Strange Fire: Sorting Out the Issues, Part 1: John MacArthur Answers His Critics

(sorry, don't know how these got out of order.  If I'm up to it I'll switch them around later)

In a two-part interview by a Reformed blogger who invited him to answer various criticisms of the Strange Fire Conference, John MacArthur Answers His Critics, Part 1 and Part 2 , John MacArthur says he considers this a "vital issue" that needed a strong statement as a "trumpet blast," a wake-up call to a complacent and ambivalent Church.

Because the honor of the Holy Spirit is at stake, we were convinced that we could not remain silent...

The charismatic quest for extrabiblical revelation, subjective impressions, ecstatic experiences, and so on, represents a massive danger to the church. Error is still error, even if there are true believers who embrace and espouse it...

The reality is that the gospel being proclaimed and believed by the majority of charismatics around the world is not the biblical gospel...

[It] breaks my heart to think that hundreds of millions of souls are being caught up into a movement where they are being seduced by false forms of the gospel.

   In Part 2 he continues:

Now someone might ask, “But isn’t this a secondary issue?” I would respond by asking, “Is the true understanding of the dignity of the Holy Spirit a secondary issue?” That’s a frightening notion, since the worship of the true God in the true way is our highest priority. And this issue has dramatic implications both for how we view God and for how we worship Him...

[Most objections don't]... take into account both the severity and the ubiquity of the charismatic error on the global level. Errant pneumatology is not ancillary to the charismatic movement. It is the very thing that defines it. And when an entire movement is defined by a heterodox theology that threatens the purity of the church by tolerating and even promoting false forms of the gospel, it must be boldly confronted...

These are strong statements, but for the most part the Continuationists or Charismatics have been reacting against the very idea of criticizing "another branch of the Church" and denigrating the Conference as focusing on secondary issues to no good purpose, rather than addressing the actual arguments presented at the Conference.

Personal communications on it I've received from Continuationists have ranged from a disgusted objection to "such a trivial concern," calling it "just another doctrinal conference that divides Christians when we need so desperately to be unified against the evils we are facing," which unfortunately included a refusal to listen to any of it; to a lengthy denunciation of the Conference full of Bible quotes condemning the presenters as heretics, also without having heard any of it. 

To these Charismatics there is no point in addressing the issues, it doesn't even occur to them.  They believe they already know the issues, and criticism of the Charismatic movement is not something to discuss but something to denounce, period.  So far the trumpet blast hasn't gotten through to them.

Well, IS it a "massive danger to the church" or just a trivial secondary matter it would be better to let lie for the sake of unity, or even a heresy itself to challenge it?  ARE people being "seduced by false forms of the gospel" through the Charismatic movement?

As I've already said in other posts, I think the Conference made its case, that it is a great danger, which justifies holding such a Conference, and justifies further attempts to get it across to Christians who have been taking it for granted. 

However, it's important that the critics get it right, and what MacArthur calls a "quest for extrabiblical revelation, subjective impressions and ecstatic experiences" misrepresents what the Charismatics believe they are doing.  As I say in my previous post, Charismatics do believe they base their belief in the continuation of the "gifts of the Spirit" on the Bible so that it is not a matter of personal seeking of revelations or impressions or experiences but of being open to what the Holy Spirit brings to their spirit.  Getting this right is crucial if the debate is going to make any headway.
 

Strange Fire: Sorting Out the Issues, Part 3: The Source of the Charismatic "GIfts"

Having said that I think it's important to characterize the Charismatics' beliefs in their own terms, as the Holy Spirit's speaking through the human spirit, if the Strange Fire Conference is right that is not at all what is going on.  However, I'm still not sure it's right to characterize the actuality as promoting extrabiblical revelations, seeking subjective impressions and ecstatic experiences as John MacArthur put it. 

I think this glosses over the fact that these things are usually experienced as just happening to the person without being asked for, and because that is the way they occur and because the recipient believes he or she is a saved Christian the question of their source just doesn't come up.  Or if it does it is immediately squelched by the constant refrain that it is dangerous to doubt the Holy Spirit.  That this attitude amounts to a mental bondage as tyrannical as that of any cult or dictatorship also doesn't occur.

In any case, if you insist on characterizing these phenomena in terms of subjective mental states you are going to miss the whole point, and miss an opportunity to make Charismatics aware of the problem you want to get across to them.

THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL IS A HUGE OFFSHOOT BUT IT'S NOT THE ROOT

I'm glad to see the Pentecostal pastor I quoted in the previous post agreeing with John MacArthur about the Prosperity Gospel, and that's a big start, but he remains a Continuationist nevertheless, in opposition to MacArthur, while the Strange Fire Conference ultimately aims at the root of the whole thing, at the very idea that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit continue today.

And that gets us into the fundamental Pentecostal and Charismatic claims of miraculous healings from God, of genuine visions from God, of genuine prophecies from God, of a genuine gift of tongues from God. of a Baptism in the Holy Spirit that is separate from being born again, and so on. 

[Just heard on Pilgrim Radio an interview with Phil Johnson of the Conference, and tomorrow at the same time there will be an interview with Michael Brown for the Charismatic side, on the program His People. The program airs in Pacific Standard Time at 2:30 AM, 12:30 PM and 9:30 PM and can be heard online.]

MIRACULOUS GIFTS OR "LEARNED BEHAVIOR" OR "INTUITIONS"

On the radio show I just mentioned, Phil Johnson just described the phenomena claimed by Charismatics to be from the Holy Spirit to be in fact "learned behavior," and I've got to disagree with that quite sharply. 

I don't know if possibly some of it is, but I can guarantee you I never "learned" to "speak in tongues," it just happened to me one day while I was praying out loud during the few years I was in a charismatic church and a charismatic organization as well.  A whole stream of unfamiliar sounds came out of my mouth absolutely unbidden.  I don't remember what I was praying about but I wasn't even thinking about the gift of tongues, let alone asking for it, though I think I had asked for it from time to time before that.  At first I was elated -- Wow, it's true and I got the gift.  It turned out to be easy to just walk around letting my mouth produce those foreign sounds.  There was a definite pattern to them with repeating "words."  Sometimes they seemed to come out with an unidentifiable foreign accent too, even more oddly many different accents.  I even sang them.  It began to hit me as very odd that the tunes I was singing them to were nursery rhymes like Hickory Dickory Dock and Three Blind Mice and the tune Reuben Reuben.  This did bother me, I didn't know what to make of it, but I wasn't producing those sounds myself in any sense, they were being automatically produced as I simply opened my mouth and allowed them to come out.   I couldn't have imitated them consciously if I'd tried, though by now I can imitate many of them.  Years later I read that at least one other person quit the charismatic movement when he found his own "gift of tongues" coming out to the tune of a nursery rhyme.   Smart man.  I dragged on with mine for a few more years, very ambivalent about it but unable to get rid of it; and occasionally I discover it's still there though I try to suppress it.

So to MacArthur and Johnson and Company I have to say No No No, you are not going to get anywhere characterizing these productions of the mind and mouth that Charismatics experience as mere learned behavior or intuitions of any ordinary sort.   I'm not going to say there aren't any frauds but I know for a fact that these things can be produced apart from any normal mental process.   Michael Brown said on one of his shows that he "prays in tongues."  Well, from my experience it's quite possible to carry on for a long time producing these alien sounds and I suppose someone, taking his cue from a misread Bible verse or two, could assume they are "prayer."  My supposition is that they are about as far from prayer or worship as you can get, but the automatic nature of them may be enough to persuade a Charismatic believer otherwise. 

And if Cessationists don't recognize this they aren't going to persuade any Charismatics.

SOUL POWER OR DEMONIC?
 
For this sort of phenomenon those are really the only two options.  Eventually I want to do a more thorough discussion of "soul power,"  which comes from a Continuationist corner of the Church although today's Charismatics haven't given it any thought that I know of.  The Strange Fire people are not likely to accept much of it either, although in many ways it supports their criticisms of the Charismatic movement.  

The idea is that there are "miraculous" powers that were given to Adam but lost at the fall, or at least "buried in the flesh" as Watchman Nee puts it, that can be revived under certain circumstances (such as repetitive singing of choruses).  He thinks they are probably discovered by people through promptings by the evil spirits.  They include such "parapsychological" or "paranormal" phenomena as psychic powers, clairvoyance, telepathy, telekinesis and that sort of thing.  Psychic powers can imitate prophecy.  Nee says healings of a certain sort are even possible through these powers, a sort of mind-over-matter thing such as Christian Science preaches and some Hindus and others practice.

This kind of thing would explain the kind of phenomena that are being exercised in the Charismatic movement, the "prophecies" and the "healings" and probably also the tongues speaking.  Some at Strange Fire did mention "psychic" phenomena as a possible explanation.  Nee also discussed the so-called "holy laughter" that was a major element in the supposed "revival" called the Toronto Blessing, that he'd witnessed in China before 1933 when he wrote the book describing these things.  How this automatic laughter relates to soul power isn't clear but Nee recognized it as a counterfeit phenomenon that did not come from God.   Nee, and Jessie Penn Lewis whose work he built on, accepted the continuation of the gifts of the Spirit but he also recognized a very large number of counterfeits of those gifts that were being expressed at the same time, something we don't hear recognized by today's charismatics who seem uncritically to accept anything that calls itself prophetic or miraculous. 

In his interview about his critics, John MacArthur goes on to such subjects as visions and tongues, which also need to be discussed as something other than ordinary human phenomena. That will be the next post.

Strange Fire: Sorting Out the Issues Part 2: A Pentecostal Pastor Agrees with much of the Strange Fire Conference

In Part 2 of his interview to answer his critics, John MacArthur gives a link to a blog by a Pentecostal minister   who agrees in general with the Strange Fire Conference (this is a great article).  As MacArthur says, this is the sort of response he was hoping to get:

THE DANGER OF THE PROSPERITY GOSPEL IS ABOUT WHAT THE AVERAGE BELIEVER BELIEVES (not about how many Prosperity preachers there are):

I’m around average Pentecostals in my congregation and campus ministry. I’m not constantly around denominational leaders or scholars. And among most congregants the likes of Osteen, Meyer, Copeland, and Shuttlesworth are incredibly popular.

I’ve heard demands for MacArthur to evaluate us by looking at French Arrington or Stanley Horton. To be completely honest, my congregants have no clue who those men are (apart from perhaps a vague familiarity established by sermon references). My congregants do know who Kenneth Hagin is, or who T.D. Jakes is. I don’t think MacArthur’s concern is primarily with the Pentecostals who hold Horton in high esteem. It’s with the congregants who hold Jakes and Copeland in high esteem, and given that priority, MacArthur’s approach makes more sense.

MacArthur wasn’t looking to spark a debate in peer-reviewed literature. He was looking to engage at the popular level, and he has been wildly successful at this. It’s the popular level where the false teachers and excesses are often a problem, and it makes sense to aim there.

It should also be noted that TBN is exported to other countries. They broadcast all over the world. They broadcast to Christians who don’t have the benefit of owning their own Bibles. The incredible damage of Prosperity teaching in world missions must be carefully observed.

INCREDIBLE DAMAGE OF PROSPERITY TEACHING IN WORLD MISSIONS.  Nobody else on the Continuationist side has said such a thing that I know of.  And he concludes with this:

We Pentecostals and Charismatics needed to be offended, I’m afraid it may be the only thing that will make us think critically and Biblically about ourselves as a movement. And for this offense I want to thank John MacArthur and the participants in the Strange Fire Conference. The most hurtful thing about that conference is not the broad generalizations, sweeping condemnations, or lack of distinctions. For me as a Pentecostal the most hurtful thing about the Strange Fire Conference is my knowledge that far too many of the criticisms are true.

Right.  We can all read the books by the pastors and theologians but it's our friends in the congregations we hear from most, and although I'm no longer part of the charismatic movement I do still have friends who are.   Some are into the Prosperity Gospel or at least into the related idea that miraculous healings are promised to us if we ask for them.  They can quote the Bible on this. 

I may say more about this later but it seemed important for now to let this Pentecostal pastor be heard.

Reframing the Cessationist/Continuationist Debate: Let's get the arguments on both sides of this straight.

I've listened to just a few minutes of Michael Brown's radio show for today, Do You Have a Kundalini Spirit? and I'm already frustrated with the way they are characterizing the Strange Fire Conference arguments.  He's got a Reformed Cessationist on as guest, John B. Carpenter, who wrote an article on the Conference in the Christian Post yesterday, Recovering From Strange and Friendly Fire. They just got through characterizing the Cessationist position pretty much as Carpenter characterizes it in his article:

The argument for cessationism is simple: the "revelatory gifts" of the New Testament were for the purpose of revealing scripture and since that is now done, we don't need those gifts. So they've ceased.

Yes, that's a simple enough statement of the Cessationist position, but how that position was defended at the Conference is not how it was characterized on the radio program.  Both on the program and in Carpenter's article, the appeal is made to 1 Corinthians 13 as supposedly saying that the gifts will cease "when the perfect comes" understood to mean "when the canon is established," which is NOT any argument that I heard at the Conference, or if it was it went in one ear and out the other.  I'd heard that sort of argument for years and it never convinced me that the gifts have ceased and I'm not at all surprised it doesn't convince anyone else.  But that was NOT the argument that DID convince me that I heard at the Conference and it makes me wonder if this long after the Conference neither Brown nor Carpenter has actually HEARD the arguments made there.

They also say that since there is no direct explicit statement in the Bible to support the claim that the gifts have ceased that the claim to base it on the Bible completely fails.  This is another old and dead argument. 

In fact Michael Brown said he's writing a chapter for his book, Authentic Fire, which he's writing in answer to the Conference, titled "Sola Scriptura and Therefore Not a Cessationist."  And I've got to say that really finally does get us to the central issues in this debate because Charismatics / Continuationists DO believe they get their doctrine of the ongoing supernatural gifts from the Bible, and that probably should have been emphasized more at the Conference, and to my mind it is now the main point Cessationists need to address.  That is, how can you think people could be asking for the Holy Spirit, as Charismatics do, or "for everything You have for me," and get a counterfeit, when scripture promises that God will not give you a stone when you ask for bread?  This IS central to this argument.

But again, the Conference DID convince me on BIBLICAL grounds that the gifts have ceased, and NOT on the grounds as described by Brown and Carpenter.

The main argument was that throughout scripture, and in certain very specific statements in the New Testament, the supernatural or miraculous gifts that were PERFORMED BY PARTICULAR PERSONS were given to authenticate that person as God's messenger or his message as from God.   That was the purpose of the miracles done by Moses and by Elijah and by Jesus Christ.  Scripture IS very clear about that.

And THAT is what you have to answer, Charismatics, that plus the supporting facts:

• that the charismatic gifts are not at all like the apostolic gifts,
• that various Christian theologians down the centuries argued that the gifts had ceased,

Again, that is what needs to be answered, not all the tired old arguments that were not defended at the Conference.   

But I'd add that the acceptance of the gifts for today is a NEW thing, hardly older than a century, which does not speak much in its favor.  It can be rationalized away, but not very effectively after the historical facts are understood.

======================================
Update:  Thought I was going to go back and hear more of that radio show but this debate has gone on in new directions since then. 

Again I Point to the Work of Chris Pinto in calling down the Roman Church as the Antichrist Plotter of Plots.

A friend listened to Chris Pinto's radio show on The Final Antichrist that I linked at my Catholicism blog yesterday and was fascinated and edified by it, which encourages me to continue to give Chris Pinto's work top billing at my blogs.  My friend was lamenting about how stupid we all are about history, which we may find out by listening to Chris Pinto for one. 

So I thought I'd edit my answer to him for the sake of anybody reading this.   I do my blogs in the hope of being useful to the Church, after all, which is up to God of course and I don't get much notice out here in Cyberboonieville but that's no reason to stop.  So here's some stuff as I laid it out for my friend, that I've learned through Chris Pinto's work, through his documentary films and his radio shows and articles.

One reason we're all so stupid about history is that Jesuits have rewritten many of our history books to obscure and downplay the role of the Vatican in all their evil doings, from the Inquisition to attempts to assassinate the leaders of nations, even the whole English government at one time (The Gunpowder Plot), to their work to take the American continent for the Pope (recognized by the first Protestant settlers, as described in Bradford and Winthrop's writings), to their role in the assassination of Lincoln (sources are Charles Chiniquy and Paul Serup), to their influence on the Bible manuscript and translation committees, including their forgeries of "ancient manuscripts" designed to discredit the King James Bible, which used to be common knowledge, and much more, all of which I learned through Chris Pinto's ministry.

He is not a scholar, but a guy who used to want to be an actor and now makes documentary films, but he's got the instincts of a historian and collects all kinds of old books with all this information in them that has been suppressed over the last century or so.  I've linked to many of them in the right margin of my Catholicism blog.  I don't know of anybody else who is doing anything comparable that could be of so much benefit to the Church and I pray for him, that the knowledge he has been trying to get out would be picked up by the Church at large so we won't have to remain stupid about who our enemies are.

Right now if you research any of these topics you'll find you are directed to a lot of Catholic revisionism and disinformation.  If you love the idea of the Pope ruling the world through a reestablished Holy Roman Empire along with a new Inquisition, which we believe would in fact be fulfillment of prophecy, then choose the Catholic sources.  But if you love the idea of truth and freedom you might consider finding out what Chris Pinto has to say and put off the fulfillment of prophecy for another season.

Both Pinto and my friend are ex-Catholics by the way, and it is always necessary to say that in attacking the RCC nobody is attacking Catholics as such, who don't know anything about this history but need to learn it so they can escape the clutches of the Vatican, which is what the Reformers and their followers did.  The Vatican is still working strenuously but stealthily behind the scenes to bring down the Protestant Reformation, and making quite a bit of headway, too, judging from the signs of the times. 

I hope many will be inspired to learn what Chris Pinto has been bringing to our attention and do their own deep study of all of it.

************WE NEED A NEW PROTESTANT REFORMATION************

Getting Free of the Deceptions of Charismatica

After watching and rewatching the Strange Fire Conference it's been growing on me how amazing and deplorable it is that so many Christians can't discern the falseness of Charismatic phenomena, and I'm certainly including myself in that judgment.   After much prayer I had come to reject most of the phenomena I'd encountered in my Charismatic phase, and left the whole movement after a couple of years of involvement, but I still had some doubts and reservations I shouldn't have had. 

When John MacArthur at the Conference simply flatly denounced the movement as insulting to God and the Holy Spirit and in essence apologized to the Lord for anyone's ever mistaking the bizarre phenomena as coming from Him, it hit me how right he was and how we should ALL recognize that.  And why don't we?  Are we deceived Christians or are we Christians at all?  Even that is often not clear.  How many of us may even be demon-oppressed (or possessed) because of our involvement?

I had felt hopeless about ever settling the questions I had for years, a couple of decades really, having given up on being able to determine for sure whether there was anything of God in the movement or not. 

Some of us originally got involved in the movement because of personal experiences of our own that we attributed to God.  And some of the experiences may truly HAVE been of God.  Having had such experiences we are drawn to the movement because it majors on personal experience.  I know of people who feel they found the "truth" in a charismatic church, found a real relationship with God.  They love the enthusiasm, the emotion, whereas their previous experience of church had been "dead" and boring.

My very first experience of a church service, being taken there by a friend after coming to belief through reading, was in a Foursquare charismatic church.  I actually didn't like many things about it because my reading had led me to a reverence and adoration of God rather than the emotional enthusiasms I saw in the church, but I had no reliable way of judging at that time, being a new Christian and then for some period being around only charismatics.  I'd also become involved in occultic practices during my reading period, and that was no doubt exerting a strong influence on me too despite efforts to reject it.  Later, in another town, the first church I attended by my own choice was a Presbyterian church, and it took me a while to realize that it was a "liberal" church, that is, it wasn't true to the Bible.  So I left there and went to another Foursquare church.  Then I joined a charismatic "parachurch" organization.  All that lasted for a couple of years until I finally made my way to a Reformed church which was new in town at that time.  The preaching there was excellent, but I still had my reservations about the charismatic phenomena.  And even now, despite the effect of the Strange Fire Conference, I may still be deceived in some ways I have yet to discover.

I am writing all this with a view to getting across something about the hold these things have on people.  I have no doubt any more that the movement is satanic in its essence, yet I met many there I consider to be true Christians, and now I'm pondering how hard it is to get free of it.  It must be somewhat similar to a Catholic's bondage to the RCC, or a Mormon's bondage to their "church."

TORONTO "BLESSING" OR CURSE?
I was still involved in the Charismatic movement when the "Toronto Blessing" broke out and my first take on it was that it had to be a counterfeit.  Nevertheless, being surrounded by charismatics who were constantly warning against imputing satanic influence to a work of God I was kept in a state of suspended judgment about it.  That constant refrain about attributing God's work to Satan has a powerful effect, it's one of the devil's most effective strategies.  Few of us have enough of a grasp of the Bible to cut through that worry with certainty, and even praying for light as I did (and receiving a great deal of light in answer) didn't fully release me from my doubts.

Until the Strange Fire Conference I hadn't thought about the Toronto Blessing for years, but in the last few days I decided to learn something about it.  All I remembered was that it was known as the "laughing revival."  I watched a film about it at You Tube that presents it in a very positive light.  Very little of the more controversial phenomena the revival is known for was shown, very little of the laughter, very little of the jerking.  Instead it focused mostly on people's claims to have been emotionally healed of past "hurts," to have had bad marriages repaired, and a few claimed physical healings as well.   Much of this "healing" went on during the periods when they were out cold on the floor.

How difficult it is to find fault with such nice normal people as were interviewed for this film, nice people who had such nice experiences, who testify to having had their lives changed by this "revival," and to "loving Jesus more" as well as loving people more.

After I saw it I had to sit and think and pray for a while to get my head straight about it.  The main thing that became evident to me was that all the focus was on psychological or fleshly results, people "getting their lives back," now having happy marriages or happier lives; and they were all thanking God for this.  But this is a far cry from the teachings of Jesus, who tells us to LOSE our lives, not gain them, who tells us to take up our cross (consider ourselves dead to this world), die to ourselves daily and so on.    None of that was in evidence, nor a single word about sin and how we are sinners in need of salvation, nor anything of the gospel itself of salvation through Christ's death in our place,  In short there was nothing Christian about this "revival" at all from what was shown in that film.

"HOLY" LAUGHTER?
 This topic takes me back to the idea of "soul power" which I've posted on a few times.  I've always liked the "holiness" writers like Watchman Nee, which is probably one major reason I haven't been able to completely free myself from the spell of charismatica, since he and others in the Holiness camp accept the charismatic idea of the continuation of the spiritual gifts.  Now that I believe he was deceived about that it helps.

However, since he does accept the gifts for today you might think more charismatics would refer to his writings for support, but I haven't found that to be the case.  If they did they'd have to notice that he denounced "holy laughter" all the way back in 1933 when it was occurring in churches in China.  Unlike other supernatural phenomena he considered to be possibly authentic, requiring discernment to tell the authentic from the counterfeit, "holy laughter" he considered to be nothing but counterfeit [pp. 71-4, Latent Power of the Soul], so if charismatics had taken him seriously during the Toronto Blessing they'd have to have rejected that particular manifestation for sure.

And really, again it seems to me that we all ought to see such laughter as counterfeit, just the tone of it is a violation of the Biblical revelation of the character of God, so again I'm amazed at us that we hesitate on such a point as this.  The devil's manipulations are powerful, the fear of offending God by rejecting such phenomena for instance, when in reality we offend Him by accepting such things.

Nee also writes, in Latent Power of the Soul, that the devil can counterfeit all kinds of things that we'd never suspect to be counterfeits, such as "false repentance, false salvation, false regeneration, false revival, false joy ..." [p. 41]

We need all the help we can get from something like the Strange Fire Conference, to set us free from these things.

Here's a link to a page of articles exposing the errors of the Toronto Blessing:
Testimonies and Analyses of the Toronto Blessing

Interesting: I've read quite a few of those articles by now and what's particularly interesting to me is that while many of them identify the revival as the work of evil spirits they don't give up their belief in the charismatic gifts for today. This is a pretty common position these days, to see such things as merely excesses or deviations, but it seems to me now that they are the natural logical extension of belief in the gifts, or any false belief in supernatural occurrences, which gives ground to evil spirits.

Rethinking the Mark of the Beast

I always thought the Mark of the Beast, which is described in Revelation 13 as a mark put on hand or forehead of those who follow the Antichrist, would irrevocably damn any person who received it.  So when the Left Behind series said a person could repent of it I thought that was heresy.  Then I heard in the summer of 2012 of a Christian teacher who said the same thing and wrote a blog post suggesting he must be a heretic too.  

Now it looks like I should apologize for that as repentance from the Mark is taught by two Christian teachers I think highly of:

First, John MacArthur whose position is that no sin is unforgiveable if it is repented of.

Then, Chris Pinto who goes back to the Reformers, showing that they identified the Mark as connected with the Roman Catholic rite of Confirmation, which was said to implant an indelible mark on the confirmed person.  If that is the identity of the Mark, then obviously one can repent of it or nobody could ever be saved out of the RCC.  Pinto discussed the Mark in some recent radio shows:

http://www.noiseofthunder.com/storage/NOTR_MARK.GOSPEL.REVELATION_10.17.13.mp3  Mark's Ending and the Mark of the Beast, October 17

http://www.noiseofthunder.com/storage/NOTR_MARK.OF.THE.BEAST.TWO_10.21.13.mp3
The Mark of the Beast, Part 2, October 19

http://www.noiseofthunder.com/storage/NOTR_HISTORY.MARK.OF.BEAST_10.21.13.mp3
History of the Mark of the Beast, October 25

http://www.noiseofthunder.com/storage/NOTR_REPENT.MARK.BEAST_10.22.13.mp3
Repentance From the Mark of the Beast, October 25