25 August 2018
As a Pentecostal pastor, I have listened many times as someone shared a dream, or a vision, or a 'word from God' with me. Many of them have borne all the marks of the genuine. Others have brought the Scripture to my mind where Paul writes about people who "go into great detail about visions they have seen, and their unspiritual minds puff them up with idle notions" (Col 2:18). I have also heard and received many prophecies (though I think there is a bit of confusion over the difference between prophecy and the gift of knowledge.) Many of these prophecies and words of knowledge have been dead on. I have witnessed and received words given by people who had no access to the kind of information they were referring to as they spoke. Some of these words have resonated in my spirit to such an extent that I could shout a whole-hearted 'yes!' to the Lord's question to Jeremiah: "Does not my word burn like fire? Is it not like a hammer that shatters rock into pieces?" (Jer 23:29). I can remember many of them word-for-word, despite their having been spoken 10 or 15 years ago. These words have carried me through the darkest of times in my life, they have given me hope to hold onto while I felt like I was being torn apart, they have come to pass despite every indication that their fulfillment was unlikely bordering on impossible – right up to the moment when suddenly, in a way that defied all prediction – the circumstances lined up and things fell into place precisely as they had been told to me.
I have also attended more than one event called a 'prophetic conference.' I would say that I witnessed some genuine prophecy and words of knowledge at these conferences. But I also saw scenes that reminded me of a story narrated in 1 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 18.
King Ahab of Israel and King Jehoshaphat of Judah, dressed in their royal robes, were sitting on thrones at the threshing floor near the gate of Samaria. All of Ahab’s prophets were prophesying there in front of them. One of them, Zedekiah son of Kenaanah, made some iron horns and proclaimed, “This is what the Lordsays: With these horns you will gore the Arameans to death!”
All the other prophets agreed. “Yes,” they said, “go up to Ramoth-gilead and be victorious, for the Lord will give the king victory!”
This sounds to me like a prophecy circus gone off the rails. When I've found myself in an atmosphere like this, it was very difficult to discern the genuine from the counterfeit. Further, the piling up of questionable 'words from the Lord' called the validity of the gift itself into question, and brought dishonor on the genuine.
I personally know people who were diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, who requested new scans from their oncologists after having been prayed for, and those scans came back: cancer free. And I can never forget the day, when, in the course of a normal worship service, I was suddenly overcome with an overwhelming level of gratitude to and love for God, when I started to thank Him and found that my mouth could no longer keep up with the torrent of emotion that my heart was attempting to give voice to, until my speech finally broke free of every law of syntax and grammar and I was able to vocalize the content of my innermost being without the burden of coming up with language to communicate what was happening in me. At that point in my life, I had dedicated a vast amount of the preceding years to writing songs–dozens and dozens of songs. The first conscious thought that went through my mind after hearing this new form of speech coming out of my mouth was: "I'll never have to write another song again. Because this is what I've been trying to say for my entire life."
It is possible to read the Book of Acts, and see in it a pattern of how speaking in tongues (the indisputable evidence of what the Bible calls the Baptism in the Holy Spirit), along with the other spiritual gifts, break into the world according to the order of expanding geographical and cultural spheres in which Jesus told His disciples they would be His witnesses: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Instances of Spirit Baptism occur in the story at precisely the points that relate how the gift of the Spirit crosses over into one of these territories for the first time. So it is possible to conclude that the purpose of tongues was 1.) to demonstrate the faithful fulfillment of God's redemptive-historical promise, and/or 2.) to provide sufficient supernatural confirmation to overcome the initial resistance to the Gospel within each new people group, such that a permanent inroads for the Gospel into that culture would have, ostensibly, thereby been established. This line of reasoning provides plausibility to a view of the gifts of the Spirit in which they cease to function after the apostolic age (a position called cessationism).
In my opinion, a much more natural reading of the Book of Acts understands the expansion of the Gospel by signs and wonders (including the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues) as being presented as a normative model for the whole Church Age. The Book of Acts functions as a representative example, a kind of 'here's what you should expect' account for Christians to refer to as they go about the continuing work of making disciples of all nations. It is well known that the narrative structure of Acts follows the pattern mentioned previously: the center of the action moves from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and then to the ends of the known world. I don't think that anyone would conclude, on that basis, that the spread of the Gospel should therefore cease with the end of the apostolic age, since Jesus' promise to the Apostles with respect to the Gospel's expansion had been fulfilled. To suggest that the Gospel should spread but that the gifts given to assist in the spread of the Gospel should cease is to superimpose an external structure on Scripture. The argument, based on the narrative structure of Acts, that the examples of Spirit Baptism with speaking in tongues are one-time salvation-historical milestones cannot be applied in favor of a cessationist view of the gifts without also arguing for a cessationist position with respect to the need for ongoing evangelism. Why would the gifts be needed to overturn unbelief and help the Church establish a foothold in Ephesus, but not in Barcelona, Bogotá, or Bangkok?
It is my conviction that opposition to the ongoing validity of spiritual gifts arises mainly on account of three specific causes:
First: a lack of the experience leads (unnecessarily) to a discounting of the ongoing validity of the experience to the degree that the determination is made that the possibility of any future instances of the experience is thereby excluded; this then crystallizes into a prohibition with the force of a doctrinal position.
Second: consequently, those indoctrinated in the cessationist tend to engage with the phenomenon of spiritual gifts from a place of entrenched opposition. There is no room for dialogue that includes openness to other views.
Third (and sadly), people who claim to be in possession of the gifts give cessationists additional incentive to remain closed to ever reassessing their position. This happens in all the same ways as in 1 Corinthians. Spirit-filled believers place a higher premium on operating in the gifts of the Spirit than on developing the character of Christ (i.e., the fruit of the Spirit.) As a result, these believers abuse and bring disrepute on the gifts by neglecting their proper use; the gifts are given in order to benefit everyone in the church and to confront unbelievers with an experience that excludes every other possible conclusion apart from, "Surely God is among you!" 1 Cor 14:25). The 'gifted' ones fail the ultimate test, that is, to keep the gifts functioning as a means of maintaining a community whose supreme ethic is self-denying love (thus Paul's placement of 1 Corinthians 13 right in the center of his discussion of spiritual gifts). And then, the nail in the coffin: the displacing of Christlike love as the highest goal of the worshiping community results in other symptoms: disunity (there are far more Pentecostal/Charismatic movements than any other family of Christians), immorality, pride, indulgence, and competition (I don't think any Christian denomination can claim to have clean hands on every one of these matters.) It's worth noting here that William Seymour, one of the founders of the modern Pentecostal movement, objected to the hailing of tongues as the Pentecostal distinctive. His conviction was that any people who claimed to be living in an enhanced state of participation in the life of the Spirit should be most distinct on account of the quality of love that they have. ("The world will know you are My followers because...")
As a Pentecostal, I am absolutely convinced that believers empowered by the gifts of the Spirit are the world's last and best hope for a 4th Great Awakening (why the Pentecostal movement in the early 20th Century is not called the 3rd Great Awakening is a mystery to me.) But in order for the movement to which I belong to play such a privileged role in salvation history, we need to immerse ourselves in what we've been reading in 1 Corinthians this last week. The gifts are mission-critical. Paul desires that we would all speak in tongues. Even more he desires that we would all prophesy. But the gifts must be used according to their purpose: in a way that benefits the whole church and in order to overturn unbelief and demonstrate the truth of the Gospel. And if we have to choose between walking in supernatural power and living in Christlike love, than we need to choose love every time. Because if we have all the gifts but we lack love, we are nothing.
Historically, the churches have a mixed record of refusing to choose between elements of our faith that the the Bible commends. We stood our ground when it came to the question of how Jesus could be fully man and fully God. 'Both', we insisted (hypostatic union). We embraced the unthinkable as a result of working through the question of how there could only be one God, when the New Testament regularly refers to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 'There is only one God', we said, 'but God is Triune – three distinct Persons in one Being without any confusion in their identities.' We didn't do so well when it came to the problem of free will versus sovereignty. Scripturally, it has to be both. In much the same way that, with respect to the divinity and the humanity of Jesus, if you refuse to insist fully on both you are forced to disregard the plain meaning of significant portions of Scripture, so it is with the sovereignty of God and the free will of His humanity. And so it is, I believe, with love and spiritual gifts, agape and charisma, Christlike self-giving and Spirit empowerment. If we insist on choosing one or the other, something central to our Gospel is lost; our Churches will fall short of their potential to put God's image–to put the life of heaven–on display when we gather together and in our individual lives. As a committed Pentecostal, I must still stand with Scripture: and the greatest of these is love. And yet my prayer is that we would find ourselves even more capable of maturity, of what the Ephesians 4:13 refers to a the "full stature of Christ", than I have proposed so far. For Paul said to Timothy that we have been given a spirit not only of love and of power, but also of sound mind (2 Tim 1:7).
"For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, in all, and living through all" (Eph 4:4-6).
Amen.