IHOP Postmortem, Part 1
Series: Podcast
Speaker: Chris Oswald
Podcast
Date: 6th April 2025
Passage: John 14:1-16:33
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Some of the greatest preaching and teaching in the history of the church was polemic in nature. That is to say it was oriented toward correcting heresy.
An example would Irenaeus’ work: Against Heretics. Spurgeon did this when he opposed Marxism. One of the best sermon’s I’ve ever heard was preached by the baptist great WA Crisswell who preached a sermon at the Southern Baptist Convention aimed directly at theological liberalism.
Today I’m going to be talking about the Holy Spirit. And I’m going to attempt to preach a polemical sermon. Meaning, I’m going to preach against something. Namely, the errors related to the Holy Spirit that are at work in the hypercharismatic movement.
By hypercharismatics, I am mostly referring to the movement known as New Apostolic Reformation. IHOP was part of that, as is Bethel. And there are several other groups loosely connected. This appears to be a growing movement.
In 2015, there were about 3 million American Christians connected to NAR churches. Some estimates put that number at 33 million today. Whatever the number, we can say:
A lot of these folks live in Kansas City. And due to the IHOP stuff, a lot of them are rethinking all of this. In one sense, this sermon could help you help them. And obviously, I am eager to protect from their errors as well.
Three things about polemical preaching.
Firstly, it needs to be firm.
Titus 2:11-15 says, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.
Secondly, it needs to be gentle.
2 Timothy 2:24-26 says, And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.
So we won’t be offering these critiques in a particularly spicy way.
Thirdly, it must use the error to proclaim and clarify the truth.
While we do hope that some people will receive correction, the real value of polemical preaching is that it offers a kind of “not this but that” format that winds up clarifying key truths and further edifying believers who aren’t themselves in error. Today, we’re going to use the errors at work in the New Apostolic Reformation movement as a kind of contrast to the truths we see taught by Jesus in John 14-16
Three problems with the hyper-charismatic movement as it relates to their functional relationship with the Holy Spirit.
A failure to distinguish the apostolic age from this current age
A false division between the spirit and the word
A failure to emphasize Christ
Apostolic Uniqueness
The NAR error on this account amounts to their insistence of total continuity between the apostolic age and our current age. They think the office of apostle continues today as it did back in the early church. The traditional view, which I think is the correct view, says otherwise.
Think of it this way, as we’ve studied the words of Jesus, given primarily to the apostles, there’s a kind of elephant in the room.
Are these promises directed at the apostles or to all believers?
There is a sense in which the apostles are just like us. Peter calls himself a fellow shepherd. The apostles refer to themselves as brothers and co-laborers with the other Christians.
But there is another sense in which they were special. They were given unique apostolic authority and anointing. They performed miracles of unique quality, quantity, and predictability. Most importantly, they wrote the scriptures.
The apostles are like us in that we all are saved the same way.
They are unlike us in that they held a unique place in the development of the church.
That’s what we believe. That the apostles were a unique group of men who existed for a specific period of time. They had two qualifications:
they were eyewitnesses to the resurrected Christ (Acts 1:21-22; 1 Corinthians 9:1)
they were directly commissioned by Jesus to speak and write with foundational authority for the church (Galatians 1:1; 2 Peter 3:2).
This aligns with Ephesians 2:20, where the church is "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets," a foundation we see as being laid once for all in the first century.
This affects how we view Jesus’ words, especially during his farewell discourse. Here’s how I would propose you think about this.
For the apostles, Jesus gives particulars.
For the rest of us, Jesus gives patterns.
Perhaps the most obvious example of this has to do with the Great Commission. The apostles literally did go from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the outermost parts. For the church at large, that same text serves as a more general pattern.
In John 16:1-4, we see another example:
“I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you.
That literally happened to the apostles. It figuratively or metaphorically happens to all disciples (you will be excluded and persecuted).
Here’s another example. Look at vs. 12
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
When directed toward the apostles, this promise predicts the formation of the New Testament. They received divine revelation from the Holy Spirit as they wrote the books of the NT. They were carried along by the Holy Spirit writing inspired inerrant divine revelation. That’s the particular fulfillment of Jesus’ words.
But there’s also something there for us. Something more like a pattern. When directed toward us, the idea moves from being revelation to illumination. For the apostles, the Holy Spirit gave them the words of Christ to write (which is revelation). We are beneath the apostles in this regard and instead of revelation, the Holy Spirit provides illumination of God’s word.
Illumination means that the Holy Spirit opens our spiritual eyes to the existing scriptures to help us understand and apply them in a way that pleases God.
Which brings us to the second critique of NAR. Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit’s main way of helping us involves illuminating the word of God to us.
