A" apostles. Besides that, Paul and Barnabas were not of "The Twelve," but there is no implication that Acts 14:14 meant some different "class" of apostles when it referred to them. Finally, there is no Biblical text that states that office would be removed at some point, and there are a few (1 Cor. 12-13; Eph. 4:11-16) suggest it will remain until the Church is mature and the Lord returns.


I'll break here and resume later.

[NorrinRadd]

"Apostolic gifts" is a made-up term, especially in the sense that Justin uses it. 1 Cor. 12 and Eph. 4 show that apostles, or "being" apostles, so to speak, is a gift. But there is nothing that identifies tongues, interpretation, prophecy, or healing as "apostolic."

There is also nothing in Scripture that states any of them would "cease" prior to the Church reaching maturity and the Lord returning. There are, on the other hand, MANY Scriptures that suggest they would remain, and that they are in no way limited to "apostles."



It is irrelevant that some pagans speak in tongues. The fact that Pharaoh's magicians were able to duplicate many of the wonders Moses performed did not mean those of Moses were false.




There are several important points here, some of them rather subtle.

One is that Paul never even hinted that the Corinthians were not speaking in "genuine" tongues, in spite of their inappropriate usage of them.

Another is that Corinth demonstrated that the gifts truly are "graces," since God gave them to that church in spite of the strife and immorality rampant there.

A third is the fact that, as Justin noted, Paul wrote to correct errors. This small point is an important matter of hermeneutics. It was true of much of the material in most of the Epistles. Here is the importance: Do we necessarily take instructions written to curb errors of particular churches "there and then" and directly apply them universally, including "here and now"?



The traditional Pentecostal view is that there are two "versions" of tongues -- one for prayer and praise, one for delivering messages. In their view, the "rules" of 1 Cor. 14 only apply to "message" tongues.

Another view is that there is only one "version" of tongues, and in order to avoid having the "rules" of 1 Cor. 14 conflict with Acts 2, 10, and 19, we must either assume those "rules" are only "suggestions," or else come up with definitions of "corporate worship" that satisfy Scripture and First Century practices.



First, it is a distinctly minority view that salvation is evidenced by speaking in tongues.

Second, it is certainly not "patently unbiblical." I don't happen to agree with the view, but there are enough passages that suggest it to cause me discomfort.

Third, unless Paul's rhetorical point is only that the body should embrace all the gifts and not neglect any, that portion of 1 Cor. 12 conflicts with several other portions of Scripture, including parts of 1 Cor. 14.

We can no more say that every Christian should speak in tongues than we could say that every
Christian should have the gift of teaching, or every Christian should have the gift of mercy. Every
Christian does not have every spiritual gift. The Holy Spirit distributes the gifts among the body as He
wills to do so, 1 Corinthians chapter 12. So this is patently unbiblical.

Again, "patently unbiblical" is an overstatement. John 14 teaches that the believer will do the same works that Jesus did; it does not teach that some believers will do some of the works, others believers will do different works. Mark 16 teaches that "they" will speak in tongues and lay hands on the sick, and the sick will recover; it does not teach that "some of them" will speak in tongues, "others of them" will lay hands on the sick, etc.



That's at best a narrow reading. 1 Cor. 14:4 says that the one speaking in tongues builds himself up. That is a good thing. 1 Cor. 14:14-15 treat "pray in tongues" and "pray in the Spirit" as parallel terms, and Jude 1:20 links "praying in the Spirit" with "building up oneself in ones faith."

So they were not ONLY given as a "sign."



One view (a minority one AFAICT) is that 14:22 is one of several instances of "mirror reading" in 1 Cor., such that Paul there quotes the Corinthians, and then corrects them in the following verses.

If we assume a more straightforward reading, then whatever Paul means has to make sense in the immediate context of 1 Cor. In that case, in light of v. 23, it signifies or invites "judgment" when used carelessly in a way that impedes helping infidels and unlearned.

In any case, it is debatable whether that is in view in Acts 2. Whatever is going on in Acts 2 has to also make sense in Acts 10 and 19, and the "judgment" thing does not seem to fit those latter cases. Justin notes that 1 Cor. 12:22 is often neglected, but it is just as true that most critics of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity neglect Acts 10 and 19, not to mention failing to consider the relationships between Luke 24 / Acts 1-2 and Luke 4.






That is unprovable. The only place where we *know* that at least some of the tongues were known languages is Acts 2, and it is there that some people -- infidels, n.b. -- mock them as drunken gibberish.




Actually, that IS pretty much the way I've seen it happen. Now, I don't happen to agree that is the proper understanding of 1 Cor. 14. I am among those who believe that, from the standpoint of the speaker, tongues is virtually if not literally always for prayer and praise first and foremost, and that it is a gift that is to be used freely and frequently in private, just a bit more carefully and reservedly in groups where only experienced believers are present, and much more carefully and reservedly any time unbelievers or untaught may be present.

Also, it is irrelevant whether the languages spoken are Swahili, Farsi, Klingon, or Eldarin. 1 Cor. 14 implies that whatever the Spirit-given languages are, we would expect that no human there would be able to understand them without the accompanying gift of interpretation.




I agree this is nutty. I have never seen any such thing in any of the dozen or so Pentecostal and Charismatic churches I've attended or visited. I've never heard any such thing from advocates of glossolalia such as Gordon Fee or Craig Keener, or even from Faith preachers.



I question whether Justin has any clue what the "Biblical" gift really is, so naturally I am among those who dispute the notion that it is not practiced today.

I see that he does not understand what the function of the gift is -- prayer, praise, self-edification -- so he errs in believing that function to have been fulfilled.

I see that Scripture teaches that the gifts will "cease" when the Church is mature and the Lord returns, so he errs in there.

Regarding his assertion about A.D. 58 and the NT record, the adage "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" applies.

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I'll now take another break. I have issues with some of the rest of his presentation, but not nearly as many, so I won't be in a big hurry to resume here.