I've just finished Strange Fire John MacArthur's latest offering on the Charismatic movement and it was an interesting read. I am not a Charismatic, not even one wearing a seat belt, I am not even a continuationist, its fair to say I place myself squarely in the cessasionist camp like John MacArthur. Yet this book is one that I nearly didn't finish as the first couple of chapters expressed MacArthur's distaste for the Charismatic movement with lots of words but very little reason. The only thing I got from these chapters is that MacArthur really doesn't like Charismatics. Also I felt that for some parts he was dependent upon Hank Hanagraaff's Christianity in Crisis. For me it the first two chapters were something of a paradox, I agree with his assessment: 'The "Holy Spirit" found in the vast majority of charismatic teaching and practise bears no resemblance to the true Spirit of God as revealed in Scripture. The Holy Spirit is not an electrifying current of ecstatic energy, a mind-numbing babbler of irrational speech, or a cosmic genie who indiscriminately grants self-centred wishes for health and wealth.' Yet before he gives any evidence of this he spends page after page saying the same thing so anyone who doesn't agree with him on this would struggle to go any further with the book. I know lots of Christians from the charismatic movement that are genuine believers who love the LORD and have a passion for the lost and that the first two chapters was unfair to them.
Much better for me was the history of the movement he points out that the original Pentecostal movement had strange beginnings and that what they experienced of tongues they thought was the gift of foreign languages so much so they thought they could go on the mission field and preach without language study. He rightly shows us that the name Pentecostal comes from Acts 2, which was languages understood by the hearers on the day of Pentecost. When their tongues was shown not to be anything other than gibberish they had to go back to the drawing board and come up with something else.
He has been accused of concentrating on the fringes and revealing the most extreme forms of the movement. In some sense I can see this is the case as for large parts he concentrates on the Word Faith Movement, people like Benny Hinn et al, and I would argue that these people are not charismatics they are outside of the charismatic movement. However Charismatics are the people who keep buying their books and giving them airspace. Even good reformed Charismatics like Terry Virgo and Adrian Warnock have said in public that they believe the Toronto Blessing and Lakeland Revival are genuine moves of God. Yet Toronto was started by Rodney Howard Brown and the Lakeland Revival was centred around the "ministry" of Todd Bentley both Word Faith Movement, Health and Wealth preachers.
On the morality of the movement I felt he was unfair as he said he could give hundred of examples, but the examples of lapsed morality he gave were the ones I also thought of Hinn and White, Bakker, Ted Haggard etc. Although he was right to point out these guys are disqualified from ministry but they don't stop, they just keep going and still claim to be anointed by God.
As he worked through the book it seemed to be that he didn't see there was any difference between moderate reformed charismatics like Wayne Grudem and John Piper and that he was writing them off with the same brushstrokes as Hinn and the Word Faith Movement. However the closing chapter has a very warm pastoral letter to his continuationist friends, the book would have been better in my opinion if he had started with this letter.
MacArthur closes with an appendix on the cessassion of the gifts throughout church history pointing out some key quotes from notable figures in the 2000 year history of the church.
Much of what MacArthur says in this book has probably needed to be said for a long time, maybe he isn't the person to say it but no-one else has stepped up to the plate.
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