Charismatics degrading revelation? Must be a day ending in a "y"

by Dan Phillips

The speaker here is Jennifer LeClaire. She's not some obscure figure off on the fringe; she is news editor at Charisma magazine — which I guess is the leaky-Canoneers' organ of record? At any rate, she's written books, she's got an internet presence, and on and on and on.

Plus, she's a preacher. Plus, she receives direct, verbal, extra-Scriptural revelation from God. And we're not talking feelings, impressions, hunches. We're talking about words from God that she can quote for us. And we need her to, right? Because they're not in our Bibles.

They're just Jennifer.

Well, not anymore, because she's thoughtfully passed on to us what God bypassed His Bible and His body of believers to speak to her only. And here it is. These are, according to Jennifer LeClaire, the words of God:

There is a great awakening coming to this nation. For I have heard your cries and I long to heal your land. I am a covenant God and I will not forget the covenant I made with your Founding Forefathers. Yes, there will be a shaking, but the foundations will not crack and they will not crumble. Only those things which can be shaken will be shaken that the sin in the land may be laid bare.

Well, it's all there, isn't it? It is a direct quotation of God. "I have heard your cries." Read the article: there is no "I might have gotten this exactly right," or "You have to understand, I'm about to impersonate God, but I don't mean you to think that I'm, you know, impersonating God," or "Remember how Grudem made it okay for me to redefine prophecy? There's my get-out-of-responsibility card!"

But wait, there's more.

This isn't the mere rehashing of Biblical generalities that many Charismatic pop-offecies feature. It actually imparts newly-revealed information, information that changes everything. "God" here tells us that "He" made a covenant with America's Founding Forefathers. Those Deists and Romanists and all-over-the-mappers were "His" covenant partners. Covenant with Abram, with Isaac, with Jacob... and with America's founders. The texts are Genesis 12, Exodus 2:24... and Jennifer.

And where is this covenant? What was the ceremony? When did it happen? What is the exact wording? Is it unilateral, bilateral, or what? Are there promises? What are they? Sanctions?

This is heavy, immense stuff. It changes history and our view of it. It changes the way we see America, and the way we need to demand that everyone sees America — you know, demand, in "God's" name, right? Because this is the Word of God. Like the Bible is.

And surely all the rest of us should put this in our preaching rotation, right? Because it's important. So: Proverbs, Ephesians, Gospel of John, prophecy of Isaiah, prophecy of Daniel, prophecy of Jennifer.

Plus, shouldn't living theologians schedule revisions of their texts? Especially Grudem? They weren't working with the full dataset.

There's a lot more in this prophecy. Interestingly, "God" calls the nation to repent — but "He" doesn't call this female preacher to repent of the obvious.

Are the high-traffic leaky-Canon-friendly reformed blogs all over this, either tearing it to shreds or preaching it up?

All right now, some of you are chuckling, some are groaning, some are gritting your teeth. Why am I doing this? (And this is nothing; we could go on, and on, and on.)

Because all of this is a perfect exhibition as to why the Strange Fire conference was necessary, and why conferences like Sufficient Fire are absolutely essential. The church has become inoculated and numbed to the outrageous audacity and distraction that is Charismaticism, and it has allowed its wonder and marvel and reverence over the Word of God to be adulterated down to the vaguest shadow of what it should be.

It's not a little thing. It's just treated like a little thing.

However, it is as if Christians who have a robust doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture have an unspoken agreement about our Charismatic siblings. When they start claiming direct revelation, or semi-hemi-demi revelation, we just smile with fond indulgence and wait until they're done. It's like Crazy Uncle Rufus. We all love him, so when he starts up about how President Bush ordered the bombing of the World Trade Center, or alien bovine probing, we just smile and wink at each other. It's just Crazy Uncle Rufus being Crazy Uncle Rufus. We love him. No harm done, right?

Not right.

Not right, and not to God's glory. Nor does it adorn our witness to the lost. Nor is it to the good of Christ's church...nor of Jennifer LeClaire, for that matter.

That someone should speak up is a given. That all who affirm Scripture's self-revelation should speak up, sound the alarm — also a given.

That so few do... that's the mystery, and that's the shame.

But one just has to do what one can.

ADDENDUM: this poor lady only blames a 360-word rant on God. Francis Chan now tells us God "asked" him to write a whole book. This isn't Chan's first irresponsible statement of the kind. What if these thoughts from 2010 had been echoed and made more of a focus among those with a robust doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture four years ago?

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How to Relate to the Story

by Frank Turk

Let me start by saying two things:

[1] Yes: I read Mark Driscoll's horn-tooting about the "New Calvinists."  He's already a disgrace, so piling on that post at the Resurgence is like trying to clean out the cat lady's house. First: remove all the cats.  I leave it to the staff at the Resurgence to begin the cat removal before we bother to attempt any other excavations.

[2] This post is, materially, a repost from 2008, but it is entirely worth it.

You know: the Gospel of Mark is the only Gospel which doesn't really give a "Christmas" account. Some people may say that John doesn't either, but maybe those people don't really understand why John goes from "in the Beginning" to "the Word became flesh".

At any rate, Mark has other fish to fry in telling the Good News of Jesus Christ, starting here:

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,

"Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
'Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,'"

John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, "After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

Now, when Mark wrote this, Leviticus and Deuteronomy would have been books ~1400 years old, (thanks Dan!) right? And Isaiah would have been a book about 700 years old. And the last OT prophet would have spoken about 400 years previous.

I mention that because even 400 years is a long time -- especially in an age with no internets and blogs, no printing press for weekly news magazines, no technological tools for preserving cultural foundations except pen and paper. Yet Mark makes a point of starting out his view of the Gospel by showing that in fact there is no Gospel without these pen and paper artifacts.

Think of this as a devotional moment for us as we consider Christmas -- because what we really want to do at Christmas is sort of close the Old Testament and get on with the angels, and the shepherds, and the girl with the forgiving fiance, and the stable, and the idea or the story that this Jesus fellow was relatable and therefore we should at least give him a chance to say what he has to say.

But when Mark starts his story of the Gospel of Jesus, he says first of all that this three thousand year old story is where the story of Jesus begins: the story of Jesus begins in the Prophets.

And in that, what the Prophets were saying about Jesus was not something like, "well: your view of God is evolving, Israel, and one day someone will help you to come to a more human way of relating to and thinking about God other than this sacrificial system you are bloodying the place up with today."

In fact, the Prophets were saying, "God Himself is coming, and you should 'make straight his path'."

What a thing to say, right? "Make straight His path".

Listen: Jesus is the one whose sandal we are unfit to untie, and we ought to be preparing the way for Him -- through repentance  through connecting to the Old Testament, and through the tutor of the Law which God gave us so that it will do good for us.

There's a voice crying out in the wilderness: make a straight path, for God is coming to dwell among us. Don't change the channel. Listen to this voice because it is good news -- even if it means that you have to admit that it is not the good news you were thinking you wanted to hear.

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