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The Charismatic Movement
Connect…
How can we know whether something is true or not? For example, someone makes a blanket statement:
“The moon is made of cheese.” Is that statement true? What happens if that person was an astronaut and
he said he went to the moon and tasted the ground, and it was made of cheese? Would you believe him as
telling the truth?
For something to be true, it must be based on some standard or law outside of our experiences. For
example, gravity is based on a law that God created. If someone told you that he plans to jump off a building
this afternoon, then you can say truthfully that he may be injured or die because he WILL FALL to the ground.
You base your statement on the law of gravity. 100% of the time, when you drop something, it will fall
toward the center of the Earth!
God established all truth. It is found in His Word and in His creation. Whether we experience His truth or not
does not negate the fact that what He says is true. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life…” Jesus
is God, and He is the truth.
Today, we are going to study a movement within the Christian church that bases truth on experience rather
than what the Word of God says. “If I experience something, then it must be true” is the overriding
philosophy of the Charismatic movement. This philosophy sends one down a slippery slope toward error.
Let’s examine some of the errant teachings about the Holy Spirit within the Charismatic movement.
The Lesson ...
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The Charismatic movement
The Charismatic movement is an interdenominational Christian renewal movement and is one of the most
popular and fastest-growing forces within the Christian world today. The movement traces its roots to 1906,
at the Azusa Street mission in Los Angeles, California, a Methodist-sponsored revival. It was there that people
claimed to have been “baptized by the Holy Spirit” in the manner recorded in Acts chapter 2 during the
celebration of Pentecost. People speaking in tongues and miracles of healing roused people to a spiritual
frenzy. The people who attended those meetings spread their enthusiasm throughout the United States, and
the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement began.
By the early 1970s, the movement had spread to Europe, and during
the 1980s, the movement expanded, with a number of new
denominations evolving from it. It is not unusual to see its influence in
many other denominations, such as Baptists, Episcopalians, and
Lutherans, as well as non-denominational churches.
The movement takes its name from the Greek words charis, which is
33 https://www.gotquestions.org/Charismatic-movement.html - Used with permission
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