The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-5, titled "Bible Questions and Answers."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE.  Copyright John MacArthur Jr., All Rights Reserved.

Question

In the morning on my "drive time" to work, right between my boss, Chuck Swindoll, and my pastor John MacArthur, there is a gentleman that comes on named John Wimber.  I frequently find myself turning off his program, being rather upset at his taking Scripture out of context.  The last couple of days he has been reading off stories how he cast demons supposedly out of Christians.  My question to you, "Do you consider Pastor John Wimber to be a Charismatic brother who has a different perspective on the Scriptures than us, or do you consider him a false teacher in the light of the passage in 1 Timothy that we have been studying with you?"

Answer

I would say it is a good question.  In my own mind, and I don't know if I can isolate this, but when I talk about a false teacher or a false prophet I usually have someone in mind who perverts the saving gospel.  I would have to think about whether that is consistently true in the New Testament text, but I think you might find that that is at least the emphasis of a false teacher or a false prophet, someone who leads you away from saving truth.  So in the technical sense I would not see John Wimber as a false prophet, in the fact that he will articulate and adhere to the gospel--the saving gospel of Christ.  He would not present another gospel, but from there on he presents things that are not true. 

He teaches a course at Fuller Seminary which is a very interesting phenomena, because Fuller is moving more and more towards the Charismatics; because when

you go into liberalism, and when you begin to let go of the authority and inerrancy of Scripture and you wind up with the vacuum of liberalism you also wind up with no real spiritual reality.  And in grasping for some kind of spiritual reality, some kind of (if you will) feeling or emotion--they have done two things over the last few years: one, they hired a Catholic Priest with a Doctorate in Spirituality from some Catholic University to come and teach spirituality and take their students away to some monastery so they could learn spirituality.  The second thing that they have done is to bring in this Charismatic influence to try and to infuse some feeling into the sort of the vacuous theology that they have wound up with, and Wimber was that person.  He began to teach a course called MC-501.  "Christian Life" or

"Christian Herald" magazine, about two or three years ago, did a special article on that in which he teaches people how to heal and how to cast out devils, and he sees tongues of fire coming out of the sky, and this big sword zapping people in the head, and so forth. 

He is definitely a Charismatic.  He has a personal sort of warmth and gentleness about his personality that I think is different than a lot of the sort of screaming type of Charismatics.  He seems to have some balance in his life in terms of his life style that some of them don't, but I think basically he is really at a loss in terms of Bible interpretation. 

I heard him say one day that (and I am telling you this because you need to be warned.  So many people have asked me about him because he is on right before we are), but I heard him say one day, "When you talk about miracles you can't go to the gospel of John (this is almost a direct quote) you can't  go to the Gospel of John since John doesn't deal with miracles."  And I almost fell off my car seat, because the entire Gospel of John is one long series of miracles which are all about proving, as John 20:31 says, "That Jesus is the Christ."  So that kind of stuff really is so tragic. 

He has a personality that is attractive but you just have to know that his understanding of the Gifts of the Spirit, his understanding of the, I guess you could call it the Ontology of spiritual life, whatever, is not true to Scripture.  I don't know how people can keep telling themselves that they can cast out devils and heal everybody, when they know themselves that they can't--I mean they can't or they would be at the hospital doing it.  So they seem to always find a way out, but you need to be very cautious in listening to him.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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