I would have to disagree with your statement regarding Africa, which I couldn't get back to before, (life does get in the way)....but would like to comment on further.
What solid Christian African Pastors are seeing is the Charismatic movement ‘preventing’ the people from Gods word and study of as well as from Salvation.....
This movement has focused the people ‘on the Pastors’ of these churches...claiming to be powerful in prayer they address personal “issues” of which the people seek resolution of..... They have become the new Witch Doctors so to speak....of which the Africans were accustomed to seeing with “issues” prior to the infiltration of the Charismatic Movement.
The Pastors main focus are on meeting peoples issues in all the emotional drama similar to here only far more emotional and dramatic.... which is why they get so many in attendance.
But... the Gospel message is not mentioned except as an after thought if that..... They begin their services with danceable music and the hype normal within the Charismatic churches and often the services continue in that venue until heeling's and such are addressed. An occasional verse might be read form the Bible but there is no expository teaching at all, the people do not here the context. The message's consists of repetition using Christian verbage , which we also see in the Charismatic churches here,....which is not true worship nor is it the Gospel Message any part of the singing...repentance is not heard.
Additional they focus on “Deliverance’ from the issues they come there with, again what draws them is to seek resolution to their personal problems, as they did the Witch Doctors prior.
Africans see a need for ‘Power’ far greater than we in the states can understand..... These Pastors show them this through their hyped up sensual and dramatic services.... as well... the Pastors are seen by the people as ‘Independent from Gods Word and become the “authority”.
Without the Pastors speaking of the redeeming blood of Christ and His sacrificial work the Gospel message is lost....so the life of true worship is also lost.
Saying this because: " Spiritually dead people cannot produce reference for a Holy God...cannot produce Godliness...cannot produce God Glorifying worship..because...Reverence for God is born out of hearts that are ‘changed’ by the Spirit , and the Spirit is NOT divorced from Gods Word.
By the Pastors teaching and practicing these “extraordinary gifts” they believe are still active today, and with the Pastors being seen similar to the Witch Doctors, just with a different title....and also seen independent from Gods word....then what is to stop them from adding their own rules, regulations and ways of handling the people????? Where does it stop???? It doesn't and the Christian Pastors of Africa are saying this movement has created a drought for the Word of God and the Charismatic Pastors are misleading many into sin as they accept the "honor and power" the people off er them.
I have written this from an African Pastor who sees the truth of what's happening in his country.....it is NOT as some would like to believe it is. "This movement is a counterfeit which is costing people their souls in Africa."
What your "solid" but anonymous African pastor says does attest to carnal religion, and is to be condemned. And which is just the type of thing the devil works so that he has no competition in the breadth of the supernatural realm. But which is not the Scriptural response to fabrications or demonic imitators.
And using aberrations to characterize the whole, and to seemingly set up a false dilemma in order to justify cessasionism, is part of the problem. Similarly, some churches refuse to evangelize door to door because the JWs do it.
It is not either you hold to the gifts at issue being operative today or you preach the gospel and "the doctrine that is according to Godliness," but that Scripturally they are to go together.
I do not sanction, but censure Pentecostal aberrations, yet my case is that the resurrection is not simply a historical fact but that it is an event which the NT church gave witness to with great power. And not simply the apostles.
That is the model, and such attestation of the risen Christ is needed now as it was then (besides it being God's nature to do such), in addition to textual proofs. Regardless of my deficiencies or of the church today i cannot doctrinally abide settling for a lower standard of attestation, which can be an excuse for not seeking to be fully like the early church in its positive attributes.
For the church is to manifest the risen Christ not only in purity, passion but in NT power. My conscience must be held captive to the Word of God. Here i stand. May God help me. Amen