Rating: 
Summary: Exposition of Latest Charismatic Revivals
Review: With many playbacks of recording in the charismatic churches, Hanegraff lively exposes the last charismatic revivals of the third charismatic wave. He arranged the many playbacks so as to document the leaders, the history, the expansion , some hoaxes and lies,and the damage caused by the last waves. He deals mostly with the recent Pensacola revival ( coming from the Brownsville church in Pensacola, and characterized by drunkenness in the spirit, spiritual parties, head-shaking, and much more) and some older revivals (church growth / Toronto / Vineyard, characterized by Faith-Healing, animal behavior, slaying in the spirit, pseudo-signs and alleged wonders, etc. )I find these tapes much more valuable than the book (although I recommend buying the book also, for overview, quick browsing and reference), as some of these things are so hard to believe that it is better to hear the charismatic leaders when they spoke in their church. Also the tapes expose the way these charismatic leaders address their congregations and desinvoltely speak about holy issues in church; they also include recordings of many spiritual experiences, such as animal (charismatic) sounds, which are definitively worth listening to. Actually a video compilation would document some phenomena even better. Hanegraff shows that these revivals are counterfeit and are completely opposed to Christian revivals. In particular, he compares these revivals to the revival of Johnathan Edwards, a revivalist preached of the 18th century, to whom the charismatic (wrongly) refer to vindicate their revivals. Hanegraaff sometimes points to psycho-social phenomena in the charismatic revivals as well as to their satanic origin, yet without giving support for these assertions, except for the demonic orgin of the first wave, the Pentacostal one, at Azuza Street, in L. A. at the beginning of the century. He documents somewhat the leading role of spiritists and mediums at Azuza street. Deep studies are beyond the scope of his work, which does not ! require any academic skills and will be comprehensible to all charismatics, if they accept listening to it. I think that more work need to be done on these revivals, in the spirit of the seminal academic studies made by psychologists on the glossolalic (tongues) phenomenum on the first and second charismatic waves (I have in mind some books such as Kildahl's or Samarin's). I think that Hanegraaff is seriously mistaken about 1Co 14. He denounces the glossolalia practiced by the charismatics who claim to speak in foreign languages, showing that they never do, but then goes as far as denying that the languages mentionned in 1 Co 14 were not foreign languages used in the international church at Corinth. Hanegraaf claims that the gift of language is not for speaking foreign languages, but for praying to God. Thus he implies that this gift is actually the occult practice of glossolalia, which is a very serious theological mistake. Besides this negative point, I wholeheatly recommend these audio tapes. The evil coming from these charismatic revivals is reaching out worldwide, and a responsible Christian would do well to be warned about these phenomena.
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