Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'There he is!' do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. - Mathew 24:23-24 (ESV)
The Brownsville faux revival remains a blight on the history of the church. Starting in 1995 and ending in 2000, this debacle plagued the city of Pensacola with demonic outpourings and expressions of mystical spirits. All one needs to do is watch some of the grainy videos from that time. People were writhing, spasmodically jerking back and forth, and violently twitching uncontrollably for five years. Services routinely saw hundreds of people laid out all over the floor, laughing hysterically, crawling around, similar to the fake outpouring from Toronto. One of the outspoken critics of Brownsville, Hank Hanegraaff, wrote an article in 2009 when the Brownsville leaders were having a reunion. In it, he outlined some of the very real problems with this fake revival:
"All the while in the Brownsville Assembly of God, they had people aping the practices of pagan spirituality. One of the most bizarre manifestations I witnessed in that particular scene was in the sanctuary as I watched in horror as a woman in the choir began to jerk her head spasmodically from side to side. An hour went by, then another. All the while the shaking continued unabated as intermittently she bent spasmodically at the waist. A church member, noting the look of concern on my face, quickly attempted to assure me that this woman was merely under the influence of the "Holy Ghost." When I asked if she was certain it was the Holy Ghost, she seemed incredulous. "What else could it be?" she snapped. "We're in church, aren't we?' She went on to report that this woman had been shaking wildly in the sanctuary for more than a year and a half. What was once practiced only in the cults is now present in our churches. What heightens the danger is that Christians do not expect a counterfeit in church. While virtually the same methods employed in cultic communes can now be experienced in Christian churches there is a difference. At the altars of Pensacola the practices were cloaked in Christian terminology and were attributed to the Holy Spirit. Pensacola practices such as jerking spasmodically, laughing uncontrollably, and falling backward into trancelike states were conspicuous by their absence in the ministry of Jesus and the apostles. In fact, Peter warned them to be wary of such pagan practices. He said to be "clear minded and self controlled." (1 Peter 4:7). My concern for the woman who was shaking spasmodically and many others like her prompted me to plead with Pensacola pastor John Kilpatrick to consider the physical and spiritual consequences. He did acknowledge that the woman I identified in his church "shakes like she has palsy" but then defiantly paraded her across his platform as a trophy of the "Pensacola Outpouring." He then shouted, "If you don't want your head to start shaking"come here a minute, girl. Come down here a minute. Hurry up. Hurry up. If you [referring to me] don't want your head to do like this, you better lay your mouth off her." Of course this is the same person that predicted that in 90 days I would be dead. As I previously mentioned, Stephen Hill made all kinds of dogmatic declarations from the platform, he said that "congressmen are weeping under the power of God", but never provided a shred of evidence to support his claim." - Hank Hanegraaff
I may not agree with Hanegraaff on everything, but this summation sounds about right. There is almost a blithe attitude within the Charismaniacal church that thinks that anything within its walls must be from God. Discernment is something to apply to the unbelieving world instead of our own. One of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is self-control and the hallmark of Pensacola was a total lack of self-control and then blaming the resulting craziness on the Holy Spirit! The leaders of this bastardization of the spirit testify to this day about Brownsville as some kind of move of God and they boldly claim upwards of 200,000 people as "coming to Christ" as a result. Except what Christ are they coming to? The key verses above clearly teach that there will be false christs in this world during the end times we currently live in. Galatians teaches that we can quickly abandon the gospel for false gospels. Pensacola and the plague of Charismania are judgments upon the apostate church. Brownsville claims healing but saved no records of such. They claim lasting fruit, but it is all rotten to the core if the spirit it engaged with is not the spirit of God. Hyper-emotionalism is not a spiritual move of the sovereign God. We see this ignorant self-promotion throughout the heretical church today as mega churches routinely claim salvations in the tens of thousands per year, if not more. International ministries claim even more dubious numbers. The dynamic is simple, make an altar call plea devoid of true repentance, and when they people raise their hands, count. They are automatically credited with being "saved" because that is how Rick Warren taught this generation of cult of personality pastors. I remember once at a Chris Tomlin concert the intermission was an altar call by Louis Giglio. It was all based upon raised hands. No one actually spoke to any of these people. They were encouraged of course to find a local church but to count them as "salvations" is ludicrous. I say this as a backdrop to the article linked above by Dr. Michael Brown, one of the leaders from the Brownsville demonic outpouring who stands by it proudly to this day. When questioned he wields the proximity fallacy, which he loves doing, and claims that because he was there, he knows better. Nonsense. The reality is that because he was there, he is biased. We have the benefit of hindsight and the videos proving that people shaking their heads violently for a year and a half were not being influenced by the Holy Spirit of God. So, let us reason once more through his defense in this article.
"This past weekend, we celebrated our 25th annual missions conference, thanking God for the amazing testimonies from our faithful workers who have served on the mission field worldwide, often quite sacrificially. This missions movement was birthed directly out of our ministry school, Brownsville Revival School of Ministry, and then FIRE School of Ministry, which in turn was birthed out of the Brownsville Revival in Pensacola, Florida (1995-2000). This is the best answer to the critics who claimed the fruit of the revival would not last. One critic claimed that Brownsville was "not really " a revival, but lunatic fringe Christians from other places responding to altar calls," also referring to it as a "spiritual cesspit." A prominent American pastor described the revival as a "mindless, emotional orgy marked by irrational, sensual and fleshly behavior produced by altered states of consciousness, peer pressure, heightened expectation or suggestibility." Surely, these emotions would quickly fade. During the revival, I would say to these critics, "Well, this person has been walking solidly with the Lord now for one full year. What does that indicate about the validity of their conversion?" The reply would be, "One year? That proves nothing!" What about several years later, when they graduated from our ministry school with a burning heart to reach the nations? What about several years after that, as they relocated their whole families to serve outside the USA? And what about now, when some of our grads have been on the mission field for 25 years? I would call that lasting fruit!" - Dr. Michael Brown
No Dr. Brown, the premise is flawed. If the foundation was heresy, being emotional and standing by that heresy decades later is not proof of concept. Going out into the "mission field" to teach foreigners that the spirit of God wants them to violently shake and roll around on the ground, cannot be deemed "fruit" unless you mean poisonous fruit. Dr. Brown is right that the Pensacola demon show resulted in the Revival School of Ministry that became the FIRE School but that is only proof of the growth of the Charismaniacal demon seeds, not any kind of move of God. Just a cursory review of the courses associated with the FIRE school today reveals that Brown will teach you how the NAR false apostolic power paradigm is in effect, how the false prophecy industrial complex works, and other NAR false teachings like divine healing, or the notion that God MUST heal us. This will only set you back over five thousand dollars according to the website. This is the legacy that can be traced back to Brownsville and it does not serve God. The criticisms of a spiritual cesspool, emotionally orgiastic, altered stats of consciousness a swell as being irrational, sensual, and fleshly all seem to hit the nail on the head. If your heart is wickedly burning it does not matter if you want to reach the nations with that unholy fire. The people who spread the prosperity doctrine and word faith to Africa may have been zealous but the result is some of the richest flock fleecers in the world now reside ply their trade in the poorest continent. I would not call that lasting fruit.
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