Why Do Miracles Happen in Churches With Wrong Beliefs?

[Please note that the following transcript was auto generated and has not been proofed.]

Again, you’ve got to be critical here. You’ve got to be thinking, not negatively critical, but you have to be thinking and just thinking Scripture.

Question: Hello, dear friends, and I’ll be honest. First off, thank you for your ministry. God has used your material wonderfully over the years in my life. Some of Pastor Tim, James’ brother Paul’s sermons were instrumental in my conversion. They have been a great help to me in my walk and in growing in holiness and desire for Christ. Why do we see healings, conversions, and other fruit and manifestations of power sometimes from ministries that present questionable teaching? I’m not speaking of the larger, more public word of faith or New Apostolic Reformation so-called ministries that are so popular these days. He says this, “I’ve noticed in my city in Canada, a good number of instances of what appear on the surface to be genuine miracles come out of churches whose leadership tends toward the direction of word of faith.”

Okay, let’s not just assume things. Somebody give me a good definition of the word of faith. What is that?

Given over to the prosperity gospel and name it claim, it, whatever you say will happen. They think that if they say it, it somehow is going to automatically make it happen. Anybody know about the New Apostolic Reformation? I mean, I know it’s a you know about that. I mean, it’s a Pentecostal/charismatic type group. I know they have like sevenfold, seven mountains of something. Anyway, what do you know about them? I just watched some stuff on the Urban Gospel TV network, and some people say it doesn’t even exist. Basically, it’s, there is not a base. People do things that there are modern apostles and that this Apostolic Reformation will be, just like the Protestant Reformation with New Apostolic teachings.

He says that I’ve noticed in my city in Canada, a good number of instances of what appear on the surface to be genuine miracles come out of churches whose leadership tends toward the direction of word of faith. Here’s his question: Are these instances of the Lord honoring faith? So he’s asking, are these instances of the Lord honoring faith even though their knowledge is flawed, or are they false miracles? Do they fall into the category of Matthew 7:21-23? And of course, that’s where people are doing many mighty works in his name. And he says, I never knew you. In the end, these people seem to have genuinely performed miracles in the name of Christ. How do we handle these cases?

The issue is admittedly of particular interest to me, as the young woman I’m pursuing with the hopes of future marriage gets pulled into these circles a lot because of close friends she has in them. Her uncle also pastors one of these churches. So obviously this guy is getting a perspective through this girl. She’s got an uncle in this. So things are being communicated back to him. He’s observing things, whether it’s through her eyes or however. She sees the issues and potential dangers in associating with them but is swayed by what appears to be the spirit moving in their midst in evangelism and healing, where many other churches here lack initiative.

I’m greatly appreciative of whatever insight you might have to give on the subject. One of the things that pop out at once is the girl is swayed by what appears to be the spirit moving in their midst in evangelism and healing. So what happens is you observe what you think is miraculous. You’re swayed to believe it’s genuine because of the miraculous. And then what happens is you embrace their theology as probably genuine, maybe slightly flawed, but as a whole, embraceable. Why? Because you’ve authenticated this thing by the fact that you observe the miraculous. Any problem with that sort of thinking? Like maybe it’s backwards? Does that occur to you that that’s backwards? Does it occur to you that if you think that way, or you’re swayed that way, that you’re playing right into the hands of the devil? Does that occur to you?

Because if I am swayed by what appears to me to be miraculous. Brethren, let’s just ask this question he’s posing. But, like, think about this. Why do we see healings, conversions, and other fruit and manifestations of power sometimes from ministries that present questionable teaching? Well, maybe they’re converted. Maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re healed. Maybe they’re not. Manifestations of power. The arm of the devil’s powerful God is more powerful. But the devil is pretty powerful. And the devil can do powerful things that, even if possible, might deceive the elect. Somebody said somewhere one time. And so my wife doesn’t like when I say that. She said, Tim, don’t say that. And they think that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

So I want to talk about the possibilities here. This guy has presented something. What are the possibilities? Obviously, one possibility is the whole thing is totally demonic. It’s a demonic false religion and anything apparently supernatural is either a deception, it isn’t really, or it’s a supernatural expression of some demonic activity in their midst. That’s one possibility. Two, it may be that the people he’s dealing with actually have the truth, even though he says that they’re off in some areas or, you know, they tend towards some certain direction. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe they’re right. And maybe what he’s observing in them is altogether genuine. Maybe he’s right in that this is a situation where their doctrine is right in the core, but they’re kind of off in some other places, maybe some things we might say are more minor, and because they believe and they have faith, God does something there that he doesn’t do in a lot of reformed and Calvinistic groups, because Jesus doesn’t do many mighty works in certain places because of unbelief. Maybe there’s a whole lot of Calvinistic unbelief out there, and maybe some people that are in charismatic circles, maybe they have enough of the gospel where they’ve genuinely got saved, Pentecostal circles, and they have more faith than we have. Maybe there’s a possibility there.

Now, here’s the thing. We’re not there. One of the, what does Scripture tell us to do? What’s that? That’s to test the spirit. Where is that text found? First John 4. You should all know that we’re told to test the spirits. Okay, let me ask you this. What does that mean? Tell me what that means. Well, out doctrine and the devil’s way out there. Doctrine. Let me ask you this. If you came along and you found this church, and you found that, and you start looking around and it’s like, there’s sexual immorality, there’s fornication, there’s adultery here. And these brothers are suing each other. They’re off on the resurrection. You got people teaching weird doctrine here. And you guys over there, they’re speaking in tongues, and gays are prophesying. It’s like you look at it and they’re suing each other. And there’s obviously a problem with the women in the church, and there’s idolatry here, and there’s division. And the rich people aren’t waiting for the poor, and people are getting drunk at the Lord’s Supper. What do you think? They’re speaking in tongues. You think it’s genuine? You think it’s genuine? Test the spirits. What conclusion are you going to come to? Well, I didn’t know it was first Corinthians, I think it. You think it’s false? You might get. I was just getting a letter on the 13th. One, two, four. It says if there arises among you a prophet or dreamer of dreams who gives you a sign or a wonder and the sign of the wonder comes to pass, now which he spoke to you saying. This life. You are the God that you are not known. Let us serve him. We shall not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer of dreams, but the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.

So clearly, if somebody is trying to move us away from worshiping the God of Scripture, we would really need to know who the God of Scripture is. You know? Just watch. Just think with me. I find, without exception, the devil attacks two things always. He attacks the person and work of Jesus Christ, and he attacks the scriptures. Look at any movement. Look at any church. Look at whatever they profess to be or are. Look at what they say. Somebody comes along and says, what do you think about Seventh Day Adventists? What do you think about Seventh Day Baptists? What do you think about Church of Christ? What do you think about these different things? You know, all sorts of movements spring up in this group or that group, and just go right there every time. What do they believe about Jesus Christ? What do they believe about his work? His person? What do they believe about scriptures? You examine them at that level. You will expose the devil every single time. He attacks those two things. He can’t tolerate them. He hates them. You want to look for testing the spirits? What spirit is this of? And be very careful. In much of the false Pentecostal charismatic circles, the spirit in those religions exalts himself. The spirit of Scripture exalts Christ. Make no mistake about it. That’s what Jesus says. He will glorify me. And so then you want to look for that.

The devil in the garden attacked the word. You look at the error. Just think about like first John. What’s the error? It’s to say the wrong thing about Christ. If you’re looking for the Antichrist. So if we’re testing the spirits, listen. There is a large amount of unbelief in reformed circles. I believe it with my whole heart. You can tell how much people really believe by what they’re willing to trust God to do, how much they’re willing to step out in, trust in. I can

remember Brother Andy, a missionary that we support, and he was talking about people like Amy Carmichael. If you look carefully, Amy Carmichael, obviously a woman, she was in India. She rescued all sorts of children from these Hindu temples. She took over a thousand children in. She would preach to men. You see, I don’t like that. She’s a false prophet. Andy has made the point that there are certain people throughout church history that know 100 times less than us, but they do a thousand times more.

So be careful. Listen, if you test people at the level of what they believe about Christ and the level of what they believe about Scripture, they may be charismatic, they may be Arminian, but just be careful. Be careful, because sometimes people don’t agree with you in certain areas. Women in a mixed congregation of the church should not be. I mean, we don’t approve of women elders and women preaching to men, but historically things like that have happened. Is that a reason to cut them off? Like, you start looking at their life and you almost have to hang your head in shame at what they accomplished for the Lord. I know this. I quoted from a book at this last conference, the fellowship conference by John Nevins. John Nevins was actually a Presbyterian. He lived in the days of Hudson Taylor. He was working in China, and he began to have experiences with the demonic. So what he did was he reached out to all of these good, solid, doctrinally solid missionaries that were working in China. He wanted to hear their stories. You start reading, and I read today, and one of the missionaries that wrote to Nevins was relating his experiences. He said that what he found is when you had these brand new Chinese converts in simple faith, they opened up their Bibles and saw how demons were dealt with in Scripture, and they were just naive enough to turn around and simply apply what they found in Scripture to their own lives. And God blessed it.

Jeff was telling me he was recently reading a book put out by a Methodist from Asbury College who was writing on the miraculous. Jeff recounted situations in other countries where they would actually ask the American missionaries not to pray with them, and the Americans feel, why? Because you don’t believe in and. I think there’s something to that. And so, you know what? Sometimes you get things happening in Canada. It’s really none of our business. I mean, it doesn’t have anything to do with us. It has something to do with this guy, but it doesn’t have anything to do with us, and we’re not close enough to really be able to test the spirits. But we recognize that, you know what? I’ve had similar thoughts before that I have a feeling there are some groups out there where their faith is just simple enough, and they’re seeing God do things that we don’t get to see, because in simple faith, they have an expectation that God is going to do them. They may not cross every single T with us in God, every single I with us. But they have a simple faith in the Lord Jesus.

The thing is, he’s talking about in Canada and he’s observing. He’s observing not just one church or one person. He’s kind of being general. So I don’t know. You don’t know. I don’t know because we don’t know them. We’re not even, we don’t have the perspective to be able to test the spirits. But just because somebody disagrees on some peripheral things, you’ve got to look at the heart. You’ve got to look at the gospel. You’ve got to look at what is their take on Scripture. I mean, brethren, I can tell you this, that one of my great heroes is John Wesley. As Arminian as he was, and some of the perspectives he had on things like, you know, perfectionism or election. He probably had far more fruit than any of us will ever have. I know he was a hero of Spurgeon’s and sometimes we almost start by, you know, how perfect is somebody’s doctrine in aligning with what we think of Calvinistic Christianity. And brethren, sometimes there’s people out there with a whole lot less knowledge that have a whole lot more faith. So be careful that you don’t measure things by the wrong thing. You test in the spirit. Go to the heart of the matter. You can never get away from this. What do they say about Christ? What do they say about the Scriptures? If you’ve got them solid on those two points, be very careful that you dismiss them because the devil isn’t in the business of making people solid on those points. Any comments or questions with regards to that?

Brethren, you know what we don’t want? We don’t want to get to the end and have written off. I can remember one time calling one of these Reformed Baptist churches when I was down here at Community Baptist Church. I mean, they grilled me on what my position was on the Sabbath. And it’s almost, and you know, a lot of these guys from that group, they admit that they were swallowed up. They looked down their noses at everybody. They were hypercritical, hyperjudgmental. If you didn’t believe exactly how they believed with regards to the law, in regards to this, in regards to that. Brethren, as much as we do to one of the least of these children, we do it to him. I want to be very careful that we’re not dismissive of some of his genuine people, just because they don’t agree with us in every place. Be careful with that. Sometimes we can get this mindset, well, if you’re not of us, you know, should we call down fire on these people? Should we tell them to stop? Should we do this or whatever? And it’s like, don’t be of that spirit. Be careful. I tell you, one of the things they found when massive persecution came to Romania and they started throwing all these professing Christians into prison, you know, if you know about Richard Wurmbrand, you know, when you’re sitting in that dungeon, you care if the guy was a Methodist or a Lutheran, an Arminian? If you’re all sitting there and you’re in your chains and you’re breaking bread together, and your only hope is Christ, you don’t care if they were charismatic. God does save people in other circles than ours, folks.

Anything else on that point? I never heard your opinion on cessationism. Brother, if we’re going to cling to Scripture, then let’s cling to Scripture. I will say this. You will not find any verse in your Bible that says that anything given to the early church has ceased. It doesn’t exist. You may think certain things have ceased. You know what’s interesting? I was talking to Mac Tomlinson the other day. You know, Mac might preform with regards to this. Mac can’t sit. He hasn’t been able to sit for 50 days. He has told me again, God has been visiting him during this entire 50 days, and it has provided him an opportunity to really pour himself into his next book. You know what? He’s doing a book on the miraculous and the Scottish Covenanters. This is key for the Scottish Covenanters. Many of these guys were the Westminster divines. These are the guys that a lot of the reform movement in both Presbyterian and Baptist circles look up to. They, I mean, these are not guys that are easily dismissed. What Mac is doing is he’s researching all the supernatural that happened among these guys. How they freely spoke about prophesying and just, they were very persecuted. Sometimes they didn’t have Bibles. God was using them in all sorts of ways.

What’s the point? Well, these guys, the Scottish Covenanters, come along 15, 1600 years after the apostles, and they’re still seeing those things at that time. Brother Andy, some of you were here the last time he came here. One of our sisters said, can you tell us about things you’ve witnessed over there? He said, I could, but it would be sensationalized. So he chose not to. But I’ve sat with him in private and your mouth would hang open, and I’ll tell you, you hear some of Paul Washer’s stories about when he was in Peru. The same thing. Tozer said it and I, but you’ve probably often heard me say this, but Tozer said, you want to see the miraculous look on the front lines. You know, you can get a guy that comes along, one of these cessationist guys like John MacArthur, and say, well, where is it? I mean, if all this stuff is happening today, show me where. The problem is, when we are in our nice, air-conditioned building and there’s no real persecution, I mean, people aren’t busting in here and throwing us in jail. We basically have a very comfortable setting, and we have full Bibles and everything that we have. It probably ought not to surprise us. But, you know, when you get out there in the raw and you’re facing the devil, where, you know, in Hinduism and the rawness of Buddhism and Islam, and it’s right there in your face, you’re dealing with these things out there where the devil is not hiding behind the white shirt and the tie on Wall Street. It’s like this stuff is kind of in your face. There’s you get in environments where there’s persecution and there’s, what Andy said was, to the degree that you saw demonic activity, he said over and above, you saw God do things through the church supernaturally.

He cannot come here and talk among his supporters about the things he’s witnessed over there. Mac was telling me that Paul Washer was recently speaking in the context of something like the John MacArthur churches, and he was talking about the supernatural things, and he could tell a coldness was developing with his audience. Paul began to tell them about what God did in Spurgeon’s ministry and what God did through

the Scottish Covenanters. He said the guys were disarmed, because once you start talking about these guys that are your heroes and they experience these things, we’re always revisionist. Men love to revise history. So guess what? Banner of Truth comes along and they write a biography of Martin Lloyd-Jones. They don’t want to tell you about all the supernatural stuff that he experienced. Why? Because they don’t like it. So somebody comes along and writes their books on Spurgeon, and they’re not going to tell you about all the supernatural experiences. Yet they don’t like it. They’re not comfortable with it. They want to erase it. They don’t want to see. This is why it’s so great that Mac is actually keen in on these aspects of the Covenanters, because these guys are behind the Westminster Confession. It’s the staple confession of Calvinistic Presbyterianism today, from which the 1689 London Baptist Confession came. When you get the guys that make up some of the stalwart personalities that were behind these things and you find out that they’re out there having these kinds of experiences, well, you know what? There’s not a lot of people talking about it. Mac’s hoping to produce a whole book on it. He’s getting original resources. He’s been over to England and different libraries. He’s collecting all those together. And then God puts him in a situation where he’s got back problems and hip problems, and he’s out of commission, like on his back for 50 days. He feels like glory, and God’s meeting with him. He said, I have so much liberty to write this book. I told Mac, you’ve got to finish that before you die. We need that book.

He asked me just the other day, would you write all sorts down and just take an hour and the thoughts on prophesying and whatever your thoughts are on that. I just say be biblical because there is a text somewhere, and folks, this tells us not to despise prophesying. Now, you might have to figure out theologically how you define that term. The way to do it is to look at every place it’s used in your Bible, especially the New Testament. Look at every place that word is used in some form or another in the New Testament. Do an exhaustive study of every single place it’s used and get a good feel for what it was, what it was intended to do. Develop and derive your definition there because you’re not supposed to despise it. Answer me. Are you despising it if you write it off as something that doesn’t apply today? I would say so. It seems to me that would be the perfect example of despising it. Now we may have to define it. Is it broader than predicting the future? I think it is. If you study, I’ve studied probably not only every New Testament use but every use in the entire Bible. If you’re going to get a feel, you’re going to develop a feel. I want to be biblical. That’s where you’re going to be biblical. You do topical studies out of your Bible and you start looking. If we’re honest with Scripture, it’s like, where’s that verse that says all these things have stopped and ceased? Look, I recognize that when and we’re all safe and quite comfortable, well, is there a reason for certain things to happen?

Historically, you can look at times when tongues have been given, but you know what it’s like. The situation demanded it. What these charismatics are doing with it. For one, they don’t have interpreters. Get rid of tongues speaking with no interpretation, which the Bible says silence. If you don’t have an interpreter, get rid of all the non-interpreted tongues. You just got rid of 99% of all the tongues. Let’s just be biblical. The thing is, if we’re all sitting here and we all speak the same language, who needs tongues? You don’t. We don’t. But go read Richard Wurmbrand. You get thrown into a communist prison. Just read about the things that happen. I’ll tell you, if you were in prison, you were in a dungeon, you’d want those things to happen too. The situation demanded it, and Christ came and visited his people in wonderful ways.

One of the reasons we say a lot of the things we do is we don’t simply don’t know the history. We’re so much caught up in this revisionist thing. We’re so selective on who we’ll read and it’s all been tampered with. They give us their rendition of what history looks like. Sometimes we get a step out of that and go back. Anyway, brethren, you know what my prayer is on a regular basis. Lord, I don’t know what you’re willing to do right at this hour and in this place, but Lord, please, whatever the fullness of that is, give it to us. Please don’t. I mean, it was said of the Corinthians that they came behind a no gift. So I didn’t say, Lord, whatever gifts you’re giving today, please give them to us. Because there’s always purposes. It’s not just so you can sit back and say, well, I want to. That’s neat. There’s always spiritual purposes. There’s spiritual warfare. There’s encouragement. God gives these things for a reason to help his people. You read about what prophesying is. I mean, it’s to encourage the church. Anything else on that?