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The Arminianist Charismatic: Why Some Abandon Their Faith

Many of the Reformed are clueless to this.

They have never been in these churches or exposed to this kind of teaching.

As you know, it is not sound.

Many follow these teachings because health and wealth sells.

What breaks my heart is how many believe these teachings. Nonetheless, the Lord controls all this.

The positive is that the Lord will save some out of it.

Apologies for getting off topic.
What breaks my heart is God being so badly misrepresented, and his people being so ignorant of the greatness of his majesty, and those who consider him not worth the time of day, because of what they have heard about him.
 
What breaks my heart is God being so badly misrepresented, and his people being so ignorant of the greatness of his majesty, and those who consider him not worth the time of day, because of what they have heard about him.

I will agree,

However, most of these people are not regenerate.

The unregenerate hate the Lord as you know.
 
I will agree,

However, most of these people are not regenerate.

The unregenerate hate the Lord as you know.
But God uses means, blinding some so that they will not see. It is not to the credit of false teachers that he uses them for that purpose.

But beyond that, it pains the believer to see his majesty go unnoticed. We should all be in awe and dumbfounded amazement of him. But we are not.


It is also worth mentioning, that what morally should happen, does not, very often. Those who will be in Heaven, overflowing with joy, will nevertheless have works burned, and their very thoughts laid bare. What should have belonged to God, will never be. (And, no, by that, I don't mean that some members (or all) of the Body of Christ, and of the Bride of Christ, will be lacking in any way what God had intended concerning them. She will be altogether without fault or blemish. But not by virtue of the individual.)
 
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Many of the Reformed are clueless to this.

They have never been in these churches or exposed to this kind of teaching.

As you know, it is not sound.

Many follow these teachings because health and wealth sells.

What breaks my heart is how many believe these teachings. Nonetheless, the Lord controls all this.

The positive is that the Lord will save some out of it.

Apologies for getting off topic.
You are probably right in saying that many are not aware of the practices and teachings of Charismatics that are false teachings. They are not all false and I firmly believe that there are those who are genuinely saved that are in those churches, but are simply deceived in some areas.

Ironically, in that too, God is glorified as nothing can take them out of his hands. But only a person who understands from the scriptures that it is God period, who saves, who understand the Doctrines of Grace, who would know this, or see this.

But it is those of us who are Reformed in our theology but were not always; who began as Charismatic Arminianists, or had come across it one way or another, who would know just how shaky is the ground they stand on. I would guess most are aware of the extremes, through videos and TV programs, the extreme of the extreme, such as Copeland and his crowd, and may think they are an anomaly---just crazies. And may not actually listen to or hear the depth of the false teaching involved. Such as, "Whatever Jesus did we can do also." "We are little Gods." "Faith (and that wrongly defined) is the conduit between man and God that God must respond to. Faith as a force." Our faith then becomes the mediator between God and man, not Christ. And the thing by which we manipulate God.
 
But God uses means, blinding some so that they will not see. It is not to the credit of false teachers that he uses them for that purpose.
I know this is just wording on your part---but I can't resist. There is no credit to either a false teacher or rightly handling the word of God.

However, even though God is using all of this for his purposes, the false teachers bear the responsibility of leading people astray. If they themselves are genuinely saved, and it is just a matter of ignorance (and not doing the proper homework of rightly handling the word of God) because they themselves have been deceived, they may be building on the proper foundation laid by the apostles and prophets, but with wood, hay, and straw.
 
makesends said:
But for the thing about tongues, (in its many expressions (sorry, couldn't resist)), mainstream Christianity has departed from Orthodoxy pretty much the same way the Charismatics have. Their gospel is just as corrupt, and in the same things.
Agree.
The non-Charismatic jeer at the Charismatic over the tongues thing and other related things but at the core, the real problem is bad doctrine, beginning with a weak Doctrine of God, a silly understanding of Sin, an anthropology derived from the authority of self—even to the point of believing that self is entirely capable of fully grasping truth —NO! Even causing truth!— and a miserable notion of who Christ is and what he has done—all of it failing to make it through to the core of the believer, that this life centers on Christ and what God has decreed/ God is doing. This is not about us, and it doesn't depend on us.
I am glad you brought that up about a weak doctrine of God, as in TG videos (and in my forum conversations with Arminnianists) that has become a starkly vivid problem. And when they are told that, had it demonstrated to them from scripture, it is like they went blind and deaf.

To use TG as an example, in mocking manner, he asks the question, "If God is good and he is all powerful, why is there evil in the world. Why are there tornadoes and hurricanes and earth quakes, and murders?"

The only thing that has been taught of the doctrine of God is that he is, sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. Beyond that, he is good and love. And they can't reconcile the first three with the last two, so they don't bother to do so, and create doctrines that satisfy, in their thinking, with good and love. In the process of course, the sovereignty, goes out the window unnoticed, and with it the omnipotence. They bridge the gap by saying things such as God sovereignly chose to not violate man's free will, as that would be evil (not good and not love), and place Jesus's success on the cross squarely in the hands of the sinner.

Which brings us to the lack of understanding sin you mention. And sin is treated more as just a word, a concept, (the world just calls it mistakes)rather than relating it to the holiness of the one who made them in his image and likeness. It does not take into consideration who God is at all. Part of the doctrine of God is not his holiness. Other than it being a word attributed to him. It is great to have my sins forgiven is pretty much the surface scratched in dealing with the matter.

What is missing in the doctrine of God among A'ists, be they Charismatic or not? He is good always and in all his ways. Yet he also reveals himself as vengeful (not revengeful) as destroying, as bringing calamity, of commanding wars and killing. The understanding of this seeming paradox does not come by pretending it doesn't exist, while at the same time asserting that God would be evil if only chose some to save and did not give everyone an equal chance.

The solution to the paradox is found in who God is, really. All his attributes are equal and equally active all the time and in everyplace. Including both his love, his goodness, and his justice. Perfect love cannot passively accept evil, it is love that brings wrath against what is not love. Perfect good cannot dwell with what is not good. It is good that brings wrath against the not good. Perfect justice cannot leave sin unpunished. It is justice that lays the foundation for the substitutionary atonement of Christ. It is justice that pours out his wrath against against the unbelieving sinner and the father of lies, the deceiver, for the sake of the Son and those he has given to him. it is love.
 
You're preaching to the choir, here. I have been to a few different Charismatic 'worship' services and even a C&MA couples' retreat, because of my in-laws (my in-laws who totaled two cars on the way to church, fighting) and at my wife's request, and I could not abide it. I have close friends whose two very young daughters died of some kind of unknown-to-this-day meningitis-like (the Mayo Clinic was sympathetic, but ultimately useless) brain disease after months of suffering, and a mutual acquaintance of ours had the gall to tell them it was because of the parent's lack of faith that the children were not healed. Wait, NO—God had apparently told him to call a meeting with us all so that he could tell them that! (It might be significant that it was not many years after that, that my friend (a pastor) discovered the Reformed point of view in Scripture, and in particular, that God does what God does for God's own reasons.)
That is a sad but not uncommon story. With two dangerous flaws that are actual teachings. One, that God has to do what our faith perceives. That is is us who created something out of nothing with our faith. A gross perversion of the definition of faith as given in the Bible. The faith the Bible speaks of is a gift of God that comes by GRACE, and through which we come to believe the gospel truths in Christ and him crucified.

It is not their definition which is a worldly faith defined by persistent unwavering belief that what they say will be, will be, because of the power in that faith to our will, not his, the greater power. I once read of a statement made by T.D. Jake where he perverted the Lord's prayer to MEAN, "Not thy will be done, buy my will be done." My sister emailed it to me fully believing it. She is caught in the deception, but her beginnings were not there, and I do believe she is truly saved. Her beginnings were in a legalistic and family cultish small church. It was me, I am ashamed to say, in my beginnings who brought her into a Charismatic church with a pastor who turned out to be a money grubbing charlatan who spent seventeen years in a Texas prison for fraud. But the church was ALIVE and made Christianity pertinent. I saw his true colors, never fully trusted him but was a babe, cringed at some of the things he did and said, not the least of which was he looked like Jim Baker, his wife Tammy, looked like Tammy Faye, he wore large rings of diamonds (probably fake) gold chains and drove a Cadilac---which he had to sell to make ends meet. But my sister did not see him for what he is until a few years ago (he had served his time and came right back to the church his wife pastored in his absence, divorced her, and still has his church.

Anyway, your account of the pastor above, is not unlike, what is found in Christian Science (what I grew up in). The only difference is in CS the faith was not connected to God or manipulating him, he is not a personal being in CS, but a faith not strong enough to replace the illusion of sickness or whatever (otherwise known among normal people as reality).
 
My closest non-Christian friend still refuses to believe, giving as his excuse all the descriptions he has heard (his whole 60 years), "They say that God is love; if so, then why is x and y true??? If God exists, then why can't I see him?? If blah blah blah. As we can expect, he won't listen to any answers, but I will keep him as uncomfortable as I can. But it galls me that he has grown up with these things as descriptions of what God is like. He may as well be entirely pagan! I can hardly wait for the day when it finally dawns on him why life is funny, why he can laugh at his own foibles, why there is beauty and love, why 2 + 2 = 4, and why there is existence.
See post #46. The same arguments that TG uses. Exactly like an unbeliever---therefore, an unbeliever. He did not abandon his faith, he never had it. No regeneration. Which is a strong argument against the invitation to Christ being what causes regeneration. As opposed to it being evidence that someone can lose their faith when the Bible so clearly says we cannot.

The Arminianist, Charismatic or otherwise---anyone who says in any form that their choice, freely made, is why God saved them, can assent to OSAS. But they do not have a solid biblical base holding up that belief, even though it is true. If their salvation is a result of their choice, what is holding them there but their choice? And it would be just as easy to decide to choose differently, in theory.

Now, maybe some have a stronger foundation that is also accurate. I'm sure they do, though I never heard it expressed. I too believed it was my choice but that I couldn't lose my salvation, because that was what I was taught. In my own mind and thoughts, my reasoning for the security was that if the blood of Jesus is what purchased me, it could not be un-purchased. Even though that is true, is even enough, there is more to it. And that is found in a correct understanding of the Doctrines of Grace. TULI make P absolute and necessary.
 
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