What is the Charismatic movement?

Of recent years a number of sincere and earnest Christians have been much taken up with certain remarkable doings and manifestations, which, they claim are a revival of those spiritual gifts of a divine and miraculous kind which were comparatively common in the Apostolic age. In 1 Corinthians 12:7-10, we get a list of those gifts, but the claims as to a modern revival are centred mainly in two only, the "gift" of healing and the "gift" of tongues.

At the present moment many excellent Christians are filled with a great longing for some display of spiritual power of a wholly extraordinary sort. Impressed, doubtless, with the low estate of the professing church, they long for something unprecedented — at all events in these latter times — something miraculous which may rehabilitate her in the eyes of the world, rally her scattered forces, and close the mouths of her critics. The desire runs particularly into two channels just now — miraculous powers of bodily healing and speaking with tongues.

Ever since the Day of Pentecost, when the Gift of Tongues startled the multitudes at Jerusalem, and the Gift of Divine Healing, conferred upon the early disciples, drew attention to the Gospel and attested it as coming from God, there have arisen repeatedly religious movements claiming the revival of these Pentecostal gifts.

(For a number of years movements have started which claim to be a new Pentecost. The gift of tongues is the leading feature. They go by different names--Apostolic Faith--Pentecostal Faith--Latter-Day Rain, etc. But is it the work of the Holy Spirit? The divisions which exist in these movements, the unscriptural teachings which are held by some of them and the lack of love, besides other characteristics are not the marks of the energy and power of God's Spirit.)

Now, while it is true that there was such a gift as speaking in an unknown tongue in the apostolic age, and no Christian believer would doubt the power of God to impart to a person the gift to preach the Gospel in a foreign tongue, we do not believe that this gift of speaking in an unknown tongue was to abide in the church. Repeatedly claims were made in years gone by that it had been restored (for instance during the Irvingite delusion in England), but in every case it was found to be spurious or emanating from the enemy. The present day "apostolic or pentecostal movement" with its high pretensions and false doctrines, lacking true scriptural knowledge and wisdom, creating new schisms in the body, with its women leaders and teachers, has all the marks of the same great counterfeiter upon it. (For a closer examination of the speaking in tongues see our larger work on Acts.)

There were undoubtedly the Gifts of Healing and of Speaking with Tongues in the early church. The Scriptures give us ample confirmation of this. In regard to present-day claims, the question we have to ask is, DO THE TEACHING OF SCRIPTURE AND THE FACTS OF THIS MODERN MOVEMENT AGREE? If they agree, we can joyfully acknowledge the movement as of God, and throw ourselves unreservedly and wholeheartedly into it. But if there is a divergence between the Scriptural teaching on the subject and the facts of the movement, if that divergence is marked, and the movement is characterised by traits that Scripture manifestly condemns, then we may at once come to the conclusion that in the main it is not of God, and may be one of the latter-day deceptions, against which we are warned in the Word of God.

“Interpretation is present, prophecy is being bestowed, discerning of spirits is in operation, miracles are not unknown, gifts of healing are in the midst, and of others there are the buds of promise. We frankly admit that they are present in many cases in embryo, but whereas they were unknown absolutely before tongues came, they are in more or less operation now. The need to go on to perfection is agreed upon at once, but as far as He can, the Holy Ghost is bringing the gifts back in the train of the tongues. Ten years ago Acts 19 was a blank to some of us. Today we can affirm that it has all been enacted in the sphere of our immediate knowledge. Hallelujah!”§

Some of our readers may be unaware that similar pretensions were made in London nearly a hundred years ago by Edward Irving and his followers, the founders of the Catholic Apostolic Body. That movement began with utterances in tongues, which were said to be directly of God. It proceeded to appropriate all the gifts and functions of the early church, claiming the revival of apostles, prophets, angels, etc., and ended by the promulgation of blasphemous doctrine concerning the Person of our Lord.

In the time of the Apostles, we find they had miraculous gifts, and that the Holy Spirit of God conferred gifts on individuals, not generally, as witness the testimony of 1 Corinthians 12:8-11. We do not find the believers generally having these gifts, and they received the Holy Spirit without necessarily receiving special gifts. We find Peter, Paul, Stephen, Philip and Barnabas doing miracles, but the testimony is that the miraculous was confined to the few, it was not universal, it was for distinct purposes. It was not promised anywhere in Scripture to be continuous.

The miraculous gifts have often been likened to the church bells that call the congregation to the service, and once that is accomplished, they are silent. We believe from the testimony of Scripture that the miraculous gifts were the attestation in a wonderful way of the Divine message, and as soon as that attestation was effected, they ceased.

The gift of tongues especially became the manifest token of this divine work. Scriptures show that the gospel was told out by the gift of tongues; for the strangers heard the wonderful works of God, each in his own dialect (Acts 2:4, 8, 11; 10:46; 19:6); but it is wrong to conclude that one had not the Spirit of God if he had not this special gift. Tongues were for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not (1 Cor. 14:21-22). This is a fulfilment of Isaiah 28:11-12. We see from this prophecy that it was a sign especially intended to demonstrate to the unbelieving Jews their guilt in rejecting Christ.