Richard Thomas (2) (1951–)

There may be Hyper-Orthodox among us who profess that any miracle outside the Orthodox Church is simply demonic delusion. They forget how the Heavenly Father causes His rain to fall on both the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45) and how that no one who does a miracle in the Name of Jesus Christ, even if he's not part of the Apostolic community, can immediately turn around and say evil things about Christ (Mark 9:38-40). Had the Apostles not recognized the miraculous utterance of various tongues in the house of Cornelius the Centurion together with the magnification of God as a sign of God's bestowal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit upon Gentiles, they would not have admitted Gentiles into the Church of God, which, up until that point, had been composed only of circumcised, Torah-observant Jews. The miraculous tongues manifested in and through the as-yet-unbaptized Gentiles of the household of Cornelius the Centurion was the decisive factor convincing the apostles that God had granted non-Jews repentance and eternal life in Christ (Acts 10:45-48; 11:15-18; 15:8-9). Such Hyper-Orthodox ought to be careful not to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, by calling His workings among the non-Orthodox "demonic" or "satanic," or, to use a potentially more sanctimonious term, "prelest." These things are said here, knowing that some will brand these words as heresy. Such Hyper-Orthodox go beyond what is actually stated here by claiming that such statements dismiss the exclusive claims of the Church. Such a dismissal of the Church's exclusive claims, however, is actually only taking place in the minds of the Hyper-Orthodox. If anyone is dismissing anything, it is they. It is they who are dismissing the previously-cited Scriptures and their import for Orthodox Christians today. All this is not to say that "prelest" or demonic delusion do not exist. They certainly do. But we ought to avoid having a knee-jerk dismissal of any miracle simply because it has happened among non-Orthodox.… (mehr)