Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future

by Seraphim Rose

  A few specific texts of “prophecy” and “interpretation” are given in the apologetical books of the “charismatic”movement:

  1. “Be like a tree swaying with His will, rooted in His strength, reaching up to His love and light” (Ford, p. 35).

  2. “As the Holy Spirit came down upon Mary and Jesus was formed within her, so the Holy Spirit comes upon you and Jesus is in your midst” — given in tongues by a Roman Catholic and “interpreted” by a Protestant (Ford, p. 35).

  3. “The feet of Him who walked the streets of Jerusalem are behind you. His gaze is healing to those who draw near but death to those who flee” — this had special meaning for one member of the prayer group (Ford, p. 35).

  4. “I reach out my hand to you. You need only take it and I will lead you” — this same message was given a few minutes earlier to a Roman Catholic priest in another room; he wrote it down and entered the prayer room just in time to hear it uttered in exactly the words he had written down (Ranaghan, p. 54).

  5. “Do not worry, I am pleased with the stand you have taken. This is difficult for you but will bring much blessing to another” — this brought final reassurance to one person present concerning a recent difficult decision (Sherrill, p. 88).

  6. “My wife walked in and began to play the organ. Suddenly, the Spirit of God came upon her and she began to speak in tongues and prophesy, ‘My son, I am with you. Because you have been faithful in little things I am going to use you in a greater way. I am leading you by the hand. I am guiding you, be not afraid. You are in the center of My will. Do not look to the right or to the left, but continue therein” — this “prophecy” was accompanied by a “vision” and was directly responsible for the founding of a large and influential Pentecostal organization, the “Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International” (Logos Journal, Sept.–Oct. 1971, p. 14).

  We may well believe, according to the testimony of witnesses who find that such messages apply directly to them, that there is something preternatural about a number of them, that they are not just “made up.” But does the Holy Spirit use such artificial methods to communicate with men? (The “spirits” at séances certainly do!) Why is the language so monotonous and stereotyped, sometimes worthy of the penny fortune-telling machines in American cafes? Why are the messages so vague and dreamlike, sounding indeed like trance-utterances? Why is their content always one of “consolation,” “solace and joy,” reassurance, precisely without prophetic or dogmatic character — as if the “spirit,” even like the “spirits” at séances, were especially pleased with his non-denominational audience? Who, after all, is the strangely characterless “I” that speaks? Are we wrong in applying the words of a true Prophet of God to all this? — Let not your prophets that are in the midst of you, and your diviners, deceive you.... For they prophesy falsely unto you in My name: I have not sent them, saith the Lord (Jeremiah 29:8–9).

  Just as one “baptized in the Spirit” usually carries the ability to speak in tongues over into his private devotions, and in general is aware that “the Lord” is constantly with him, so too, even outside the atmosphere of the prayer meeting he often has private “revelations,” including audible voices and tangible “presences.” Thus does the “prophet” of the “charismatic revival” describe one of his experiences: “I was awakened from a deep restful sleep by a voice that seemed loud and clear...distinctly saying: ‘God has no grandsons’.... Then it seemed as if there was someone in my room and the presence made me feel good. Suddenly it dawned on me. It must be the Holy Spirit who spoke to me” (Du Plessis, p. 61).

  How can one account for such experiences? Bishop Ignatius writes: “One possessed by this kind of spiritual deception fancies of himself [the second form of prelest is called ‘fancy,’ mnenie in Russian] that he abounds in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This fancy is composed of false concepts and false feelings, and in this character which it has it belongs fully to the realm of the father and representative of falsehood, the devil. One who, in praying, strives to unveil in the heart the feeling of the new man, yet does not have any possibility to do this, substitutes for this feelings of his own invention, counterfeits, to which the action of fallen spirits does not tarry to join itself. Acknowledging his incorrect feelings, both his own and those from the demons, to be true and grace-given, he receives conceptions which correspond to the feelings.”

  Precisely such a process has been observed by writers on spiritism. For someone seriously involved in spiritism (and not only mediums themselves), a moment comes when the whole false spirituality that cultivates passivity of mind and openness to the activity of “spirits,” manifested even in such seemingly innocent pastimes as the use of a ouija-board, passes over into the actual possession of this person by an invading spirit, after which undeniably “supernatural” phenomena begin to appear.16 In the “charismatic revival” this moment of transition is identified as the experience of the “Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” which, when it is genuine, is precisely the moment when self-deception becomes demonic deception, and the “charismatic” victim is virtually assured that from then on his deceived “religious feelings” can expect a response from the “Spirit” and he will enter a “life of miracles.”

  D. The New “Outpouring of the Holy Spirit”

  In general, followers of the “charismatic revival” have the feeling of being (as they constantly repeat) “Spirit-filled.” “I felt free, clean and a new person and completely filled with the Holy Spirit” (Ranaghan, p. 98). “Because of what was begun in the baptism of the Spirit, I have now begun to see more a vision of what life in the Spirit is like. It is truly a life of miracles... of being filled over and over with the life-giving love of the Spirit of God” (Ranaghan, p. 65). They invariably characterize their “spiritual” state in similar words; a Catholic priest writes, “Whatever other particular effects may have occurred, peace and joy seem to have been received by all, almost without exception, of those who have been touched by the Spirit” (Ranaghan, p. 185). One inter-denominational “charismatic” group states that the aim of its members is “to show and spread Jesus Christ’s Love, Joy and Peace wherever they are” (Inter-Church Renewal). In this “spiritual” state (in which, characteristically, both repentance and salvation are seldom mentioned), some rise to great heights. In one Catholic the gift of the “Spirit” “has risen within me to long periods (several hours) of near ecstasy in which I’d swear I was experiencing a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven” (Ranaghan, p. 103). Spectacular stories are told of deliverance from drug addiction and the like. The Greek priest Fr. Eusebius Stephanou summarizes this “spirituality” by quoting a Roman Catholic priest who states that the “charismatic” movement involves “a new sense of the presence of God, a new awareness of Christ, a greater desire to pray, an ability to praise God, a new desire to read the Scriptures, the Scriptures coming alive as the Word of God, a new eagerness to have others know about Christ, a new compassion for others and a sensitiveness to their needs, a new sense of peace and joy....” And Fr. Eusebius presents the ultimate argument of the whole movement: “The tree is known by its fruits.... Do these fruits demonstrate the presence of the devil or of the sanctifying Spirit of Christ? No Orthodox in his right mind who has seen the fruits of the Spirit with his own eyes can give a mistaken answer to this question” (Logos, Jan. 1972, p. 13).

  There is no reason to doubt any of this testimony. True, there is also much testimony — we have given a few examples — that contradicts this and states definitely that the “spirit” of the “charismatic revival” is something dark and ominous; but still it cannot be doubted that many followers of the “charismatic revival” actually feel that it is something “Christian” and “spiritual.” As long as these people remain outside the Orthodox Church, we might well leave their opinions without comment. But when an Orthodox priest tells us that sectarian phenomena are produced by the Holy Spirit, and he even exhorts us: “Don’t be left out. Open your heart to the promptings of the Ho
ly Spirit and be part of the growing charismatic renewal” (loc. cit.) — then we have the right and the duty to examine their opinions quite closely, judging them not by the standard of the vague humanist “Christianity” which prevails in the West and is prepared to call anything “Christian” that merely “feels” so, but by the quite different standard of Orthodox Christianity. And by this standard there is not one item in the above list of “spiritual fruits” but that can be, and has been in the sectarian and heretical movements of the past, produced by the devil appearing as an “angel of light,” precisely with the aim of leading people away from the Church of Christ into some other kind of “Christianity.” If the “spirit” of the “charismatic revival” is not the Holy Spirit, then these “spiritual fruits” likewise are not from God.

  According to Bishop Ignatius, the deception known as fancy “is satisfied with the invention of counterfeit feelings and states of grace, from which there is born a false, wrong conception of the whole spiritual undertaking.... It constantly invents pseudo-spiritual states, an intimate companionship with Jesus, an inward conversation with him, mystical revelations, voices, enjoyments.... From this activity the blood receives a sinful, deceiving movement, which presents itself as a grace-given delight.... It clothes itself in the mask of humility, piety, wisdom.” Unlike the more spectacular form of spiritual deception, fancy, while “bringing the mind into the most frightful error, does not however lead it to delirium,” so that the state may continue for many years or a whole lifetime and not be easily detected. One who falls into this warm, comfortable, fevered state of deception virtually commits spiritual suicide, blinding himself to his own true spiritual state. Writes Bishop Ignatius: “Fancying of himself ... that he is filled with grace, he will never receive grace.... He who ascribes to himself gifts of grace fences off from himself by this ‘fancy’ the entrance into himself of Divine grace, and opens wide the door to the infection of sin and to demons.” Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked (Apoc. 3:17).

  Those infected with the “charismatic” deception are not only themselves “spirit-filled”; they also see around them the beginning of a “new age” of the “out-pouring of the Holy Spirit,” believing, as does Fr. Eusebius Stephanou, that “the world is on the threshold of a great spiritual awakening” (Logos, Feb. 1972, p. 18); and the words of the Prophet Joel are constantly on their lips: I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh (Joel 2:28). The Orthodox Christian knows that this prophecy refers in general to the last age that began with the coming of our Lord, and more specifically to Pentecost (Acts 2), and to every Orthodox Saint who truly possesses in abundance the gifts of the Holy Spirit — such as St. John of Kronstadt and St. Nectarios of Pentapolis, who have worked thousands of miracles even in this corrupt 20th century. But to today’s “charismatics,” miraculous gifts are for everyone; almost everyone who wants to can and does speak in tongues, and there are manuals telling you how to do it.

  But what do the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church teach us? According to Bishop Ignatius, the gifts of the Holy Spirit “exist only in Orthodox Christians who have attained Christian perfection, purified and prepared beforehand by repentance.” They “are given to Saints of God solely at God’s good will and God’s action, and not by the will of men and not by one’s own power. They are given unexpectedly, extremely rarely, in cases of extreme need, by God’s wondrous providence, and not just at random” (St. Isaac the Syrian). “It should be noted that at the present time spiritual gifts are granted in great moderation, corresponding to the enfeeblement that has enveloped Christianity in general. These gifts serve entirely the needs of salvation. On the contrary, ‘fancy’ lavishes its gifts in boundless abundance and with the greatest speed.”

  In a word, the “spirit” that suddenly lavishes its “gifts” upon this adulterous generation which, corrupted and deceived by centuries of false belief and pseudo-piety, seeks only a “sign” — is not the Holy Spirit of God. These people have never known the Holy Spirit and never worshipped Him. True spirituality is so far beyond them that, to the sober observer, they only mock it by their psychic and emotional — and sometimes demonic — phenomena and blasphemous utterances. Of true spiritual feelings, writes Bishop Ignatius, “the fleshly man cannot form any conception: because a conception of feeling is always based on those feelings already known to the heart, while spiritual feelings are entirely foreign to the heart that knows only fleshly and emotional feelings. Such a heart does not so much as know of the existence of spiritual feelings.”

  SOURCES CITED IN THE TEXT OF THIS CHAPTER

  Burdick, Donald W. Tongues — To Speak or not to Speak. Moody Press, 1969.

  Christenson, Larry. Speaking in Tongues. Dimension Books, Minneapolis, 1968.

  Du Plessis, David J. The Spirit Bade Me Go. Logos International, Plainfield, New Jersey, 1970.

  Ford, J. Massingberd. The Pentecostal Experience. Paulist Press, N. Y., 1970.

  Gelpi, Donald L., S. J. Pentecostalism, A Theological Viewpoint. Paulist Press, N. Y., 1971.

  Harper, Michael. Life in the Holy Spirit. Logos Books, Plainfield, N. J., 1966.

  Koch, Kurt. The Strife of Tongues. Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, 1969.

  Lillie, D. G. Tongues under Fire. Fountain Trust, London, 1966.

  Ortega, Ruben, compiler. The Jesus People Speak Out. David C. Cook Publishing Co., Elgin, Ill., 1972

  Ranaghan, Kevin; Ranaghan, Dorothy. Catholic Pentecostals. Paulist Press, 1969.

  Sherrill, John L. They Speak with Other Tongues. Spire Books, Old Tappan, N. J., 1965

  Williams, J. Rodman. The Era of the Spirit. Logos International, 1971.

  VIII

  Conclusion: The Spirit of the Last Times

  1. THE “CHARISMATIC REVIVAL” AS A SIGN OF THE TIMES

  To the very end of this age there shall not be lacking Prophets of the Lord God, as also servants of satan. But in the last times those who truly will serve God will succeed in hiding themselves from men and will not perform in their midst signs and wonders as at the present time, but they will travel by a path of activity intermixed with humility, and in the Kingdom of Heaven they will be greater than the Fathers who have been glorified by signs. For at that time no one will perform before the eyes of men miracles which would inflame men and inspire them to strive with zeal for ascetic labors.... Many, being possessed by ignorance, will fall into the abyss, going astray in the breadth of the broad and spacious path.

  —Prophecy of St. Niphon of Constantia, Cyprus1

  A. A “Pentecost without Christ”

  For Orthodox Christians present-day “tongues,” like those described in the New Testament, are also a “sign”; but now they are a sign, not of the beginning of the Gospel of salvation for all people, but of its end. The sober Orthodox Christian will not find it difficult to agree with the apologists of the “charismatic revival” that this new “outpouring of the spirit” may mean indeed that “the consummation of the age is at hand” (Fr. Eusebius Stephanou in Logos, April 1972, p. 3). Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils (I Tim. 4:1). In the last days we shall see the spirits of devils, working miracles (Apoc. 16:14).

  The Holy Scriptures and Orthodox Fathers clearly tell us that the character of the last times will not at all be one of a great spiritual “revival,” of an “outpouring of the Holy Spirit,” but rather one of almost universal apostasy, of spiritual deception so subtle that the very elect, if that were possible, will be deceived, of the virtual disappearance of Christianity from the face of the earth. When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8). It is precisely in the last times that satan is to be loosed (Apoc. 20:3) in order to produce the final and greatest outpouring of evil upon the earth.

  The “charismatic revival,” the product of a wor
ld without sacraments, without grace, a world thirsting for spiritual “signs” without being able to discern the spirits that give the signs, is itself a “sign” of these apostate times. The ecumenical movement itself remains always a movement of “good intentions” and feeble humanitarian “good deeds”; but when it is joined by a movement with “power,” indeed with all power and signs and lying wonders (II Thess. 2:9), then who will be able to stop it? The “charismatic revival” comes to the rescue of a floundering ecumenism, and pushes it on to its goal. And this goal, as we have seen, is not merely “Christian” in nature — the “refounding of the Church of Christ,” to use the blasphemous utterance of Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople — that is only the first step to a larger goal which lies entirely outside of Christianity: the establishment of the “spiritual unity” of all religions, of all mankind.

  However, the followers of the “charismatic revival” believe their experience is “Christian”; they will have nothing to do with occultism and Eastern religions; and they doubtless reject outright the whole comparison in the preceding pages of the “charismatic revival” with spiritism. Now it is quite true that religiously the “charismatic revival” is on a higher level than spiritism, which is a product of quite gross credulity and superstition; that its techniques are more refined and its phenomena more plentiful and more easily obtained; and that its whole ideology gives the appearance of being “Christian” — not Orthodox, but something that is not far from Protestant fundamentalism with an added “ecumenical” coloring.

  And yet we have seen that “charismatic” experience, and particularly the central experience of the “Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” is largely if not entirely a pagan experience, much closer to “spirit-possession” than to anything Christian. We know also that Pentecostalism was born on the fringes of sectarian “Christianity,” where very little remains of genuine Christian attitudes and beliefs, and that it was actually “discovered” as the result of a religious experiment, in which Christians do not participate. But it was not until quite recently that it was possible to find a clear testimony of the non-Christian character of “charismatic” experience in the words of a “charismatic” apologist. This apologist informs us that the experience of the “Baptism in the Holy Spirit” can indeed be had without Christ.