Reply to John MacArthur, partial.

John: Do the Charismatics have some other level of Spirituality they have attained?

ed: Most will not want to accept this, but for the most part, John, yes they do. As we continue, i will prove it biblically.

John: Are non-Charismatic Christians somehow mired in the muck of a second classed Christianity?

ed: By their own choice John, yes they are. It is very similar to what the pharisees had as compared to John the baptist. Did or did not John the baptist have a higher level of spirituality than the pharisees? Did paul or did he not have a higher level of spirituality than those he was rebuking? People are scared to death of calling something what it is. It is simple. Some believers are more spiritual than others.

Paul: 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verses 14 and 15, "But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no man."

John: Paul spent most of 1 Corinthians 2 discussing the difference between the natural man and the spiritual man, and that's the difference between the unsaved and the saved.

ed: Well John, that really depends on your definition of saved. If we are saved by accepting Jesus with our lips, then i do not agree with you that this establishes us as spiritual men. Jesus talked about being born again and how those who are born again are blown about by the Holy Spirit as if by the wind. Is this what we are seeing widespread in the mainstream church?

John: Now that is very basic, and what I want you to understand is that according to 1 Corinthians 2, all Christians are what? Spiritual, it's basic; it's basic terminology, that's our position in Christ. We are spiritual, we are alive in the Spirit...

ed: All who have truly given themselves to the Lord Jesus and who have been filled with the Holy Spirit are spiritual. However there are a lot of dry bones within mainstream christianity who desperately need to be filled with the Living Water. If everybody is filled the same with the Holy Spirit upon receiving Jesus, how do you reconcile this idea with the following passage? These were actual disciples and yet they were not filled.

Acts 19:1 It happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the upper country and came to Ephesus, and found some disciples. 2 He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said to him, “No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.” 3 And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” And they said, “Into John’s baptism.” 4 Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” 5 When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying. 7 There were in all about twelve men.

And if the Holy Spirit does not sometimes come upon pre-existing believers by the laying on of hands (or by some other means), who as yet did not have the Holy Spirit, what exactly is Acts 19:6 saying? What is Acts 2:1-4 saying? Were those in these 2 passages more filled with the Spirit after this happened or was it exactly the same as before? Was there or was there not an experience that heightened their level of spirituality as compared to what it had been a moment earlier?

John: Then he goes on to say the Spirit of God dwells in you, only two kinds of people, those in the flesh and those in the Spirit. Those in the Spirit are spiritual, and those who are natural are also fleshly. So in the purest, truest, simplest sense, there are only two kinds of people, spiritual people, and natural people, who are also carnal people. The first understanding that I want you to have is that unregenerate people are natural. That is, they live according to human nature and they are carnal or fleshy, they operate out of the flesh, the impulse of the flesh. Christian people are spiritual, the Holy Spirit dwells within them, their inner man has been made alive, they are new creations, they are sensitive to God and alive to spiritual reality.

ed: John makes the comment that "Christian people are spiritual". So if a person who calls himself a christian is carnal and fleshy, then is this person not actually a christian? How many of those are out there? Are there not levels of spirituality? Is there not a spectrum of Spirit vs. Flesh with the Lord Jesus all the way at the Spirit end, die daily to flesh type folks close to the Spirit end and everybody else somewhere in between, hopefully striving towards christlikeness, moving closer and closer towards this?

John: Obviously, one who is new in Christ, one who is an infant in Christ is going to have a greater struggle with the flesh, right? Then one who is mature in Christ. So he says, "You're acting as if you're brand new baby Christians struggling with the flesh that's continually gaining the victory over you, and I can't even talk to you as spiritual because you have succumbed so frequently to the flesh."

ed: Sounds like Paul here is talking about different levels of spirituality within Christians, those who are more mature in Christ are more of Spirit and less of flesh. Sounds like Paul states as an expectation that Christians are supposed to shape up and get to the point where the flesh is not continually gaining the victory over the believer.

John: Spirituality, beloved, is not some permanent state that you enter into the minute you get zapped, as the Charismatics often allure to. You are spiritual positionally, but practically you never enter into a permanent state of spirituality in this life.

ed: Clearly, permanent perfect spirituality is not what most charismatics teach so this has the feel of a straw man argument. John are you attempting to excite your not so spiritual religious followers through sensationalism here?

John: You don't have some zap and become spiritual,

Ed: Seems John ignores Acts 2:1-4 where the 120 were "zapped" and became much more deeply spiritual... they were taken to a whole new level of spirituality. Paul calls it being taken from glory to glory. Were they perfect?, no! But were they much more deeply spiritual at that point? Of course they were! How much more obvious can this possibly be?!

John: spirituality is simply receiving the Living Word daily from God and letting it dwell in you richly and then living it out in the fullness of obedience. It is walking by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.

ed: this is a vital part of our walk too, Living Word of course not being excluded to experiencing God only through the bible, but directly as well as through prayer and worship. This process is known as daily consecration/sanctification. But God does baptize us in His spirit too, taking us instantaneously to a much higher level of spirituality and John M appears to be completely ignoring this perhaps because it demolishes the false point he is attempting to make which is that the "zapping" of God does not happen. See Acts 2:1-4, Acts 19:1-6 and several other scriptures which strongly support what i am saying. This is also backed up with thousands upon thousands of modern testimonies, testimonies that showed people tangibly that Jesus is real and from that moment forward these people know it.

John: It doesn't say, have one zap and you're set for life, or five zaps, or wait for the next zap, or go to the meeting where they zap you.

Ed: John, you ridicule getting baptized in the Holy Spirit which is clearly biblical and make a mockery of it, but Jesus Himself clearly told His disciples to go to Jerusalem and wait for this. There are many instances of believers being baptized or otherwise filled with the Holy Spirit and these were special occasions with instantaneous spectacular transformations, not daily occurrences.

John: It just says, "Walk in the Spirit and you'll overcome the flesh."

Ed: No John, it says both. There is daily abiding and there are special visitations of God which take us to new levels of spirituality instantaneously. I could go through the bible and produce many many examples but as a small portion, there is acts 2:1-4 and Acts 19:1-6. Remember also Saul who is a good example of someone who can be filled with the Spirit and then blunder the gift that God has given. Nobody i know teaches that the baptism in the Holy Spirit sets up a believer for life without the need for daily abiding in Christ as a branch to the Vine.


John: A basic mark, just kind of help you follow this through a little bit more, a basic mark of true spirituality is a deep awareness of sin. You know I hear people who say they reach a certain level of being zapped, and now they feel they reached a certain level of holiness. That is a dead giveaway that there is no sense of an understanding of spirituality.

Ed: Spoken as a man and a mocker who has never actually been baptized in the Holy Spirit and transformed in this way. When i was baptized, i was ever aware of sin, but my desire to sin was greatly diminished and overwhelmed by my desire to live pleasing to the Living God. I am not talking about a life of sinless perfection, but a very strong empowerment by the Spirit to choose to reject sin and flesh and to live holy unto the Living God and to repent quickly and deeply of anything that is not of Holiness including any unholy thoughts. Of course this can fade away without daily abiding in Christ and daily sowing to the Spirit. This empowerment to live by the Spirit is available to all if only they will open their hearts to it. Of course John M and others like him and the sea of people they falsely indoctrinate will believe they must avoid being "zapped by God" which is to say avoid being baptized in His Holy Spirit. It's a good thing for the dozen in Acts 19:1-6 that they didn't get so indoctrinated by false teachings like John M's and that they allowed Paul to pray for them with the laying on of hands for them to be filled with the Holy Spirit which they were. Of course many disciples today can help people with this in the same way, not only Paul, as i have done many times including as just 2 examples here: http://youtu.be/4fC531b4CAg
and here: http://youtu.be/RAuMh-WyJ7c.
There is a very good chance it happened here as well and as well in many other instances for which there are no videos made: Rebecca's testimony of our prayer together: http://youtu.be/_W_mCcA9Kcw

John: You show me a truly spiritual man and I'll show you a man who is overwhelmed, not with his holiness but with his sinfulness; even though it may appear to everybody else to be less than the rest, it is monumental to a spiritual man. It is not that he now feels himself to have arrived; it is that when he is spiritual he knows full well that he is far from where he ought to be. The spiritual man is aware of his sin.

ed: If you show john a truly spiritual man, a man filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit, John will not be able to recognize this as a genuine disciple of the Lord Jesus since this individual will know their identity in Christ and will lack the false humility that John so earnestly desires to see. John lives in defeat, believing he can not live as dead to his flesh and alive in the Spirit transformed as a new creation in Christ... and he indoctrinates many others into this defeated "christian" life. Jesus came to set us free from Sin, to set us free from captivity to the enemy, He came that we could have abundant life, life to the full(est). Through Christ Jesus and by His Spirit (only by actually being filled first as in Acts 19:1-6), and by abiding in Christ every step of the way, we are able to live victorious lives in Him. If only John would open his heart to being "zapped" by God (to use his own mocking word), he too could be transformed in this way and opened up to the Truth. Instead he is just a dead dry bone seminarian pharisee with no wellspring of Living water inside of him, teaching others to be the same.

Paul: "I have to die." How often? "Daily, this war goes on every day and I have to slay this guy name Paul, this fleshly man, who though spiritual in the inner man is still victimized by his remaining humanness."

ed: Amen, so then let us die daily to flesh or better yet, moment by moment.

John: When the glow of one experience fades they're forced to find another experience, and then another experience, and they find that a second work of grace is not enough, and a third, and a forth, and a fifth, and so on, and they seem to have diminishing returns, and in their effort to seek something more they often unwittingly abandon the Bible, they unwittingly abandon prayer and the true path of spirituality and they run errantly and wildly down a road of experience that leads to an inevitable increasing carnality.

Ed: In the worst case scenario, this can happen, but people must seriously embrace the need to abide every day in the Lord Jesus. The importance of sowing to the Spirit absolutely can not be under valued. I am always open to God blessing me with the next level-up breakthrough experience which may happen through someone's prayer or may happen directly... and in the meantime i abide intimately in Him, seeking only to fall more deeply in love with Him every day. As examples of leveling up experiences so that people can have an idea, one day i realized that when i told demons to leave people in Jesus name, they were leaving. About 6 months later after faithfully stewarding what the Lord had blessed me with in this area, i noticed that when i prayed healing for people, the vast majority were being instantaneously healed. There are a lot of far less obvious examples of leveling up. For some, there might be a singular event bringing a huge breakthrough in the Lord's Joy or tangibly experiencing the Lord's beautiful presence. If certain people were conveniently located, i would certainly ask them to lay hands and pray for me for whatever possible instantaneous blessings from the Lord this might bring, Peter, Paul, Barnabas, Philip and Stephen being 5 of many examples from the past and many other far lesser known disciples of the Lord Jesus being examples from the present including several in a worship fellowship i attend, but John M. in his ignorance would mock this because he lacks spiritual understanding of the reality that God does often work spectacularly through the direct prayers of a true disciple who has been baptized in His Spirit and has deep intimate relationship with Him. I have seen it several hundred times through my own prayers just in the past year and there are millions of disciples alive today for whom it is the same.

John: Charismatic books and pamphlets and articles are filled with testimonies, also of how a certain special experience brought a new degree of spirituality. The testimonies follow something like this, when I was baptized by the Spirit, when I spoke in tongues, then I began to live a more holy life, you've heard that. I had more power, I had more freedom, I had more joy, I had effective witness, more love, more fulfillment as a Christian, I've heard that many, many times.

Ed: Yes John, this is actually how it works. Baptism in the Holy spirit ignites us to live for Christ in power just as it did for the disciples in Acts 2 and abiding in Him keeps us in that exciting place. The problem with someone like John who does not experience God tangibly is that he can so easily ignore various scriptures that have not come to life for him as these scriptures have come alive to those who have been baptized in His Spirit.

John: Although not all Charismatics are consistent on this point, most would strongly connect that with speaking in tongues as a means of obtaining that spirituality, but Scripture just doesn't support that idea.

Ed: Myself i agree that tongues is not "THE evidence of the baptism" or the supreme key to living in the Spirit that many charismatics have made it out to be. However, if one were to search biblically, and biblically alone, as in the 3 sentence description of the acts 2 upper room baptism instead of understanding that there are 120 individualized testimonies of their own experiences that could easily fill 500 pages (again compared to the 3 sentences we have in the extremely limited scriptures), there does seem to be a strong correlation between the baptism and tongues as evidence. I repeat for clarity that i believe this baptism can be evidenced in many ways that often will not include tongues, an instantaneous 100-1000 times stronger love for Jesus being one (as happened with me), but IF we are "bible-only people" who ignore thousands upon thousands of living testimonies, we should conclude that there is a very good chance that tongues is the evidence. Myself, i know the bible is not exhaustive and so i look at thousands of actual testimonies to help fill in the blanks. John MacArthur manages somehow to be ignorant of these kinds of instantaneously life transforming testimonies and chooses only to mock them in favor of living in weakness and indoctrinating others into the same.

John: You see spirituality isn't related to your gifts or to even some supernatural kind of manifestation through those gifts of miracles, healing, tongues, and interpretation.

Ed: Those operating in gifts, but also in a sinful lifestyle is evidence of someone who has been blessed spiritually but has allowed themselves to be overcome by the flesh and/or the enemy. The church at corinth exemplifies this very well. those not operating in gifts at all is evidence that they are not deeply spiritual and never were. They need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-4, Acts 19:1-6, etc). This includes about 90% of those who call themselves christians who have been taught falsely by teachers like John M that they should not seek to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, that there is not such a thing as God touching us in an instant and instantaneously transforming us in spite of the abundance of evidence both in scripture and in the experiences of thousands upon thousands of disciples today. I just got a picture of a monkey covering his eyes and ears.

John: "You have all the gifts and you're carnal." So even having the gift of tongues has no relationship to your spirituality.

Ed: It's not that it has "no relation", just that it is possible to have a gift and to also fall into sin. It is possible to have been baptized in the Holy Spirit and then to fall. Operating in a gift is one aspect of spirituality and operating in holiness is another. The person with neither is the furthest lost and desperately needs to be baptized in the Holy Spirit for starters and to daily abide in Christ thereafter, the person in this instance who speaks in tongues but lives in sin merely needs to come to repentance and abide in Christ.

John: No spiritual gift will guarantee that you're going to win the struggle and live on a supernatural spiritual plain. The only way you can win the spiritual battle and live according to your position as a spiritual being, having been transformed, is to walk in the Spirit. Galatians 5:16, "Walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill," what? "The lusts of the flesh."... You overcome the flesh by a daily, step by step obedience to the Spirit of God, and I have to say that any discerning Charismatic will, and perhaps some do, admit that he or she has just as much trouble with the flesh and the appetites and lusts and desires of the flesh as anybody else.

Ed: I actually agree with John on these particular points, but overall, he is teaching falsely and doing much damage to the body of Christ, making the unspiritual feel that all they have to do is attempt to abide, mostly in their own strength since they are not filled with the Holy Spirit, living in weakness, and that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is a big phantom lie in spite of Acts 2, Acts 19, etc etc etc. I like that He admits that some charismatics are discerning though!

John: Enthusiasm, euphoria, fervor, excitement, emotion, all of that stuff, all the things Charismatics tend to equate with spiritual intensity,

Ed: If we are deeply in love with the Lord Jesus, it will make us more enthusiastic, euphoric, fervant, excited, and emotional for Him. I have seen people in some churches reverse this though... instead of these qualities coming out of their Spirit, they whip themselves into an emotional frenzy in the hopes of coming into the Spirit. Even though this is not the ideal, worst of all are those who have no real emotion for the Lord Jesus whatsoever. If we are not excited about the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, our beautiful Savior, something is definitely wrong. How much enthusiasm, euphoria, fervor, excitement and emotion to you have for the Lord Jesus John? Or do you have more of a knowing Him only through other people's words in a book type relationship with Him?

John:... have no power to restrain lusts, no power to conquer pride, no power to overcome selfishness, no power to deal with greed; none at all.

ed: Actually genuine enthusiasm for the Lord Jesus, genuine joy in Him does help give us additional strength in all of these areas... but the finite enemy sees the enthusiastic worshiper as a more important target than the dry bone believer and sends more resources. I don't say that the enthusiastic never fall, but enthusiasm for the Lord Jesus should not be mocked as something that is valueless.

John: Charismatics, whose only strength is drawn from the last high, the last experience, in fact, are more likely to be spiritually weak and spiritually immature.

Ed: This is a hugely overgeneralized statement, but even in the worst case scenario with a believer where this is true... in their defense, at least they know tangibly that God is real because they have experienced Him tangibly as did the 120 in the upper room. 90% of those in the mainstream church have simply decided to believe that the God they read about in the bible is real. It was an intellectual decision for them and a good one, but they lack actual tangible intimacy with Him. The charismatic who has tasted the beautiful presence of the Living God doesn't always go about pursuing Him in all the right ways, but they do know He is real. Those who have never been filled with the Holy Spirit are certainly no more mature in Christ and in His Spirit, just as the pharisees 2000 years ago seemed so to the blind, but were not mature in Spirit whatsoever. I am much more excited to pray with a charismatic who has fallen and desperately wants to get back up, than a modern day pharisee who doesn't realize he has need for anything, has an emotion-less relationship with the Living God and has never been baptized in the Holy Spirit as in Acts 19:1-6. It's very much like how my Lord Jesus the Great Physician came to help the sick, not those who believed themselves to be well.