THE GOD CHASERS
By Tommy Tenney
Destiny Image Publishers. 152 pages. £7.99.
ISBN 0 7684 2016 4
Tenney has raised a number of issues in this book which stand as valid concerns and serious challenges to the church of today. But the solutions that he proposes fall into fundamental and deceptive error.
The book encourages Christians to become 'God chasers', not in the sense of hungering for a closer walk with God which evangelicals would endorse (cf. A. W. Tozer's books), but in the sense of pursuing phenomena and the miraculous.
With strong links to people involved in the Toronto Blessing, and leanings toward the 'Manifested Sons' teaching of God raising up a group of 'super-Christians' in the last days, the author comes from a background of Oneness Pentecostals. They reject the doctrine of the Trinity and insist that people should be baptised 'in the name of Jesus', not using the Trinitarian formula. His father is the District Superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church (UPC) for Louisiana, and UPC is the largest denomination of Oneness Pentecostals in the world. Tenney's own position on these matters is not clear in the book, but nevertheless it is commended by a number of leaders including Gerald Coates and Ken Gott from the UK.
Any Bible-believing Christian ought to be alerted to the fact that this book has big problems within the first few pages. See what you make of these quotes: 'There is a vast difference between present truth and past truth. I'm afraid that most of what the church has studied is past truth, and very little of what we know is present truth.' 'God chasers don't want to just study from the mouldy pages of what God has done; they're anxious to see what God is doing.' Divorcing the present from the past is particularly easy in the context of youth culture, in which young people do not know about the past and care even less about it. In this way people can be manipulated to follow any new fad. But it is a matter of particular concern when the Bible is virtually relegated to the realm of 'past truth' instead of being seen as eternally relevant (Luke 21.33, Titus 1.9).
Split pulpit
Tenney's life was changed by a series of dramatic events on Sunday October 20th, 1996 at the Christian Tabernacle, Houston, Texas, where Richard Heard is the senior pastor. Tenney had been invited to take the service. After a tremendous build up of a spiritual presence within the building during a time of worship, Heard asked him to speak to the people. Tenney replied: 'Pastor, I'm just about half afraid to step up there, because I sense that God is about to do something.' Heard himself went to the platform. Heard first read 2 Chronicles 7:14 and then said: 'The word of the Lord to us is to stop seeking His benefits and seek Him. We are not to seek His hands any longer, but seek His face.' Tenney reported what happened next in these words: 'In that instant, I heard what sounded like a thunderclap echo through the building and the pastor was literally picked up and thrown backward about ten feet....When he went backward, the pulpit fell forward. The beautiful flower arrangement positioned in front of it fell to the ground, but by the time the pulpit hit the ground it was already in two pieces. It had split into two pieces as if lightning had hit it! At that instance the tangible terror of the presence of God filled that room.' Tenney reported that it was two and a half hours before Heard got up again. While in this cataleptic state, the only sign of life was the trembling of his hand. The two pieces of the pulpit are now proudly displayed in the church.
What did it mean?
There is clearly a problem with manifestations of this kind. When someone is healed miraculously, anyone, Christian or not, can connect it to the grace of God. Sometimes God administers punishment to his people in judgement against sin. However, the message of this incident is not so clear cut. The pastor was unharmed, being perfectly well afterwards. Furthermore there is no evidence that the pastor was involved in serious sin. The second possibility is that this incident was not from God at all. If the phenomena at Houston were not an action of God's judgement, then it would seem that it must have been the activity of deceiving spirits. Tenney would clearly not agree: his explanation is rather that God is not sufficiently present in church meetings in general. Tenney told a reporter that he believed God had zapped the podium in two, 'as a symbolic slap in the face for the tight human control of the church across America.'
There is no denying that a hallmark of many churches in the USA is tight human control. But this conjunction of human control and wild phenomena does not prove the truth of Tenney's interpretation. In reality, Tenney's attempted explanation is confused and highlights a general tendency throughout The God Chasers to attribute to God phenomena which actually have the marks of some source other than him.
Where's this going?
With 'God chasers' T-shirts and baseball caps available, this seems all set up to be marketed as a new movement. Inevitably the sceptical reader of Tenney's writings is concerned as to what the long-term outcome might be. Perhaps a clue is provided by the following observations.
Tenney has links with many of the people and centres associated with the so-called 'River Revival.' He is also a speaker at Brownsville Assemblies of God Church, Pensacola. Like the US 'prophet' Rick Joyner, Tenney believes that God is currently redefining the church. In his instructions on how to seek God's presence, he states, 'You need to forget who's around you and abandon 'normal protocol.' God is in the business of redefining what we call 'church' anyway.' Very few would question the need for changes, but the notion of redefinition seems to be linked to the 'River Revival' and the supposed restoration of End-time Apostles and Prophets.
Tenney introduces the concept of 'religious spirits' to discredit people who do not follow his pied-piper approach to God. It is certainly a serious problem for any local church if its members live in the past and are not seeking the Lord for themselves. But this is not a ground for introducing the concept of 'religious spirits.' This seems akin to a cult-like manipulation of people to shame them into conformity with the 'God chasers' agenda.
Watch out!
The things that concern me about this book can be summarised as follows:
- Because the analysis of church problems in The God Chasers has some validity, people will be beguiled into accepting the whole 'God chasers' paradigm.
- The God Chasers diverts attention from the believer's established relationship with the Lord and replaces it with a pied-piper search for 'God's manifest presence' wherever it may appear.
- The God Chasers perhaps unintentionally, replaces the believer's intimacy with God by a self-centred pursuit of spiritual experiences, encouraging believers to abandon their commitment to their local church.
- The God Chasers turns the Bible into a mere signpost to God's glory rather than a living conduit of God's glory. Believers are, therefore, encouraged to seek spiritual experiences outside of the Scripture instead of in and through the Scripture.
- The God Chasers discourages the stringent discernment of experiences according to biblical criteria, 1 Thessalonians 5.21,22.
- The God Chasers encourages toleration of psychological methods to induce spiritual experiences.
- The God Chasers promotes a unity of people on the basis of experiences divorced from Scripture rather than on the basis of a shared biblical faith and the new birth by the Holy Spirit which issues in obedience to the gospel.
People who are seriously following God have deep longings to experience the closest possible intimacy with him. Those who feel this will understand the reasons for Tenney's quest. However, the intensity of our desire for God must not render us mindless. The kind of full intimacy with God which godly people desire can only find fulfilment in glory.
The Deceiver constantly seeks to exploit believers' longings after God by perverting them for his own purposes. It is certain that he's actively pursuing agendas to achieve this end in this generation.
Mike Taylor
We understand that Tommy Tenney is due to speak at this year's Assemblies Of God conference.
