My Journey to
becoming
Charismatically
Reformed
By
Chris Parker
May
9, 2012
My journey
begins, concerning this association, not long after my salvation in early
college. Presbyterians played a major
role in shaping my interests and desires for theology, apologetics and correct
doctrine. At the time, they seemed to
have more of an academic slant than did the Southern Baptists, among which I
had grown up.
I had a
Presbyterian friend who used to try and tell me that I was Arminian, but I
replied to him that I was neither Arminian nor Calvinist, but Southern
Baptist. But after college, I served
with Campus Crusade for two years in the country of Slovakia. One winter we attended a Bible study
conference in Bucharest, Romania, on the book of Romans.
It was then
the LORD won my heart over to Calvinism, when we came to Romans 9:16, “So then,
it is neither up to the man who wills, nor the man who runs, but up to God, who
has mercy.” After my second year with
Campus Crusade, I returned to the States to attend seminary and prepare for the
full time ministry which God had called me to shortly after being saved.
I attended Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary, presided by R. Albert Mohler, who is very
staunchly a Calvinist, and requires all the seminary professors to sign a
statement confessing their beliefs in the doctrines of grace. It was during this time that my confidence
and belief in theses doctrines were confirmed and built up.
During this
time, I was a cessationist in my views of the spiritual gifts, though through
this and missionary experience I would later gain in Ghana, Kenya, Sudan and
then home again in North America, I came to see the move of the Spirit of God
and the realities of the spiritual realm around us.
While in
Kenya, a newspaper reported on a young boy who fell to the floor convulsing and
foaming at the mouth while the teacher had led the children in saying a prayer
at the opening of the school day.
Pastors were called upon to pray over this child and cast out the spirit. This was unlike anything I had seen or heard
of before in America! During college I
was a philosophy major, and so I could discern, and really see that outside of
the ‘westernized cities,’ I was in a land that was not effected by the
scientific enlightenment, and still lived very much like people of Bible times.
In seminary
I took a Spiritual Warfare class with Dr. Chuck Lawless, and one of the
projects we did was watching taped episodes of Dateline, featuring a NC Baptist
pastor who had been called into performing exorcisms. We watched the show and evaluated and
discussed the implications and realities of this ministry.
In Kenya,
doing my tribal group research, we interviewed one fellow who was telling us of
his tribes “shatanyi dances.” When a
member of the tribe got sick, the tribe would encircle the person, dance around
them and chant, and then they would ask the spirit what it wanted for the
person’s healing. Whatever item the
spirit indicated, (shoes, tools, etc.) it was brought, and the person was
healed.
I also saw
God move in some uncanny ways through prayer during this time in Kenya. Later, serving in my first church, there was
a sweet, humble little lady in the church.
You would never know it, but one day as my wife and I spoke with her,
she told us that she had the gift of tongues.
She also had a spiritual prayer language, but never made a show of
it. Her husband was an agnostic, and
once on the news, they were speaking to some native American Indians, and this lady
was in the other room, and told her husband what the people were saying!
Also at this
church, after a Sunday morning service, as congregants were crowding the center
aisle, one woman looked over her shoulder, and her eyes had changed. They were no longer human, but the eyes of
demon. This was my first experience seeing
demons manifest.
After the
LORD had moved us from this church, He had brought us to this small trailer we
rented located on five beautiful acres of a farm. This was in answer to prayer for a place to
raise our boys. During this period, I
served as an theological email answer man for CARM.org, founded by Matt
Slick. I also poured myself into the
study of the new age along with end-time prophecy and its fulfillment.
At the
corner of the property were we were staying, the farmer had a waste pit, where
he would dispose of the remains of animals that he butchered for meat. We knew that UFOs and ‘aliens’ had an
interest in cow reproductive organs, and there was a large committee of
vultures that congregated around this area.
We began to sense spiritual attack in our lives. One night while I slept, a demon appeared in
the upper corner of our bedroom, and spoke to my wife. He asked her if she thought she was strong
enough to take him, and she responded, “No, but He who is in me is greater than
you.” And with an expression of disgust, the demon disappeared.
We had other
spiritual things happen to us during this time.
We were again hired on by a church in May of 2011 to serve as youth
pastor. The LORD took us there to stand
alongside the current pastor. The
community was filled with Masons, and many in the church leadership were
Masonic members. Because of this, they
were very works oriented in their theology, and were/are serving demons.
I was
introduced by a pastor to the work of Henry Wright, A More Excellent Way. My
wife had some health issues, allergies, asthma, problems with her sciatic nerve
and a phobia of rats. When we moved to
this new community, all her maladies were intensifying. I read Wright’s book with regard to what it
said about my wife’s maladies, and in faith we confessed sins and laid on hands
and prayed for healing, and saw my wife freed and cured from her sicknesses
that doctors were only able to manage with medications.
One day my
wife had been on her feet on the hard floor most of the day, and her sciatic
nerve was bothering her. I looked this
up in Wright’s book, and it said the spiritual cause was a demon of
sciatica! So in the name of Jesus
Christ, we cast this demon, and the pain went away. Once when my wife was having an asthma
attack, she asked me to lay hands on her for it to stop. When I did, and I commanded it to be healed
in the name of Jesus, it ceased and she has not used her breather since.
Once my wife
had pain in her shoulder and arm and I tried to cast it out, but the pain intensified. I repeated myself, trying to command it out
in the name of Jesus, but it kept increasing the pain. My wife was screaming hysterically, and I was
imploring the Lord to have mercy on her.
After 10 minutes of this, it gradually left.
A young man
came by the church office one day when I was there alone. He wanted me to give the blessing for him and
his girlfriend to live together. I would
not do it. This man was schizophrenic,
and heavily on drugs (at least in younger years). I asked him what the voices said to him, and
he told me that they tell him to kill people, all the time! I
responded by telling him that in Bible times people would take drugs to open
them to spirit beings they thought were gods.
The Bible tells us that these were demons. I said, “I think those voices in your head
are demons.” Over the next couple of
minutes, as I continued to refuse to bless his living in fornication, his face
hardened, and his eyes went from blue to yellow! A/The demon in him manifested itself. It was
literally like looking into the eyes of a serpent! I knew he could spring upon me and finish me
off, but the Lord gave me a peace.
I prayed for
him as he left with his girlfriend, but the next time I tried to pray for him,
he hung up the phone on me. I was going
to command the spirits out. His uncle is
a pastor, and I wanted to try to share the gospel with him.
This church
had also fired the last four or five pastors in a decade or so. They held a vote of no-confidence for my
senior pastor (which is unbiblical).
There was a young man who stood up, out of turn according to Robert’s
rules of order, and demanded a woman (who has demons) answer the spiritual test
question, “Has Jesus Christ ever walked the earth in the flesh?” (1 Jn.
4:2). The lady never answered but looked
at him with a sinister smile on her face and said, “You’re silly, sit down.”
Later I took
a stand against members of the church going to see the Twilight Series. I was teaching the youth that it opened
gateways to the demonic, but female leadership of the church was openly
broadcasting their love for the antichrist movies. The senior pastor resigned, and two weeks
later, the leadership moved to fire me.
They tried to get me on areas of theology, and on mismanagement of
church monies. When they could not get
me on these, they said that I was not reaching the youth. When they defended me, those particular
individuals were “exceptions to the rule.”
So they brought me to a vote of no-confidence before the church. The LORD had told me to stand, so I refused
to resign. I fully expected to have my
job terminated at the close of this meeting.
But the LORD moved in the meeting, and they failed to pass it by three
votes.
During this
meeting, and in several encounters with church members involved in Masonry or Eastern
Star, I would see a dark cloud around them as they raged against me. God is my witness that I walked in complete
integrity all during my ministry, but the enemy did not like that I was
beginning to teach the youth of healing, and that involvement with the world
opened gateways to the demonic, and that many of our sicknesses and depressions
are caused by unconfessed sin and demons.
So now I live on a beautiful farm. My wife and partner in ministry feel that the LORD has called us here to get the
farm ready for the economic collapse that is coming and the LORD has brought us a couple of people witht he Spirit who have
prophesied that this will be used for an end-time ministry. And so the journey continues...
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