Is Driscoll claiming to be a prophet?

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I am not trying to say that Driscoll is lying, but after watching the video it does ring a little false. If you had molested someone when they were very young and they didn't remember it and you had gotten away with it for so long, and then suddenly they came to you and said "Hey, my pastor says he had a vision that you molested me when I was two. Is this true?" You would never admit it to it as if it was no big deal. You would insist that the pastor was insane. And yet all of the people whom Driscoll had a "vision" about admitted it immediately when confronted.
 
I realize Driscoll is generally not thought well of in these parts, but is this quote seriously considered cultish?

"Cultish" is actually one of the first words that came to my mind, and I didn't even notice the forum this had been placed in. But cultish in the personality cult sense. If you pastor is now receiving direct messages from God on an imaginary TV, what do you think that is going to do to the members of the congregation who trust in this man. If he now sees secret sins on the TV screen, then that gives him huge power/control over the people. And if that's not cultish, I don't know what is. No, nobody's being abducted in unmarked vans and taken to a gated compound, but this is the kind of thing that you see the exalted leaders of true cults of the past doing, except maybe on a smaller scale. And it's a very dangerous thing.
 
This quote is pretty dorky. Does he claim - specifically and emphatically that what he "sees" is of Divine origin?

Interestingly, I don't doubt his ability to read people - particularly people from abused pasts. The trauma of abuse often creates a "profile" of behaviors and lifestyle choices that someone with enough experience can read like an open book - or in this case, "watch like a tv program." Incidentally his church has a very large ministry to people coming from various types of broken backgrounds. In fact, hands down the best book I've read this year was written by his associate pastor who heads up that ministry.

So I really do trust his ability to discern someone who has emerged from an abusive past.
 
A friend of mine read Driscoll's earlier book Confessions of a Reformission Reverend and said that in that book he discusses his children levitating off of their beds. Granted, I don't know the context and haven't read it myself. At the least it shows those strongly charismatic tendencies are nothing new to Driscoll's ministry.
 
I don't quite understand what the big deal is. Did Driscoll claim to be a prophet?

Even Spurgeon had premonitions that were much more specific than Driscoll's. Shall we throw Spurgeon under the bus too?
Spurgeon and prophecy « A Living Text

I think you've failed to listen to the Driscoll message or read the transcript of it if you think that the premonitions Spurgeon spoke of were "much more specific than Driscoll's"

I meant more what Ben was saying. Recognizing the tell-tale signs of abuse is something that many counselors and pastors can do. Now, being led by the Spirit to point at someone in the congregation a dozen or more times, and discerning things like that someone stole the gloves he was wearing, or opened his shoemaker shop on the Sabbath and took four pence profit ... that seems to be much more difficult.

For those critiquing Driscoll ... are you also critical of Spurgeon's leadings of the spirit?
 
I don't quite understand what the big deal is. Did Driscoll claim to be a prophet?

Even Spurgeon had premonitions that were much more specific than Driscoll's. Shall we throw Spurgeon under the bus too?
Spurgeon and prophecy « A Living Text

I think you've failed to listen to the Driscoll message or read the transcript of it if you think that the premonitions Spurgeon spoke of were "much more specific than Driscoll's"

I meant more what Ben was saying. Recognizing the tell-tale signs of abuse is something that many counselors and pastors can do. Now, being led by the Spirit to point at someone in the congregation a dozen or more times, and discerning things like that someone stole the gloves he was wearing, or opened his shoemaker shop on the Sabbath and took four pence profit ... that seems to be much more difficult.

For those critiquing Driscoll ... are you also critical of Spurgeon's leadings of the spirit?

Don,

Have you watched the video or read the transcript of Driscoll's message? I ask because if you had I don't think you'd keep asking this question in comparing him to Spurgeon.
 
Have you watched the video or read the transcript of Driscoll's message? I ask because if you had I don't think you'd keep asking this question in comparing him to Spurgeon.

I read the transcript. Why do you not think that Driscoll and Spurgeon are comparable?
 
A friend of mine read Driscoll's earlier book Confessions of a Reformission Reverend and said that in that book he discusses his children levitating off of their beds. Granted, I don't know the context and haven't read it myself. At the least it shows those strongly charismatic tendencies are nothing new to Driscoll's ministry.

I've heard him say some odd things in the past too. I listened to a sermon (or conference, can't remember) talk he did on demons. Some good stuff in there, but he recounted the story about how he had been
attacked by a demon once, and that the attack had left him bruised and battered.

My inlaws used to attend a pentacostal church, so this sort of talk doesn't shock me, per se, but "reformed" and "charismatic" just seems like such an odd combination.
 
Have you watched the video or read the transcript of Driscoll's message? I ask because if you had I don't think you'd keep asking this question in comparing him to Spurgeon.

I read the transcript. Why do you not think that Driscoll and Spurgeon are comparable?

As far as I can tell, Spurgeon never boasted that he used his "gifts" to expose sin to third parties. He never accused a wife of adultery in front of her husband without confronting her privately. And I am pretty sure he never told a person that he was a victim of a felony based only upon his visions.

In fact, Spurgeon did what he did in the course of preaching, and I'm not quite convinced that he singled people out as that account said. People recall being singled out, but that is how God's word often convicts.
 
This clip is over five years old, if that matters to anyone.

Why would that matter? Has Driscoll recanted or at least attempted to explain any of the video since then? If not, then I presume he still holds to the same views.
 
This clip is over five years old, if that matters to anyone.

Why would that matter? Has Driscoll recanted or at least attempted to explain any of the video since then? If not, then I presume he still holds to the same views.

I don't know. I don't watch or listen to him much anymore. But since it's been a little while, it'd probably be worth investigating instead of acting like he said it yesterday.
 
Adam
A friend of mine read Driscoll's earlier book Confessions of a Reformission Reverend and said that in that book he discusses his children levitating off of their beds. Granted, I don't know the context and haven't read it myself. At the least it shows those strongly charismatic tendencies are nothing new to Driscoll's ministry.

Is that not when young children get full of orange squash and start using their bed as a trampoline :lol:
 
Have you watched the video or read the transcript of Driscoll's message? I ask because if you had I don't think you'd keep asking this question in comparing him to Spurgeon.

I read the transcript. Why do you not think that Driscoll and Spurgeon are comparable?

You posted that you meant more like what Ben was saying with regard to recognizing tell-tale signs of abuse. MD goes way beyond that and says he can view things as clearly as you would on a TV screen. I asked if you read the transcript because I don't see how someone can read it and then say that Spurgeon's impressions were "much more difficult."

One difference is that Spurgeon apparently only had it happen a handful of times and he didn't denounce cessationists as being practical deists the way that Driscoll recently did. (Cessationism is likely an anachronistic term when applied to Spurgeon's era, but he would have been familiar with the argument.) Spurgeon had great admiration for Old Princeton, for example, which was arguably the fountainhead of cessationism as it is usually articulated today. Spurgeon used A.H. Hodge's Outlines of Theology in his pastor's college, stating that he only disagreed with it on ecclesiology. Yet Driscoll derides that as "Old Calvinism" and says it's basically modernist and deist.

---------- Post added at 12:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:17 PM ----------

This clip is over five years old, if that matters to anyone.

Why would that matter? Has Driscoll recanted or at least attempted to explain any of the video since then? If not, then I presume he still holds to the same views.

I don't know. I don't watch or listen to him much anymore. But since it's been a little while, it'd probably be worth investigating instead of acting like he said it yesterday.

Very recently he has said "cessationism is worldliness" and “So it goes to Atheism, Deism and this will be controversial, cessationism.” He falsely claimed that cessationism was a post-enlightenment idea when in fact it goes back to the Church Fathers. While he doesn't say it in so many words, his denouncement of cessationism essentially equated it with the antisupernaturalism of the liberals. So I think it's fair to assume he is still in large agreement with his statements based on that as well as the fact that the message linked in the OP is still on his website.

I ask, with all due respect, would this perpetual apology of "How old is that message?" be employed with regard to any other leader? Unfortunately over the past several years I have spent way too much time on the internet. Yet, I haven't seen "how old was that message" applied to anyone else, especially in this kind of context.

It was continually brought up a couple of years ago when there was the controversy over the linkage to "Christian Nymphos," the Song of Solomon, etc. (which is still linked at MH from what I understand, with the exception of the Scotland message.) The concerns over the propriety of these actions were widely (and wrongly) dismissed by his admirers as just a rehash of the old cussing controversy. A lot of that is because many of the young guys simply don't like those who would dare to criticize them or their hero, typically viewing such criticism or concern as the raving of suited fundamentalists, prejudiced rednecks, rabid anti-Calvinists or "frozen chosen" TR's. While some of that may be true, broad brushing everyone in that manner is no more accurate than the Arminian-moralistic types are of stereotyping all Calvinists as being either the frozen chosen or Driscoll fanboys.
 
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what is all this talk about NT prophecies could be false? Source? I HIGHLY doubt that Grudem would actually claim that.

Here is what Grudem says in The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today (emphasis added):

In this book I am suggesting an understanding of the gift of prophecy which would require a bit of modification in the views of each of these . . . groups. I am asking that the charismatics go on using the gift of prophecy, but that they stop calling it "a word from the Lord"`simply because that label makes it sound exactly like the Bible in authority, and leads to much misunderstanding. . . . On the other side, I am asking those in the cessationist camp to give serious thought to the possibility that prophecy in ordinary New Testament churches was not equal to Scripture in authority, but was simply a very human and sometimes partially mistaken report of something the Holy Spirit brought to someone's mind. And I am asking that they think again about those arguments for the cessation of certain gifts.

Speaking as a former charismatic, how someone within charismatic circles responds to Grudem's view here is a major marker of whether they have passed beyond charismatic to charismaniac. Those who accept Grudem's view, have rejected the biblical testimony that a prediction must be provably accurate before it can be accepted either as prophecy or divine testing. Those who reject Grudem's view but accept contemporary occasional situational (NOT canonical) prophecy are best dealt with in a way that recognizes their difference from Grudem's view.
 
As somebody who was once involved in the charismatic movement, let me say this clearly and concisely, with all due respect to Mark Driscoll and others who flirt with charismaticism/pentecostalism:

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be careful about this!!! I can tell you that, more often than not, people who claimed to have "visions" or other supernatural interventions of the Spirit were in truth often giving in to their own imaginations or emotionalism.

I, like others here, have no doubt that God in His sovereignty can interact in a divine way. The problem comes when that becomes the expected norm of operation, when the expected norm should be running to the written word of God and realizing that God's working out of His will more often than not happens through natural means rather than through miraculous means.

It's very easy to start chasing after the supernatural and forsake the natural in the pentecostal movement, and exalting tongues, signs, and wonders over the written Word of God is a real temptation to those in this area.

I don't know whether or not Driscoll actively "seeks" after these things, or whether or not these are legitamate visions from God or conjurings from his own imagination. I do know this: to focus upon those things and make them the center of faith is a step in the direction of being tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine.
 
This quote is pretty dorky. Does he claim - specifically and emphatically that what he "sees" is of Divine origin?

Interestingly, I don't doubt his ability to read people - particularly people from abused pasts. The trauma of abuse often creates a "profile" of behaviors and lifestyle choices that someone with enough experience can read like an open book - or in this case, "watch like a tv program." Incidentally his church has a very large ministry to people coming from various types of broken backgrounds. In fact, hands down the best book I've read this year was written by his associate pastor who heads up that ministry.

So I really do trust his ability to discern someone who has emerged from an abusive past.

Ben, I've found this to be quite true, having had several friends who've been abused. One of the most tragic things about abuse, particularly sexual abuse, is that it leaves a pretty distinct profile of wreckage. In fact, it's like a large portion of their humanity is stripped away and every inch of it they get back is a major victory. This means that they're easily identifiable if you know what to look for, which of course tends to attract other predatory types but can also be key to a Christian identifying and helping these people. And yes, if you're talking about Rid of My Disgrace, it's an excellent and badly needed book on the subject.

However, his quote is the WRONG approach to take towards someone exhibiting signs of abuse. The last thing a counselor should do is to project specifics like this onto some person or another. It's not unreasonable to ask if someone exhibiting the major characteristics of abuse was abused and if so who did it, but telling these people about your visions is unconscionably cruel, especially if you think these prophetic visions can be fallible. (Now I don't believe either fallible or infallible visions from God occur post-apostolic era, but this is an example of how fallible visions are in some ways even more cruel than the "infallible" ones) It's how you create false memories that shield either real abuse or psychological cries for help. And it also opens the door to false accusations, which erodes the credibility of rape or abuse to a public who would much prefer for this to only be an issue for a tiny group of people.
 
There needs to be greater accountability and discipleship amongst some of these pastors. And honestly, some advice on speaking style. Sometimes one hears things that just sound so silly and wrong that it is hard to evaluate what was actually meant. You shouldn't have to interpret a pastor's words before other believers can see that they are ok.
 
This is very interesting. The fact that it was 3 years ago though also makes a difference. I'm not sure what to think honestly.
 
The fact that it was 3 years ago though also makes a difference.

Why? Just the other week he slammed cessationists as being little better than liberals and deists. That certainly doesn't indicate any change of position on the issue.
 
The fact that it was 3 years ago though also makes a difference.

Why? Just the other week he slammed cessationists as being little better than liberals and deists. That certainly doesn't indicate any change of position on the issue.
Cite?

I think it is in the Orlando message linked in post #53, starting about halfway through.

If not, you can Google Driscoll and cessationism is worldliness or something similar and a bunch of links will come up. The video and a transcript are available in Frank Turk's recent Open Letter to Driscoll. The cessationism is worldliness message is what caused this blogger (who was a poster here in the early days) to recall the message that is the subject of this thread.

 
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