50 Days of Wisdom

Romans 8 will help you to understand the true ministry of the Holy Spirit in a time when, in the evangelical Christian world, the ministry of the Holy Spirit is misunderstood and misrepresented. That is largely the legacy of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, which is kind of a third force in Christianity. There's Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Pentecostalism. Those are the three forces, and, obviously, we understand the errors in Roman Catholicism. That's why Protestantism exists—because it was a protest against their errors. But we haven't protested yet, as we should have, against the Pentecostal aberrations of Scripture. I've been endeavoring to carry on a rather small protest for many years. My goal is to bring the Holy Spirit into the light of the Scripture and get Him out of the shadows of the Pentecostal misrepresentations. To be able to know the truth about the Holy Spirit is to be able to worship God properly. God is supposed to be worshiped for who He is and for what He has done in full Trinitarian expression. We are to worship the Father truly, the Son truly, and the Spirit truly, and we are to worship in Spirit and in truth. And to do that, a right understanding of the Holy Spirit is essential. It's a strange paradox that the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement claims to be the movement of the Holy Spirit, and yet it's the one most guilty of misrepresenting who He is and what He does. And most of their misrepresentations have to do with the Holy Spirit, although they're not limited to that. There are also deviations in that movement regarding the doctrine of Scripture, which is the doctrine of divine revelation. That's no small issue. They are convinced that God is still revealing Himself and that He is still speaking, giving visions, words of wisdom, and words of knowledge. They believe that people are still receiving divine revelation, which calls into question the singularity of holy Scripture and reminds us of the warning at the end of the book of Revelation: "if anything is added to this book, it shall be added to the ones who do that addition the plagues that are written in it." Confusing divine revelation is a serious error, and that is rampant in that movement. And then there's the issue of interpretation. How do you interpret the Scripture in the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement? It's largely a matter of not just superficial interpretation but spiritualizing it, interpreting the Bible by intuition and by experience, and reading into the text whatever it is that you want the text to say; we call that eisegesis. There is also grave error in the issue of authority. What has authority in the church? Does somebody's experience have authority? Does somebody's feeling have authority? Is truth determined and validated by existential experience? Is there power in the person to create their own world? Do we have the authority to speak our own world into existence, like positive confession tells us in that movement? Can we create our own reality? Do we even have authority over God to force God to do certain things because we have spoken them, and by our faith, force Him to act on our behalf? The issue of authority is a huge issue misrepresented in that movement. The issue of apostolic uniqueness is another one. According to the Pentecostal movement, there are still apostles and prophets today. And apostles still have the signs of an apostle. This calls into question the uniqueness of the apostolic ministry of those true apostles that saw the resurrected Jesus and were so designated in the New Testament. There are so many other issues that are concerning, but it seems that no one area of misrepresentation is any more vast than that concerning the Holy Spirit. So much of what goes on in the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement is supposed to be the power and work of the Holy Spirit when in fact it's not that at all. Thankfully, Romans 8 helps us to understand the true ministry of the Holy Spirit. Repent and believe! GTY.org (90-426) – Conforming to the Glory of Christ

Today's Wisdom

Day: 947

June 17, 2026

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Now grant, O Lord, that when the souls who read these books cast their eyes upon these lines, their minds may be illuminated and their consciences convinced and awakened, that they may see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and be converted so that You may heal them. Amen