Pentecost Sunday – the Church’s birthday, as many call it. What a spectacular celebration that first one was! Picture the scene: violent winds roaring through the house, tongues of fire dancing above the apostles’ heads, languages flowing from lips that had never learned them, and Peter’s sermon converting 3,000 souls in a single day. It was like the grand opening of the most important enterprise in human history, complete with fireworks, fanfare, and miraculous demonstrations.
But here’s what I learned after losing twenty years of my life to the Charismatic movement: some people never want the birthday party to end. They keep expecting the same spectacular effects, the same dramatic displays, convinced that God operates today exactly as He did on that inaugural day. It’s like insisting that every birthday party must have the same elaborate decorations as the original celebration – even when the guest of honor has grown up and moved on to more mature expressions of relationship.
From Mainline to Sideline: My Descent into “Light”
Once upon a time, I was young and idealistic, heading off to college with dreams as big as the sky and a heart burning to please Jesus Christ. I had grown up in a solid mainline denomination, but during my college years, I encountered something that seemed more exciting, more alive, more real than anything I’d experienced before.
It started innocently enough in my Sunday school class. Other college students spoke about Jesus with an outward intensity and excitement that matched my own quieter devotion. I had never met people who were so expressive about their faith and their love for the Lord. Their enthusiasm was intoxicating, and like a moth drawn to flame, I wanted to be part of that excitement. They attended a nondenominational Charismatic Church on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. The energy in the services was palpable, the worship was passionate, and the supernatural seemed as common as morning coffee.
When the preachers taught about the baptism in the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues as evidence, I nodded along smugly. After all, I had read my Bible. I knew about Pentecost and the miracle of tongues. This modern manifestation seemed like the natural continuation of what God had always intended. I swallowed the teachings hook, line, and sinker, never bothering to open my Bible to investigate why churches with centuries of faithful history weren’t practicing these things.
Looking back, it’s like I traded a solid, well-built house for a carnival tent – dazzling and exciting, but built on shifting sand with no foundation to weather the storms ahead.
Twenty Years in the Wilderness of “Blessings”
What followed was a two-decade journey through what I can only call spiritual darkness masquerading as light. I became thoroughly entrenched in the name-it-and-claim-it branch of the movement. I accepted “prophecies” as direct words from God’s mouth and even delivered a few myself. Worse still, I taught these heretical doctrines to others, spreading the infection of error like a virus through a vulnerable population.
I was so deeply enamored with Charismatic teachings that no amount of logic or wisdom could have pried me loose. It’s terrifying to remember how misled I was and how determined I was to remain in that deception. Only the miraculous grace of God, poured out over years of patient work, was able to reach me and lead me back to sound doctrine and genuine joy.
The Pattern of God’s Miracle-Working
Here’s a question that should have occurred to me much sooner: Have you met anyone building an Ark lately? Of course not. We all understand that the rainbow was God’s promise that never again would such a flood occur or such a rescue vessel be needed. The message some of us miss is that just because God operates one way at a certain time in history, it doesn’t mean He’s obligated to operate the same way today.
Consider the heroes of faith throughout the Old Testament. Did Abraham perform miracles? What about Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, King David, King Solomon, Isaiah, or Jeremiah? The answer is no – none of them were miracle-workers in the sense that modern Charismatics claim to be.
I’m not saying God never performed supernatural acts during their lifetimes. He rained fire on Sodom and Gomorrah while Abraham watched. He turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt. He protected David from King Saul’s wrath under seemingly miraculous circumstances. But these were sovereign acts of God, performed without human mediators claiming special powers.
Looking at the sweep of biblical history, I believe there were only three distinct periods when God chose routinely to work through human agency to channel His miraculous power directly into individuals’ lives:
- During the lives of Moses and Joshua – establishing God’s people and law
- During the lives of Elijah and Elisha – calling Israel back from apostasy
- During the lives of Jesus and the apostles – launching the New Testament Church
Each period had a specific purpose: establishing something new or calling people back to truth. Like a master builder who uses scaffolding during construction but removes it once the building is complete, God used miraculous signs during these transitional periods, then withdrew them when their purpose was fulfilled.
The Problem with Modern “Tongues”
This brings me to the question I should have asked when I first entered the Charismatic Church: Why do some Christians believe the gift of tongues ceased with the apostles while others still practice it today?
The difference is like comparing a symphony orchestra to a child banging on pots and pans. Every time an apostle spoke in tongues in the early church, it was in a known language that unbelievers could understand. According to 1 Corinthians 14:22, tongues were specifically designed as “a sign to unbelievers.”
But today’s “tongues” – what practitioners call their “prayer language” – bears no resemblance to the biblical gift. It’s not an actual language; it has nothing to do with unbelievers, and its apparent purpose is to edify the speaker. This contradicts Paul’s clear teaching in 1 Corinthians 12:7 that spiritual gifts are meant “to profit all” the church, not just one glory-seeking individual.
Furthermore, Paul indicates that genuine spiritual gifts operate under the Holy Spirit’s control, yet the modern “prayer language” is practiced entirely at the whim of the speaker. I know because I did it myself for years. Today, I call it “jabber,” not tongues.
It’s like claiming to speak French while making random sounds that no French person could understand. Calling it “French” doesn’t make it a true language.
The “Perfect” Solution to Spiritual Gifts
After I escaped from “charismania,” I was frustrated that traditional denominations treated tongues, prophecies, and words of knowledge as non-issues, while newer Charismatic sects claimed to possess the same supernatural abilities as the apostles. I didn’t believe Christians had been too spiritually blind to recognize these gifts for nearly two thousand years. The more logical explanation is that these gifts were provided by God for a specific season – to ensure the infant Church received sound doctrine – and were then withdrawn when the apostles died and the New Testament was complete.
This understanding finally clicked when I spent a week meditating on 1 Corinthians 13:8-12. In verse 8, Paul states plainly that “prophecies will fail, tongues will cease, and knowledge will vanish away.” For years, I assumed he was talking about the situation in Heaven, but that interpretation never made sense in context. Why would Paul interrupt his teaching about spiritual gifts in the church to suddenly describe the afterlife?
The key is in verses 9-10, where Paul explains that the church must rely on “inadequate knowledge and prophecies for a season,” but that a time would come when they would have full understanding of God’s New Covenant – “when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.”
Think of it like this: imagine you’re trying to understand a complex story, but you only receive it in fragments – a sentence here, a paragraph there, delivered by various messengers at random times. Eventually, however, you receive the complete book. Once you have the whole story, you no longer need those scattered fragments. The “perfect” (complete) has replaced the “partial” (fragmentary).
Paul uses the analogy of looking into the poor-quality mirrors of his day – polished metal that gave only a vague, distorted reflection. Receiving scattered prophecies and words of knowledge was like looking into such a mirror: you got some idea of the image, but it wasn’t clear. When the complete canon of Scripture was compiled, God’s New Covenant became crystal clear, like looking directly at a person rather than trying to make out their reflection in tarnished metal.
The Madness of Modern “Prophecy”
By the end of my twenty-year sojourn in Charismatic circles, I was deeply troubled that “everybody and their dog had a Word from God.” It was spiritual chaos! I know without a doubt that the Lord – the magnificent, omnipotent Creator of Heaven and Earth – cannot be pleased with the random babblings attributed to Him.
It’s like claiming that Shakespeare personally dictated your grocery list or that Beethoven composed your doorbell’s melody. The gap between the majesty of God and the triviality of most modern “prophecies” is so vast that it borders on blasphemy.
God’s Dispensational Limits
Here’s a crucial truth that Paul reveals in Colossians 2:3: all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. They’re hidden, not obvious. We can’t simply skip through Scripture trying to appropriate every miracle and promise for our lives today. God is indeed the same yesterday, today, and forever, but He has established dispensational boundaries. He’s not obligated to exercise His power in today’s mature Church the same way He did when inaugurating a new organism and a new way of life.
Think of it like a master craftsman who uses different tools for different phases of a project. The hammer and chisel are essential when laying the foundation, but once the structure is complete, he switches to fine brushes and delicate instruments for the finishing work. The craftsman hasn’t changed, but his methods evolve according to what the work requires.
The Greatest Gift of All
First Corinthians 13 – the famous “Love Chapter” – sits right in the middle of Paul’s teaching on spiritual gifts, and I believe that’s no accident. The first three verses use deliberate hyperbole – tongues of angels, faith that moves mountains, a body surrendered to flames – to make a crucial point: LOVE, not spiritual gifts, is to be our goal.
Paul isn’t providing a blueprint for modern Charismatic doctrine when he mentions “tongues of angels.” He’s using literary exaggeration to emphasize that even the most spectacular spiritual gifts are worthless without love. It’s like saying, “Even if I could fly to the moon and back, but didn’t have love, I’d be nothing.” The point isn’t that moon travel is normative for Christians. It’s that love supersedes everything else.
A Warning for the Next Generation
Since my escape from Charismatic error, I’ve been deeply concerned that mainline churches aren’t equipping young people with the knowledge they need to avoid the pitfalls I stumbled into. I hear no teaching about the transitional nature of the apostolic period, no explanation for why some churches seek a “baptism in the Holy Spirit” while others don’t, no warnings against accepting modern “prophecies” as new revelation from God.
My heart trembles for today’s youth who head off to college as young, idealistic, and gullible as I was fifty-something years ago. They deserve better preparation for the spiritual minefields they’ll encounter.
The Bottom Line
Prophecies, tongues, and words of knowledge may cease, but faith, hope, and love will remain forever. And the greatest of these is love. The Lord probably cares less about who wins theological debates and more about whether the world knows His followers by their love.
Even so, we must not abandon sound doctrine in an effort to please those who value their interpretations above God’s truth. Like a lighthouse keeper who maintains his beacon not for his own benefit but for ships in danger of crashing on the rocks, we must hold fast to biblical truth – not out of pride or stubbornness, but out of love for those who might otherwise be shipwrecked by spiritual deception.
The journey out of Charismatic darkness was long and difficult, but it led me to a deeper appreciation for God’s Word, a clearer understanding of His methods, and a more mature faith built on the solid rock of Scripture rather than the shifting sands of subjective experience. For that deliverance, I will be eternally grateful.
Looking back on this journey, I’m reminded that spiritual maturity often means trading the spectacular for the substantial, the flashy for the faithful, and the experiential for the eternal. The real miracle isn’t in supernatural displays that dazzle the senses, but in the quiet transformation of hearts that learn to love as Christ loved – steadily, sacrificially, and without fanfare.
Because I believe fiction is powerful, I wrote Darkness Under His Feet to expose some of the errors in “charismania.” You can download and read the novel for free on this website.
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Knowing the Unknowable One
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Fighting the Good Fight of Faith
Christian Mysteries: Why I Love Them!
List of Some Nonfiction Books You Don’t Want to Miss
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