ed mcmahon

Dan Phillips once again hits a home run. It's great but not perfect and he then be-smudges his fame with a sloppy interview in the locker-room. His most recent post, at Pyromaniacs, The Holy Spirit is not a failed Ed McMahon, is an excellent analogy for what the Holy Spirit does - He puts the spotlight on Christ.

My allusion to McMahon has one point, and one only: McMahon's job was go make another person look good, to draw attention to him. It was to produce anticipation, and then, with his famous "Heeeeere's Johnny!", to bring on the star of the show. If the camera had remained on McMahon, if the spotlight had been trained on him, immediately we'd have known something was very wrong. Ed wasn't the focus.

This is good stuff and like so many of his writings (akin to John MacArthur and Phil Johnson), if he would stay with that, he would achieve greatness. But there is just something about this bunch that will not let them do that.

For some reason Phillips doesn't understand that one can believe the above and enjoy the fullness of what is found in Scripture. He writes;

What of men or women who wish to be distinguished from all other Christians by their view of the Spirit's work? People who do not tend to get much exercised when the person and work of Christ, and the Word of God, are misrepresented, attacked, slighted, smeared, rejected either outright or by implication—but who fly into action if anyone expresses skepticism about The Gifts{tm}? Who are known not for their robust defenseof the inerrancy and sufficiency of Scripture, nor of penal, substitutionary atonement, nor of the truth of by-grace-alone, forensic justification, nor of the imputed righteousness of Christ, nor of the exclusivity of Christ's claims and Gospel, nor of the objective nature of the Word's truth—but for the right to label an activity "prophecy" or "tongues," despite the fact that it does not approach the Spirit-breathed, Biblical definition?

For those that think the focus is on the Spirit, you need to hear Phillips' correction.

My issue is in the extra step Phillips takes. In his writings, Phillips routinely denies the Biblical truth of the gifts of the Holy Spirit because they do not match his definition of them. When one tries to make a Biblical defense for these, they fall into the trap he sets such as in the paragraph above.

The truth is that the Holy Spirit points us to Christ and He gives gifts. If I address a false teaching on the latter it does not mean I deny the former.

The comments to his post reinforce the error in his thinking and that people blindly accept his bad teaching which is mixed in with the good.

Here's one comment.

Can the other side point to ANY prominent guy who is promoting Jesus first? Even one?

Joey beat me to the response; CJ Mahaney, John Piper, Terry Virgo ... and there are many more. At the top of my list was a favorite target of the MacArthur gang, John Wimber.

Phillips then out does himself. He formerly used the phrase "leaky Canon" to refer to those that accept that prophecy is still a gift from God. Now he has graduated to saying we ascribe to "imitation-gifts". He states;

All those centuries of Christ-centered people, yet they managed to struggle by without the imitation-gifts.

I hark back again to the believers at Pentecost. Not a one believed in tongues, and it did not prevent the Holy Spirit from distributing the gift as they sought (A) NOT tongues, (B) NOT the Holy Spirit, (C) BUT the Lord.

Had He wanted to give The Gifts{tm}, not a thing would have prevented Him all these centuries.

Against all data, he refuses that the gifts of the Spirit continue through the Church Age and insists that our ability to identify the gifts of the Holy Spirit in history has bearing on the truth of their continued existence found in Scripture. He does not understand the Scripture at these points and is placing his version of history over Scripture. He is denying the promise of Scripture and the clear truth that the Holy Spirit choses to use gifts for the common good which in turn glorifies Christ.

The ironic part is in his words. Note he said, "struggle by". Exactly, can we be a body of believers without gifts of the Spirit, for sake of argument, let's say yes. According to the Scripture would it be good for us to be a body of believers with the gifts of the Spirit, yes! Therefore, in contrast, yep, the former would be more of a struggle.

Then he states, "not a thing would have prevented". To that I can only ask why is he denying it then?

As a side note, one commenter reminds us that the Holy Spirit does at times place the "spotlight" on Himself but it is momentary.

Sometimes the Holy Spirit does, indeed, place the "spotlight" on Himself. As the One who inspired the Scriptures, we see that the Holy Spirit speaks of Himself, for instance, in John 14:15-17, 25-26; 15:26; and 16:7-14. He also places the focus on Himself in Romans 8:9-11, 13-16, 26-27. In other words, wherever we see the Spirit spoken of, at that place we wouldn't be wrong to say the Spirit was speaking of Himself--momentarily putting the spotlight on Himself, if you will.

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