I just finished reading an interesting book called Counterfeit Revival, by Hank Hanegraff. The book was written at the height of what Charismatic/Pentecostals were calling a fresh renewal or revival in North America. You may remember this time (starting around 1994 and ending in 2001) as a church in Pensacola, Brownsville, and one in Toronto were getting some media attention due to strange things happening in their meetings. Hundreds of Christians were flocking to these towns to ‘catch the fire’ and bring it back to their local churches. My home church was no exception.

As I read the book which recounts tales of people falling down, shaking, and laughing uncontrollably, I couldn’t help but think how impressionable I was back then and how easily people buy into wacko stuff. This renewal ended up signaling the beginning of the end of our church. Within a few years of buying into hyper-charismania our church shrunk dramatically in size with many people falling away from the faith and many more still disenfranchised because the truth of who God was had been exchanged for an experience that couldn’t last.

Unfortunately emotional experience dealers like Benny Hinn still have a stage and many charismatic churches still focus more on the experience than the truth. Even recently, people like Todd Bentley managed to rally and deceive people into coming to a ’spiritual’ experience, while cheating on his wife behind the scenes.

Back to the book. I’d recommend anyone that has grown up or experienced hyper-charasmatic doctrine to read it. It’s a very truthful examination of some very unfortunate practices in the Christian culture. For me, reading some of the stories was a blast from the past.