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Seems like your Calvinist friends have no love for Wimber...
"There is no place in the Bible where people were lined up and Jesus or Paul or anyone else went along and bapped them on the head and watched them go down, one after another, and somebody else ran along behind. Can you picture Peter and James -- "Hold it, hold it, hold it!" -- running along behind trying to catch them? And so the model that we're seeing, either on stage or on television, is totally different from anything that's in Scripture."
(John Wimber, "Spiritual Phenomena: Slain In The Spirit -- Part 1," Vineyard Christian Fellowship, Anaheim, CA, 1981, audiotape)
'There's nothing in Scripture that supports these kinds of phenomena that I can see, and I can't think of anything throughout the church age that would,' Wimber writes. 'So I feel no obligation to try to explain it. It's just phenomena. It's just people responding to God.'
"In the final chapters I address the implications of power evangelism for conservative evangelicalism, Pentecostalism and the charismatic renewal in mainline denominations and the Roman Catholic Church. Though I write about power evangelism, the most powerful evangelism will come only when Jesus' prayer for Christian unity is fulfilled."====================================================================
"He holds a radical Arminianism (some might well argue it is Pelagianism). Wimber seems to have little or no appreciation of the doctrine of the Fall and speaks of being involved in "restoring the Edenic state" in and through his ministry."
(Assessing the Wimber Phenomenon, Dr. Don Lewis)
In Charismatic practice, the Holy Spirit becomes a genie, appearing on command and conforming to a scripted performance.
he inevitable conclusion of John Wimber's theology is the acceptance of an emotional and experiential approach to spiritual truth in which experience in itself becomes the self-validating criteria confirming the nature of a religious experience. This self-validation process takes two main forms:
- I had an experience, therefore it is from God.
- My experience was from God because I feel that it was.
The emotional reaction to an experience then becomes the verification of the presumed true spiritual nature of that experience, and becomes the criteria for judgment rather that Biblical teaching or the application of doctrinal principles. With that theological foundation in place, the Vineyard Fellowship became the perfect object for the introduction of emotional and experiential manifestations such as the Toronto Blessing which was introduced into the Toronto Airport Vineyard Fellowship (Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship). Leadership, under men like John Arnott, could then tell their congregation to receive the manifestation first and analyze it later; an approach that allows false teaching and heresy to enter the church prior to any person analyzing its content and, at the same time, allows leadership to increase its control and position of power. Although he initially rejected the Toronto Blessing, John Wimber then embraced and supported it.THE HOLY SPIRIT IS A CONTROLLABLE ENTITY
This belief is no more apparent than in the performances surrounding the Toronto Blessing phenomenon, in which the Holy Spirit is commanded, directed and given permission by the leadership in charge, to make an appearance and manifestation, which results in the excesses of that experience.
Since the Holy Spirit is part of the trinitarian nature of the Godhead, it is presumptuous at best and heretical at the worst to assume that a person, even a pastoral leader, has the authority or ability to call or command an appearance by the Holy Spirit. If, or when, the Holy Spirit makes an appearance, it is based on the sovereign and consummate will of God, not the desire of leadership to express their self-proclaimed power and authority based on the times during which a church fellowship meets. In Charismatic practice, the Holy Spirit becomes a genie, appearing on command and conforming to a scripted performance.
Seems like your Calvinist friends have no love for Wimber...
John Wimber himself, is revealed as a chameleon, modifying his theology and shifting his ground whenever challenged. The authors point to significant variations in his published testimonies (p.221ff); they question the authorship of books bearing his name (p.222); note his attack on the need for a rational mind (p.235); and his unfulfilled prophecies (p.239ff). These include claims made in 1989 that a new strain of AIDS would be released which only the church would be able to heal (p.239),
Seems like your Calvinist friends have no love for Wimber or his teachings...