The Charismatic Experience - by Erroll Hulse

Found here. My comments in bold.

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We're going to take the liberty of deleting some large sections of this long article so as to get to the meat of the issues.

Before we start we must note that the author needs to provide a biblical critique. But unfortunately he will not restrict his presentation to the biblical argument. We have previously set forth our requirements when considering the claims of cessationists. Any argument presented must

• be biblically based
• not appeal to contemporary expressions of other believers
• not appeal to silence
• not appeal to events or practices of history

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The Blessings, Main Problem and Dangers of the Charismatic Experience

1. The blessings

(...)

2. The main problem 

The main problem confronting us is simply, Have the charismatic gifts ceased or not? If they have not ceased and were never meant to cease, then the Charismatics have a cogent case when they say that this explains why the Church is weak. Also there is a strong argument that we should down tools and concentrate on the regaining of that which has been lost. This is a problem far greater than the questions posed by the second blessing issue. Thomas Smail in his book already referred to rightly concedes that there is ultimately only one blessing: (We address the semantics of "second blessing" here. Suffice to say, what charismatics mean by the second blessing is actually to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18).

‘How many blessings are there?’ The New Testament answer is ‘essentially one’. God has given us his one gift of himself in his Son, and everything else is contained in him. ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places’ (Eph. 1:3). However many and varied our spiritual experiences, they all have their unity and significance in the fact that they all proceed from him, reflect him, and glorify him.⁴

In the chapter on the baptism of the Spirit I point out that when we are united to Christ we are united to the whole of him. Regeneration and conversion together with justification and forgiveness do not form a first blessing with sanctification to follow at a later date as a second blessing. The main problem is not the second blessing issue. No, the main problem is the one that has been asserted and which can be stated in a different way as follows. Is this entire dispensation supposed to be extraordinary and charismatic? Is this whole time from Christ’s first advent to his second advent supposed to be filled with the miraculous and extraordinary gifts or not?

This main problem could be settled in a moment if we could find one statement which plainly or conclusively declares that it was God’s purpose to withdraw the charismata. No such text can be found. (Emphasis added.) This discovery by no means ends the dispute because the next question to be posed is this: Can it be proved by inference (Emphasis added.) from the Scripture that the Charismatic period ended with the apostles? As theologians might express it, is there a biblical hermeneutic which is decisive? Is there a principle inherent in the Scriptures which decides the issue? I believe there is. (Let's hope the author will lay out the Scriptures that infer this.)

The majority of those in the Evangelical Reformed tradition have been fully persuaded that the inferential argument is perfectly sound, valid and adequate. Those who have written on the subject include John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, George Smeaton, James Buchanan, B. B. Warfield and in our generation Walter Chantry.

It is alleged that to argue by inference is not to argue biblically. Furthermore it is thought that there is a tendency for Reformed believers to argue in a philosophical or speculative way. In reply to this I would agree that much care should be taken to avoid the snare of reasoning in an unbiblical fashion. However in this case I am persuaded that the observations and arguments regarding the cessation of the charismata are not only biblical, but thoroughly biblical! I believe that it is of the utmost importance that we observe that the Bible shows that God does act in a different way during different epochs. The most simple mind can observe plain facts of Bible history to which our attention is sometimes drawn. ‘John did no miracle’ (Jn. 10:41). There was a time when our Lord appeared by theophany and a time when he did not. The observations of such matters belongs to the order of biblical theology not philosophy. And biblical theology is of paramount importance.

My own summary of the inferential position I advance as follows. Apostles were temporary. All but the smallest of the Charismatic groups (the Apostolic Pentecostals) concede that. If they were temporary, then already we have established the principle of the extraordinary and temporary as against the ordinary and permanent. There are passages which show that the wonders, signs and miracles were given specifically to attest the veracity of the Gospel as established by the apostles. After all, the entire revelation depended on them (Heb. 2:4, 2 Cor. 12:12, Eph. 2:20). (Ah, finally the author gets down to offering Scripture. Let's quote them.

He. 2:4 God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

2Co. 12:12 The things that mark an apostle — signs, wonders and miracles — were done among you with great perseverance. 

Ep. 2:20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

So from these three Scriptures the author infers that our present day is not supposed to be "extraordinary and charismatic." But none of these Scriptures say that only apostles can perform signs and wonders, or that the only reason for signs and wonders are to attest to the apostles' ministry.)

Miraculous power was not confined to the apostles. Stephen, who was not an apostle, obviously possessed the gift of miracles. This was because it was the apostolic testimony at that time that required vindication. (Waaait. We thought miraculous powers were to authenticate the apostles? How does Stephen do that?)

I have never read of any person since the apostolic period who has possessed that same gift to perform perfect miracles as was possessed by Peter and Stephen. (Argument from the silence of history.)

Not for one moment do I deny that God could give the gift today but if he gave the gift of miracles it would be to attest something other than what was being attested while the apostles lived. (If attestation was the only reason, this would be true. But then the author would have to establish that attestation was the only reason for the miraculous.)

The mighty miracles, signs and wonders attested that they were telling the truth. We need no such attestation in that way today because such would be a slur and would cast a shadow over the Word of God. The Word itself is a perfect vindication of the truth of the Christ even in all its details. I would regret anybody insisting upon miracles to prove the New Testament record to be true. It is true without any further miracles or signs. If a person produced miracles out of God’s compassion for sick people (So the author seems to concede that the miraculous is not only to attest to the apostles' ministry.)

we would only rejoice in the mighty power of God and in his mercy, but this is different from rejoicing in a vindication that Jesus is raised from the dead. (Non Sequitur.) 

If someone is still not sure about the resurrection he must give attention to the more sure word of prophecy and not look for further miracles (2 Pet. 1:19). (Boy, do these cessationists hate to quote Scripture! 

2Pe. 1:9 But if anyone does not have them, he is short-sighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. 

"Them" refers to adding godly characteristics to one's life. So if someone does not have godly characteristics, Peter concludes they are blind and have forgotten their salvation. 

What this has to do with not looking for further miracles is anyone's guess.)

If they hear not Moses and the prophets neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead (Luke 16:31). (once again we quote the Scripture:

Lk. 16:28-31 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ 29 “Abraham replied, `They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’ 30 “`No, father Abraham,’ he said, `but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ 31 “He said to him, `If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’“

Again we search in vain for relevance. Jesus in telling this parable was teaching his audience that even his resurrection would not be enough for some to believe. This has nothing to do with the topic at hand.)

The gifts of tongues, interpretation of tongues, and prophecies were, according to B. B. Warfield in his chapter on the cessation of the charismata, common to all the churches. Although he was not there to see it we see no reason for rejecting his assertion. According to Edwards in his exposition of I Corinthians 13 these oral gifts were a means of edification until that which was perfect was established. Those who reject the possibility of establishing any argument from I Corinthians 13 on exegetical grounds should not be too quick to dismiss the principles produced by Edwards on that matter. There is a fundamental difference between ministering to a local church which possesses the whole Bible in writing, and by contrast, a pioneering situation in which the Scriptures have yet to be translated and published in the language of the people concerned. (What might that difference be?)

Edwards reasons well and powerfully when he contrasts the imperfect and infantile with the perfect and mature, supporting this further by a comparison of the present state with that which will be perfect in the consummate sense. Those who contemptuously dismiss Edwards with a wave of the hand tell us more about themselves than about Edwards! (After due consideration, we deem Edwards mistaken. We discuss "the perfect" here.)

Some have pointed out that if we concede that the absence of the Scriptures in writing constitutes an extraordinary situation, we should also concede that in such a case of infant development the situation could be assisted by the impression of extraordinary miracles or signs to attest the truth of the gospel.

My own response to that argument is that it is a sound and reasonable one. I would add that if God does give supernatural signs they will be of such an order that nobody could dispute them, just as nobody could contradict the miracles of Christ and his apostles. (Unfortunately for the author, those miracles were contradicted. [Mat. 12:24.])

There was no strain involved. The power signs just seemed to tumble out of heaven. They were given by God, with the stress on given. They were not extracted. History shows that men such as William Carey had to follow a long hard road of toil. Miracles could have tumbled out of heaven, but they did not. (Appeal to the silence of history.)

Carey could hardly have been blamed for a blockage. It would be absurd to attribute the lack of miracles to a lack of faith. Carey showed faith of superlative quality in persevering through so many difficulties.

The actual purpose of the gifts to attest or to edify provides a basis or principle upon which to distinguish between the extra-ordinary and the ordinary, the permanent and temporary. (Unsupported assertion.)

The lists of gifts vary. There is more stress on the supernatural gifts in I Corinthians 12 because Paul was dealing with the charismata in particular in that letter, whereas only prophecy belongs to the extraordinary category in the gifts mentioned in the Romans 12 passage. (That's a pretty big exception.)

Many of the Protestant consensus, including an increasing number of ex-Pentecostalists like myself are convinced by the inferential argument outlined above, the main principle of which is well summed up by Warfield as follows:

There is an inseparable connection of miracles with revelation as its mark or credential. Miracles do not appear on the page of Scripture vagrantly here, there and everywhere indifferently without assignable reason. They belong to revelation periods and appear only when God is speaking to his people through accredited messengers. Their abundant display in the Apostolic Church is the mark of the richness of that age in revelation; and when this revelation period closed, the period of miracle-working had passed by also as a matter of course.⁵ (There is much here to unpack, none of it good. First, Warfield presumes that miracles are inseparable from revelation, but does not supply us with a Scriptural reference for this. Second, he informs us there were "revelation periods," but nether does he document this. Third, he claims that "this revelation period closed," which means he is essentially using the thing he wishes to prove as evidence.) 

My personal belief on this matter is not that God cannot give a prophecy or a miracle. He can do anything he pleases. To believe in the cessation of the Charismata does not mean the cessation of the supernatural. What is meant is that whereas the miraculous was the norm with the apostles, now it is exceptional. We have no need to fret about it or get worked up about it. A miracle after the New Testament pattern is so plain, powerful and irrefutable that it would be futile to argue about it. (Scripture tells us otherwise. Jn. 9:8-41 is quite clear the Pharisees didn't believe Jesus healed the blind man.)

Probably God has done miracles and given some true prophecies since the apostolic era but they are of an exceptional and temporary category and not permanent. (Whaaa? The author has just conceded his entire case!)

(...)

Viewed pragmatically, what are the main reasons why many reject Pentecostal claims? Ken Haarhof distinguishes between the vocal gifts and the power gifts such as healing miracles. He points out that the gifts to do with speech greatly ‘outproportion’ the miracles of power. (Criticizing contemporary practices is not biblical proof.)

Almost all lay claim to tongues, fewer to interpretation of tongues, fewer still to prophecy, while those who would be ready to come forward as raisers of the dead hardly exist at all. Does not this disparity or disproportion contrast strongly with the apostolic era?

With regard to the vocal gifts my eyes began to open when I insisted on writing down interpretations of tongues and prophecies and comparing them with Scripture. The contrast in content and the poor quality were such that I could not accept that the vocal messages constituted the inspired work of the Holy Spirit. (Again, what happens in certain churches or with certain people is not a biblical argument.)

Also the way in which tongues are induced or taught contrasted completely with the way in which the Spirit fell upon believers in the apostolic period.

In this connection George Gardiner, an ex-Pentecostal minister who spent twenty-two years in the Charismatic Movement, has made some interesting observations about tongues. ‘Give me any group of people,’ he boldly declares, ‘who will do what I say, who will go through the ritual and do it with sincerity, and, in a matter of time, I will have them all speaking in ecstatic speech.’⁸ But he does qualify this further by insisting that controls be dropped and inhibitions be removed.

A further problem existed for me which has also perplexed many and that is the nature of the tongues spoken. Having participated myself and having seen and heard others in action I could never agree that these are real languages or in fact any kind of language which has a proper grammatical construction. The more I go on in the Christian life the more fond I become of language study and the more I am impressed by the complexity of languages. I find it hard to believe that angels would use languages that consist of basic sounds repeated over and over again, that is, language without proper syntax. I remain unpersuaded that glossolalia as it is practised today is the language of angels (I Cor. 13:1). I think they would be quite offended at such a claim. Some Pentecostal friends I have spoken with do not claim that tongues form the speech of angels but the issue is still relevant because it is hard to accept that the Holy Spirit is the inspirer of gibberish or that it is gibberish that is interpreted into the speech of men. (Continuing to cite contemporary practices, all of which are irrelevant to the biblical case.)

There are several books on tongues which are full of interest and information by men such as Parnell, Gromacki, Hoekema, and John Kildahi. After many years of research and analysis Kildahi came to the following conclusion in answering the question, is tongues a spiritual gift?

We have shown that speaking in tongues can be learned, almost as other abilities are learned. Whether one calls the practice a gift of the Spirit is, then, a matter of individual choice. Speaking in tongues does make the individual feel better, and theologically it is perhaps possible to claim that anything that makes one feel better is in some way a gift of God. We cannot quarrel with so broad an interpretation of the meaning of ‘gift’.

But we believe it is the use of glossolalia that determines whether or not it is a constructive phenomenon or rather damages and destroys. Glossolalia rarely benefits a wide segment of the community.

We hope therefore that its practitioners as well as the scientists who study the phenomenon will be modest in their claims for it. For it is not uniquely spiritual; it is not uniquely the result of God’s intervention in man’s speech. Whether or not it is a gift of God’s providential care for his people depends on varying subjective interpretations of the nature of what is spiritual and what constitutes a good gift for man.⁹

Furthermore the Scriptures say emphatically that tongues are a sign not to believers but unbelievers. Paul quotes Isaiah (28:11,12) in his exposition of this subject (I Cor. 14:21,22). (At last, a biblical argument! We are happy to concede that tongues are indeed a sign to believers. However, Paul goes to great lengths to instruct the Corinthian church about edification as well. That is, Paul would rather speak intelligible word than a tongue, because intelligible words edify the Body! [1Co. 14:12])

What about self-edification in tongue speaking? It is true that by this means one’s spirit can be moved and uplifted but the mind is not instructed. Moreover there is no way in which one can prove that the exercise is not self-induced or psychological.

When we turn from the vocal gifts to the power gifts, the matter of healing miracles is most prominent. This subject is analysed by B. B. Warfield in his treatise Counterfeit Miracles. It is easy to dismiss the author for being negative but if one of our own relatives had suddenly to make the choice between dependance (sic) on surgery or a miracle then Warfield’s book would be extremely relevant. We would want to be every bit as careful and perceptive as he was. (False binary choice.)

The difference between the miracles of our Lord and his apostles and the majority of claims made today (Appeal to contemporary experiences is not valid.)

is that theirs took a matter of seconds whereas so many today seem to be long drawn out affairs. (Except that Jesus took more than one try to heal the blind man [Mk. 8:22-25].)

I believe that God does intervene in an extraordinary way in some cases but like Ken Haarhof I have never come across a modern miracle that I could put into the same category as the New Testament miracles. (The author does not state the scripture that says this is a requirement.)

Either God has restored the gifts or he has not. If he has, then these questions would not and could not be raised because the power would be beyond dispute. (Hmmm. We don't know this. The church may have become apostate and thus powerless. There may be many miracles of which the author is unaware.)

We never read of anyone questioning the miracles of Jesus. (Which we just discovered is false.)

Some of his enemies attributed his power to Diabolus but no one doubted the authenticity of his miracles as such. (Hmmm again. If those miracle were attributed to the devil, then they by definition are not authentic.)

The difficulty of authenticity is one which perplexes many. So many claims simply lack the marks of authenticity. When Jesus fed the multitudes there was no doubt about the miracle. It was because he actually possessed power to create bread and fish that they tried to seize him to make him a king. (Which again begs a question. Why is today's church so powerless?)

To sum up the main problem I would say that if God did enable real miracles to be performed today, such as would pass the test of the scrutiny of the newspapermen and television men, we would need to be wry careful indeed in our evaluation of the purpose of such wonders. (Did Jesus call the scribes and pharisees when He was about to perform a miracle so as to have them attest to their veracity? Did Paul? Peter?)

We read of the fearful possibility of deception in Revelation 13:13,14 — of fire coming down from heaven in the sight of men, and of miracles. If persuaded however that the wonders bore every mark of being of God we could interpret them as a demonstration of the reality of the supernatural in a materialistic age, or if to do with healing, a proof of God’s compassion. We would not conclude that Scripture needed any further authentication. Nor would we conclude that now we must revert back to the extraordinary as the norm for the churches.

3. The Dangers of the Charismatic experience

(...)

(The author concludes with some sober and timely warnings any Christian, charismatic or not, would do well to heed.)

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Notes

February 28, 1975. A profile of the Charismatic Movement.
p. 17 Reflected Glory as published by Hodder, a 156 page small size paperback, 85p. Thomas A. Smail is the director of the Fountain Trust. He is a self-confessed Barthian. His doctrine of the person of Christ is heretical, cf. p. 66ff.
Quoted from an article on Christmas Evans by Robert Oliver in Reformation Today, issue 29.
ibid. p. 44
Counterfeit Miracles, p. 2 ff.
Reformation Today, issue 16.
See John Owen on schism, vol. 14 p. 364. Also see helpful article on this subject by Bill Payne, Reformation Today, issue 33.
Quoted from a tape-recorded message by George Gardiner of U.S.A.
The Psychology of Speaking in Tongues, John P. Kildahi, 1972, Hodder, p. 86.
ibid.
What Luther Says, vol. 2 pp. 702-714, 715-718.
An example of this is Demos Shakarian’s, The Happiest People on Earth, as told to John and Elizabeth Sherrill.
This statement made a powerful impact and was reported in the Church of England’s newspaper daily report for NEAC. Correspondence between David Watson and the author was published in Reformation Today, issue 38.
Let My People Grow, p. III.