A Gentleman's Response to Hank Hanegraaff

For 24 years I have lived in England, having arrived here on Sept. 1, 1973, from my own country, the United States. I came here to do theological research at Oxford University. I came to study the Puritans, and my supervisor, B.R. White, welcomed my choice of J.I. Packer as a second supervisor.

While at Oxford, my friendship with pastor D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones that had begun in 1963 was renewed. Lloyd-Jones was perhaps the greatest preacher of our time and a genius if there ever was one. It never crossed my mind that I would end up as his successor at Westminster Chapel.

For eight years after I arrived in England, Lloyd-Jones' friendship was invaluable to me. He kept my mind sharp and my heart warm. He later put me in my current pulpit, and I was his pastor until he died in 1981.

For nearly all of the four years before Lloyd-Jones' death, I had the rarest privilege to sit at his feet. I got to know how his mind worked, and he taught me to be open to the Spirit in a manner no one else had suggested.

During my 20 years at Westminster Chapel I have kept expository preaching central to my ministry. I and my staff have sought to be equally evangelistic, theologically minded and open to the Holy Spirit. Prophetic minister Paul Cain asked for and received church membership; South African evangelist Rodney Howard-Browne has preached for us, as has John Arnott, pastor of Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship. Our congregation may be the first church in London to have plunged into "the river" of God's current move without becoming charismatic first.

Imagine my surprise when I began reading Hank Hanegraaff's latest book, Counterfeit Revival. I knew good things about Hank and was aware that he had been faithful in exposing dangerous cults; in so doing he performed a wonderful service for the church.

Hanegraaff begins his book by giving us a colorful, graphic and descriptive account of a persuasive man in action before a sympathetic audience. People are mesmerized and in awe of the man. They witness him doing quite extraordinary things.

As I read Hanegraaff's description, it wasn't long before I thought that he was describing Howard-Browne, who sometimes is known as the "Holy Ghost Bartender." How wrong I was--I had taken the bait! Hank actually was describing Tony Angelo, the world's greatest stage hypnotist.

At one time, I could have written Counterfeit Revival. Had I walked cold into one of Howard-Browne's meetings, my reaction would have been identical to Hanegraaff's.

But God has graciously prepared me over the years, and I've learned He doesn't lead us directly from A to Z, but from A to B, B to C and so on. Over the years, God has developed in me two things: (1) a hunger for intimacy with Him that has surpassed all other desires; and (2) a lack of concern for my reputation so that I did not care where the Spirit led--as long as it could be attested by His Word.

But Counterfeit Revival shook me nonetheless. Hanegraaff puts "facts" before the reader with minimal attempts to verify or document all the findings.

He often describes Howard-Browne's manner accurately: "Fill, fill, fill! Let it bubble out of your belly!" or "Get him, Jesus! Get him!"

But then he throws in unhappy items about A.A. Allen and William Branham. And at the appropriate time, he quotes Howard-Browne: "Read the life stories of some of the great men of God, men like A.A. Allen." Then enters Paul Cain, Hanegraaff's next target, who admits to his admiration of Branham.

By the time I had worked through such "guilt by association" motifs, I found myself thinking I truly must be the most deceived man who ever lived.

I was reminded of my days at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. That hallowed institution has since changed and is now under sound theological leadership, but I was there from 1971-73 when Higher Criticism of the Bible was an assumption, Paul Tillich was a hero and Process Theology was the greatest way forward since the Reformation.

I had come to Louisville believing the Bible was true. But here were learned men who claimed they were going to help us appreciate the Bible all the more!

I asked them: Could Karl Barth have been right? If so, then there is no need to evangelize. Could Rudolf Bultmann have been right? If so, then the Bible was a faulty document.

Hanegraaff's depictions of what I have thought were mostly God's doing in recent times gave me exactly the same feeling I had at seminary when I wondered if I could believe the Bible any longer. And if Hanegraaff's book is right, then not only have I been taken in by Satan, but my wife also has been healed and transformed by an angel of light, and my son T.R.'s sudden, deep love for spiritual things has been impugned.

FAITH AND WORKS

I could count on one hand the people who have gripped my attention within seconds after meeting them. Paul Cain was one of them.

Based on the things I heard (all in Hanegraaff's book), I honestly had concluded that Cain was occultic. But when I saw him and spent time with him, I was forced to change my mind.

And I met Howard-Browne before I ever heard him preach. It was at breakfast in Wembley, near London, in December 1994. I immediately asked him if he would pray for my wife, Louise, and he agreed to come to my vestry.

Louise had never laid eyes on Rodney, never heard him preach, never been near one of his meetings. But she agreed to let him pray for her.

Rodney and his wife, Adonica, laid hands on Louise, who had no opportunity for preconditioning or hype, and they prayed for about five minutes. Louise was instantly healed of a condition that neither her general practitioner nor the top specialists in London's prestigious Brompton Hospital could touch.

Encouraged by this, she went to one of Rodney's meetings a month later in Florida. She returned to London a transformed woman.

She had been in a serious depression for five years. Her assessment of Rodney's meetings was, "It's the nearest you get to heaven without dying."

Our son T.R. was reached through the same meeting and is today at the center of so much of what is happening at Westminster Chapel. It is safe to say the changes in Louise and T.R. have been a factor in our church's remaining united behind my ministry.

I came out of my experience at Southern Seminary a stronger believer in the full inspiration and infallibility of the Bible than when I had entered. But how? I settled it on my knees; it was my personal relationship with God that won the day.

In a similar way, had my wife and son not been turned around by Rodney's ministry, and had I not personally experienced the direct power of the Holy Spirit, I cannot be sure how I would have coped with Hanegraaff's book. That is, until he attacked the Cane Ridge Revival.

I knew he had been selective in his references to Jonathan Edwards, a leader of what commonly is called the Great Awakening. Hank apparently does not want the reader to know that Edwards, a theologian and preacher, did not disown strange manifestations.

But Hanegraaff overreached himself when he put the Cane Ridge Revival--what church historians call America's Second Great Awakening--on the same scale and plateau as what he calls counterfeit.

For anyone to claim that the Cane Ridge Revival is not of God and then label it a forerunner to Rodney Howard-Browne, Toronto and Pensacola, and Promise Keepers has in that moment affirmed the latter ministries (even if unwittingly) to the hilt!

Yet, I have to admit I was sobered by Hanegraaff's book, and I sympathize with those readers who will take this book at face value and never look back. I sympathize with not a few young seminary students who come to their chosen place of learning only to be disillusioned and never get back to the gospel.

It seems to me that Hanegraaff has managed to criticize nearly everything that is largely explained by the immediate power of the Holy Spirit. He may not be a cessationist (one who believes that the supernatural ended with the closing of the canon of Scripture), but he might as well be. He seems threatened by nearly anything that is supernatural, and he needs to play into good people's fears to bolster his case.

I have written to Hank, expressing my surprise at the way he handles truth and is selective with the evidence. I hope he will talk to me.

I fear he has been promoted to the level of his incompetence. He is out of his depth when he focuses on the authentic rather than the counterfeit. Perhaps it takes less of the Spirit to expose the false?

I promise to pray for Hank. His gift could be valuable to the cause of Christ. He has done some good work in the past, but not this time. *

R.T. Kendall is pastor of Westminster Chapel in London, where he has served 20 years. He is the author of Word of the Lord (Zondervan) and several other books.

© 1996 Strang Communications