Independent Baptist proudly stand against charismatics and all their happy-clappy hand-raising praise-and-worship mumbo jumbo. They also firmly state that the time of God’s direct revelation through sign gifts is at an end and that God only talks to us now through the Scriptures as illumined by the Holy Spirit.
The exceptions to this rule would be those times when He reveals to a fundamentalist that they should take an alternate route home to avoid a car crash or that they should marry a specific person or perhaps that they should give their last ten dollars in the offering since there’s a yet undiscovered envelope of cash in small unmarked bills waiting in their mailbox at home.
These revelations are excused as being non-verbal ‘urgings’, ‘leadings’, and the like but NOT actual words or voices like those crazy Pentecostals. How one can get specific driving direction from a non-specific urging is a bit fuzzy.
God no longer gives us extra-Biblical revelation — but he does tell fundies things that are specifically about their situation that are strangely missing from the pages of Scripture.
Or that they should attend a particular college (the Bible college for their particular non-denomination of course).
I should probably add that I did do that – follow a “non-charismatic” leading to attend a particular Bible college. :/
Semantics. I realized that when I went on a youth activity with the lone charismatic at our Christian school. The speaker asked all of those who had “received the Holy Spirit” or “been baptized by the Spirit” or something like that, to raise their hands.
I, being a good Baptist girl, did not raise my hand and have them think I had spoken in tongues or something. Another girl from our school did raise her hand. I asked her why and she said, “I’m saved, I have the Holy Spirit.” Made sense, it was then and there that I began to understand that so much that divides us is word usage.
LOL This is so right on. I love the exceptions to the rule……..brings back a lot of those old testamonys.
Hyles used to tell the story of how he was praying about taking the pastorate at FBC Hammond, but wasn’t able to make the decision. One day, he was driving home from a meeting late one night in Texas and he fell asleep at the wheel for a moment…then God woke him up right as he was about to collide into the back of a semi truck that had “Hammond” written on the back of the truck’s trailer. He figured it was God’s leading!
Hyles also was the biggest critic of the charismatics…go figure.
This chick tract explains the driving directions. http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0095/0095_01.asp
Its an oldie thats out of print except for special orders. Reverend Wonderful
I remember the Missions conference where the sermon illustrations were directly from the tabloids in the supermarket line from that afternoon. It was not the immaculate sermon conception, but as he stood there reading all the swimwear issues, “the holy siprit impressed on him this message….”