What Emergent Christianity Can Offer a Secularized World

A Postmodern Emergent Church Response

At Relevancy22 we have systematically responded to the secularity found in Evangelical modernism by proffering a postmodern version of Christianity known as Emergent Christianity which actively recognizes the syncretic effects that modernity has brought into the Evangelical church. And in response, have sought to identify those modernistic elements within the church by deconstructing them, often to the alarm and dismay, of many well-meaning evangelicals. And yet, in the aftermath, there has arisen an emergent Christian faith which lives more hopefully in these postmodern times, in the rediscovery of the God of the Bible in our everyday lives. Who is real, and is faithfully connected to, our turmoils and troubles, our witness and mission, our worship and fellowship, through Jesus.

 

Moreover, in the recovering of the supernatural presence of God in daily living and witness, there has resulted a continuing, sustaining presence of the Holy Spirit who empowers the Gospel of Jesus as presented in, and through, His church. So that when considering secularity, the answer is not to so simply return to those starry-eyed days of pre-modernistic Spirit-filled fellowships, but to incorporate what this would then mean to the church when placed within today's more discriminating postmodernistic times. For Emergent Christianity should not be thought as more charitable to those undiscerning protestations of miracles, the supernatural, spiritual warfare, angels and demons, but more critical of it in the defining sense of re-considering how those Christian positions oftentimes support an indiscriminate modernism found present within Evangelical Christianity. Thus withholding it from transitioning to a mandated postmodern re-definition of itself. Meaning that, we do not wish to trade one defeated "religious perspective" for another "less competent perspective" but to incorporate a more vigorous postmodern vision that gives life-and-breath back to the Word of God without relying on earlier superstitions, non-scientific assessments, religious folklore, traditions, fictions and fantasies. More simply said, an emergent Christian would not deny these biblical portrayals so much as re-express them in a postmodern sense of Christian enactment and divine presence.

 

Hence, we have been careful within this blogsite to question (and then restate) just what miracles are; what the nature, mission, and operation of spiritual gifting (tongues, healing, prophecy) under the ministry of the Holy Spirit is and can be; how to conduct a literary and not a literal reading of the Bible, of God, and of God's mission to the world through today's postmodern church; what the ministry of the church is to society; what sin's relationship to creation and humanity's free will is; how to read the Bible in a postmodern sense; how to minister and comport our lives within a postmodern setting; and generally, a revisioning of what it means to see the Holy One of Israel apart from the Evangelical blinders that we have too readily adopted uconsciously through the veneers of religiosity too comfortably adapted into our lives, our thoughts, our beliefs, tongues and dogmas.

Specifically, a postmodern assessment of secularization will not encourage those Third Wave Christians, nor spiritists amongst the church, backwards towards earlier beliefs and participations that once housed varying forms of mystical gnosticism. Nor towards an indiscriminate reading of either the bible, or modernity, or both; a reading which generally gives way to more naive forms of cloistered, pre-modernistic, Christian communities and worship fellowships. But then again, nor do we wish too discourage our brethren either for we have much in common with such mindful Christians wishing to apprehend God and live for Jesus in witness, work, and ministry. To such mindful groups we would challenge not a reversion away from modernism into pre-modernal living, but a progression forwards in renouncing modernal expressions of Evangelicalism. While coming to appreciate, if not adopt, a postmodernal, Spirit-filled Emergent expression and understanding of Christianity. For if this is not undertaken, than the church can not - and will not - have a contemporary global witness that is effective within this postmodern world of ours so long as we live and walk and breathe upon this Earth the dead-and-dying airs of yesteryear's secular modernity.

Moreover, Dr. Olson (below) has well pointed out the deficiencies of modernized Christianity. And though a postmodernist would wish to depart from such oversimplified characterizations of "secularity" knowing that such dualisms are a part of the classical modernal world being left behind, still Dr. Olson does point out (in modernal terminology) the deficiencies of modernity in using this type of categorical representation. However, in counterpoint, a postmodernist labors to remove as many of the dualities of the modern mindset as possible from the language of postmodernism, and from postmodern Christianity, so as to remove (reduce, or exclude) classical thinking and its paradigms from oversimplifying the person and work of God, His Word, His world, and mission through Jesus. While also seeking to remove modernal attitudes placed upon God, His Word, world, and mission, that are self-referential and self-reinforcing producing a prohibitive witness and exclusionary fellowships to God, His Word, world and mission to the world.

In its place a postmodernist seeks to integrate a wholism to life that incorporates a pluralistic perspective that places dualities along the fuller theological spectrum of quantum insights and definitions. It is a language that can only grow and occur as future generations develop it and the church absorbs it. Moreover, a critical component of postmodernal thinking is that it demands, as a mandatory basis for enjoining oneself to it, a self-criticism and introspection that would create a healthy respect for doubt, mystery, and a closer respect for those individuals and people groups who are different from ourselves. In this way it becomes a superimposing superstructure that can better give way to any future philosophic eras arising along the lines of demonstrated authenticity and global participation. How? By requiring a decentralization of our personal experiences to that of the expanding whole of humanity, as well as to that of creation ecologically. It has well been said that a journey of a 1000 miles cannot begin without first questioning the need for such a journey. For where there is no introspection or doubt, so too will there be found delusion and contempt (which is my humble attempt at speaking in terms of Peter "Rollinisms").

For those modernists amongst us, we will always feel less convinced and less willing to let go of our dualisms. But in the world of quantum physics, as in the world of quantum living, such classical descriptors cannot be helpful. Neither to a postmodern way of living and thinking, nor to our biblical studies and Christian worship. Emergent Christianity is a different type of Christianity than we are use to seeing. It is foreign to us, and startling new and refreshing. And as such, generally feared and dreaded, called names, and chastised as from the devil's own pit of hell, by the less informed, or less willingly to move forwards towards God's gracious calls of repentance and submission.

 

And though it is true that postmodern emergent Christianity has radically changed many of the goal posts of pre-modern, and modern, evangelical Christianity, it should also be known that God is still the same, only now we are gaining a richer, more fuller, understanding of His majesty and glory. As such, the wisdom of God's salvation through Jesus is itself radically removing all the goalposts of our Christian (and non-Christian) lives unto the furthering majesties and glories of God's renewing Kingdom. Not magically, nor mystically, but in a very real, definitive sense of spiritual undertaking by the Holy Spirit. Requiring the insights of today's younger, more nimble postmodern minds and spirits, which are more willing to rediscover the God of the Bible lost upon the foundering sands of religious secularisms and secularized lifestyles (I speak in modern day terms here, just as Paul did to his first century listeners!).

 

Underneath will be found a truer spirituality than can be found through the fantasizations and mysticisms many think must accompany a reforming Christianity. Certainly, there will be devils enough to fight; and, principalities and powers too! But don't be surprised to find those devils and powers housed quite comfortably within the halls and board rooms of the church. For inasmuch as there be heaven-sent angels let them be likewised clothed in flesh-and-blood hearts and souls through the postmodern day you of emergent Christianity. Who will globally speak Jesus' love and healing in as many tongues, and prophetic ministrations, of the redeemed to an unredeemed world lost in its hedonisms, atheism, pride and hate. It will require a greater power than our own human spirit of altruism and social justice. It will require the spiritual power of God's Holy Spirit testifying in-and-through us, to the power and resurrection found in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. Who Himself will put down all principalities and powers, and even the sin found in me and you. For it is to this postmodern day power of liberation and freedom, healing and forgiveness, that we are called to speak in Jesus' uplifted name. Amen.

 

R.E. Slater

January 4, 2013

   

 

 

 

How Secularized Has American Evangelical Christianity Become?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/01/how-secularized-has-american-evangelical-christianity-become/

 

by Roger Olson

January 3, 2013

Comments

 

How Secularized Has American Evangelical Christianity Become?

 

In a recent post here I talked about what I see as the secularization of evangelical Christianity in America. I gave some examples of its symptoms—that is, symptoms of secularization in American evangelical church life. I simply took for granted that secularization had long ago gripped and changed so-called “mainstream” Protestantism in America. Traditionally, that has been one of the primary ways of distinguishing “evangelical” from “mainstream” or “mainline” Christianity in America.

 

Some commenters have wondered if secularity is necessarily bad. How, for example, can evangelical Christianity engage in mission to secular people without some degree of secularity? Of course, that raises many questions, too many to discuss here. All I want to do here and now is discuss what I mean by “secularity” (and “secularization” and “secular”) and explain why I think it is something evangelical Christians should avoid. (By “avoid” I don’t mean “separate from” physically. I’ll explain further on what I mean by it.)

 

The word “secular” has a long and rich history and many meanings. In one sense, not the one I mean, it is simply a description of priests and nuns who do not belong to any particular order. Its alternative is “religious.” A priest or a nun is “secular” who does not belong to, for example, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) or the Carmelite Order. A “religious” priest or nun is one who does belong to a particular order (which usually involves taking certain special vows and living a distinctive lifestyle). Just to be clear—this is not the meaning of “secular” here.

 

What I mean by “secular” (and its cognates) is belief that human life can be lived successfully without God or religion. “Secularity” is implicit belief in that; “secularism” is explicit and, usually, aggressive belief in that.

 

When I suggest that American evangelical Christianity is largely “secular,” I do not mean that it has bought into secularism. No evangelical I know espouses secularism. Evangelicals usually recoil with horror from it. It is “the enemy” (e.g., “secular humanism”).

 

No, what I do mean is that, to a very large extent, as I see it, American evangelical Christianity has bought into secularity—an ethos, an outlook, a way of living life “in the world and of it” that is often, usually, unintended and even denied.

 

Before proceeding, I want to confess that I am not immune to secularity. I think it is extremely difficult to be immune to it. It’s an ingredient, if not the main feature, of the modern, Western culture most of us live in on a day-to-day basis. It would be almost impossible to avoid being influenced by secularity without leaving culture behind in the way, for example, portrayed in the movie “The Village.” There are lesser degrees of that kind of separation in many intentional Christian communities, but it seems to me the only way to avoid being infected by secularity entirely would be to create something like the community portrayed in that movie.

 

Also, I confess that I think secularity, a product of modernity, has brought about some good things. I don’t believe in shunning everything secular. For example, methodological naturalism in scientific research is secular. There is a sense in which separation of church and state is secular. I happen to think it’s also biblical and practical in that it is good for both church and state. It’s good theology and good policy. So, “secular” is not always automatically bad.

 

What is bad, in my view, is when secularity invades the churches (or is invited in) and becomes the shaping ethos in Christian life. That usually happens without anyone noticing it or pointing it out. It is like the proverbial frog in the gradually heating water who fails to jump out and ends up boiled to death. (I have read about that and, apparently, it doesn’t really happen to frogs. Still, I think it’s a good illustration for what can happen to Christians who accommodate too much to culture whether it be secular or pagan.)

 

I think to avoid secularity becoming a controlling norm in Christian life, including church life, we have to be conscious of it and intentionally resist it. We American evangelicals are, by and large, very critical of Christians in other cultures who we think practice “syncretism,” that is, uncritical and unbiblical blending of non-Christian cultural and religious beliefs and practices with Christianity. We talk much about “contextualizing the gospel” while avoiding syncretism. For the most part, anyway, evangelical missionaries (and their teachers and supporters in America) have criticized such things as ancestor veneration among Christians in certain African and Asian societies. In some African countries, some Christians practice animal sacrifice in Christian worship. In Central America some Christians have combined shamanistic practices with Christianity. All these things we denounce and demand that our “converts” stop and shun.

 

However, when evangelical Christians from other, non-Westernized, cultures come to us they almost always see and point out (when coaxed) our own syncretisms—especially the ways in which we American Christians uncritically blend secularity with our Christianity. I don’t always agree with them. Sometimes they seem to want Western (European and North American) Christians to live pre-modern lives in a puritan manner (purified of modernity and all its products). For example, I once succeeded in getting a Christian student from Ethiopia to open up and reveal his thoughts about American Christianity. As the old saying goes, “Boy did we get an earful!” Among other things he said (very politely and respectfully) that in much of Africa (the parts he was familiar with) questioning authorities was considered unchristian and yet I encouraged my theology students to question anything. The difference in his case seemed to be that critical thinking itself revealed impermissible syncretism, accommodation to secular culture. I disagreed (about the “impermissible” part, anyway).

 

On the other hand, at the same college and seminary, Ugandan evangelical bishop Festo Kivengere (1919-1988), “the Billy Graham of Africa,” gave us an earful about our secularized ways (not so much in his public talks as in his answers to our questions during a private lunch with faculty and administrators). I had to agree with his examples.

 

For example, many even non-evangelical African Christians speak warmly and enthusiastically about miracles as part and parcel of authentic Christianity. A few years ago I invited a Nigerian Catholic priest to speak to one of my classes. He was supposed to talk about Catholic theology (he was then the priest in residence at the Catholic student center next to the campus where I taught). Instead, he talked about miracles in African churches and among African Christians—including Catholic churches and individuals. That was his main topic. Clearly, he was attempting to evangelize American evangelicals, not with messages about Mary or the pope but about the power of God to heal the sick and raise the dead (which he claimed to have seen with his own eyes).

 

[It is supposed here that the subject area of fighting spiritual "principalities and powers" such as demons and the devil would also come under this same topic for a 3rd World beleiver. - R.E. Slater]

 

I think this is one of the best ways for American evangelical Christians to discover and avoid secularity among us and in us—to invite evangelical Christians from non-Western countries (especially Asia and Africa) into our churches and Christian organizations and ask them to talk to us about our own tendencies toward syncretism with secular culture.

 

So where do I see secularization in American evangelical Christianity? You might expect me to talk first and perhaps foremost about our general neglect of miracles and the supernatural in general. However, I prefer to begin by pointing out the ways in which our churches and Christian organizations operate along secular business lines. And I don’t mean only with money.

 

Business language pervades our churches and organizations. Instead of talking about “calling” a pastor, we now talk about “hiring” one. A small thing? I think not. In many evangelical churches today, the pastor is treated as an “employee” and falls under the oversight of the “personnel committee” (whatever name that might have). Now don’t get me wrong, I have no objection to churches having personnel committees. My objection is to placing the pastor and pastoral staff under its supervision. Churches used to have “pulpit committees” or “pastoral relations” committees whose job it was to work with the pastor(s) as lay representatives of the congregation. We also now frequently refer to the worship space using terms such as “auditorium,” “platform,” and “lobby.” But at a deeper level, many evangelical churches in America now make budget decisions in the same way businesses make them. Appeals by congregants to “have faith” are routinely turned aside as impractical. When there’s a budget shortfall, one or more staff members get “laid off.” In many cases, funds donated to the church or organization are put into endowments instead of being used for immediate ministry needs. Often, if not usually, the endowment proceeds are used for building maintenance (or, in one case I know of, to pay non-church member choir members).

 

In today’s evangelical Christianity I hear very little talk about God speaking to people, guiding and leading them, healing or providing for them—or doing anything (except giving comfort). I know one evangelical man who claims he had a “conversation with God” that resulted in what he sees as a miracle of provision for someone else through him, but he’s afraid to tell about it because he thinks even other evangelicals will think he’s crazy or a fanatic. He wrote an article about it anonymously and tells only a select few friends that it happened to him. Some “good evangelicals” he’s told about it have expressed skepticism that God really speaks to people that way or provides in that manner.

 

This is one area where I agree with fellow evangelical Wayne Grudem (many of whose other opinions I disagree with very strongly). Wayne has written about the demise of prophecy in Christianity and how important it is to recover that gift. And by “prophecy” he doesn’t mean what most evangelicals mean by it—good preaching. Another more conservative evangelical (than I am) theologian who has advocated a renaissance of non-secular Christianity among evangelicals is J. P. Moreland, author of, among other books, Kingdom Triangle (Zondervan, 2007). I once served on a panel with him and Greg Boyd at a National Pastors Conference. They both reminded me just how secularized I have become, along with most other evangelicals. Moreland talked very openly and publicly about angels who attend him. Boyd, of course, talked about spiritual warfare. Many in the audience, made up mostly of pastors associated in some way with evangelical emergent churches, looked very skeptical. (I was sitting with Boyd and Moreland on the platform [this was not in a church!] and examined the facial expressions and body language of the audience members I could see.)

 

I’m not advocating seeing angels or practicing spiritual warfare or renewing prophecy so much as I am simply pointing out how far we American evangelicals have moved in terms of absorbing a secular outlook on life. Evidence, as I see it, is not so much that we don’t do those things as that we are skeptical about them in a kind of knee-jerk fashion. (I wrote in my previous post about the dwindling of church meetings for fellowship and worship and other symptoms of creeping secularization.)

 

So, after all that, let me confess my own guilt. I was shocked and somewhat put off when my Christian medical doctor asked to pray with me after an examination for a medical problem. Why? Not because he was doing anything less than the very best medical science has to offer. He wasn’t substituting prayer for medical care. I suspect many, if not most, American evangelical Christians would have the same reaction I had—wondering if that was appropriate professional practice even for a Christian medical doctor. (I concluded it is, but my initial reaction was revealing.) Later, I wasn’t surprised to find out that he attends a “Third Wave” church in town that believes in miracles. I would have been more surprised to learn that he attends a “normal” evangelical church! I could go on giving examples of my own secularization of mind and heart and behavior. But I’ll stop for now and just ask you, my dear readers, to examine your own Christian lives and churches and consider whether, and to what extent, they have been compromised by secularity.


 

What is Heaven? The Kingdom of God Come NOW to Earth...

Let's give Jeff Cook 3 "atta-boys" on his remarkable perception of tying in what we know about the Kingdom of God with that of our future expectation of God's renewal of all things to Himself. When writers, pastors and preachers come along and actually "get it" and then tell us how they "get it" it makes for easy work for those theologians amongst us that have time-and-again beat the pulpit (or lectern) patiently describing to students and practitioners of God's Word how, and in every way, Jesus has renewed all things on Earth here amongst us.

The Christian expectation is not to die and to run from this wicked world of sin and decay. But to fly into the arms of the Spirit and claim resurrection and renewal to this wicked world around us! To stay put and demand that God resurrect and make new their life spiritually... their family spiritually... their friendships spiritually... their hopes and dreams spiritually... their present ministries and avocations spiritually.... That in every way, and in every possible realization, that God be found within this world of ours using us, and in concerted effort with His people the Church, remaking this world into one filled with hope and love and peace and goodwill and reconciliation and heaven-sent destiny!

Consequently, AMEN my brother! Preach it! Live it! Tell it! Demand it! Use it! Want it! Declare it! Expect it! Shout it! Show it! Make it!! (Yes, I said make it!). For we, as Jesus born, Spirit indwelt, disciples of God are the tools of God by His Spirit that He will use to hammer and chisel, break down, and rebuild, smooth and transform, this wicked world of sin into the new creation that He envisions, wants, wills and demands. Be the tool. Be the sword. Be the plow and shield for the Kingdom of God, now! Be all that you can be in the Spirit of God until He comes and redeems this world from sin and death. Amen.

R.E. Slater

June 26, 2012

Reimagining Heaven

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/deeper-walk/features/24307-reimagining-heaven

By Jeff Cook
February 3, 2011

If heaven is more than harps, and halos ... what is it?

Often when we think of heaven, what comes to mind is escape. According to Medieval art and modern cartoons, “heaven” is about leaving. Heaven is about getting as far away from what we and others have broken as possible. Perhaps we think this world is too base, painful and irreparably shattered to fix, so our only hope is to leave. As such, “salvation” isn’t about a new life, a transformed character or a brilliant new experience of God. Salvation is about departure. Salvation is about “going to heaven,” being rescued from this dysfunctional world and entering a new home that is trash bag-free.

There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to suffer anymore, or wanting to be with God (which are some of the things that come to my mind when thinking of heaven). But when Jesus taught about heaven, He never spoke of it as a distant land of clouds, bath robes and harp music waiting for the souls of the dead (which sounds a bit more like hell to me). Instead, Jesus spoke of “the kingdom of heaven.” It is arguably His favorite topic. Jesus refers to this kingdom more than 100 times—more than He speaks of love, peace and money combined. Apparently, the “kingdom” aspect of heaven was vital to Jesus and His teachings.

But notice—kingdoms are power structures. They are an area of authority. As such, when He spoke of heaven, Jesus was emphasizing heaven’s present power and work. When Jesus told stories that began with similes (such as, the kingdom of heaven is like a man sowing seed in a barren field), He was showing His culture what it looked like when heaven was in control. This was what Jesus wanted His followers to know about heaven. For Jesus, heaven was primarily about God’s will being done on earth. We don’t need to leave earth, because heaven is coming here. Because “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,” it makes sense that the Son’s highest concern would be repairing the world His Father loves—saturating it with the life of heaven (John 3:16, NIV).

Now and Not Yet

Jesus and the rest of the New Testament writers consistently speak in a way that suggests both that heaven—the sphere of God’s reign, presence and repairing power—is already here in a new way and that it is not yet fully here in another.

When the early Christians expressed their hope in God’s future, they pointed at the resurrection, but there was something else that was more tangible, specific and informative about God’s plans for each of them. They spoke of experiencing God’s Spirit within them and within one another. The Spirit that had once hovered over chaos and helped make the world, the Spirit they saw in Jesus—that same Spirit was now in them. It was tangible, and they felt it transforming them inside and making them more like Jesus.

Jesus believed the Spirit’s renewal—of both human beings and God’s world—had begun. The Spirit’s work is how new creation happens. Notice, Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven to a tiny mustard seed sprouting and eventually growing into an enormous tree filling all the sky. He compared the kingdom of heaven to yeast that slowly worked into a large lump of dough. Both parables imply that the kingdom of heaven will not be instantaneous. Jesus thought heaven had just now begun to grow here, had just now begun to reclaim all the places that had been neglected.

As such, we should think of heaven and the age to come chasing us, meeting us, enlivening us and beginning to grow right here in our midst. It’s as though the renewal of all things has begun, and you and I are being transformed now into what we will always be.

The Sight of Heaven

If we are willing, we can choose to see heaven. We can see it in the lives of those around us who are transformed not by lucky flukes, but the Spirit of God. We can see it in the life and resurrection of Jesus, and in ourselves. We can choose to see places in our own story not as an accident, but as a real encounter with the God who is making everything new. It is a mistake to think of heaven as ever distant, inexperienced, always a step beyond our lives now. The Bible is filled with stories not of people being hurried out of here, but of God descending and drawing the world to Himself.

In the early days of creation, God descended into the Garden of Eden. During the exodus, God descended in a guiding pillar of cloud and fire. During the Jewish exile, God descended into a Babylonian fire to be with three would-be martyrs. In the Gospels, God descended in the incarnation of Jesus. At the origin of the Christian community, God descended like tongues of fire, which communicate to every nation a new reality. When Paul pictured the end of the age, he wrote again of God descending: “The Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command … and the dead in Christ will rise” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). The final chapters of the Bible end with a grand culmination where heaven and earth are fully wed and God makes His home with us here. What results when our lives are united to that reality—to the reign of God and the work of His Son—is new creation. As God Himself says to close the Bible:

“‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.

They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death” or mourning

or crying or pain, for the old order of things [the present age] has passed away.’

He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’”

- Revelation 21:3-5

 

Do we choose to see our world this way? Do we choose to see heaven slowly engulfing everything and waiting for its full revelation in our midst? Our hope then is that we will continue to be transformed, that “he who began a good work in you [now] will carry it on to completion [then]” (Philippians 1:6). You and I have not yet arrived. We are not yet perfect. We are always in transit. Our lives are a work of tension—the tension between a work “begun” and a work “complete.” But for those who experience God’s Spirit, the future is clear. We are being made more and more like Jesus who has given us His Spirit.

 

As such, when we choose mercy over indifference, when we choose action over apathy, when we choose self-restraint and chastity over a life given over to our many reckless desires, we choose to live now in the kingdom of heaven. When we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, house the homeless and die to ourselves for the sake of another, we enjoy the life of the age to come. When we hear the voice of God telling us we are loved, that our many sins are forgiven, we experience now what we will experience forever. When we eat together, laugh together, sing together, serve together, take communion, love our enemies and cancel debts, we choose to live the best kind of life—the life of God’s future connected to Him and to one another.

Of course, Jesus is central to all this. He is not simply the one announcing a new kingdom. He is the king—the Christ—and in the pantheon of potential deities, Jesus alone is doing the work of restoration. He alone has a history of making everything new. In Jesus alone do we get the sense that repair may actually become a reality. We see the defeat of evil in the events of Good Friday and Easter, for the cross and resurrection are the sign to all that there is a new king, for death could not overcome the life rising up in God’s Son.

Jeff Cook teaches philosophy at the University of Northern Colorado, and is the author of Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes (Zondervan 2008) and the upcoming Everything New (2011). This article is excerpted from one that originally appeared in RELEVANT. To get more articles like this, you can subscribe by clicking here.

On Things that Last - Revival, Relationship, Faith

"I Used to Be On Fire for God"

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/church/blog/29017-qi-used-to-be-on-fire-for-godq

Jordan White

 

Me and Britt

It started junior year of high school when I went to my friend’s charismatic youth group. The room was dark, the music was loud and there was a lot of dancing. People were crying on the floor, shouting unintelligible languages and jumping.

It was the weirdest, most electric thing I’d ever experienced. I was "on fire" for God.



I was raised almost completely out of church by completely Christian parents. I’ve only recently come to understand what it was that hurt them about church and why they can’t bring themselves to go back. It’s an unspoken bond not unlike people who’ve experienced something traumatic like a car accident. The connection is in the eyes, in the way we talk about who we were as compared to who we are. When I was in high school and on fire for God, I thought my parents were scared. Little did I know, God is scary.



The problem with revival is that it is a fleeting notion.



While in high school and on fire for God, I was a leader for a campus ministry called CRASH. The name came from a group of rhinos running into buildings or something Christian-edgy like that. We met once a week on Friday mornings before school, and it was my job to lead sermons for the 15 or so students brave enough to show up before school and worship. When I didn’t sleep through my alarm, I dragged my younger brother to school at six and planned out lessons five minutes before I was supposed to deliver them.

I was really terrible at leading CRASH. My ego and self-confidence levels were at an all-time high with practicality trailing enormously behind me. That was a serious problem with my brand of Christianity. It was more about me believing unwaveringly in my own enlightenment than it was about sharing God’s love. I saw myself as a revolutionary Christian leader whose stories were sure to circulate for millennia to come. It was all about the sexiness of healings and loud worship and not at all about listening. But one time, I did do something right. “Right,” meaning "impactful."





Our group met in the old theater of the high school. Our small following didn’t come close to filling the 1,000-seat auditorium, but occasionally that worked in our favor. On this particular morning, I was talking about how we shouldn’t be scared to spread the Gospel to each and every person we meet. I’m sure I quoted (potentially misquoted) the verse about how if we deny God before man, then Jesus will deny us before His Father.



From the stage, I asked for a volunteer to come stand on a box. After a long pause, I got one. He slowly approached the steps to the left of the stage and stood next to me. Then I asked him what he was passionate about. I had also been talking about how God works through our passions and that we should be bold about those as well. Like a good revolutionary, I took this simple question and made something radical and showy out of it.



I jumped off the stage and ran toward the back of the auditorium. By the time I got to the door, my participant, viewers, fellow leaders and church instructor were all very confused. From the back of the auditorium I shouted at my participant and asked him again what he was passionate about. He responded, but I couldn’t hear him—or rather, pretended not to. I kept having him repeat it at increasing decibel levels until the boy was screaming from the box. I felt like Brad Pitt in Fight Club.



Everyone laughed as I walked back up, and the electricity of emotion overwhelmed the group. People were nervous (and maybe a little bit excited) about the concept of yelling in front of their peers.



“If you can’t yell about God here, in an empty auditorium with all of your friends, how are you going to preach the Gospel out there [I pointed to the rest of the school] in the real world?” I baited them.



One by one, students walked up to the box and yelled at me. Like I said, this was the highlight of my CRASH career. At the end of the meeting, our church advisor, Paul, talked to me about the lesson. He was a youth pastor at a local Baptist church and much shyer than any of us.



“I’m not sure I could have done that, man. If you would have called me up there, I’m not sure I could have yelled like that. That would be way out of my comfort zone,” Paul said. 

I could barely hear him talking over the sound of my already bulbous ego being further inflated with the hot air of spiritual elitism. I was more spiritual than a grown man who was working as a youth pastor! That was worth, like, 3,000 revival points!



The problem with revival-driven ministry, as I’ve come to understand it, is that it leaves its believers high and dry when they run out of steam. It’s a dangerous act of creating unrealistic expectations and glorifying actions. Or at least, that’s what I’ve seen in my friends from my old church who don’t go anymore. 

That’s how I felt after I cooled off for God and realized I’d been placing all the importance on the “acts of God” as opposed to a relationship with God. I felt like I’d been chasing healings and miracles and revivals for so long that I’d forgotten how to be a normal person. I also felt like normality was defeat, that if I wasn’t speaking in tongues during algebra, I wasn’t pleasing to God.



One of my friends listens to a pastor who says that the opposite of Christianity isn’t atheism, it’s idolatry. I think he’s right. The tricky part is that we make idols out of some really cool things sometimes. Whenever the mission becomes more important than the person for whom we’re doing the mission, we get in trouble.

Accepting grace is probably one of the hardest things for humans to do, especially in a culture where we’re made so very aware of our shortcomings. But just like anything else, accepting grace is a balancing act. The charismatic church I attended through high school was focused on just that. We were good at accepting grace. Weirdly enough, that was kind of our thing. We were so good at accepting grace and believing ourselves to be revivalists that we didn’t really have room for the guilt of our transgressions.



If there’s anything I’ve learned about God, it’s that all my formulas fall short. Grace is so strange because it doesn’t fall into the natural cause-effect relationship of our Earth. I’m starting to think the relationship is what’s most important—that no matter how many healings I’ve seen or auditoriums I’ve yelled in, quality time is what’s most important.

Jordan White started writing in the sixth grade when he told a girl that he wrote poetry in order to make her like him. Turns out, she wanted to read some of his poetry—so he started writing and never looked back. Read his blog here.

 

What is Pietism?

By way of commentary I would like to say I have always been interested in this subject but somehow never felt much attracted to it personally, as curious as that sounds. Perhaps its my personality or my upbringing that makes me feel that I'll never be holy enough to exhibit this type of behavior. But then again the cynical side of my being always has been wary of my own motives knowing how strong pride and ego can be. And even more, how strong the old man of legalism can be... which I think is our ultimate struggle... that of trying to justify ourselves before God when it is not necessary.

For our self-righteousness is the very thing which must be submitted to God at the time of our rebirth or conversion. And for which Jesus provided through His sacrifice on the Cross when He took our sins upon Himself and gave to us His atoning work of redemption, justification, and reconciliation in transaction. But even then. Even after conversion. We are prone to trying to please God through the works of our old man, or inner sinful self. Which is unnecessary. Why? Because we stand pleasing to God through His Son Jesus. What God wants from us is to rest in the provisional work of His Son. And in reliance upon His Holy Spirit through whom the works of God must flow through our lives. And not the practice of our own sinful works done in the flesh. For the quality of legalism is a very, very strong force within us. Which would do battle with God every day of our lives. Which we must understand is unpleasing to God. And unnecessary. Which has been made vitally dead through the Cross of Christ and by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us. Even though the flesh's practice of self-justification (legalism) would seem to live-and-breath through us so unpleasantly day-after-day as we try to live for Jesus in our daily practices and worship. It is but a living, daily struggle that the Spirit of God replaces day-by-day with His grace gifts. His presence. His assurance and direction.

That said, I actually am attracted by the pietistic qualities that I find in believers whom I discover from time to time. What most attracts me in those rare few is that they do not seem to work at this type of behavior. It just is part of their makeup. Its not forced. Its not contrived. It isn't fake. It doesn't seem like a performance that they put on for others. Or a mask that they wear for themselves. Or for show. Or for personal need. It is just part of their makeup. Their behavior. Their personality. Which must somehow be their own personal blessing through the inner grace of the Spirit of God within them. I feel it and it feels strong like a mighty river reaching out to drown me within the mighty embrace of God in His goodness, and love, and peace, and holiness.

But I do not envy it. Nor am I jealous of that behavior and blessing which seems so strong and part of another's being. For I know with assurance that God's inner grace and power is as strong within me as it is within them. However, His grace and peace flows in a different manner through me than through another. And it is this quality that I must recognize and be thankful for. I do not need to grasp it. Nor to seek it (in a sense). Nor pray for more of it (in a sense). It is already mine that God has given to me. It simply flows through me differently. Through mine own personal makeup of who I am. As God has made me before Himself and men. And it is enough. Thanks be to God.

So in a sense, pietism is that quality which inhabits every believer as part-and-parcel of the receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit at the time of spiritual rebirth - the bible calls this rebirth "baptism" or "faith" at times. I do not mention this gift in the sense of a Pentecostal second blessing which I believe to be a contrived doctrine, which I do, and don't, understand of Pentecostalism. But please forgive me for those of you who do follow this teaching. May God's blessings be yours in abundance and in the fullness of His Spirit! But for me, the gift of God of His Holy Spirit comes with rebirth. Not at another time of second blessing. His grace is always full. Always abundant. Because I am always indwelt by God's Spirit at every moment of my life and breath. He came to live within me at the time of my faith in Christ as Lord and Savior. This is God's promise and blessing for each and every believer.

But let us return to the subject at hand... my argument is that because our old man, or inner sinful self of legalism, of self-justification, of self-righteousness, is so very strong, it may force us to seek pietism for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps shame. Guilt. Trauma. Life choices. Whatever these may be. Moreover, when coming across this grand doctrine of pietism we may be urged towards it innocently at first. Perhaps at the direction of a preacher. Or a friend. Or some reading in Scripture. Or through a book. Or from within a pietistic movement. And yet, when starting down this road of behavior and observance, we next meet our old friend "Legalism" telling us to do even more (or less) than what we had first set out to do. It attracts our old man in unnatural ways.

And while making allowance for a wide gulf of pietisticisolations and fleshly denials - I might irreligiously say that perhaps we may apprehend God in our lives by NOT taking these very actions and observations which is so encouraged within our flesh. As example, I see a lot of this behavior during the time of Lent. The denial of foods, activities, disciplines, etc, which are purported to bring us closer to God. And perhaps they do. And perhaps we should deny ourselves and our flesh of those things. But remember that our fleshly man lusts to make us righteous before God through our own efforts, and not through Christ, who gives to us true righteousness. And so, I might suggest an alternative to the shutting "on" and "off" of our daily activities and behaviours in an unnatural manner....

That alternative goes by the term of "moderation." Become moderate in your fleshly appetites. Your body is a gift of God. Praise Him for those unique desires that make you you. If passionate, praise God for this. If driven by your vision of life than seek His help. What may appear as weakness in the flesh may be God's gift of understanding others with those same desires, needs and wants. The days of flailing our flesh, of submitting the body to unnatural experiences must cease in the truths of God's Word. Jesus is man's Justifier. Not ourselves. Not our deprivations. Nor our striven desires to quit the flesh. Use this very same flesh to praise God. It is holy and is what sets us beautifully apart from the angels that look down from heaven upon the grand estate of man.

Seek moderation in your quiet times of reflection before God. And learn in your moderation to find those same quiet times with God in the company of men and in the busyness of life. And in the practices of isolation don't overstay your presence to the destitution of your responsibilities with your family, friends, work mates, and society at large. Be therefore moderate in your isolations and in your walk with God. Do not feed the lusts of the flesh which would make us do unnatural things. Which makes us think that we are pleasing God when perhaps we are only pleasing our own flesh in its self-righteousness. God is our Justifier. Not our own works. Be at peace and know your justification has already come in Christ.

But at the last, this must be your decision. Not mine. Not others. As we each struggle to determine before God how to live as His fleshly servants thankful for our estate and yet resisting the flesh's urges to over-do, or under-do, God's command of rest and peace in Christ's salvation that has come to our souls.  Our prayers go with you in the sincerity of your prayers, and your habits of devotion, while urging you not to forget the remembrance of your gifts of ministry to mankind. For Jesus came to seek and to save. To minister and serve. Not in isolation but in the throngs of humanity desiring living waters. Light. And life. Then let your piety walk and talk. Let it breathe and be seen. Follow then Christ's earthly example. Be then true disciples of Jesus.

So let me end where I first began. Pietism for me just doesn't seem to be my calling. Perhaps due to my faith background, which was an admixture of Lutheran and Baptist. Then again, I have felt its compulsions and have learned to wrestle with my flesh while being thankful for who I am. It is God's gift. In the end, I think it better to learn to find the practice of pietism in the daily walk of life as we live with one another. Not in its abstinences but in its quality of reliance on the quiet strength of God. His peace and wisdom. Pietism can be that quality or condition that may flow through us as naturally as when we commune with nature. Or with mankind. At work. Or at play. And in our daily habits.

Pietism is ours because God's Spirit dwells within us. And it is the Person of the Spirit from whom all qualities of holiness, righteous, and careful pietism flows out. It does not need to be forced. Or contrived. Or faked. It is as natural as our very personalities which flow through our characters, minds, hearts, tongues, eyes, ears, mind, hands and feet. If God dwells in you than you are holy. And you may walk pleasing to Him. God's gift to us is Himself. He is pleased with us as we are. Be satisfied with His work and grace in your life. It is a blessing rich and rewarding. His peace is ours. Which peace we must accept. And practice. And be content in. Know then that Christ is our Piety.

R.E. Slater

January 4, 2011

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The Practice of Piety

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/01/04/pietism-what-is-it/#more-23916

by Scot McKnight

January 4, 2012

I was once speaking to an audience of students and professors when a respondent suggested something I had said was “pietistic.” I reacted viscerally to it because for the respondent “pietism” was a slur and evoked such things as individualism, legalism, experientialism, lack of sound theology, and anti-intellectualism, while that respondent thought he was an example of biblical theology and genuine Reformation theology.

It is so easy to stigmatize a group in the way a term is used. Pietism is one of those terms being used by some as a way of calling into question the sufficiency of one’s Christian orientation.

Is Pietism a completion of the Reformation or a distraction? Where do we find Pietism today?

Which all raises the question of what pietism is…

… but before I get there two more ideas. I teach at North Park University, NPU is connected to the Evangelical Covenant Church, the ECC is overtly connected to the Pietism of European Christianity and many draw much of their faith orientation from the likes of Philip Jakob Spener, whose famous 1675 book Pia Desideria (Pious Desires/Wishes) really did set the table for Pietism.

The second point I’d make is this: I didn’t appreciate being called a Pietist in part because my orientation is Anabaptism and not so much Pietism. Do they overlap? Of course, in a number of ways, but they are not the same. Not that I have anything against Pietism and in fact I embrace Pietism (as sketched below), so let me outline how Spener more or less sketched what Pietism was:

 

1. A commitment to the Word of God. (He proposed more attention to small groups!)

2. Spiritual priesthood: all Christians are priests and not just ministers. (He did not equate this with qualification for public ministries as on Sunday morning.)

3. Knowledge of the Christian faith is not enough; practice of the Christian faith is what matters. Love is the real mark.

4. Learn how to conduct ourselves better in public controversies, and here he was talking about theological debates among clergy and Christians in Germany among the Lutherans. He hoped for greater cooperation among Christians. So there is an ecumenical dimension to Pietism.

5. Converted and pious ministers — a necessity.

6. Teachers are to teach toward genuine conversion.

In its essence, Pietism is a Scripturally-sound convertive piety that seeks to reform the church beyond what the Reformation’s successors offered. In other words, Pietism (like Anabaptism) sought to complete the Reformation, and it is combined features of Lutheranism and Calvinism. It’s beginning point is right here: Genuine conversion as a work of God in the inner person leading to a kind of life that reflects that conversion in all ways.

Roger Olson, in his essay called “Pietism: Myths and Realities” (in The Pietist Impulse in Christianity, ed. by C.T. Collins Winn et al), sees a progression from an inner conversion into a devotional life marked by personal relationship with Christ and a commitment to holiness, prayer, devotional reading of the Bible, the cross as saving and as symbol for the Christian life, and evangelism. It is set over against baptismal regeneration, sacramentalism, creedalism, liturgical worship drained of feeling and emotion and the reduction of evangelism to social work. (See Olson, p. 7.)

The Pietist Impulse

And "...your daughters will prophesy"

http://rachelheldevans.com/daughters-will-prophesy

by Rachel Held Evans
December 13, 2011

“Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. - Jesus, Matthew 10:41

Josiah became king of Israel when he was just eight years old.

Described as Israel’s last good king, he reigned for thirty-one years during a final period of peace before the Babylonian exile. About halfway through his reign, Josiah learns that the long-lost Book of the Law—the Torah— has been discovered in the temple. Upon hearing the words of the Torah read aloud, Josiah tears his robes in repentance and summons a prophet, for he sees how far Israel has strayed from God’s ways.

Contemporaries of Josiah included the famed prophets Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Nahum, and Habakkuk—all of whom have books of the Bible named after them. But Josiah did not choose any of those men. Instead he chose Huldah, a woman and prophet who lived in Jerusalem. “Huldah is not chosen because no men were available,” writes Scot McKnight, “she is chosen because she is truly exceptional among the prophets.”

Huldah first confirms the scroll’s authenticity and then tells Josiah that the disobedience of Israel will indeed lead to its destruction, but that Josiah himself would die in peace. Thus, Huldah not only interpreted but also authorized the document that would become the core of Jewish and Christian scripture. Her prophecy was fulfilled thirty-five years later (2 Kings 22).

The Bible identifies ten such female prophets in the Old and New Testaments: Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Noadiah, Isaiah’s wife, Anna, and the four daughters of Philip. In addition, women like Rachel, Hannah, Abigail, Elisabeth, and Mary are described as having prophetic visions about the future of their children, the destiny of nations, and the coming Messiah.

When the Holy Spirit descended upon the first Christians at Pentecost, Peter draws from the words of the prophet Joel to describe what has happened:

Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
Your young men will see visions,
Your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
And they will prophesy (Acts 2:17-18)

The breaking in of the new creation after Christ’s resurrection unleashed a cacophony of new prophetic voices, and apparently, prophesying among women was such a common activity in the early church that Paul had to remind women to cover their heads when they did it. While some may try to downplay biblical examples of female disciples, deacons, preachers, leaders and apostles, no one can deny the Bible’s long tradition of prophetic feminine vision.

I believe that right now, we need that prophetic vision more than ever.

Right now, 30,000 children die every day from preventable disease.

Right now 3 million women and girls are enslaved in the sex trade.

Right now a woman dies in childbirth every minute.

Right now, women age 15-44 are more likely to be maimed or to die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.

Meanwhile, the evangelical church has busied itself with endless debates about the “appropriate roles” of women in the church and complaints about the supposed “feminization of the Church,” as if women are no longer needed for the Kingdom, as if we’ve stepped outside our bounds. Meanwhile, churches are spending years debating whether a female missionary should be allowed to speak on a Sunday morning, whether students older than ten should have female Sunday school teachers, whether women should be allowed to read from Scripture in a church service, whether girls should be encouraged to attend seminary, whether women should be permitted to collect the offering or write the church newsletter or make an announcement. Those of us who are perhaps most equipped to speak and act prophetically in response to the violence, poverty, and inequality that plague our sisters around the world are being silenced ourselves.

Folks who see the leadership of women like Huldah and Junia as special exceptions for times of great need are oblivious to the world in which we live. Those who think the urgency of Pentecost has passed are deluding themsleves. They “have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear.”

Women around the world need the voices of all their sisters to cry out in one accord.

I’m with Sarah on this one. We cannot afford to wait for permission to make change; women themselves must be the change.

So, ladies—speak out.

Preach.

Prophecy.

Stand with your sisters.

Change the world.

And if a man ever tries to use the Bible as a weapon against you to keep you from speaking the truth, just throw on a head covering and tell him that you’re prophesying, just like the Bible says you can do.

To those who will not accept us as preachers, we will have to become prophets.

The Holy Spirit & Pentecostal Teaching

Criteria for testing messages based on

unmediated experiences of God

Part 1

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2011/11/criteria-for-testing-messages-based-on-unmediated-experiences-of-god/

by Roger Olson

November 30, 2011

Since I mentioned the importance of unmediated spiritual experiences of God, several people here have inquired about criteria for testing them. Others have objected that positing objective criteria undermines the immediacy of the experiences.

Here I intend to propose some intersubjective criteria that all Christians should be able to agree on and use in testing messages, truth claims, brought forth as a result of unmediated experiences of God. I have in mind messages such as prophecies (whether forthtelling or foretelling), claims of new truths based on “rhema word,” etc. Insofar as an unmediated experience of God does not result in such messages, I see no need for criteria. Criteria become necessary when a person claims something was revealed to him or her that others should believe.

I offered these tests or criteria in an editorial in Christianity Today’s January 14, 1991 issue (p. 15). The cover story was about the so-called “Kansas City Prophets”–the controversy du jour among charismatics and some evangelicals. Rather than simply deny extra-biblical prophecy altogether, I (at the request of the editors), suggested these five tests for whether a prophecy (or other kind of extra-biblical message) MIGHT BE from God.

In other words, they are negative tests, like the law of non-contradiction in philosophy. They do not prove the validity of any message; they only function to raise red flags of warning over messages that might be false.

1) The Christ Touchstone. If a prophecy (or message) promotes Christ and not the prophet, it may be valid. (Put negatively, if a prophecy promotes the prophet over Christ, it is probably not valid.)

2) The Apostolic Norm. If it is consistent with the message of the gospel as found in the didactic writings of the New Testament, it may be valid.

3) The Unity Criterion. If a prophecy does not promote spiritual elitism or schism (based on the prophecy alone), it may be valid.

4) The Sanity Check. If it does not require the sacrifice of the intellect and the mindless acceptance of newly revealed teachings, it may be valid.

5) The Messiah Test: If it does not exalt some individual (or organization) into an object of veneration, it may be valid.

Paul ordered the Corinthian Christians not to quench the Spirit but to test all things. These criteria are simply tools for discernment.

More about direct revelations from God

Part 2

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2011/12/more-about-direct-revelations-from-god/

by Roger Olson

December 2, 2011

I have a long list of theological topics I want to address here, but they will have to wait. I am enjoying the conversation here about unmediated, direct experiences of God. When I was growing up I often heard that “a person with an experience is never at the mercy of a person with an argument.” Well, I have come to doubt the validity of that statement if taken to an extreme of gullibility toward all claims of immediate experiences of God–especially insofar as they claim to bear “new truths” everyone should accept and believe and act on. Then I think argument (using my five criteria) is necessary.

But I think SOME people here may misunderstand what kinds of direct, unmediated experiences of God I believe in and think our evangelical churches need to be more open to.

First, there’s the inward experience of God in conviction and conversion. It may or may not be mediated through Word and/or sacrament. But even when reading of scripture provokes it (as in Wesley’s case) there can be, and often is, a sense of immediacy of God to the soul that is individual and intuitive (i.e., not amenable to proof or argument).

Second, there’s what I call “conversional piety”–the personal relationship with Jesus Christ in which God may speak directly to a Christian’s heart/mind giving guidance and direction beyond scripture [a sense of conviction, a sense of purpose, a sense of conscience, and so forth - re slater].

Third, there are “power encounters” such as healings, exorcisms, miracles. I have been in places where these are manufactured and, in my opinion, spurious. But I don’t discount them entirely. I’m sure God can still do these things and somewhere does. For the most part we evangelicals have simply relegated these things to the past or to other societies. [a friend of mine once said that we Americans have excluded God in our technologies and active/persuasive non-recognition of the divine - re slater]

Fourth, there are prophecies and words of wisdom and knowledge (no, I don’t know how to distinguish those and I would place “interpretation of tongues” in this same category)–divinely inspired messages directly from God to a person or group that transcend inward guidance for an individual. Many sermons have this character–or at least parts of them. I have known people who have heard God speak directly to them (and probably others in the listening audience/congregation) through a sermon with powerful, life-changing results.

[consequently, speaking God's active word to the ears of others may not result in the action desired, but perhaps create a hardening of hearts and wills instead. - re slater]

Unfortunately, both also happened in evangelical contexts relatively closed to such experiences and messages.

Many evangelicals outside the Pentecostal and charismatic movements have come to embrace these kinds of unmediated experiences of God. The difference is that in the Pentecostalism I grew up in, too often,

Evangelical scholars like Grudem and Moreland and others (often touched in some way by the Vineyard Fellowship or some other “Third Wave” ministry) argue that evangelicals should be open to such experiences and messages within a clear discernment process.

I think that, for the most part, evangelicals have taken the easy way and chosen to chase the Holy Spirit into the Bible.

A Personal Observation

Part 3

R. E. Slater

December 3, 2011

Introduction

I come from an evangelical tradition that misunderstood Pentecostalism's "charismatic gifts" of the Holy Spirit (I believe there were three - tongues, prophecy/revelation, healing). My tradition described these gifts as "Apostolic Gifts" that were used to announce the Gospel of Jesus Christ to both believers and unbelievers alike in the days of Christ's ministry. Moreover, they explained, that these gifts were then extended for usage through Jesus to His disciples (later understood to be more than the designated twelve disciples of Jesus we have come to associate with this term) during the days of His ministry.

Thereafter, on the advent of Jesus' death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit officially announced the risen presence of Jesus' ministry and glorified power on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 1) by a "baptism in the Holy Spirit" (Acts 1-10) upon the gathered room of despairing believers. Once baptised these Jesus followers spoke in tongues and prophecies and performed other miraculous events using the Spirit's "signs and wonders" to proclaim the Gospel message of Christ to believers and unbelievers alike. First to Jerusalem (Ac 1-7). Then to Samaria (Ac 8). And finally to the Gentile world at large (Ac 10).

Further, my tradition also said that these "signs and wonders" and charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit became less vibrant as Calvary's cross receded further and further into the historical record. Perhaps within days or weeks of the event. Perhaps a few years or more after that. But eventually ceased altogether, especially with the passing of the Apostles (the gift of prophecy for instance). At which time the canon of New Testament Scriptures were closed so that no further revelatory instruction from God proceeded forth at the final laying down of the Apostle John's pen at Revelation's completion.

Years later, when still a young man, I was drawn for a short while into the world of Charismatic wonder and teaching. Explored it. And arrived at a separate, personal conclusion (not unlike Dr. Olson's discussion above). Which I will describe in the paragraphs below. This was my introduction into the evangelical side of Charismaticism. It lasted a brief two years and was abated when being reintroduced into the teachings of the bible on the Holy Spirit through a Spirit-filled church that was non-charismatic but didn't disparage the gifts of the Holy Spirit either. A church that was much more open to the Spirit's movement and filling perhaps because of the pagan culture it was surrounded by. Perhaps because of the Gospel's suppression and oppression within that university setting. I am not sure why. But I knew that this church's vibrant witnessed relied on the Spirit's power and testimony (and which would fit with the biblical usage of "signs and wonders" found within the early church's New Testament experience).

Miracles Announced New Covenantal Eras

Firstly, I would like to state that the gifts of the Holy Spirit should be distinguished from the miraculous events occurring around the period of Jesus' birth, ministry and death. Jesus' birth was announced by angels and prophets (John the Baptist, Zacharias of the temple, Elizabeth, etc). Jesus' ministry was full of miraculous signs and wonders. And Jesus' death was accompanied by both supernatural wonders and Spirit-inflamed men and women testifying of His resurrection and salvation.

Simply, without much further explanation at this point, miraculous "signs and wonders" are a mark of significant salvific epochal eras that have commenced (and which consequently conclude an older, passing, salvific era's transitional period). A kind of announcement, if you will, by God that He is doing something quite different from what He has been doing. These eras are marked by Covenants which begin (and seemingly end) with a flair of the supernatural. Examples are: (1) the Old Covenant commencing with Israel's deliverance from Egypt (10 plagues et al) and Moses receiving the ten commandments on Mt. Sinai (along with Israel's 40 year Wilderness journeys as God prepares them as His people). The (2) New Covenant that began with Jesus and continued through the Church Age. And, (3) the Kingdom Covenant to come when the events of the book of Revelation come alive and the Age of Man is finally displaced by Jesus' Rule and Reign that eventually will fold into a period known as (4) New Heavens and New Earth. Each period has been (or will be) marked by supernatural signs and wonders.

And on the reverse side, there is a correspondent activity of demonic or Satanic power. For instance, Pharaoh's sorcerers and magicians were able to produce look-alike "miracles" that would cause Pharaoh's stubborn heart to disbelieve God's message given to him through Moses. Through a series of events this time of "exodus" in the lives of the people of Israel would commence, or begin, the Old Covenant era (or time period) that would last until Jesus died and was resurrected, and the Holy Spirit created the church on the Day of Pentecost as a living society of believing Christ-ians. Another instance of demonic/Satanic power came at the formation of the New Covenant marked by Jesus' confrontation of demons through people He meets, or by events that occur around Him. Or, by Jesus' confrontation of Satan in the Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of His death. Or on the very Cross of Calvary itself. Then later, in the early Church's birth, as the New Covenant becomes operative, through the church's continual persecution and oppression at every step of its missional outreach from Jerusalem, to Samaria, and the Gentile world. Which we later understand to be the normative experience of the Church-at-large throughout the ages of man as shown through Paul's letters to the churches, and Peter's,  and John's. Including John's letter of Revelation revealing the intense spiritual warfare which will continually confront the church of God for its survival to keep to their faith throughout the length and breadth of the New Covenant Age (also known as the Church Age) and into the final times of Jesus' return. And during this New Covenantal era there will also be occurring an unseen war between the angelic realm with sin and devil until culminating in Revelation's narrative of the final rise of sinful man and fallen Devil that leads to the supernatural establishment of the New Kingdom to Come at Jesus' heavenly return that concludes the reign of man, sin and devil.

Thus, with each new covenant's arrival comes the displacement of the old covenant where new spiritual customs and traditions will arise to absorb and bade farewell to the old spiritual customs and traditions. And during these transitional times will also come both positive and negative supernatural events. Events from God and events not from God. Events that will fashion the newer covenant with newer content, purpose, activity, and meaning. As well as events that protest against its formation and continual renewal from generation to generation. And when these covenants are not renewed than sin and judgment will occur - as in Israel's case under the OT; or later, under the NT as the church presents its witness to the world. For in every succeeding generation both the covenantal community - as well as the society within outreach to that covenantal community's witness - is held accountable in each generation to obey God's word. When it is not obeyed than will come cycles of judgment, repentance and blessing. In today's terms the church is held accountable to be pure and actively obedient to God's will as it testifies of Jesus. When this does not occur, or if the gospel of Jesus is refused, then we may expect cyclical cycles within the church (and society) that will "rise and fall" in blessings or in judgment, from continent to continent as has been observed since the time of Calvary. And shall be observed in the future until the New Covenant era concludes in a culmination of global oppression, death, sin and destruction (known as the Great Tribulation and ending with the war of Armageddon under the Antichrist) concluding with Christ's return as prophesied in the book of Revelation.

During this time there will be miraculous events coupled with signs and wonders. These events and wonders distinguish the end of one covenantal era and the beginning of another covenantal era. We saw this with Moses before Pharaoh, Mt. Sinai; in Israel's Mt. Sinai and wilderness experience as the Tabernacle and its order of service, and the Torah's creation, were established. Afterwhich Israel (and the countries surrounding Israel) went through periods of blessing and judgment. This concluded with Jesus' birth, ministry, death and resurrection. The entirety of the OC era was concluded in Jesus. He received the blessings and the curses of God as the Messiah representative of the people of Israel. In Him was concluded the Old Covenant.

And in Jesus was begun the New Covenant. By His body and His blood. By His incarnation, anointment, ministry, passion, sacrifice and ascension. He became both the Lamb of God for the sins of Israel; the Priest of God as mediator; the Altar of God for atonement; the Tabernacle of God for provision and worship; the pillar of Fire by night and the cloud of Smoke by day as heat and shade for the tribes of Israel; verily He was Israel's burning heart of conviction as well as their merciful God of forgiveness; Jesus was the Table of God set before Israel in the wilderness of their sin; He was the prophet of God come to save His people from sin; He was the very announcement of God for salvation; He was Messiah born in a lowly stable before angelic song worshipping their King of Kings. As the Old Covenant ended in Jesus, so too did the New Covenant begin in Jesus. And likewise will the Kingdom era be initiated, ratified, and governed by this same Risen Jesus in the Age to Come.

God's Communion with Man

In a differentiating sense, today's gifts of the Holy Spirit under the New Testamental Covenant in Jesus no longer mark the announcement of the New Covenant. That has already occurred. But, in another sense, they mark the continuation of this era's redemptive power first begun with Jesus - its very Author and Sustainer. At first, God's "signs and wonders" began as announcements testifying to His Son's ministry. But later, they "quieted down" or "adapted", as the New Covenant age became normative (if normative can even be used when speaking of the Holy Spirit's power and ministries!). They smoothed out, as it were, becoming the standardized elements of the Christian life experience with the God of Salvation. So that our Christian experience as believers and follower's of Jesus, is marked with God's continual presence in our life. That very presence is both powerful and supernatural. It is the very definition of what it means to be a born-again believer who is more engaged with God than when he once was as an unconverted non-believer of Christ.  (At some later time, I would like to make the further case that the Holy Spirit's gifts and ministries were actually the non-normative experience of Spirit-filled Old Testament believers as well. Not just of prophets, priests and kings, but of any OT believer trusting God for something - Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Joshua, Samuel, Gideon, etc. However, I will not make that case today in this article).

Which brings up an interesting point. The Bible teaches that God's supernatural presence is likewise with every person NOT acknowledging Jesus as Lord and Savior. NOT following Jesus. NOT believing in the Messiah Christ. This is based upon God's Sovereign Personage that Christianity teaches. God is not simply an inhuman thing, an infinite force, a vast creative power, but He is, within the centrality of His being, a Person in fellowship within a Trinity known as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is ONE God in THREE Persons. For without this fellowship there can be no personage. More specifically, no relational personage. That personage would otherwise be autistic, as it were, towards ITS relationship to creation and to mankind. But as a Personage bearing a Trinitarian fellowship can come the naturally occurring expansion of divine fellowship in constant and continual relationship to creation and to mankind (see - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-should-we-read-bible.html). That personage would not be autistic but personable, knowable, malleable in His relationships to the cosmos and to His image-bearers. This speaks to a concept known as relational theism.

Thus, God must relate and communicate to creation and mankind. This is the very definition of God. He is personal, loving, caring, good, merciful, helping, assisting, present and knowing. And consequently, He directs each life towards Himself until that life comes to a fuller understanding of who He is and what He has done through His Son. If this is not so then how do we come to God? On our own? Not according to the sin that is within us. Nor the world and devil that would blind us to God's presence by doubt, argument, lies and deception. However, for the follower of Christ, the experience of God is as a Father to a son, that are in communion one with the other. As versus communing with God through man's philosophies, or through nature, or some other fashion. Though these can be rich spiritual experiences, they are not the same as communing with God through the revelation of Himself through His Son Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. Who is fully God as he was fully man. Thus, God's final, fullest expression of communion lies in Himself. Through His redemption of man at Calvary's Cross. This communion provides the fullest expression of man's communion with God. None other. And this in itself is another kind of miracle, sign or wonder that has come to not only the Christian believer, but all mankind, in God's continual presence, witness, and work in each, and every, human life. Seeking our salvation and redemption to Himself through Jesus.

Ephocal v. Normative Covenantal Miracles

In any case, what I am trying to say is that epochal Covenantal miracles should be differentiated from normative Covenantal miracles - the latter being based after the commencement of a Covenantal Age. The one kind of miracle is used by God as an announcement of a new salvific era. The other kind of miracle is used of the Christian life that has as its starting point the preceding, historically initiated, salvific era. So there is the time element here which speaks to the charter and constitution of a covenantal era's establishment - and in our case, to the New Covenant established in Christ Jesus. Moreover, because of the time element, only those Christians during living during the time of Jesus' life, ministry, death and resurrection would participate as eyewitnesses to these supernatural, ephocal, events. Which events would also include the initiation of the New Covenant through the Spirit to the believers of Acts 1-10 on the Day of Pentecost, as Christ's Gospel spread from Jerusalem to Samaria and then into the Gentile world.

So that what we have now is the quality or characteristic of the New Covenant that marks every believer reborn in Jesus. These are normative characteristics of Christians baptised in the Spirit of Christ and "waking up" to discover their "new covenantal relation" with God through Christ Jesus their Lord and Savior. They are normative for all Christians today because they are part-and-parcel of what it means to be a Spirit-baptised believer. Which I use in the strictest, most narrow sense in description of being born again. We are born again by faith, but that faith is meaningless if we are not born of the Spirit, Romans 9.9 - "You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him."

Jesus calls this new birth a birth by water and by the Spirit. Water signifying the baptism in Jesus (which the Church celebrates by water baptism in various forms) . And Spirit signifying the believer's baptism in the Holy Spirit which is marked by God as the sina-qua-non descriptor of a believer's faith. To be in Jesus is to be baptised, or indwelt, into (and by!) the Spirit of God. Our faith proclamations ring hollow if we are not Spirit-birthed. It is through faith that we are born again. And with that faith comes Spirit rebirth, regeneration, transformation, conformation to the will and word of God. It is no simpler than this. Nor no harder. But it is sublime and changes everything for that believing man or woman or child. And when we doubt our faith it is to the Spirit that we place our trust for that born-again faith. Not ourselves. For it was, and is, and ever will be, an external event to our internal confidence in Christ as our Lord and Savior. This should be a comfort to us knowing that we are possessed, indwelt, sealed, and owned by the Comforter of God who is the Holy Spirit personage of the Godhead.

• Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God." (John 3.5; context John 3:4-6)
• That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3.6; context John 3:5-7)
• "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3.8; context John 3:7-9)
• But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. (Gal 4.29)

Consequently, if you are born again then you have been baptised into the Spirit. Signed. Sealed. Delivered. Empowered. That is your positional standing. However, your personal experience in this life of flesh, sin and death may be otherwise, and most likely will fluctuate up and down in your faith walk and testimony.

The Every Day Wonder of God

Further, the experience of every believer is miraculous not only because of (1) God's presence in our previous non-believing state; nor (2) because of our formative spiritual rebirth, but (3) because the Spirit of God is presently active as a living dynamic who is in constant communication with the child of God. EVEN as He is within the world of mankind itself (which I prefer to kindly think upon as "God's children" in a non-strict connotation). So that our normative experience of the Spirit is actually quite non-normative. In fact, it is miraculous. And we are participants in the miraculous. Just like we can have daily communication with our family and friends, so too God communicates with His family of born-again believers through His spirit. God is spirit just as man is spirit. And within the Godhead of the Trinity He is known as the Holy Spirit.

It is our standard, normative experience of God - that is a miraculous, non-normative experience of God! - that can, and will, break out into our lives in unexpected, and powerful ways. And yet, because God's spirit moves in the quietude of our lives, between the cracks of existence, like the air that surrounds us, so too does His power and filling and direction undergird the believer in the totality of his life experience. Whether for ill or for good. God is there. He will protect you despite death, sin, evil or devil. You are His, and will be throughout eternity no matter the destruction done to our body and soul; our family, community or possessions; our heritage and lands.... In it all God will remove every tear and bind every wound. This is His promise to His children.

And it is this commitment of God to us that means infinitely more than any mere desire to see "signs and wonders" in our lives to prove His existence, love or care. For God is our everyday miracle, even while He is everyday performing "signs and wonders" within our feeble lives unseen and unobserved (see my Synchronicity article for more here). And through our lives. And between the cracks of our existence whether we know it or not. It is like the air that surrounds us. We breath it and don't realise it's intake. But it's there with our every breath, infilling us with God's life. God's care. God's love. Protecting us against evil. Against darkness. Against the wickedness of man or the harm of sin-racked creation, whether floods, tornadoes, storms or earthquakes. He is there. And ever and always will be there as your God and Savior. Trust Him and He will do the rest. This is the everyday, non-normative experience of every believer born in the Spirit of God. It is miraculous. It is sublime. It is full of wonder and pregnant with the miraculous signs of God's loving bond between the believer and Himself. (And, might I mention, to every man seeking God. Whether he knows it or not. God is there seeking him).

The New Covenant Age of the Church...

Is the New Covenant Age of the Spirit

For starts (and here is where I have blended my traditional views with my charismatic views), all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit are always present in all the eras of the church age, and within our lives specifically.  These are unrelated to the "closing of the canon of Scripture" and Apostolic witness. But are precisely based upon the Holy Spirit Himself, in that His relationship with the believer (as well as with mankind in general) is always active and communicative to us. For it is within the Holy Spirit's nature to communicate the person and work of God to our daily lives and surroundings. For that same Spirit is the very spirit of God Himself. They are one and the same. The third person of the Trinity is the very Godhead, and vice-versa. This is the mystery and wonder which is God.

In other words, without resorting to any additional criterion but very the person of the Holy Spirit Himself we may say that God's word-and-work is always active and participatory as a regular, normal functioning of what it means to be a "born-again child of God" (as well as part of humanity itself,. For God ever reaches out to all men everywhere, as well as to creation itself, as He recreates its "renewal" ecologically). Thus, God is always speaking to us. He is always directing us into His will (whether expressed or otherwise). He is always seeking our obedience and observance that would speak of His love and grace. Mercy and truth. Justice and compassion. This is man's normal, regular, everyday experience of God in His personage and in His relationship to creation (a theme that I have begun to call "Relational Theism".

The Purpose of Holy Spirit Empowerment

We must then ask as a necessary consequence, "What then is that will of God?" For myself, I understand it to mean that we are to testify of God's love and grace through Jesus Christ in as many innumerable ways as possible. Using all of our talents, our skills, our possessions and positions, our relationships and inventions. In as many unique forms as we possibly can to communicate God to others (as well as to ourselves in times of doubt, distress, or tiredness).

What then of the three charismatic gifts that were at one time excluded from my lexicon of Christian experience? For myself, I understand them now to be fully operational and added back into the bible as veritable truths. But with a difference not commonly understood by either side. Let me explain.

The Gift of Prophecy

As concerning prophecy, I too am open to God's work through my life and other people and events. I don't deny the supernatural. Nor the miraculous. Though I do understand them in a differentiating sense as mentioned above.  Moreover, I "test the spoken word of men (and angels)" to the criteria Dr. Olson quite ably listed at the outset of our discussion. But additionally, have lowered my resistance and barriers to God as much as is feasibly possible. When others speak, I listen. When others work, I observe and perhaps participate within this experience. I test the spirits to see whether they are of God or of men (works of flesh or of false prophets). To see if Jesus is praised and glorified. Not myself. Not the works of my hands. Not to effectual harm of others in conscience, in exclusion from community, or in judgment.

More plainly, prophecy proclaims God effectively and powerfully in personally unsettling ways and non-typical teachings than we normally experience or hear. For me, a good positive example would be that of Emergent Christianity's message. I doubted it for a long while (and with good reason... but more on this in a moment...) before finally coming to participate in it's renewal of Christianity.

Another example I can think of (in the negative sense) is that of religious folklore, or the religious customs and traditions, that were errantly appealed to as necessary dogmatic expressions to my faith experience by my Christian church and friends. But God deemed these traditions and customs as idols to my faith and sent a word of prophecy to my spirit to discern and disrupt those misleading religious conventions. God said to lay down, and not participate, in the idols of judgment and gossip, condemnation and unlove, safe teachings and safer worship. To reach beyond my denomination's religious conventions to those "outsiders" who are not among us, as Jesus once did when He ministered to sinners and the irreligious turned off by the religious institutions of their day. In fact, Jesus was so successful at doing this that He created a firestorm of hatred by the religious Sadducees and Pharisees, the self-appointed protector guardians of Israel's bankrupt faith. They hated Jesus because He spoke against their "religion". And this is what I am referring to as the idols of religious folklore, conventions, and tradition's (for more on this subject go here - "Christian Smith - Introduction: The Bible Made Impossible". The prophetic teaching of better discerning men and women more experienced with the foibles of the popularized Christian faith message became the vanguard of a newer, more loving, more expansive message of Christ's gospel than what the regional faith communities were communicating around me.

Prophecy then is the plain tell of God's communicated will and word to us. Usually at significant times in our lives when we have become too comfortable with God. Too at ease with His word. With His people. With God's ministries in general. And in the case of emergent Christianity, it took me about ten years to determine whether this movement was a new Gnostic movement of mysticism, confusion, and false teaching. As it first seemed to me as it wandered in-and-out of Christian sectarianism; created a subjectively-defined revisionism of Church history; sought a form of naive deconstructivism rather than a more proper theo-sophic deconstructivism (and the necessary constructivism that consequently follows); and promoted liberal political policies ill defined to capitalism's less-socialistic structure. It seemed to wander from New Age practices and theories to good-will humanitarian practices full of human-spirit. And before all of this, a group of well-meaning Christians infiltrated our emerging church and sought to impose a form of Judaism upon the congregation. Proposing to fill the Christian faith with dead OT customs of diet, calendar dates, dress and law. Recommending a Judaihistic form of Christianity rather than a Messianic Christianity that respects the past but does not return to it.

Eventually it sorted itself out, and I later concluded that the Emergent Christian Church movement that was being birthed around me was largely misunderstood and being very being badly communicated by illiterate and ignorant Christians who really didn't know themselves. And as time went on God directed their hearts and discernment to better behold and speak this newer brand of Christianity - seemingly so new, so radical. In effect, God gave to us, this baby Christian community, prophetic insight into the do's and don'ts of Emergent Christianity (helped quite a bit by the provocation that occurred from other branches of the church through disapproving faith congregations and denominational heads-of-state).

From the outset the desire of emergent Christians was to speak of the Christian mission and the Gospel of Christ to the world in less acrimonious and judgmental terms. To be more open to loving the unlovable. To remove and destroy the withholding idols of evangelical religion so that Jesus Himself could be seen (deconstruction v. construction). All the while, I prayed and sought God both for these individuals and for my own individual direction. As a result, the testimony of this web blog can now attest to a fuller idea of what Christianity should be (regardless of movement or label). And I believe that this was done by God's spirit when giving to me His prophetic word of wisdom, illumination, revelation and instruction.

Lastly, as concerning prophecy, I believe a good preacher, or an expressive Christian, can speak God's word-and-will powerfully. In socially coercive, and expressive, ways. Non-charismatics call this "forthtelling" while charismatics call it "prophecy." Neither group understands these words to be extra-canonical (that is, to be included in the canon of Scripture). But both groups can believe it to be the normal, operative work of the Holy Spirit expressed by the Godhead itself, into our work-a-day world and life experiences. God has the habit of "making clear" to us what we must say and do, when we learn not to quench or resist His Spirit. When this happens it can be powerful. Unexpected. Remarkable. Invigorating. Inviting. Penetrating.

The Gift of Healing

Secondly, I believe God heals. When asked to participate in the healing ceremony of someone I know, I go at the invite. But it is up to God either to heal or not to heal. In my most recent, sad experience, the beloved wife of a friend died a tragic death nonetheless. However, I believe that even through this experience of suffering and death there occurred healing.... How? Through that person's soul and life affairs, her husband and family, and even her friends and those who assisted her through her time of turmoil. Healing occurred. But in this case it was not physical healing. (see the sidebar "Ed's Story" for more on this subject).

I have also experienced healing from God and have heard its testimony of healing from unexpected friendships made with Christians and non-Christians alike. Mostly, this healing has been to my spirit and soul, family and friendships, at work and within community somewhere. Ungodly things like anger, envy, bitterness, hatred, gossip, ill-will, and so forth. Sinful baggage that keeps us from living the life that God fully wants us to have and experience. Like dark closeted secrets and skeletons we dare not share nor let lose for fear that God would love us less. God's spirit of healing comes to these situations and resolves our sin, our fears, our griefs and torments and gives to us good hearts full of light and life that can be shared with so many destroyed around us. Though physical healing is often prayed for, I find myself more often praying for the spiritual healing of people's abandoned souls, unloved spirits, and broken hearts. I think this is God's gift of healing that I read of in the Bible, more often than not, than the standard Pentecostal, or Charismatic teaching, on the subject.

The Gift of Tongues

Lastly, lest I neglect the gift of tongues, I will note with you the use of the Greek work "glossia" (English, "glossary") from which we get the word "tongues" in the New Testament. When glossia is used it is always used in an evangelistic setting where an apostle or Jesus followers are speaking the Gospel to others ignorant of Jesus' redemptive work. They speak in non-native tongues and consequently must hear in their tongue. Apparently, God's emissaries are gifted to speak in that dialect or speech so that the Gospel is heard and understood.

Modern day examples of this may be missionaries that we know who rapidly pickup a language in order to communicate Christ. I know a very young man who we have followed here from time to time (sidebar - Missions: Sojourneys - http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/09/sojourneys-update-isaan-thailand.html) who, in the space of nine months, learned Thai. He was an ex-skateboarder traveling with KKSM ministries, born and bred in West Michigan, with no foreign language or culture background. But his heart was burdened that he could not speak Jesus to the Thai around him and God gifted him with that ability as he rapidly consumed and studied the language. More amazing still is that he learned this language without the help of a grammar aide or premier. By comparing the KJV Bible he had with a purchased Thai Bible (Wycliffe?) he taught himself the language's correct spellings and grammars when conversing with native Thai people. To me this is amazing, if not miraculous, and an evident gift of tongues by the Holy Spirit.

Let me stretch this paradigm a bit further.... I often think of "tongues" when found in an unlikely group of people foreign to me and my background. When I have been placed into these circumstances - perhaps with gang members I'm working with; past Chinese groups I became friends with in college; Caribbean island peoples and Central American cultures when travelling;  even gender-based cultures once foreign to myself - I've found God to give me the ears and tongue to listen and speak powerfully within those circumstances. Even though the language we are using is English, the culture itself was uniquely different from mine own. It required "extra radar" as it were to piece together the needs and wants of those individuals and communities as Christ was testified to. In this instance I understood it as a gifting of the Spirit to be able to communicate (both verbally AND non-verbally) within cultural situations even though the same language of English was being used. I was gifted by the Spirit to speak of Christ to people dissimilar to mine own heritage and background.

Summary

So then, when charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit are thus framed within the experience of humanity they become understood as the normal, regular experience of any man (saved or unsaved) hearing God's word and will and responding accordingly. It also works in reverse when we think of Pharaoh's stubborn and hardened heart. Or the religious leaders of Jesus' day. To disobey God's expressed word and will can harm us for we are effectually refusing the Spirit's testimony of Jesus which is blasphemy. Though I don't believe the Bible teaches that blasphemy of the Spirit can ever stop God from reaching out to us; it does however, sour and sear our heart from hearing as well as we could. In those cases God may create bigger life disturbances to awaken us from our deathly slumber. In Israel's case He sent prophets. They refused to hear His word. Then God sent judgment. Eventually they woke up and either died in their sins (like Pharaoh of Egypt) or repented from their sins (like Nehemiah and Jonah). Let us not provoke God so far. Let us be of humbler stock and readily invite Him in. Give ear to His word and seek His will!

Thus, I don't need to speak in angelic tongues nor have angelic interpreters to interpret for me. It makes no sense. For when we're used of God in other's lives we have become "like as to angels" - which in the Greek means "messengers" (angelos). In other words, we are become the very angelic messengers of God's word sent to speak His words of ministry. We have become like Christ Jesus our Lord who came to heal and bind up the wounds of humanity's ills and brokenness. Who has done (and is doing) the same for us (and in us presently). Christ didn't use the language of angels but the language of love. He spoke in a tongue that could be understood. He needed no further interpreter than that of the Holy Spirit. He lived and ministered in a clarity that was refreshing. Christ prophesied of God. Of the Kingdom of God to come. Of His passion. His death. His resurrection. Of the Comforter to come. In all three of gifts of the Spirit Jesus is our example. He healed. He spoke in tongues. He prophesied. These are God's gift to us when understood aright and not misled in our human wills and sinful hearts (like Simon the magician who sought the Spirit's power when converted to Christ but initially misunderstood the Spirit's ministry to a broken humanity - Acts 8).

And finally, if we speak in this kind of a "heavenly language" then it is enough. It is not self-edifying. And it does not waste the time of another believer in the task of interpretation, when that time could be better used in reaching out the Gospel to the lost and unsaved. An activity that should be enough as evidence to God's power and testimony. For we need look no further for spiritual evidences than the saving power and healing of the Holy Spirit in the lives of men and women telling one-and-all of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and living in obedience to Him.