Worth Reading

     Charismatic Chaos, by John F. MacArthur, Jr. (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1992, ISBN 0-310-57570-2). If you aren’t a Christian, this title is unlikely to interest you. If you are, though, it’s required reading. Like it or not, the Charismatic movement is one of the fastest-growing heresies in the United States. For all that its teachings are un-Biblical to the point of apostasy, modern, Charismatic Christianity’s ever-increasing popularity owes itself to undue emphasis on “the three M’s” (miracles, mysticism, and materialism).  It is a designer drug, formulated to satisfy and stimulate, by turns, the cravings of a morally bankrupt, experience-hungry society. As our Lord himself said: “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign…” (Matthew 12:39, KJV)

     “…Let us reason together,” says the Lord in Isaiah 1:18, and MacArthur answers the call, offering rational, scripturally sound rebuttals to the absurd, heretical claims and pick-and-choose doctrine of the Charisma Cult. Charismatic Chaos begins will a full-scale assault on the belligerent anti-intellectualism so annoyingly characteristic of the movement, and proceeds to demolish subjectivity, mysticism, post-Biblical revelation, the hallucinations and parlor-tricks so beloved of the “signs and wonders” crowd, and the so called “Prosperity Gospel.”

    If ever you’ve had to endure the spectacle of an overweight, pompadoured, semiliterate demoniac (straight out of II Corinthians 11) as he bellows, “I once healed me a li’l AW-tistic boy by pourin’ a bottle o’ Perrier over his haid! Puh-RAISE JAY-sus!” you’ll enjoy this book. If, like me, you’re disgusted by the Charismatics' wholesale scrapping of the Epistle of James, and their indifferent, often sadistic treatment of the poor, the sick, and the handicapped over their presumed lack of faith, you’ll love it.