The proud parents brought their new baby boy home from the hospital.  Days passed, and they became concened.  The baby never cried.  He might whimper a little bit, but he never made the all-out squawlin' bawlin' sound their other children had made.

     As the baby grew from infant to toddler, he still made not a sound.  They tried to get him to talk, but to no avail.  Worried, they took him to the doctor.  After a thorough examination, the doctor declared, "I can't find anything wrong with him.  I guess he'll talk when he wants to."

     Years passed, and the parents grew used to the silence.  Little Jack never said a word.

     One day when the boy was about ten years old, he came in to eat the lunch that his mother had prepared for him.  He took one spoonful of the soup into his mouth, a sour look came over his face.  He spat out the soup, threw down his spoon and shouted,

     "This is slop!  And I'm not gonna eat it."

     Stunned, the mother said,

     "Jack!  My God!

      You can talk!"

     Then she thought for a moment and added,

     "Hey!  Why haven't you talked before?"

     Jack replied,

     "Well, things were pretty well alright until now."

     Like little Jack, we in Spirit-filled circles have had little to say, and have been pretty content to eat whatever spiritual meal was placed before us.

     Jack rejected a perfectly good meal, calling it "slop" simply because he didn't like the taste.  In our case though, the spiritual meals given us by too many Charismatic leaders have gotten less and less Scriptural to the point where much of what we're getting is indeed "slop."

      Readers, if you have spent any significant amount of time in prayer, and have any level of spiritual maturity and discening, you already know that some of our full-gospel teachings have become increasingly bizarre, and have little if anything to do with sound doctrine and Scripture.

     We haven't had the nerve to say anything.

     We didn't dare.

     If you are a Charismatic pastor, evangelist, or prophet, and you don't copy what everyone else is preaching, your people will notice that you aren't following the pack, and will begin to believe you are behind the times.  Your church rolls will drop, you will be invited to hold meetings less often, and before long, you'll be out of ministry and back in secular work.

     So the need for self-preservation is a strong incentive for Charismatic ministers to just preach what everyone else is preaching.

     If you are a member of a Spirit-filled congregation and you question the validity of some of the extreme teachings and improper behavior that appear in our circles from time to time, you risk being called "unteachable" or "rebellious," or you might be told that you are not properly "submitting to authority."

     "After all, Brother So and So preaches this!  I heard this preached on xyz Christian TV program last night!  Brother Great Healing Evangelist teaches this in his new book!  They can't all be wrong!"

     Sadly, yes they can.

     They have been before.