How Excess Can Destroy Moves of God!

by Sean Steckbeck

I've seen unbalanced excesses destroy moves of God over and over again as a student of church history and revival history, particurarly in the charismatic movement. These were genuine moves of God, excesses (leaven) was allowed in, it was not dealt with, and in the end it stopped the move of God.

Let's just give examples with this century:

1.) Pentecostal Movement

Not many know this, but it was the excess of the Oneness doctrine that ended what began at Azusa Street. Frank Bartleman can be seen as a reference here. There were mini-movements as well like John Alexander Dowie's fall with his belief he was Elijah and others. This was a genuine move of God where God was restoring the fresh wind of His Spirit as a normal everyday part of His church.

2.) Healing Revivals

Great move of God where God was restoring the basics of healing to the church, thousands were healed, the excess was the worship of men who thought themselves invincible, and fell. Many strange doctrines entered in this phase that we haven't been able to shake until this day. Including the seed-serpent doctrine, the latter rain doctrines, and others... to the destruction of the "healing revival" and its leaven until this day.

3.) The Charismatic Movement

God was breathing His Spirit on denominational churches. This brought wonderful refreshing to the church at large, but as someone said, "it was ten miles wide, but two inches deep." The good news is great deception didn't happen here for the most part, but also there was no foundational disipleship which brought lack of balance and eventually caused the fire of the movement to die. There was no multiplication and no apostolic vision. It eventually created little "bless me clubs".

4.) The Jesus Movement

A wonderful mighty move of God, one of a kind! Hundreds of thousands of youth swept into the kingdom without religion. Two excesses destroyed this movement, being too loose without any leadership/servant elders, and afterwards the excess of hierarchy and shepherding to correct this problem. This movement ended sadly, it was one of the most amazing moves of God.

5.) The Word of Faith Movement/ Teaching Movement

Restored the truths of who we are in Messiah, standing on the promises of God, faith, prosperity, spiritual authority, the power of the Word of God, and personal healing. This movement allowed excesses in like hyper-prosperity, excessive lifestyles, hyper-faith, stretching the Word of God, we are "little gods", hyper- positive confession (these people get on my nerves to be honest), and created "yes men" conferencing clubs. The downfall of this movement came with all the men of this movement who fell into legal problems, marital failures, and other such stuff. To his credit, Hagin saw this coming, and wrote "The Midas Touch" to confront one of these excesses. It was after this that Benny Hinn repented and others. The downfall of this movement could have been much harder if it wasn't for the wisdom of Hagin.

6.) Third Wave Movement

John Wimber and the Vineyard came as a branch out of the Jesus Movement, I believe the pure stream of balance of the Jesus Movement moved onto Wimber. The Vineyard really brought forth truths such as the priesthood of every believer, church not being religious, the gifts of the Spirit in your everyday life, incredible worship music, and being supernatural without being weird. The downfall of this movement came because of the excess of NO DISCERNMENT in who they allowed to influence them. They let Peter Wagner's hierarchy influence them. They let the false prophet Bob Jones influence them (because of a word Bob gave about Wimber's son). This eventually led to the downfall of the Vineyard into a powerless "seeker" movement after the fall of Bob Jones at a Vineyard church where he was caught prophesying over women and having them strip naked. We will return to Bob Jones in a later movement!

7.) The Toronto/Renewal/River Movement

This was a genuine move of God. I was personally touched by this movement. It restored truths such as the presence of God, power encounters with God, prophetic experiences, the Father heart of God, etc. I believe from the onset this movement had some heavy duty goods (wonderful gifts from God), but as well as some heavy duty excesses that were never taken care of. For starters, from the beginning this movement began to be a "pilgrimage movement" rather than an apostolic sending movement, something very unhealthy. I am guilty of this myself and have repented since.

Second of all, there was too little concentration on the results of the power of God in a person's everyday life, and too big of a concentration on manifestations. The weirdest part of this movement is manifestations started taking on names, patterns, and repetition. Whether it was being slain in the Spirit, holy laughter, HOOing, WHOAing, birthing, shaking, squatting, roaring, being drunk, and others. These same extra-biblical manifestations were seen night after night as if it was expected. God can touch people, and people do manifest it in different ways sometimes including the above mentioned. However, I don't see it as a stuck pattern in the NT. I don't see Yeshua or his disciples going around praying for the sick and "HOOing" all the time. I don't see recorded where the Apostle Paul would shake his head violently as he was preaching. I'm not saying that these things don't happen when the Holy Spirit moves, but they are not a regular pattern. I can see where people were slain in the Spirit in the NT (the guards of Yeshua), but I can't see where the majority of people Yeshua prayed for were slain in the Spirit as a "renewal" pattern on a regular basis. I see where the apostles were "drunk in the Spirit" on Pentecost, but for the rest of their ministry tenure in Acts, they were completely sober and sound minded. Lately when praying for the sick among these type of Christians, I purposefully hold them up and refuse that they fall. I want to see a healing, not a fall! This pattern-like repititous expectation for manifestations was an excess IMHO. Manifestations themself are not excesses, but the expectation and the repetition is. Most of it is flesh imitating the Spirit to uphold the tradition of repetitious manifestations. I believe this does considerable damage to the body of Messiah. While we shouldn't care if the Spirit makes us look silly, we should care if the flesh does. We should ask for love to cover these things, however, we should confront them as well.

5.) The Brownsville Revival

A true move of God and descendant of "renewal", I was there two years and graduated BRSM. Repentance and travail were its strong points. The power of God was there, and salvations were plentiful. However, the biggest excess that caused its downfall (from eye-witness experience) was elitism largely sparked by a David Yonngi Cho prophecy about them being the last revival on the earth. The school split because of elitism too!

6.) The Prophetic Movement

A great movement which encouraged all believers to prophesy, however, they fell into the excess of hierarchy, personality worship, and weird prophetic techniques that borders on the New Age (like visualization, etc.).

7) Lakeland Revival

I believe this was a mixture from the start. You had a man who had morality problems and an affair two years prior that was never dealt with properly. During this same time he had tatoos and other rebellious characteristics. He never went through discipleship. He had a mix between the real Spirit of God, a spirit of rebellion, and some familiar spirits. His spiritual father from the beginning was Bob Jones, probably the most blatant false prophet in the prophetic movement who had manipulated women with the prophetic to strip in the past. He teaches visualization techniques. You had gross false doctrine such as an overconcentration on angels. In the end, Bentley left his wife, and is now living with his new mistress (as per the announcement a week ago) and refuses to repent or to listen. Remember, this is his second affair, this was not dealt with properly two years ago. The Lakeland revival was lit and fell just as a quick meaningless firework. It was a "quick ride" for those from the renewal movement who missed Toronto-Brownsville.

8.) The Simple Church Movement

A true move of God and the one I am presently in. The list of strengths can take up books. However, if they do not recognize the need for elders to confront false doctrine, specifically but not only Universal Salvation, I would hate to see it join the other lists!