A preacher visiting my church last month from South Africa reported that the Rick Warren method of conducting Charismatic-style worship services was definitely taking hold in his part of the world.

“They’ve got the drums, the electric guitars and everything going big guns up front in these large worship services where people are swinging from the chandeliers, etc., etc.,” said the preacher, Des Strydom, a native of South Africa. “Around our area, most churches are going that route because that’s what’s bringing in the crowds.”

In his mega, mega-bestseller, “The Purpose-Driven Life,” Warren, who’s trained 350,000-plus pastors worldwide and bases God’s approval on weekly roll numbers, warns that “God’s heart is not touched by tradition in worship, but by passion and commitment.”

He actually writes that “healing miracles and ecstatic experiences can be forms of worship.”

A month ago on this site (Editor’s Note: Scroll down to “Kiss Off,” dated April, 10, 2006), I wrote about an Assemblies of God preacher, Lee McFarland, in Surprise, Ariz., who trained under Warren at a church-building seminar and is now working to build his own mega-church empire under the nightclub-sounding church name of Radiant.

A New York Times profile on McFarland and his church revealed he purposely avoids mentioning his affiliation with the Pentecostal Assemblies of God in sermons for fear it might turn people off.

Even when conducting an orientation class for “new believers” considering becoming involved in the church, McFarland, according to the Times, danced around his church’s real identity.

Specifically, the Times reported, “He poked fun at the movement—‘What they’re known for is being real Holy Ghost: speaking in tongues, swinging from the chandeliers, all that kind of crazy stuff’—and assured his audience Radiant is ‘the most different Assemblies church.’ ”

Still, McFarland is said to be an “unapologetic believer in the movement’s doctrines.” He unabashedly reveals he speaks in tongues, explaining in the Times that he first came to “exercise his gift” one day while “on his lunch break, driving around town in his brown Trans Am, listening to the tape of a sermon that a pastor had made for him.”

All of a sudden, he found himself on the steps of his house “speaking a language he had never spoken.” He testified, “I received the Holy Spirit through a cassette tape.”

First of all, is this really the kind of flaky guy anybody would want to put their trust in as a “man of God”? He himself fully admits to being deceptive about his beliefs and affiliations and is an obvious mocker of his own supposed convictions.

Myself, I really question whether he’s even absolutely sure he’s a Believer considering the Bible makes it very clear that when you trust Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, the Holy Spirit takes up residence inside of you. There’s no “receiving” the Spirit through inanimate plastic objects.

“If you ever hear anyone say, ‘We just feel the presence of God here tonight,’ know they didn’t—you don’t feel God’s presence,” assures my pastor, Richard Jordan (Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill.), in a study I have on tape. “The Spirit of God doesn’t walk up and down the aisles; the Spirit of God lives within you. He is the resident agent of the Godhead who indwells you, and one of His functions is to work with your spirit. Information from God’s Word comes into your mind, through your spirit, and He contacts your spirit through His Word.”

As I pointed out in my last piece, speaking in tongues was a “sign gift” given by God to some early Christians at Corinth to provide evidence to Jews—who historically relied on signs from God to show He was working in their midst—that their message about Christ’s death and resurrection resulting in God’s change of program was to be trusted.

Through his early ministry, the Apostle Paul was given progressive revelation directly from Christ about God’s new program for Jews and Gentiles alike in the dispensation of grace. Once all the information was delivered, and then written up by Paul for all to share in, the sign gifts were outmoded.

“Whether there be tongues, they shall cease,” Paul plainly states in I Cor. 13:8.

The funny thing is even if you were somehow not to comprehend this take-away message from Paul in your reading of I Cor. 13, and were convinced his instructions about tongues still applied, you’d still have to quit tongue-talking based upon his rules about it alone!

For instance, Paul states clearly that there must be an interpreter present whenever anyone speaks in an unknown tongue. He must tell the crowd--and tongues were to be done only in an assembly—exactly what is being said.

This certainly rules out McFarland’s Trans Am cassette player “reception” for his personal enjoyment.

As my pastor explains, “If any man speak in an unknown tongue, he’s not going to do the church any good if somebody can’t interpret, and what Paul’s saying is, ‘Here’s how you operate the tongues.’ The issue in this passage is if you’re going to do them, do them right.

“Paul says, ‘You better not get up and give them this ‘Astalashanda-eeney-meeney- miney-mo-e-pluribus-unum’ routine in the tongues unless you’ve really got the stuff, because the rule is the man who speaks there has to have an interpreter, and if there’s no interpreter, than it’s obvious you didn’t speak under the leadership of God the Holy Spirit, because God the Holy Spirit won’t produce the interpreter.’

“So that helped eliminate the false and the sham and those wanting to put on and show off and make a kind of display.”

Paul also clearly states that no more three people were to speak in tongues at one time—and all them had to be men. No women were permitted.

“If you took women out of the Tongues Movement it would shut down today,” observes Jordan.

When Paul writes the famous line, “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak,” it’s a specific reference to the women in Corinth who were speaking in tongues in the assembly.

“The problem at Corinth had gotten to be that some of the women were bold and forward and brazen, and they were just running off at the mouth and controlling things, and so Paul rebukes them,” says Jordan. “He’s not saying it’s wrong for a woman to sing a song when the congregation sings a song. The idea there is the women are being bold and they’re taking the men’s positions of leadership and he’s telling them get under subjection; back off.

“In essence, Paul’s saying, ‘It isn’t permitted for you to speak in tongues and when you do, it’s wrong because the law says you’re to be in subjection. The man’s to be in leadership.’ ”

When gifts are discussed by Paul in I Cor. 12, he’s not talking about a person’s natural talents but supernatural gifts supernaturally given by the Holy Spirit to the church at Corinth for the benefit of Israel alone. They are simply not the system whereby God works today in edifying the Body of Christ in this age of grace.

For those who swear up and down, “But I’ve seen them do it—I’ve heard it with my own ears,” and thereby view tongue-talking as proof of a miraculous outward demonstration of God at work, Paul warns about the real potential for being bewitched, beguiled and bewildered by Satan’s “seducing spirits.”

Specifically, he says in I Tim. 4:1-2, “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; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron.”

The Bible’s use of the word ‘seduce,’ related to the word seduction, means to draw away from the path of right living and right doctrine by the promise of some physical, sensory, emotional delight or experience.

In Deut. 13:1-3, it’s clearly shown that signs and wonders can “come to pass,” and be legitimate experiences you can measure and identify, and be from false prophets.

Indeed, the Antichrist will use unparalleled “shock-and-awe” as his primary means for deceiving the masses and gaining mastery over the world by basing his validity— the validity of his claim to being God—on miraculous demonstrations.

II Thess. 2 offers one the most detailed descriptions of the Antichrist in all the Bible, and it actually says, “Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

“And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.”

Given this information, it’s easy to see why the church today, more and more, is having its attention pulled away from the Word of God and onto human experiences as the basis of all validity and religious life.

Jordan says that over his 40 years of ministry he’s seen “many, many, many people walk an aisle and shake that preacher’s hand, having a religious experience and they tell you they’re Christians because they’ve had a religious experience. They’ve had an encounter. . .

“The only safety for you, your children, your family, your friends, for our church, is the word rightly divided in a love of the truth, and if we don’t maintain that at all costs, we’ll be a part of those Christians about us, once strong and valiant, who’ve been carried off into deception.”

In Paul’s day, the Corinthians were all balled up with the physical sign gifts and Paul said to them, in essence, “Guys, you’re missing the boat. Those physical signs are going to cease; the gift of prophecy, tongues, healing. The thing that’s going to remain is charity.” (I Cor. 13)

For those who simply won’t listen to this reality, and insist that tongues do work, Paul says, “If any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant.”

“You’re going to meet people along the way who are absolutely going to refuse to acknowledge Paul’s authority and Paul’s ministry, and they’re going to go on in spite of it, and Paul says, ‘Well, just don’t worry about it, just let them go on. There isn’t anything you can do for them,’ ” says Jordan.

In the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement people are actually made to believe that in order to have a real, true experience in their Christian life, they need to be able to talk in tongues—or have some other supernatural gift of the Spirit.

To those duped Christians, Jordan assures, “God’s going to read your meter and see whether you’re trusting Him or whether you’re trusting in men. The Bible says, ‘For the Lord God proveth you to know whether you love your God with all your heart.’

“You know what I know about people who are following miraculous signs and wonders in the Charismatic movement is that they don’t give a flip about what God’s Word says; they just know what they’ve seen and experienced. I know, No. 1, they don’t love God and, No. 2, they love themselves. They love their emotions, they love the high, they love their feelings, and they don’t care anything about God.

“God said, ‘I’m going to try them out and I’m going to demonstrate whether they love me or not.’ Jesus said, ‘If you love me, keep my words.’ ”

In Matt. 7:22, there were a bunch of people who prophesied in the name of Jesus, and cast out devils in His name, and did signs and wonders in His name, and Jesus Christ said to them, “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

Of this passage, Jordan says, “My dear friend, there are counterfeit preachers, counterfeit signs and counterfeit wonders done in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Have you ever noticed how these Charismatic folks run around and they’re always talking about, ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus’? Nobody in that Bible, not one of His disciples, not one of His followers, not one person who loved Him and respected Him, ever looked at Him and said, ‘Jesus.’

“Those who address Him by that first name only are always unbelievers or demoniacs. You check it out and you’ll see.

“Those people in Matt. 7 are counterfeiters and workers of iniquity. You say, ‘What does that ‘workers of iniquity’ mean? That mean they’re satanic?’ Well, that’s a good question.

“In Matt 24: 24, it says, ‘For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. ’

“They’re going to show great signs and wonders, but are they true Christs, true prophets? It says they are false prophets.”