DANGER OF THE "

DANGER OF THE "PENSACOLA OUTPOURING"

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June 25, 1997 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) - The following is an excerpt from the Christian Research Institute Bible Answer Man radio broadcast, April 30, 1997. The host is Hank Hanegraaff, and the subject is the "Pensacola Outpouring." While there are a number of serious issues over which we disagree with Hanegraaff, we appreciate his stand against the "Toronto Blessing" and the "Pensacola Outpouring." He has brought many important features of this dangerous movement to light through his research. The following is the testimony of a man who called the Bible Answer Man broadcast to share the frightful and unscriptural experiences of people in his church who have attended the Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Florida.

HANEGRAAFF: "Welcome to the broadcast, Gary."

GARY: "Hi, how are ya?"

HANEGRAAFF: "You have a story to tell about your pastor who went to the Brownsville Assembly of God."

GARY: "That's correct. I belong to a fairly large church in -------. It's a Pentecostal, Assembly of God church and our pastor has been looking for revival and praying. He's a very sincere man and loves the Lord. Evidently, he and his wife went to Pensacola about three months ago and came back very excited and then they took all the pastoral staff; we have about four or five pastors, that work with him. They all went down there. They came back very excited, and encouraged as many people as possible, especially the elders and deacons and other people in the church, to go down there. Finally, about a month and a half, six weeks ago, they encouraged all the youth, the teenage youth, to go down there."

HANEGRAAFF: "So the pastor went, and then the elders and deacons, and then the youth group?"

GARY: "Right, as many youth as possible. Not all the youth could afford to pay the plane fare. They had to pay out of their own pockets, but many youth did go. And what happened in the next passing weeks was dramatic. It was to me very frightening. We began to see, like you said, a lot of jerking among the youth."

HANEGRAAFF: "So, is this when they came back from Pensacola? They were jerking?"

GARY: "Right."

HANEGRAAFF: "So they were still jerking after they left?"

GARY: "Well, before they left there was no jerking at all. And when they came back."

HANEGRAAFF: "When they left Oregon they weren't shaking. They went to Pensacola and started shaking. And when they went back to Oregon, were they still shaking?"

GARY: "Right. All I know is when I saw them after they came back, they were shaking."

HANEGRAAFF: "So what happened? Did they eventually stop shaking or just shake out?"

GARY: "I think some of them stopped, and many of them, from what I've seen and from what I've heard talking with other people, shake all the time in the grocery store and hardware stores, bathrooms."

HANEGRAAFF: "How do they go to school?"

GARY: "There have been some problems in one of the schools here in one of the surrounding communities. Some of the students were. In fact the last time I went to church, which was a week ago last Wednesday, they were saying that the pastor was proud of the fact that he could feel the spirit. And the teachers, some of which were evangelical but not Pentecostal, became very alarmed at what they saw. They tried to separate the students in separate rooms and the students continued to react."

HANEGRAAFF: "So they took them out of the classrooms and put them ..."

GARY: "In separate [rooms], hoping they would calm down, and they had to finally have the parents come pick them up and take them home."

HANEGRAAFF: "So they couldn't function in school."

GARY: "And then the following day in church, the pastor praised them for being persecuted."

HANEGRAAFF: "Now, were there any other manifestations other then shaking?"

GARY: "Yea, that same Wednesday night. Well, first he prayed that the spirit of attraction would be taken away. My wife and I were encouraged by that. But when the meeting was just about over, he decided to have an outpouring of the Holy Spirit so that we could mature more in the Holy Ghost. At that time people began to be 'slain in the spirit,' especially young people, all across the congregation. You can picture [it]; its a real large church; and not only were they laying on the ground, but they were spasming and screaming at the top of their lungs. My grandson was accidentally struck, not seriously hurt, but hit by a man that was swirling and jerking backwards. My grandson walked up because he was curious about it. After that happened and the girls starting screaming, my wife and I grabbed our children and left the building. And the next day I went over to our pastor. See, I was saved in this church many years ago, so its an emotional experience for me--real emotional. It was hard for me. I had to write a letter to the pastor the next day."

HANEGRAAFF: "How are the kids doing now, do you know?"

GARY: "Our kids, or the church kids?"

HANEGRAAFF: "Your kids, the kids that came back twitching and so forth."

GARY: "Well, I haven't seen them in about a week. At that time it looked like the jerking was spreading. I saw many adults who, not many; I saw several adults who had been to Pensacola. They too were beginning to shake. Now whether or not they shook all the time or not, I'm not sure. But I have seen young people shake all the time, not just in church. And all the people that are shaking are the ones that went to Pensacola."

HANEGRAAFF: "Yea, I know that a research department has actually contacted one of the schools and talked to people who were in charge. And they were seriously concerned for these children as you were and really cared for these children. And they didn't want to expel them for any punitive reason; but were concerned about the chaos that was caused in the school and certainly concerned for the safety of the children themselves.

GARY: "Yea, our pastor made a statement that he'd rather see people drunk in the spirit than drunk on whiskey and alcohol. But, I'm not sure if this is physically good for them to shake 24 hours."

HANEGRAAFF: "Well, you know, I wonder about that too, Gary, because you have John Kilpatrick [pastor of the Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola], who I'm certain is not an alcoholic, although I don't know him. But certainly when he's spiritually inebriated and driving his car, the same kind of things according to some testimony as pointed out by a professor at the Assemblies of God school in Springfield, Missouri, pointed out in a broadcast yesterday, is knocking over garbage cans with his car and he banged into the back of another car and so forth. So the effect is still the same, whether you want to call it Jack Daniels or drunk on Jesus. This kind of spiritual inebriation can be extra-ordinarily dangerous I think."

GARY: "Yes, and I've got to agree with the philosophy that this has got to seriously complicate your reasoning process, your ability to make cognitive decisions; and make a rational, valid decision about things that are happening around you, if you're doing this kind of movement."

HANEGRAAFF: "Well, that's right. How can he think rationally and critically when he's knocking over garbage cans and riding over a lawn? And the thing that we want to do from a spiritual standpoint is not dull the critical thinking process, but rather sharpen it and we want to be in control not out of control."

GARY: "Right. I went down and prayed for a real good friend of mine who had been a Christian with me for years. And I tried to pray with him and he looked up at me; well he was jerking, his eyes were glazed. I don't know if he heard anything I said. But he was jerking, and I tried to pray that the Holy Spirit would still him. He looked like he was looking straight through me."

HANEGRAAFF: "Yea. I've said many times in Toronto and Pensacola that people in a profound altered state of consciousness have been seduced by the power of peer pressure. Their expectations have been exploited by anecdotal stories. And of course, the subtle power of suggestion so powerful that when a mass suggestion infects a movement, people can behave like beasts or barbarians and be proud of it. The wellsprings are not rational and that's one thing that people, of course, need to recognize. And, the thing that I would call on everybody, along with you, Gary, to do is test all things in light of scripture, then hold fast to that which is true."

GARY: "That's right. The associate pastor gave me some scripture that he felt would back up jerking in the spirit. One that he gave me was Psalm 96:9. It says, 'Worship the Lord in splendor and holiness, tremble before Him all the earth.'..."

HANEGRAAFF: "You know what amazes me when pastors use those texts. My first thought, of course, is, Could a pastor, a leader of a flock, a shepherd of the church of God, be as benighted as to believe that this is a text that substantiates jerking or shaking in the spirit? You would think the answer to that would be no. But you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but honestly even giving them the benefit of the doubt, you know that is a text jerked out of context and used as a pretext."

GARY: "Well, it's like when the Mormons want you to pray about the book of Mormon to see if it's true. The Bible warns about giving ourselves over to pray for things that we know are wrong. ... He gave me a whole bunch of scripture and they are all about trembling, but every one of them talks about all people, all nations, all the earth. That's just not believers; that's all people. Of course, we know that sinners will tremble before God when He comes for his people. If I wasn't saved by Christ, I would tremble."

HANEGRAAFF: "Well, Gary, I'm out of time for this segment of the Christian Research Institute Bible Answer Man broadcast. Thank you for coming on. God bless you."