re: miracles in the church ...I don't see that as the problem... it's not the statements that are said, it's the baggage that you bring to it, and assumptions about what that means.. that's the issue.. that a miracle occurred.. I can't imagine that we'd fight that.. did it occupy a central position is the question.. ...I would have no problem with that.. but are we raising the dead.. is a shadow falling over people and they're healed... I'd like to see it.. if they can produce a resurrection from the dead, that'd be really wonderful... where they're gonna I think make a mistake.. is we cannot prove the sufficiency of Scripture.. that's what they're lacking.. once you let sufficiency go.. my problem with Pentecostalism is not.. tongues or healing.. it's sufficiency of Scripture.. I don't know how to control myself if you let go of the sofficiency of Scripture.. how do you judge it.. how do you spot counterfeits... they freely admit it, which makes it nice... because once you admit that the canon, although I know it's a theological argument, once you admit that the canon has not ceased, then you have admitted the insufficiency of Scripture... my feeling would be.. that certainly God could speak, and does.. to us.. through conscience, or through other means.. and I think he could even speak directly to us.. the Lord hasn't spoken directly to me, but I wouldn't say that He can't.. but my problem would be.. would He speak directly to another person about me.. how do I judge that.. I told you my great incident with Walt Kaiser.. when Walt told me "the Lord told me".. that raises an awful lot of physiological questions.. and I guess.. what I'm doing is reacting to the extremes of where this baby goes to sea.. and there's a lot of that out there.. it could be argued that in my reaction to the extreme, I'm losing something in between, something modest.. I hope not.. ..in other words.. I think the tenets of the curses movement to reduce everything to quantify those.. doesn't work.. 'cause life is more complicated.. there are some things that just don't fit.. all the parts don't equal the whole.. you know, in life... I had a guy come in.. a graduate of ours, yesterday, I thought he was rather amusing.. he wanted me to tell him what the will of God was.. and I thought he could at least give me half an hour... and after listening to him describe it.. it wasn't over 15 minutes.. I finally decided that the will of God is.. for you, as far as I understand it, but I don't, 'cause I'm not where you are.. so you'd better start listening to your wife.. she's figured out that you've bombed three straight churches.. told you each time not to take it, but you took it.. logic tells me that you'd better start listening to that lady.... I don't have words of wisdom or words of knowledge.. as it's defined.. but if you've been around long enough, you know people.. one principle is, if your wife says not to do it, my theory has always been the Lord has to convince her.. if she says no, and we're together, the answer's no.. unless the Lord convinces her.. I don't have to struggle with the cause of the mission if she don't want to go.... you know, I've thrown my deck of cards in her lap, and if the Lord won't convince her to go to the mission field, then the answer is I shall joyfully not.. William Carey is a.. functional disaster.. to elevate him too highly without telling the bad side of what he did to his family.. or.. David Livingston.. he is a tragedy.. we hold these men up, because what we do is what we all do, even the Charismatic guys.. is look at something positive.. they exclude the implications.. focus very narrowly on particulars.. and go... we do that too.. in other words, somewhere in revelation.. you've gotta factor experience.. there's a collective wisdom of the past.. that though it is natural knowledge.. you gotta listen to it.. Q: ..he's not praying for healing, he's commanding it.. power of healing.. how do you deal with it.. A: ..I don't know.. well, one, you got to know something about Paul Cane, that should raise a question.. two, I think you have to say that he may just be a broadbase exception... three, if the Lord would have us do this, why isn't there a passage or paragraph to give us the insight.. He's given us enough data on a lot of things.. I'd just like a little passage on healing.. why does He leave it out.. why have we not needed it until we got into a therapeutic age.. I'm not saying it's wrong because he didn't have it.. then a charismatic can turn around and say he ran it off.. but you can't run off the sovereignty of God.. we never ran off the Gospel, but look how we mistreated it for centuries... so I wouldn't fix on one exception, I would just factor it in as something that you can think about.... I don't want to say, but I have lived long enough to see a lot of meteors fall out of the sky, and they were awfully bright.. John [Wimber] has had a turnabout in 1992.. that's why Jackie [Deere?] is not with John.. John has turned away from Paul Cane.. and he's redefining the Vineyard movement.. because he sees Paul Cane as bad news.. but here is a John Wimber, who is coming back.. and that's why Jackie has come back in the Fort Worth area.. and I think what Wimber is now doing.. I think in the heart of hearts, Wimber is just a wonderful man, and he's trying to conserve a movement that he sees that he's going to pass away from.. within the next few years... he has changed.. I've seen John change at least three times in his emphasis.. and I think it's good.. I honestly think it's a wonderful thing.. I think you and I are all desperate to see God do something... when I talk to the guys in the megachurch movement.. a guy called me yesterday, and he was just laying it out.. I came thru Dallas Seminary, and I was doomed to some small irrelevant non-evangelistic Bible church in the sticks.. and I rejected that.. as I analyze the Bible church, it's just made up of people that are dissatisfied with other churches.. there's no real evangelism.. you know, he was right... I didn't want that.. I found the Willow Creek model, the Saddleback model.. and I'm going for it.. well, what can I say to that.. the guy is right.. I see the only problem with the megachurch model.. is that they have a massive barrier in producing disciples.. they can produce followers, but they've had trouble when they finally got around to teaching the Bible, of making transition.. so you're going to have to come up with a hybrid of these models.. to deal with that tension.. and that's what I would say.. I wouldn't say Jackie is wrong.. "is he lying, or deceived, or telling the truth".. or that it's somewhere in between, all three may come into play.. as will be said of our lives.. I think that when they look at my life, they'll say I lied some... a lot of my ideals maybe won't ever come true, but I got locked into these presuppositions, God help me.. and sometimes you get locked into things you can't back out... I think when the truth is known, it will be something near all of us, but won't be dotted across like you and I suspect.. I think the problem is going to be damage control..... KC prophets, they've come up with the idea that it's biblical that every city should have one church.. but what they mean by that is all the other pentecostal/charismatic churches should move down in a city and come under the shepherd's rod of one prophet.. but Grudem killed that idea, because a prophet is not an office.. it's a function.. and that belongs to elders and pastors.. and yet I don't want to say it's all wrong.. I'm going to hedge my bet, I'm going to define my ministry.. I'm going to try avoid a few things... I don't believe that I can prove on a purely exegetical basis the closure of the canon or the inerrancy of scripture.. but I do honestly believe that I can argue for the sufficiency of scripture.. when they don't hedge it over there.. they're really saying that's it's more than what's revealed in the text.. and that's not wrong, because God reveals more than what's in the text, but never contrary to it.. that's the problem.. I've never seen God telling a person the will of God for somebody else.. now that destroys the priesthood of believers.. ..I can dismiss the immorality there, because it's endemic.. it lies with everybody, every denomination.. I can dismiss that.. my real fear, deep down inside, is I don't know how to control it.. from the parasites.. that's my real problem.. and in history, there's an ugly side to it.. that's what I struggle with.. I don't struggle with God giving them personal ability to heal.. but I know.. I know who Charles Brenham was.. and these guys follow Brenham.. we'll get to Brenham eventually.. and that scares me.. supernatural power, the manifestation of supernatural power has many sources.. to assume that it's one may not be legitimate.. really what's missing in this movement.. not missing, but what is not central, it's what often I find not central in evangelicalism, is Christ.. I don't want to just blame those guys... listen to what we're preaching.. I don't hear much of Calvary.. I hear much about self-esteem.. putting your life together.. sociological relationships.. ..I would just rather say.. I want to be cautious... if God pleases to heal, I see no problem.. and I think God does.. I don't see an office of healer in the holy scripture.. I don't see instructions.. I see preaching.. I think ultimately it will deprioritize scripture.. and in that sense it's very attractive, because it looks at the improvement of self.. which is a high priority in the culture.. I don't really want to go after it because I don't know.. I'm beginning to like the old Vineyard guys of the 70's.. those guys are looking conservative.. a guy like John White in his book on healing.. in his opinion, more people are healed in Wednesday night prayer meetings in non-charismatic churches.. now we're giving up our prayer meetings.. the very time that people need meaningful gatherings, because of an alienated culture, we're going to a single service.. we seem to really catch on a decade-old sociology all the time, that people are moving on to something.. it's a time for more meaningful meetings, not less meetings.. but he says more are healed in a First Baptist Church XYZ on a Wednesday night than he has seen in a Vineyard church.. I think he's right.. I think humble saintly people on their knees before God brings miracles.. if you don't believe that, why do you pray.. re: what is a miracle... some things of which there is no known sequentialism involved.. that presupposes that you know the diagnosis.. and one thing I think is.. doctors will tell you.. being through a lot of illness in our family.. doctors will tell you that they don't really know.. what doctors do is.. it's a wonderful profession.. and it's a skill.. don't want to denegrate it.. but, they're not really ever describing your case.. because they really don't know the patient.. they know about case studies that look like yours, and diagnose on the basis of that history.. I remember when they called me into the hospital room where my dad died.. before he died.. they said your dad will not last through the day.. and they told me that several days, and I've been there several weeks.. I finally said, you know, doc, and I'd known this guy when he was a little kid.. he ran around.. I said, doc, you're not describing my dad.. you're describing the last 20 or 30 cases that looked like my dad as far as you know... and doc looked at me and said, you're exactly right.. we don't know.. we're mathematicians... and we have a very high percentage of knowing what's going on.. about 70-80%.. and that's about it.. so I don't know what's really going on in all those cases... you pray, you hope.. "how can we guard ourselves".. you just have to read the Bible.. frankly, I don't know any other trick than that.. most superficial interpretations of phenomenology are those that are too narrow in terms of causation... I can't say what it is.. I can say it could be any of 5 or 6 things... I don't have a word of knowledge.. now I've lived long enough to know that I can pretty much figure out what's going on.. you see it long enough, you can begin to guess.. but I'm not going to elevate that to a gift, I'm not going to elevate that to authority... I've just been walking on the earth too long.. and I have learned a few things.. that's why some pagans can be marvelous in counseling, they've walked on the earth... I would resist the temptation to pentecostalize my vocabulary.. and my experience.. when I'm among the pentecostals, I don't find them living that differently.. when the lights come on the stage, they act differently.. their public manifestation are like ours sometimes.. the reality of their living is the same... I think you got to read the book.. my advice is read the book.. keep reading the book.. and ask God for mercy.. and be honest.. one of my basic arguments is the sufficiency of the scriptures, and the centrality of the savior.. re: Jackie Deere.. he taught OT studies here.. he's a good guy.. he's really had a circuitous road... going to be interesting to see where he winds up.. I think he's a man of the book.. but I sure hope that a guy like a powerful prophet doesn't come along, because he could be swept away.... he is bitter, believes we're unbiblical, unkind... re: praise in book for DTS.. one thing you know about Vineyard movement is they're very careful to cover their backsides.. that's what makes them better than the old-line guys.. they're being careful.. talk about health and wealth, and qualify it.. ...it doesn't surprise me, I've lived too long.. you can deny depravity, but it don't make it go away.. you can claim eradication, but you don't got it, to be quite frank.. so on the one hand, they're publically preaching a very powerful experience that lifts you up to euphoria and victory, but they themselves admit that all hell was breaking loose.. and they describe it in their books.. which is amazing to me if this works.. ...so you may leap and praise and all that, but that's an evidence of your one time baptism.. so if you keep leaping, there's something wrong here.. it's so fun.. you get a bunch of people together, somebody is going to have some massive experience.. you ever go to a testimony session of non-charismatic churches.. and watch the sucker emotionally build to a powerful crescendo.. in which everyone is out of control.. because we all out do each other, just watch the momentum build.. I've seen it on all kinds of levels..