The Charismatic Movement Is Dead

Isaac Is Coming — and the Spirit's Next Move Will Not Look Like the Last One

A few weeks ago I sat with a transcript of R.T. Kendall's recent interview on Charisma. At ninety years old, with a pulpit history that spans Westminster Chapel and Wembley Conference Centre and more nations than most of us will ever set foot in, he said plainly what many of us in apostolic and prophetic streams have been wrestling with for years: the charismatic movement, as we have known it, is dead. It has lost its impact. It is over.

Then he said something that stopped me cold. The charismatic movement is Ishmael. When Isaac comes, there will be a great fear of God. Something big is coming.

I do not believe Kendall was being clever. I believe he was being prophetic. And I believe what he is describing is the very transition the Lord has been preparing the global church for — the transition many of you reading this have already begun to feel in your spirit even if you could not name it.

A Word from 1992 — and from 1947

The line did not start with Kendall in 2026. It did not even start with him in 1992 at Wembley. It started, by his own testimony, with Smith Wigglesworth in 1947, three months before he died.

Wigglesworth reportedly prophesied a sequence: a move emphasizing the gifts of the Spirit, followed by a movement of new churches, followed by the greatest move of the Spirit since Pentecost — a tide that would flow from England through Europe and across the world.

The first wave came in 1960, with three independent renewal streams emerging the same year — Seattle, London, and South Africa — each unaware of the others, each emphasizing the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the gifts. That was the birth of what we now call the charismatic movement, distinct from the older Pentecostal streams (Assembly of God, Church of God, Pentecostal Holiness) because it spilled into Presbyterian, Baptist, and Episcopal soil.

The second wave came in the 1970s and 1980s, with the British house-church movement — Ichthus, Pioneer, New Frontiers — and its parallel expressions across the United States.

If Wigglesworth's word is to be trusted, the third wave has not yet come. That third wave is what Kendall, building on a conviction he carried even before Wigglesworth's words were known to him, calls Isaac.

Why Ishmael, Why Isaac

This is where I want to slow down and walk through the Hebrew text with you, because the typology is too important to leave at the level of a sermon illustration.

Genesis 16 — Sarah is barren. The promise of a seed has been spoken (Genesis 15:5), but heaven is silent. Sarah does what flesh always does when heaven delays: she devises a plan. Hagar, the Egyptian maidservant, is offered to Abraham. A son is born, and his name is Yishmaʿel (יִשְׁמָעֵאל, H3458) — God hears.

Note this carefully: Ishmael is not godless. Ishmael is not demonic. Ishmael is not a counterfeit hatched by the enemy. Ishmael is the flesh's response to a real promise of God. Abraham believed God genuinely heard him; he simply substituted the timing and the method. For thirteen or fourteen years he sincerely believed Ishmael was the heir. He was not a hypocrite. He was sincere — and sincerely premature.

Then comes Genesis 17. God appears as ʾEl Shaddai (אֵל שַׁדַּי, H410, H7706), the All-Sufficient One, and tells Abraham the heir will come through Sarah. And Abraham laughs (Genesis 17:17). And Sarah laughs (Genesis 18:12). And out of that laughter comes the name of the true heir: Yitsḥaq (יִצְחָק, H3327) — he laughs.

Isaac is not Ishmael grown up. Isaac is not a better version of Ishmael. Isaac is born of a different womb, by a different power, on a different timeline. Ishmael is born of Abraham's strength. Isaac is born of God's sovereignty. That distinction is everything.

And here is the line Paul draws: “as he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now” (Galatians 4:29). Ishmael always persecutes Isaac. The flesh always resents the move it cannot reproduce. Do not be surprised when those most invested in Ishmael are the loudest opponents of what the Spirit is preparing.

What Has Gone Dead

I want to be careful here, because I am not standing outside the charismatic stream throwing rocks. I am part of it. I speak in tongues. I believe in every gift listed in 1 Corinthians 12. I have laid hands on the sick on five continents and seen the Lord move. So when I say the movement is dead, I am not gloating. I am grieving.

But the diagnosis must be honest. Four things have gone, and when these four go, what remains is not the third wave Wigglesworth spoke of. What remains is a corpse with the lights still on.

1. The fear of the LORD is gone

The Hebrew is yirʾat YHWH (יִרְאַת יְהוָה, H3374) — not a nervous fright but a trembling reverence that rearranges a man's interior life. Proverbs 1:7 calls it the beginning of knowledge. Proverbs 9:10 calls it the beginning of wisdom. When the fear of the LORD departs, the platform replaces the altar, the personality replaces the presence, and the spectacle replaces the sanctuary. Look across the conference circuit and tell me honestly what you see.

2. The sovereignty of God is gone

The most subtle theological corruption in the charismatic stream over the last two decades has not been a denial of the gifts. It has been the slow normalization of open theism — the teaching, smuggled in from liberal academic theology, that God does not know the future, that He waits for our decisions to shape His next move, that He is dependent on us to win.

Isaiah 46:10 will not bend to that: “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.” The Greek Pantokrátōr (Παντοκράτωρ, G3841) — Almighty, All-Ruling — appears nine times in the New Testament, seven of them in Revelation. The God of the end of the Bible is not in suspense about the end of the Bible.

When you trade the sovereignty of God for the sovereignty of man's faith, you have not improved the gospel. You have lost it.

3. The common denominator has shifted

Forty years ago, what bound charismatics together was the gifts of the Spirit. Today, the de facto common denominator is prosperity teaching. The pulpit has become a platform for personal financial gospel rather than a throne room of the Lamb. And once the platform has been built around money, it cannot turn around and preach Gethsemane.

4. Bravado has replaced brokenness

One well-known charismatic teacher said publicly that if the Apostle Paul had had his level of faith, Paul would not have had a thorn in the flesh. That is not a slip of the tongue. That is a worldview. And it stands at exact opposition to “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). A movement that cannot tolerate a thorn cannot carry a cross.

Matthew 25 — The Midnight Cry

Now hear this, because this is where I want to give you hope.

Matthew 25:1–13 is the parable of the ten virgins. Five wise. Five foolish. All ten slumbered and slept — the Greek enýstaxan (ἐνύσταξαν, G3573), became drowsy — is sobering: all of them, wise and foolish alike, fell asleep. The condition of the church at the end is not awake-and-bright. It is drowsy.

“And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him” (Matthew 25:6).

A few things you must see.

First, the Greek behind “midnight” — mésēs nyktós — does not mean “12:00 a.m. on the cosmic clock.” Kendall is right to push back on the popular handling of this phrase. It is the middle of the night — a season of deep darkness and deeper sleep. It is a description of the church, not the calendar.

Second, there is a gap in the text. The cry goes up. The virgins wake. The foolish discover their lack and run for oil. The wise trim their lamps. Then the bridegroom comes (Matthew 25:10). Between verse 6 and verse 10 there is a window — short or long, the text does not say — in which the cry has gone out but the Bridegroom has not yet arrived. That window is Isaac. That window is the third wave. That window is what is coming.

Third, who issues the cry? Not the wise virgins — they were asleep. Not the foolish virgins — they were asleep. There is a third voice in the parable, unnamed and undescribed but unmistakable. They are the ones who did not sleep. They are the ones who knew the hour.

I am persuaded these will not be the celebrities of the platform age. They will not be the headliners. They will be ordinary people who know their Bibles and pray a lot. They will be the remnant the Spirit has been quietly forming in obscurity while the platform was eating itself. They will be sons and daughters who have been through the wilderness and learned the fear of the LORD by name. If you are reading this and you have felt strangely set aside in this season — strangely quiet — you may be one of them.

Habakkuk 2:14 — Before the Rapture, Not After

There is one more verse the popular eschatology has misplaced.

“For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14).

The Hebrew word translated glory is kābôd (כָּבוֹד, H3519) — weight, substance, the manifest weightiness of God's presence. Much of the dispensational stream has placed this verse on the far side of the rapture, after the church is gone, somewhere in the millennial reign. Read it again in its own context. Habakkuk is not describing the millennium. He is describing what God does in the earth before judgment falls.

The kābôd of YHWH covering the earth as the waters cover the sea is pre-rapture, pre-Second-Coming glory. It is the third wave. It is Isaac. It is the awakening that issues the cry that wakes the bride. You and I were not born in this generation by accident.

What This Means for You

Let me close with three things, because Kendall did not give us a sermon — he gave us a hinge.

First — stop trying to resuscitate Ishmael.

He has had his thirteen, fourteen years and more. There is a kind of nostalgia for the conferences and atmospheres of the 1990s and 2000s that, however sweet, will keep the church looking backward when the Spirit is moving forward. Honor what God did. Do not try to repeat what God has retired.

Second — welcome the fear of the LORD back into your interior life.

Isaiah 11:2 lists the seven Spirits of God resting on Messiah, and the seventh — the climax — is the Spirit of the fear of the LORD. You cannot host Isaac in a heart that has lost it. Ask for it. Make room for it. Let it rearrange you.

Third — be ready to be ordinary.

The Lord is not searching the platform for the people who will issue the midnight cry. He is searching the prayer closet. He is searching the obscure intercessor. He is searching the faithful Bible teacher in the small church no one has heard of. If He has hidden you, He has not forgotten you. He has prepared you.

The charismatic movement is dead. Mourn it honestly.

But weep with hope — because Sarah is pregnant. The promised son is on the way. And when Isaac comes, the laughter of heaven will sound across the earth.

“Behold, the Bridegroom cometh.”

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