Dennis Balcombe's Page

Dear Greg,

Thanks for the message. Yes, I have been to Canada many times, and during the past several years going about every year.  Our RCMI ministry is registered as a non-profit charitable organization in Vancouver, and now we are moving this to Toronto.  One reason is the pastor of the Chinese church we started, Revival Christian Church in Vancouver moved back to HK to take over a church here, and our main RCMI worker also will be moving to China for ministry.  We also are getting far more response to our ministry in Toronto than Vancouver. But the charitable registration will still be valid for Vancouver (and I think all of Canada). 

While we have a very active and successful ministry in China, Hong Kong and many Asian nations like Indonesia, Malaysia, etc., we don't see the same response in Canada.  This is due the very strong ant-Charismatic/Pentecostal position of Chinese churches in Canada, which hardly exists at all in China and Asia.  

But one of our goals is not to change churches, but to preach the Gospel to the Chinese, mainly those from mainland China, the vast majority who have never once heard the Gospel.  We have the tools, experience, literature and workers to work with Canadian churches to reach the lost Chinese with the Gospel.  But most of the evangelical Chinese churches will have nothing to do with us for they believe speaking in tongues, healing the sick, etc. is of the devil.  

Fortunately in Toronto we have some Chinese very hungry for revival, the Holy Spirit, and they invite me to reach the Chinese.  Last Sunday at two meeting in an evangelical church we had about 50 come forward for salvation, most from China and most hearing the Gospel the first time in their lives.

I could consider a visit in the future, if meetings can be properly arranged.  

Please contact by email at dennisb@rcchk.org   Dennis Balcombe  

Dear Greg,

Thanks so very much for your most welcomed message and all this information.  I really appreciate this.

I did not respond before as I have been in Toronto for the past 2 weeks, and just returned to HK yesterday after a long 15 hour flight. I have had a lot of work to catch on here, and will be going into China next week for ministry.

I am glad to know you have put up the sermonindex.net website, which I subscribed to a long time ago.  I read your article on the church in China and it is well written with a lot of good information.

I do totally agree with what you write about the various problems in the church in the West (especially in so called 'Charismatic' churches), which unfortunately is now even making a negative impact on Christianity in Asia.

I have been speaking out against these excesses, unbalanced teachings and non-scriptural doctrines and practices for many years.  It is not too hard to see the fruit of all this, and it is severely damaging the work of the Lord.  These leaders are not preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, but their own man-made doctrines, for it seems successful in attracting many people and getting crowds and offerings.  But in the end it is 'death in the pot'.

We have seen the power of the true Gospel and preaching sound doctrine accompanied with the ministry in the Holy Spirit of signs following the preaching of the Word of God all over China and many nations.  So we certainly want the Holy Spirit and true revival and evangelism, but reject many of these modern fads that are based on false teaching or overemphasizing one aspect of Christian doctrine and neglecting the other side of the teaching.

Some of these would be:

1. Spiritual warfare like that advocated by Peter Wagner and Georg Otis Jr. where people directly challenge and try to bind principalities in the air. This is very dangerous and seldom if ever results in these evil powers being truly bond.

2. Releasing people free of so called 'generational curses'.

3. Casting demons out of Christians instead of calling them to repentance. This casting out of demons is usually accompanied by vomiting or coughing out the demons, something very repulsive and non-Scriptural.

4. Apostolic Collation and pyramid leadership systems like that promoted also by Peter Wagner.

5. Extreme teaching on David's Tabernacle, praise or worship or even prayer where Christians gather days on end to pray and worship. There is nothing wrong with that, but in these movements nobody preaches the Gospel, there is no burden for missions or winning the lost or even helping the poor and needy in the society.  They mistakenly think if they change the spiritual climate, somehow the angles will be released and the world will be changed. This will not happen.

6.  Ministries and teaching that relegate women to a second-class citizen in the Kingdom where women are not given true authority that God has given them.  In China over 60% of all our leading ministers in both house churches and even Three-Self churches are women.  We totally reject this sexual biased teaching.

7. The Charismatic movement that doesn't preach or believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues, but just relegates speaking into tongues to one of many gifts of the Holy Spirit.  In fact in this Charismatic movement most people are 'taught to speak in tongues', on make sounds, but seldom speak in fluent flowing languages, which is a sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4).  Thus I believe the vast numbers of Charismatics are not truly Spirit filled.

8. The misuse of the gift of prophecy, or the office of the prophet. This is seen first in the fact the vast majority of these famous Charismatic prophets give prophecies that never come to pass, yet they still have a huge

The list can go on and one.  If the enemy cannot get us to leave the Lord and deny Christ who redeemed us, he will get us off on some extreme or side issue. You can always find some Scripture verses to justify any of the above, but taken out the context of the whole Bible, the teaching can result in people focusing only on extremes and often these become cults bringing destruction to the work of the Gospel.

The answer to all the above is 1) preach only sound doctrine; 2) open to the work of the Holy Spirit as we are truly living in days of revival; 3) make missions, evangelism and winning the lost the focus of all ministry.  That way we will remain balanced, the church will grow, and God will be glorified.

I have never visited Abbotsford before, but might be able to visit you at some future date.

God bless you, 

I am sorry but this website only allows for 5,000 words and cut of part of my list of extreme doctrines:  the rest are: 

8. The misuse of the gift of prophecy, or the office of the prophet. This is seen first in the fact the vast majority of these famous Charismatic prophets give prophecies that never come to pass, yet they still have a huge following. Secondly they give 'personal prophecies' that often are totally out of order, without the covering of the local pastor, and tell people how to order their lives.  True prophecy is only a 'confirmation' of what the Lord has spoken to his disciples, and should never be used to direct people.

9. The excesses of the 'prosperity Gospel' in which it is usually only the preacher who gets the offering and his mega-church building that prosper, while the people giving never truly prosper.

10. The 'sloppy grace' or antinomianism teaching that is so popular in ministries like that of Joel Osteen. There is no teaching on judgment, holiness, repentance, confession of sins, restitution, sanctification, that is all so basic to the Gospel.  But as my Bible College teacher told us when I was 18 years old in the Assembly of God Bible College in California, "Anyone can have a large church if you just preach what people want to hear, but not the Gospel.'