The Modern Drift

Part Three: The Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements

Note: This topic receives full treatment in a dedicated Derech Truth Labs paper, “Speaking in Tongues as a Sign of Salvation.” What follows is a condensed examination of the pattern.

The Doctrine and Its Origins

The modern Pentecostal movement traces to Charles Parham’s Bible school in Topeka, Kansas (1901) and the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles (1906–1915). A central claim emerged: speaking in tongues is the “initial physical evidence” of baptism in the Holy Spirit, and every believer should seek and receive this gift.

The historical problem: This doctrine was invented in 1901. For 1,900 years the church read the same Bible without reaching this conclusion. The first to explicitly connect speaking in tongues as “the initial biblical evidence” of Spirit baptism was Charles Parham. Whatever one thinks of the doctrine, its novelty is a documented fact.

The Failed Test

Early Pentecostals understood tongues in the traditional sense: a divine endowment of speaking in a foreign language previously unknown by the speaker. This was the original expectation — God was equipping them to preach worldwide without learning languages.

When missionaries arrived at their destinations, they discovered they did not have this ability. A.G. Garr and his wife traveled from Azusa Street to Calcutta, India. Speaking in tongues did not enable them to speak Bengali. Other missionaries reported identical failures.

The theological shift: Rather than concluding the experience was not what they thought, Pentecostals shifted the definition from “miraculously speaking actual foreign languages” to “ecstatic utterance” or “private prayer language.” The practice continued. Only the meaning changed.

What the Church Fathers Said

John Chrysostom (347–407): “This whole place [1 Corinthians 14] is very obscure: but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place.”

Augustine (354–430): “In the earliest times, the Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed; and they spake with tongues, which they had not learned, as the Spirit gave them utterance. These were signs adapted to the time. That thing was done for a betokening, and it passed away.”

Part Four: The Prosperity Gospel

Origins: New Thought to the Church

The prosperity gospel did not emerge from biblical study. It traces to E.W. Kenyon (1867–1948), who was influenced by the “New Thought” movement — a 19th-century quasi-Christian metaphysical teaching that positive thinking creates reality. Kenneth Hagin Sr. popularized Kenyon’s ideas, and a generation of televangelists followed: Kenneth Copeland, Oral Roberts, Benny Hinn, Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, and others.

The Teaching and Its Problems

The core claims: God wants you wealthy, and poverty indicates lack of faith. “Positive confession” — speaking what you want — creates reality. Giving money to ministries triggers financial returns from God. Physical healing is guaranteed by Christ’s atonement, and continued sickness indicates lack of faith.

The Biblical Problems

Jesus said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth” (Matthew 6:19) and “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross” (Matthew 16:24). Paul wrote, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils” (1 Timothy 6:10) and was content with plenty or hunger (Philippians 4:12). Paul left Trophimus sick at Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20) and told Timothy to use wine for his frequent ailments (1 Timothy 5:23) — neither “claimed” healing. Jesus himself had nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20). The apostles were poor. The early church shared possessions rather than accumulating them.

Insider Testimony

Costi Hinn, nephew of prosperity preacher Benny Hinn, grew up inside the movement and later left. He wrote:

“Growing up in the Hinn family empire was like belonging to some hybrid of the royal family and the mafia. Though Jesus Christ was still a part of our gospel, he was more of a magic genie than the King of Kings. Rubbing him the right way, by giving money and having enough faith, would unlock your spiritual inheritance. God’s goal was not his glory but our gain. His grace was not to set us free from sin but to make us rich.”

— Costi Hinn, Christianity Today, September 2017

Part Five: The Same Human Heart

The pattern is consistent across all four examples:

These are the same dynamics we identified in secular science: narrative protection over evidence evaluation, institutional authority over testable claims, and consequences for dissent.

Part Six: Where Truth Lives

An honest accounting holds all of the following simultaneously:

The Catholic Church’s indulgence abuse was real and acknowledged — and the Catholic tradition has also produced some of the most rigorous scholarship and faithful service in Christian history. Institutional failure does not erase institutional faithfulness.

Mainline denominations adopted progressive positions under cultural and financial pressure — and the progressive theologians making those arguments include credentialed scholars who sincerely believe they are being faithful to Scripture. We have explained why we find their arguments unpersuasive, but we do not question their sincerity.

The Pentecostal movement redefined a doctrine when reality didn’t match the claim — and Pentecostal Christians also display genuine passion for God, sacrificial service, and fruit of the Spirit that no honest observer can dismiss. The Holy Spirit is evidently at work among them, even where their theology needs correction.

The prosperity gospel is a distortion of biblical teaching — and many people in prosperity churches genuinely love Jesus and serve their communities. The critique is of the teaching, not the people.

The solution is the same: return to the source. For Christians, that source is Scripture. The Bereans were commended because they “examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). They did not accept Paul’s word because of his authority — they tested it against the Word.

A Word to the Church

The church’s prophetic voice is most powerful when it is most precise.

When we overstate our case, when we strawman positions we disagree with, when we apply standards to others that we refuse to apply to ourselves — we undermine the very credibility we need to speak truth into a world that desperately needs it.

The standard is not what feels good, what culture approves, what tradition teaches, or what authority declares. The standard is the Word of God. When any institution — scientific or religious — asks you to accept claims that contradict clear evidence or plain Scripture because of their authority, that is the moment to remember: truth is discovered by those who question, not by those who demand conformity.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. — 2 Timothy 3:16

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. — Galatians 1:8

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