My Journey to
becoming
Charismatically
Reformed
By
Chris Parker
May
9, 2012
When most hear the word "charismatic," they envision someone speaking in tongues, being slain in the "spirit," or running up and down church aisles whooping and hollering. That is not what I intend by the use of the word "charismatic". Rather, I intend it to mean, someone who holds the belief that the gifts of the Spirit have not ceased in apostolic times, but are still intended for the church in the present age. And, with my "of-late" coming to this realization and utilization in my life and ministry, believe that the cessationist view that most American Christians hold today, and that their pastors teach, has greatly contributed to our declining numbers, troubled physical health, ministry and outreach to the increasingly troubled world around us.
My journey
begins, concerning this association, not long after my salvation in early
college. Presbyterians played a major
role in shaping my interests and desires for theology, apologetics and correct
doctrine. At the time, they had more of an academic slant than did the Southern Baptists, among which I
had grown up. I had a
Presbyterian friend who used to try and tell me that I was Arminian, but I
would reply to him that I was neither Arminian nor Calvinist, but Southern
Baptist.
After graduating from UNC-Asheville, I served
overseas with Campus Crusade for two years in the Slovak Republic. One winter we attended a Bible study
conference in Bucharest, Romania, on the book of Romans. It was then
the LORD won my heart over to Calvinism, (or a.k.a., the Doctrines of Grace), when we came to Romans 9:16, “So then,
it is neither up to the man who wills, nor the man who runs, but up to God, who
has mercy.” After my second year with
Campus Crusade, I returned to the States to attend seminary and prepare for the
full time ministry which God had called me to shortly after being saved.
I attended the Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary, presided by R. Albert Mohler, who is very
staunchly a Calvinist, and requires all the seminary professors to sign a
statement confessing their beliefs in the doctrines of grace. It was during this time that my confidence
and belief in theses doctrines were confirmed and built up. During this
time, I was a cessationist in my views of the spiritual gifts, though through
this and later missionary experience I would gain in Ghana, Kenya, Sudan and
then home again in North America, I came to see the moving of the Spirit of God
and the realities of the spiritual realm around us.
While In seminary, I took a Spiritual Warfare class with Dr. Chuck Lawless, and one of the projects we did was watching taped episodes of Dateline, featuring a NC Baptist pastor who had been called into performing exorcisms. We watched the show and evaluated and discussed the implications and realities of this ministry.
While in
Kenya, a newspaper reported on a young boy who fell to the floor convulsing and
foaming at the mouth while the teacher had led the children in saying a prayer
at the opening of the school day.
Pastors were called upon to pray over this child and cast out the spirit. This was unlike anything I had seen or heard
of before in America! During college I
was a philosophy major, and so I could discern, and really see that outside of
the ‘westernized cities,’ I was in a land that had not been effected by the
scientific enlightenment, and still lived very much like people of Bible times.
Later In Kenya,
doing my tribal group research, we interviewed one fellow who was telling us of
his tribes “shatanyi dances.” When a
member of the tribe got sick, the tribe would encircle the person, dance around
them and chant, and then they would ask the spirit what it wanted for the
person’s healing. Whatever item the
spirit indicated, (shoes, tools, etc.) it was brought, and the person was
healed. Siince this was a pre-evangelistic work, we merely recorded the young man's stories and included it into our resesarch.
I also saw
God move in some uncanny ways through prayer during this time in Kenya. Later, serving in my first church, there was
a sweet, humble little woman in the church.
You would never know it, but one day as my wife and I spoke with her,
she told us that she had the gift of tongues.
She also had a spiritual prayer language, but never made a show of
it. Her husband was an agnostic, and
once the news featured some an interview to some native American Indians, and this woman with the gift of tongues
was in the other room, and told her husband what the people were saying! Needless to say, as an agnostic, this was quite shocking to him!
Another time at this
church, after a Sunday morning service, the congregation was standing up and moving into the aisles to leave. In the center
aisle, one woman turned and looked over her shoulder, and her eyes had changed. They were no longer human, but the eyes of
demon. This was my first experience seeing
a demon manifest itself.
After the
LORD had moved us from this church, He brought us to this small trailer we
rented located on five beautiful acres of a farm. This was in answer to prayer for a place to
raise our boys and for our desires to garden. During this period, I
served as an theological email answer-man for CARM.org, founded by Matt
Slick. I also poured myself into the
study of the New Age religion along with end-time prophecy and its fulfillment.
At the
corner of the property were we were staying, the owner had a waste pit, where
he would dispose of the remains of animals that he butchered for meat. We knew that UFOs and ‘aliens’ had an
interest in cow reproductive organs, and there was a large committee of
vultures that roosted around this area.
We began to sense spiritual attack in our lives. One night while I slept, a demon appeared in
the upper corner of our bedroom, and spoke to my wife. He asked her if she thought she was strong
enough to take him, and she responded, “No, but He who is in me is greater than
you.” And with an expression of disgust, the demon disappeared.
Other supernatural things happen to us during this time.
In our first church, it was apparent that there were differences in theological belief between us and the church. After the LORD moved us, we prayed for a pastor to serve with who beleived as we did, that we could stand with and carry out ministry. The LORD took us there to stand
alongside the current pastor. After some time, we were again hired on by a church to serve as youth pastor. The
community was filled with Masons, and many in the church leadership were
Masonic members. Because of this, they
were very works oriented in their theology, and were/are serving demons.
I was
introduced by a pastor to the work of Henry Wright, A More Excellent Way. My
wife had some health issues, allergies, asthma, problems with her sciatic nerve
and a phobia of rats. When we moved to
this new community, all her maladies were intensifying. I read Wright’s book with regard to what it
said about my wife’s maladies, and in faith we confessed sins and laid on hands
and prayed for healing, and saw my wife freed and cured from her sicknesses
that doctors were only able to manage with medications.
One day my
wife had been on her feet on the hard floor most of the day, and her sciatic
nerve was searing her with pain down her leg! I looked this
up in Wright’s book, and it said the spiritual root, or cause was a demon of
sciatica! So in the name of Jesus
Christ, I commanded this demon to leave, and the pain went away. Another time when my wife was having an asthma
attack, she asked me to lay hands on her for it to stop. When I did, and I commanded it to be healed
in the name of Jesus, it ceased and she has not used her breather since. Since then, there has been a time or two when her lungs would begin to get tight, so she would lay hands on her chest and pray healing in the name of Jesus. Then her lungs would loosen and she could continue her activity and breathe regularly.
Once my wife
had pain in her shoulder and arm much like scitica and I tried to cast the spirit out, but my wife's pain intensified. I repeated myself, trying to command it out
in the name of Jesus, but it kept increasing the pain. My wife was screaming hysterically, and I was
imploring the Lord to have mercy on her.
After 10 minutes of this, the pain gradually subsided. It was gone, but we were shaken. Serving at this church was an intense period of spiritual attack, as the community was dominated by the Masons, and the leadership of the church were Masons, and the demons didn't like us on their territory!
A young man
came by the church office one day when I was there alone. He wanted me to give my blessing for him and
his girlfriend to live together. I would
not do it. This man was schizophrenic,
and heavily on drugs (at least in younger years). I asked him what the voices said to him, and
he told me that they tell him to kill people, all the time! I
responded by telling him that in Bible times people would take drugs to open
them to spirit beings they thought were gods.
The Bible tells us that these were demons. I said, “I think those voices in your head
are demons.” Over the next couple of
minutes, as I continued to refuse to bless his living in fornication, his face
hardened, and his eyes went from blue to yellow! The demon in him manifested itself. It was
literally like looking into the eyes of a serpent! I knew he could spring upon me and finish me
off, but the Lord gave me a peace.
As he was leaving with his girlfriend, I prayed for
him and the healing of those voices, but the next he called the church, I tried to pray for him,
he hung up the phone on me. I was going
to command the spirits out in the name of Jesus. His uncle is
a pastor, and I wanted to try to share the gospel with him.
This church
had also fired the last four or five pastors in a decade or so. They held a vote of no-confidence for my
senior pastor (which is unbiblical).
An older woman in the church led the charge against the pastor. She was also a member of the Eastern Star. A young man who stood up, out of turn( according to Robert’s
rules of order), and demanded the woman answer the spiritual test
question, “Has Jesus Christ ever walked the earth in the flesh?” (1 Jn.
4:2). The lady never answered him, but looked
at him with a sinister smile on her face and said, “You’re silly, sit down.” as he was out of turn according to Robert's rules, the rest of the church asked him to be seated.
Later it came to my attention (on Facebook) that female members in leadership were going to see, and raving about the Twilight Vampire Series. I took
a stand against this and asked them to stop. I had been teaching the youth in church that it opened
gateways to the demonic, but these female leaders in the church was openly
broadcasting their love for the antichrist movies. The senior pastor resigned from the church, and two weeks
later, the leadership moved to fire me.
They tried to get me on areas of theology, and on mismanagement of
church monies. When they saw that I was blameless in these areas, they tried to get me by saying that I was not reaching the youth. When the youth defended me, those particular
individuals were “exceptions to the rule.”
So they brought me to a vote of no-confidence before the church. The LORD told me to stand, so I refused
to resign as the pastor had. Our friend, who had the gift of prophecy told us that the Lord told her we would have victory. The vote failed by about three votes. I had fully expected to have my
job terminated at the close of this meeting.
So both my wife and I were in shock that I still had my position in the church. But the persecution against me and my family continued, and I could not carry out my ministry in that environment.
During this
meeting, and in several encounters with church members involved in Masonry or Eastern
Star, I would see a dark cloud around them as they raged against me. God is my witness that I walked in complete
integrity all during my ministry, but the enemy did not like that I was
beginning to teach the church of healing, and that involvement with the world
opened gateways to the demonic, and that many of our sicknesses and depressions
are caused by unconfessed sin and demons. If the church had accepted it, this would have brought delieverance, holiness and freedom, and healing to the lives of many who were sick and dying.
The LORD has brought us now to a beautiful farm. I and my wife, who is my partner in ministry feel that the LORD has called us here to get the
farm ready for the economic collapse that is coming and the LORD brought a couple of different people with the Spirit who have
prophesied that this will be used for an end-time ministry. And so the journey continues...
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