HERESIES OF
NEO-PENTECOSTALS
Those that think that after their conversion, believers still need to receive the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” are known as "neo-Pentecostals" or "Charismatic": according to them that baptism is accompanied by spiritual gifts, particularly the gift of languages, prophecy, and healing. The Greek original word charisma means a divine gift.
That doctrine appeared initially in 156 AC with a teacher called Montanus, but it was rejected by the churches of the time. It was brought up again in 1826 by a Presbyterian minister called Edward Irving, who, having been expelled by the Presbyterian church, founded his own church, that he called Apostolic Catholic church, because he believed the renewal of the spiritual gifts that disappeared during the apostolic time.
His ideas were disseminated slowly, arriving in the United States in 1896 where a Baptist pastor called Richard Sparling declared that the gifts of the first century of Christianity were being restored; among his "converted" were two brothers who founded the Church of God of the South.
From 1907 to 1940 there was a fast growth of the charismatic movement, but little unity. The churches were divided as new ideas went on appearing and being transformed into doctrines; they got to such a point that, in Detroit, a woman called Mrs. Beal began a work of distribution of spiritual gifts in mass, including the gift of condemning people to hell and of speaking in any language: the result was several nervous collapses and even suicides.
After the second World War the movement had a new impulse with the appearance of Oral Roberts who, helped by Damus Shacarian, went to the middle class promising immediate communication with God by means of baptism of the Holy Spirit, and so began the "Full Gospel Businessmen’s Association", which started to finance the whole movement.
The doctrines of the "Charismatics" vary very much between themselves, and so they are very divided, some arriving at the most absurd ideas in order to capture incautious people. For lack of space, we will limit ourselves, as in the other cases, to their basic heresies.
Baptism of the Holy Spirit
According to them, such baptism is a gift that is granted to whoever asks for it. The understanding as to when the baptism takes place varies from a group to another: for some, it doesn't matter whether the person has already converted to Christ, for others, it is only possible after conversion, and for others that baptism can only be obtained after sanctification. The way of baptism also varies between an individual experience, a collective experience, or the intercession or laying on of hands by pastors or elders.
In fact, the Word of God teaches nothing about a "second" baptism: its huge importance would no doubt call for it to be mentioned clear and repeatedly in the epistles of the New Testament. Much to the contrary, the apostles' doctrine teaches that:
- there is only one baptism, by which we start to belong to Christ's body (Ephesians 4:5, Romans 6:3-4, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:27 and Colossians 2:12);
- the gift of the Holy Spirit is granted by the grace of God to all, without exception, on the occasion of the conversion of each one (Acts 10:44, 1 Corinthians 12:13);
- that action of God unites the Spiritually newborn to Christ on His death, burial and resurrection, not only making him a member of Christ's body, the true church, but also giving him the base for sanctification and for the life of victory in Christ (Romans 6:1-13).
Evidence of the “baptism” of the Holy Spirit.
They teach that the believer feels, by physical and emotional experience, when the Holy Spirit enters him, causing him to start to speak in "tongues."
But that is just a generalization and distortion of what happened, in special circumstances, in the beginning of the church: the gift of foreign languages was given to the first members of the church, in groups: to the disciples in Jerusalem, to the Gentiles, and finally to John the Baptist’s disciples as a sign to the Jews (Actions 2:4-11, Acts 10:46, 19:6, 1 Corinthians 14:21-22.).
There is no record in the Scriptures of anyone else receiving this gift in this manner! Peter, when defending himself for having entered and eaten at a Gentile’s home declared “as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, as upon us at the beginning” (eight years earlier) – this is good evidence that it had not happened again, private or collectively.
Existence of gifts of prophecy, languages and knowledge today
They sustain that we have reached a new period in which God pours His Spirit on His people, with signs and miracles, in the same way as it happened in the day of Pentecost (from where many of them take the denomination of Pentecostal). As a model, they take chapters 12 and 14 of I Corinthians, omitting chapter 13 where the word of God tells us that prophecies will fail, tongues will cease and knowledge will vanish away when the perfect (the complete revelation of the Gospel) has come, as those were only part (1 Corinthians 13:8-10). Revelation was completed with Jesus Christ's prophecy in the last book of the Bible, Revelation (Revelation 22:18-19).
The church in Corinth had been polluted with the bad customs and immorality of its environment, to such a point that the apostle Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, had to consign one of their members to Satan! It was a “charismatic” church, immature, immoral, their members got drunk during the Lord´s Supper, arrogant, indifferent, heretic subverting what Paul taught, divided, their teachers were eloquent in mundane philosophies, it was also lazy, boastful because of their "gifts", they took their contentions to the tribunals, there was infiltration of wrong doctrines on marriage and sexual conduct, they practiced divorce, the humblest were despised, women were teaching, speaking and taking positions of authority in the church, they didn't understand the meaning of spiritual gifts but were "endowed" with a bad memory because they soon forgot the message that had saved them.
Still more important, they were giving in to pressures of a social order, and they lacked the true love (1Corinthians 1:7,10,13, 27-2:5; 3:1, 5, 17, 18; 4:1-7; 5:1-5; 6:1-7,12-13,15-18; 7:1,11; 8:7-13; 11:3,18-19,21,23-33; 12:1; 14:20,26-34; 15:1,12,34; 16:1 ,13-14; 2 Corinthians 11:3; 13:5). In the letters written by Paul, it is the only church where the "gift of tongues" appears. Paul, far from approving the ecstatic babbling practiced at the church of Corinth, was obviously condemning it. Although the church had plenty knowledge and teaching, including by the apostle Paul, it was sick and had not reached maturity (1 Corinthians 2:12,13).
They thought they had all spiritual gifts; they were taught by the best “masters”, however their members were still spiritual babies, whose symptoms were diagnosed by Paul: selfishness, demonstrated by raising lawsuits amongst themselves (1 Corinthians 6:7) and by insistence in doing what they wanted without measuring the consequences to others; divisions amongst themselves instead separating themselves from the world; criticism directed to Paul, the man of God, and a tremendous tolerance of evil ((1 Corinthians 4:19, 11-13, etc.)