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John MacArthur, justin peters, Nathan Busenitz, phil johnson, R.C. Sproul, Steve Lawson, Strange Fire, Strange Fire Conference, todd friel, Tony Eareckson Tada, Truth Matters Conference
Are you over the false ministries polluting, (or brainwashing), the younger generations with a false Christianity? Are you sick of your local Charismatic/Seeker Sensitive churches misrepresenting Christianity? Do you want to get solid biblical teaching and understanding what Christianity is all about?
Once again, we would like to promote the Strange Fire Conference. Since starting, C3 Church Watch has grown in admins, authors and members. As a result of those involved, we have been pleased to discover that many are still involved in Pentecostal, Charismatic, Anglican, Baptist, Salvation Army, Uniting, Presbyterian, Simple Church and non-denominational church groups. We believe that this Strange Fire conference will be of huge benefit to you. We also think that this conference is also worth telling your friends and family about.
To all our Singaporean, Indian, African, Pacific Island, New Zealand and Australian readers, you can get the Strange Fire app. We’ve heard you can not only stream it live, you can watch the conference sessions again later.
To download the app or for more information, click here: http://www.tmstrangefire.org/app#.UlgibFBmiSo
WHAT IS SO IMPORTANT ABOUT STRANGE FIRE?
Pastor John MacArthur is hosting the Strange Conference and intends to address the spiritual nonsense within the Charismatic movement.
You do not have to agree with everything John MacArthur says or does. You do not have to like their presentations. What is important is that John MacArthur is calling for a spiritual clean up in the Charismatic movement. It is his desire to call people to repent of their Charismatic craziness and return to the sound truth of God’s Word.
Already, false teachers like Rodney Howard Browne (who have a major influence on Phil Pringle of the C3 Church Movement), has reacted publicly against the controversial event.
Strange Fire: How Much Will This Conference Impact Christianity?
From http://www.tmstrangefire.com:
Overview
The sons of Aaron…offered strange fire before the LORD…and fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them.
—Leviticus 10:1–2
The Lord calls His people to honor Him, to treat Him as holy. Leviticus 10 pictures the consequences of not doing so—of offering to Him strange fire.
For the last hundred years, the charismatic movement has been offering a strange fire of sorts to the third Person of the Godhead—the Holy Spirit. And evangelical churches have chosen to be silent or indifferent on the matter. This hasn’t served the church or the Spirit of the church with honor.
So what should be our response?
Strange Fire is a conference that will set forth what the Bible really says about the Holy Spirit, and how that squares with the charismatic movement. We’re going to address in a biblical, straightforward manner what many today see as a peripheral issue. On the contrary, your view of the Holy Spirit influences your relationship with God, your personal holiness, and your commitment to the church and evangelism.
- Strange Fire is a Truth Matters conference, sponsored by Grace to You.
- The conference will be held at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California.
Source: Main Page, http://www.tmstrangefire.org/, Accessed 12/10/2013.
Speakers worth noting are R.C. Sproul, Phil Johnson, Justin Peters, Steve Lawson, Todd Friel (from Wretched Radio), Nathan Busenitz (of the Cripplegate Blog) and Tony Eareckson Tada (from Joni and Friends Radio). We can guarantee you that this will be a conference that will be eye opening, ear opening and soul convicting.
More importantly, you will get the real gospel from real pastors with real credentials.
C3 Church Watch 
Because not many thought it was their responsibility to contend for the truth in the early stages of charismania, the false teachers and their strange fires have now become like main stream Christianity. Even some in the same circle are alarmed and have on numerous occassions raised warnings as in Lee Gradys of Charisma magazine or the late David Wilkerson but of no consequence. This conference might raise awareness but the warning must never cease because the false prophets will never stop deceiving. Are we our brothers keeper? Yes, and if we will not bother to speak up and do our individual part, this false gospel with their strange fire experiences will eventually be regarded as true and replace the authentic gospel that the apostle taught.
Amen, and praise God for your ‘set free’ status! I agree with your exhortation that the ‘warning must never cease because the false prophets will never stop deceiving’. How true this is until our Lord returns. I pray that the Holy Spirit will bless his saints with such a love for the brethren, and for the lost, that we continue to reach out to those who are currently deceived by false doctrine, wherever we find them. We also need to train up our children in the Word of God. This is so critical!
Looking forward to this.
Looks like they answer a few questions via short youtube videos under the ‘media’ section of their website if you want an idea of what is to come.
Hope that the Conference provides all the videos online for people who couldn’t see it live. Just saw Pastor Conrad Mbewe’s speech. Definitely worthy of a separate Youtube clip.
It covers the same material from his blog post. http://www.conradmbewe.com/2013/07/why-is-charismatic-movement-thriving-in.html
It’s worrying how much of the spiritual falsehoods and distortions have caused such terrible problems amongst Christians in Africa. Unfortunately many Charismatics might label (by reflex) what he says as blasphemy against the Holy Spirit though.
@ thinker – here’s a great link that provides transcriptions of all the sessions. Having live-streamed all the sessions myself, it’s good to have the well-transcribed notes provided here.
The conference was a much needed clarion call for the church to start to clear the muddy waters of Charismatic theology – which has become “the strange fire of our generation and we have no business flirting with it at any level.”
http://thecripplegate.com/
The team behind this blog include Nathan Busenitz who is a professor of theology at The Master’s Seminary and several other well-known reformed pastors from GTY and elsewhere.
Ok this will be a bit long…
I’ve always been curious about this, seeing that most people on this site (I think) come from a conservative-ish background. Disclaimer: I come from a Salvation Army and then conservative Pentecostal upbringing. These days I would like to think of myself as non-denominational born again Christian, somewhere between evangelical and Pentecostal (lol). I would place the emphasis on born again. Of course I don’t always live up to that (more later).
So anything that is putting the straw/garden/fire hose to Pentecostalism always gets my attention. Another disclaimer: I was there in a conservative Pentecostal when the “Toronto Blessing” came. Yes, there was a lot of laughter. Yes there was a bit of shaking. Yes there were a lot of songs about the Spirit, more of a love for God, being filled/drunk in the Holy Spirit (it was balanced). There was a grumpy old man who almost every service would end up bent over laughing uncontrollably. There were alter calls for prayer every service. Heaps of guest speakers. Multiple services. Yet looking back I never saw any real “extreme” stuff – just a lot of people, especially middle age/older people having a laugh, falling over etc. I didn’t hear anyone barking. A man I know who is very accurate prophetically once started running around the auditorium; I think he said he felt release, or that he was meant to do it. I did see one bloke who was normally really refined and quiet – he was roaring, kind of like when you imitate a lion. Some people at the time said it was the “Lion of the tribe of Judah” kind of thing. And no he’s not backslidden or anything now. Oh the other weird thing I saw (and I’m a bit nervous about the responses I’ll get here) is a woman rolling on the floor as if someone was pushing her, but nobody was…
So overall, there manifestations of the Spirit (yes I call them that) were fairly tame compared to other places I’ve heard of. i.e. if reports of the Arnotts (or someone similar) walking each other in a dog lead are true, I can’t see how the Spirit is in that. Maybe they are happy of full of God’s joy and do silly things – and I think a lot of this may have happened in the Toronto era; maybe not deliberately, though not necessarily the Spirit.
So that’s where I often get confused; on one hand, we have my then-Church having mild manifestations, with a LOT and LOT of genuine worship (I think I played in the band almost every service). It was labelled as a “refreshing”, where people were falling in love with the Father again, and being “introduced” to the Spirit. Then you go to extremes like some things I have heard (yet not able to directly refer to them now). I wonder where the line is drawn between genuine physical manifestations of the Spirit, person-induced behaviour, and other spirits. As far as I’m concerned, I cannot see how any other spirit could be present and operating in a service where Jesus is openly being worshiped and the Holy Spirit is invited to move (besides, what other spirits are there besides good? Bad.) I will admit, it seemed difficult to pin some of this stuff down on Scripture. There were a few, though I wonder contextually about some.
From what I’ve seen, this seems to have died down a bit in the mainstream, at least in Australia (tell me if I’m wrong). Based on that, some would argue that it was a “season”. So what do you make then of Rodney HB? Did he start off in the right season and then push something that wasn’t going? The same with Airport Vineyard (I’m not too up to speed exactly with them). I read that Mbebe article; I can’t remember that necessarily happening, well not in the blessings and breakthroughs as such. There was a belief in the “transfer” of blessing. What happened – the senior pastor and his wife (relatively conservative) went to Toronto church on their leave. They were prayed for and started laughing etc. When they returned back to church, in the first service back, it all started; people slowly began laughing and it went from there. That’s where they get the transfer thing from.
OK well I’ll leave it there. I still believe that (most) of what I saw was the Spirit’s work or angels of God, ie not demonic; I know some may not agree, but that’s OK. I do think some people in the moment might get silly, and my jury is still out about demonic spirits getting into Christian events…another time.
Pentecostalism is a valid denomination. In fact, we have contributors under C3 Church Watch that are pentecostal that say that C3, Hillsong and the Toronto blessing are not of the Holy Spirit. They are embarassed with men like Rodney Howard-Browne that supposedly represent the Pentecostal movement.
@ Simeon, I greatly appreciate your honesty. I have a million questions (okay, well at least a few) I would love to ask you about that period during the ‘Toronto Blessing’, as well as some conversation about my own experiences with a ‘spirit’ and ‘impartation’ (not so good) last year. However I have learned that social media and the printed word cannot communicate adequately for such sensitive stuff. so perhaps for another time. I have no adequate label for my position, but joyfully affirm that God works powerfully in this world, and in the hearts and minds of his people. I also believe (and see compelling and extensive evidence) that there is a great deception in the church, and a false spirit spreading throughout churches here in Australia. This spirit is always accompanied by false doctrine (even when compared to orthodox pentecostal doctrine). This doctrine has very dark, ancient origins.
I have spent a year researching the pentecostal/charismatic movements in all the different streams, as well as the emergent and church growth movements. In light of the growing wave of false teaching and deceiving spirits, what is desperately needed is for believers to come together with God’s word in front of us, so that we can wrestle with the truth in prayer and through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If we came together from our different ‘camps’ willing to take it to the Lord in prayer together perhaps the Lord would bless us with clearer understanding on the issue of gifts and manifestations of the Spirit. So often we feel like we need to defend our positions. It is a temptation we can all easily fall into.
I’m all for doing some ‘wrestling’ here, while dodging the occasional sarcasm and ‘hit and run’ comments about not being judgmental. Any thoughts guys? 🙂
i believe in the power of the Holy Spirit but i detest weird manifestations.