Christian Origins and the Ancient Economy is a fascinating study of the socioeconomic environment during the “Second Temple Period” which included the time Jesus lived among us. Professor David Fiensy’s introduction, written in pure geek, gives a false impression of how fascinating and enjoyable his work becomes once readers reach chapter one. Chapter 9, “Poverty and Wealth in the Jerusalem Church,” is worth the price of the book. Written in readable, Reader’s Digest English, it is an exposition on Acts 4:32-34, the quintessential vision of God for His church.

Fiensy begins by introducing the various social strata in Galilee. Jesus, to begin with, was a carpenter, an artisan, in low social standing among both Greeks and Romans, but extolled by the rabbis. Jesus hobnobbed with the elites, however, who were socially above Him: Johanna and her husband Chuza (an official of Herod Antipas), Jarius, Zacchaeus, Nicodemus, and Joseph of Arimathea to name a few. Perhaps, some of the elites employed Him, as a carpenter. Fiensy argues that it was Jesus, the artisan, that lead a mass movement of peasants—though the professor can only surmise how this, historically speaking, came about. As an artisan, he would have interpreted life differently than the average peasant. Additionally, Jesus, would have practiced his craft in an urban setting. This would place Jesus, culturally, worlds removed from that of a farmer. Rural populations maintained their native languages and customs. Urbanites spoke Greek and were “in touch …with the great institutions and ideas of Greco-Roman society.”

Fiensy then asks, “Was debt widespread in Jesus’s time?” That is to ask: was at least 30% of peasantry facing foreclosure on their farmlands and homes? A peasant was a subsistence farmer who was trying to grow enough to feed his family. Peasant farmers made up the greater part of a Galilean subsistence economy. They worked between 1 and 15 acres of land to feed their families on 13 to 25 bushels of wheat—per 6 acres sowed each year. The book is full of such fun facts that bring the parables of Jesus to life and provide needed insight into the New Testament narrative.

David A. Fiensy

Through the book, Professor Fiensy debates the use of a socio-economic model and its archeological accuracy in explaining a Galilean economy. Professor Fiensy uses tables, scriptures, social models, archeological finds as well as other historical data to argue both sides of this intriguing question about private debt. For example, Josephus tells a relevant story of a mob of desperate peasants setting fire to the archives in Judea to burn the record of their debts. Was this the economic backdrop to Jesus’s ministry? There are many unanswered socio-economic questions debated by archeologists and sociologists. Prof. Fiensy welcomes us into this forum as he discusses such subjects as economic crises, the introduction of currency, property, and taxes.

The economy of Lower Galilee, Fiensy’s first concern, was in the early stages of changing from a subsistence economy that bonded peasants together in a common struggle for survival into a market economy (i.e. cash crops to increase wealth) where everything had a price and coinage was, more and more, the medium of exchange. (Fiensy uses the term: commercialized.) Consequently, old associations, family, neighbors, and religious life, were becoming of lesser value. It was in this context Jesus spoke out against riches in Mark 10:25.

I had been given opportunity to review Denzil R. Miller’s 35 page booklet, Spirit-Empowered Mission: Africa’s Decade of Pentecost and the New Testament “Strategy of the Spirit.” Miller gives us here a brief overview of a continent-wide initiative of the Africa Assemblies of God Alliance (AAGA) from 2010-2020 known as the Decade of Pentecost (DOP) to evangelize Africa.

Denzil Miller offers a brief but honest evaluation of the work, its successes and challenges in terms of the Great Commission to evangelize the sub-Sahara Africa and Indian Ocean Basin areas of the continent which requires indigenously raising all the resources, finances as well as personnel, to “go into all Africa” and “make disciples of all African tribes and clans.”

Miller supports a Pauline approach to evangelization. A large part of this brief work is taken up in referencing Paul’s missionary focus. And as Paul pointed out to community after community, this work requires an empowerment only available with an infilling of the Spirit. Miller refers to this as “A Spirit-driven Call to Missions.”

“The evangelization of Africa,” Miller maintains, “[needs] an ongoing information database … to be shared with our constituent national churches, strategic partnerships across the continent between the national churches affiliated with the [AAGA], a strategic prayer network focusing on the unreached peoples of Africa, missional mentoring among … national churches [the indigenous principle, and] … compassion ministries, all the while remaining focused on the core mandate of the church, that is, reaching the lost for Christ.”

He concludes by saying, “Therefore, during these final seven years [since 2013] of the DOP initiative, we anticipate the greatest forward advance, and the greatest harvest of souls, in the one-hundred year history of the church of Africa.”

Reviewed by John King

Find Spirit-Empowered Mission on the Decade of Pentecost free download page: http://www.decadeofpentecost.org/booklets/

Véroni Krüger’s work What Has Your Church Become is a look with historical insight at what the church was at its beginning, at Pentecost, compared to what it has become. Reverend Krüger uses a literary style with scripture as its own interpreter and his primary source of documentation. Believers young in the faith would benefit greatly reading it. What Has Your Church Become would serve to introduce to them some important spiritual Truths. It is an easy read and inspiring, not argumentative.

Reverend Krüger pastored a pentecostal church and holds a masters degree in Greek. This wide range of experience in ministry makes him amply qualified from a pentecostal perspective to discuss the changing church. In bold honesty Reverend Krüger encourages the church to face its realities from frenzied emotionalism to blind intellectualism. Yet he doesn’t dazzle us with Greek terms and syntax. His easy reading style encourages us to embrace the message.

What Has Your Church Become is an ecclesiological study (a study of the church). Krüger has brought the truth into our language with the clarity, simplicity and emphasis that honors it as a timely message from God’s Word.

What Has Your Church Become is written in 4 sections, the first was background information and brief which I summed above. In his second section Reverend Krüger offers scriptural evidence of the ideal church as God envisioned it at Pentecost after which in section 3 he outlines the Pentecost movement in church history. Lastly he provides a look ahead to the potential for tomorrow’s church.

The Ideal Church

Aside from the scriptures which he writes out for our immediate reference, there are very few quotations from other sources. One I must give you because for me its provides us with his overarching theme. The late Dr. Richard Halverson, US Senate chaplain from 1950 to 1995, provided us with a succinct history of the church:

In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centring on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise.

Pastors who read his work with an honest heart will find themselves equipped with a month of messages and a driving burden to share them. Brother Krüger opens up the Psalms in the process. Sprinkled throughout are the davidic thoughts that undoubtedly were in themselves prophetic precursors of New Testament worship.

Worship requires liturgical expression. Brother Krüger sees this as a matter between the Holy Spirit’s opportunity to minister in contrast to a static and well-defined church culture developed to benefit the leadership’s personal corporate goals. Interpreting I Corinthians 14:26 he contrasts professional standards, impersonal large gatherings, leadership manipulation, spiritual weakness and an emphasis on numerical growth with the Biblically outlined work of the Spirit and our response to it. God’s people are to experience God when they gather together—intellectually (studying the Word), spiritually (worshipping God), and emotionally (participating in the service with a sense of belonging and community). Participating in the liturgy for Brother Krüger means becoming more aware of the Divine Presence with human leadership fading into the background. Liturgical worship is not an oxymoron but God’s opportunity to minister to His people. And Brother Krüger sees this as the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit among us.

Son of God: Their Empire, His Kingdom (20th Century Fox). Actors: Darwin Shaw, Sebastian Knapp, Paul Knops, and Darcie Lincoln. Directors: Christopher Spencer. Music by Hans Zimmer.

Son of God is a dramatization, taken from the memoirs of John the Apostle, played by Sebastian Knapp, that starts with the Savior’s brief ministry on His way to Calvary’s Cross and finishes with our Lord’s Resurrection and promised return.

Richard Bedser, one of its 4 writers, was also a writer for the History Channel’s 2011 documentary, Gettysburg—which should speak well of his talent and that of the team of writers, directors, actors and actresses and all who were chosen for this monumental endeavor.

The difficult task before them was to recreate the picture of betrayal and rejection that would lead to Jesus’ death. This biblical story line with the time constraint movies must honor, in 138 minutes, had to feature a selected few of Jesus’ many miracles and sayings. The first half of the movie then features Jesus crisscrossing the holy land under the observation of a Jewish religious leadership that represents a hostility growing more visceral with each word or act of mercy He shares.

Christopher Spencer, the director, correctly understood that the narrative to have any historical relevance needed more than the suspenseful music that now drapes the backdrop of every modern film. Spencer needed a story line that could integrate the miracles of Christ into a single culminating event—his crucifixion. As scholarship knows, one part of the story was inevitable in this regard: the resurrection of Lazarus. This alone would seal the Savior’s fate.

One Sadducee in the movie betrays the general attitude about Jesus among the religious leaders, “There is nothing unusual about Him aside from His ability to cause havoc!”

Jesus’ choice of a tax-collector, Matthew, is featured and appears to be the beginning of his troubles with the religious authorities of the day. Jesus’ notoriety as a potential problem takes off with children flocking about Him by the hundreds and disrupting a Pharisee holding Yeshiva under a tent. Jesus frees a woman taken in adultery and then pronounces an invalid forgiven before helping him to his feet, healed. He cleanses the temple court while crowds of would-be followers surround Him.

The movie does not follow the biblical text without a bit of drama added, a timeline rearranged, and a few details missing. Jesus does not shed tears at Lazarus’ grave, for example. Instead He enters the tomb and kisses His deceased friend on the head.

But I didn’t find this change of narrative offensive because the purpose behind the scene—behind the entire movie—was to help me live the inspiration behind a Divine idea that led to my own salvation. Also, it is safe to say that the words spoken by Jesus here are a reasonable translation of some of our Lord’s actual sayings.

Michael L. Brown, Authentic Fire: A Response to John MacArthur’s Strange Fire (Excel Publishers, Dec 12, 2013), 418 pages.

Dr. Michael Brown in his work Authentic Fire confronts the misinformation of Pastor John MacArthur’s outspoken zeal against all things charismatic in his book, Strange Fire. While Dr. Brown admits that on some points Dr. MacArthur is right on, his language is radically abusive in tone. And some of Pastor MacArthur’s comments are simply untrue. Brown carefully separates the message from the messenger in addressing charismatic abuse before proceeding to the good stuff: how to burn with authentic fire.

How successful Pentecostal movements have been at policing their own—or if they have just been policing their ammunition, cleaning up their own crime scene to mitigate the charges—is debated early. This is a must read section for persons like myself who miss the mourners bench and the witness from the unlearned that God is among us (1 Corinthians 14:16). Charismatic abuses are undeniable: the prosperity doctrine; slain in the ‘spirit’ but not healed; emotionalism without holiness; game-show hype and seeker-centric services instead of the message of the Cross; the superficial replacing the spiritual. Brown recognized that we are catering our gospel to carnality.

But as Brown shows, there is a true spirit of co-operation with God’s Spirit among a large segment of Pentecostal leadership to penitently admit the self-centric extremes visible in their midst and to confront it with biblical truth. Brown has been outspoken in past writings about what he called the “gospel” of self. Simply put: MacArthur has nothing constructive to add to the honest voices within Pentecost that call for repentance. MacArthur’s Strange Fire, which required a response in the writing of Authentic Fire, provides mere background static that drives Pentecostals to go on the defense—something Brown cautions against and wants to prevent from happening.

Ira D. Sankey (1840-1908) was an American gospel singer and hymn writer best known for his association with evangelist D. L. Moody.

Brown says that some of MacArthur’s ranting is a false attack akin to what England’s ministerium did in 1874 when they labeled the powerful outcomes of Ira Sankey’s singing as human conceit and not worship. But emotion is not emotionalism. A move of God’s Spirit often elicits a heartfelt response which is smothered in the name of propriety or order by well-meaning but misguided church leadership—who are afraid to express the full depth of their Christian experience [Luke 6:23; 10:20;19:37]. If there was abuse, it was in requiring a charismatic outburst—and not simply allowing a passionate response to happen.

MacArthur is a cessationist maintaining that tongues and prophecy have ceased based on his interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13:8. MacArthur called a Pentecostal revival service “craziness” and an “emotional orgy.” No wonder Brown had to respond in a gentle spirit while encouraging charismatic believers who only want a closer reality of their Savior and to be under His administration. In Brown’s words: “I embraced it with tears of joy while others mocked it. And that’s the great concern I have today.”

Brown speaks of MacArthur’s judgment of a move of the Holy Spirit as a faulty exegesis of Scripture and a flawed pneumatology. Brown provides scriptural insight to support this assertion. It is also noteworthy that MacArthur has been looking at a small percentage of American ministries that are not at all representative of the global move of God’s Spirit.