The third chapter from Professor Williams’ book, The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today, about the greatest reality of our time.

The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today: Dimensions (Chapter 2)

Chapter Three: Response

The human response to the giving of the Holy Spirit is essentially the praise of God. When human existence—individually and in community—is bathed with the divine presence, there is only one truly significant response, namely, the glorifying of God. God has acted through Jesus Christ to pour out His Spirit, and so marvelous is its occurrence that nothing else can capture it but the high praise of God. So does the praise of God ring forth—praise for His mighty deeds in creation, redemption and sending His Holy Spirit. It is the extolling of God that springs from the lips and hearts of those who are acclaiming Jesus as Lord.

This praise that is rendered is not to an absentee God but to one who is present in the midst of His people. The fullness of His grace in Jesus Christ has been experienced, and now His glory is being shed abroad in the Holy Spirit. There is a deep sense of the goodness of the Father, the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the dynamism of the Holy Spirit.

The whole focus of this praise is God. It is not a glorying in the self—as if perchance one had suddenly become an extraordinary person by virtue of the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is not a glorying by people who look at themselves as spiritually superior to others because of what they have received. Far from it: the direction is totally away from human existence as all things are lifted up to the praise and blessing of God.

Something like what we have been describing took place originally in Jerusalem at Pentecost. For when the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit they all began to praise God. This is apparent from the words of Acts 2:11 which record the multitude saying: “We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty [wonderful, magnificent]¹  works of God.” We are not told for what “mighty works” they praised God; but it is not hard to imagine that, having so recently lived through the events of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, they were praising Him, among other things, for having performed the mighty work of redemption. Also He had just now fulfilled the promise to pour forth the Holy Spirit. How much they had to praise God for!

Again, something of the same thing happened years later in Caesarea: another occasion of the glorifying of God. This time it was the Gentiles upon whom the Holy Spirit came, and others (Peter and his fellow Jews) “heard them speaking in tongues and extolling [magnifying]²  (Acts 10:46).

We should also note the connection between being filled with the Spirit and praise in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Paul writes: “Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart” (Ephesians 5:18-19). As a result of being filled with God’s Spirit, psalms, hymns, spiritual songs break forth—the heart is filled with melody, rejoicing in the Lord. Thus is praise offered up in manifold ways to Him who has given His blessed Spirit.

Let us reflect for a moment upon the praise of God in the worship of the church. In all true worship there is a desire to offer up worthy praise and adoration to Almighty God. And according to the intensity of the sense of the Lord’s presence, there is yearning to find further ways of showing forth this praise. Ordinary language may seem to be inadequate, and perhaps some language of the past (Greek or Latin, for example) will be used in the desire for more worthy expression. There may be the use of praise language such as “Hallelujah!” or “Hosanna!” often repeated to voice an intensity of adoration. Or in the sensing of the wonder of God’s grace, there may even be yearning for multiple tongues³  as a means of declaring what is being deeply experienced. Such ways are examples that bespeak a growing concern to get beyond ordinary speech into another, or higher, mode of worshiping God.

Here, of course, is where music occupies an important role. By moving into lyrical modes of expression, by adding melody to words, there may well be more satisfying worship of heart and soul. Thus human utterance is caught up to higher levels by the singing forth of God’s praises. Yet music, even as ordinary speech, is ever seeking among ardent worshipers of God to find ways to reach still more sublime heights.

Now we come to the recognition in the books of Acts of the close connection between praise and tongues. As we have noted, the Gentiles at Caesarea were heard to be “speaking in tongues and extolling God.” In Jerusalem the Jews on the day of Pentecost were heard to be speaking in other tongues than their own, and the speech served one purpose: the praise of God. From the Pentecost narrative it is apparent that tongues are not ordinary speech, but represent the worship of God in a speech that is other than one’s own native language. Hence, speaking in tongues might be called transcendent praise: praise that goes beyond ordinary capacity and experience.

We may better understand this by focusing upon the situation of high spiritual intensity resulting from the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit. The sense of God’s abundant presence evokes a breaking forth in praise expressive of the occasion. Ordinary language, even music, may be inadequate to declare the wonder of God’s gift. This is not to deny or discount the various modes of human expression with all their possibilities to rise to greater heights. However, there may be a speech or language more suitable to the experience of the richness of God’s spiritual gift. Humanly speaking, this is impossible, but—and herein is marvel—God through His Spirit may go beyond what has been uttered or sung before and bring forth a new language!⁴

Andy Butcher, “When It’s Hard to Believe” Charisma (April 2002), pages 38-46.

What do your non-Christian neighbors really think about you and what you believe? Charisma asked a panel of unchurched people to explain how they see the church, offering an unflattering mirror of what we look like to the world we are trying to reach.

Tony Carnes, “‘New’ China: Same Old Tricks” Christianity Today (Mar 11, 2002, Vol 46 No 3), pages 38-42.

Chinese communist leaders are attempting to change their international image regarding their oppression of human rights. However, there are now available extensive documents demonstrating that top communists approve and promote the arrest and torture of Christians.

I. Howard Marshall, “Who is a Hypocrite?” Bibliotheca Sacra (Apr-Jun 2002, Vol 159 No 634), pages 131-150.

Professor Marshall compares the two English meanings of “hypocrite” with the Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew words from which they are derived. One important conclusion he reaches is that the original Greek and Hebrew use of the “hypocrite” word groups were not always negative. Although usually linked with the concept of deceptive pretension, the word “hypocrite” can have a range of meaning. “Hypocrites” may not necessarily be people who are intentionally pretentious. From a Hebrew perspective, hypocrites may simply not realize they are not following God’s revealed ways. However, there are others who do “virtuous acts but with the motive of gaining human applause,” and were hypocrites because “they were people who sought to please God, and their desire for human applause was inconsistent with this” (p. 150).

Also in the Spring issue of BibSac can be found articles defending the book of Esther’s place in Scripture, and explanation of the imprecatory Psalms, an exploration of whether John the Baptist was an Essene, and an exposition of the judgment of the sheep and goats (Matt 25:31-46). Unlike many technical theological journals, BibSac may be trusted to uphold the inerrancy of Scripture and the fundamental beliefs of evangelical Christianity even if its writers differ strongly with Pentecostal/charismatics on the gifts of the Spirit for today. BibSac is published by the faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary.

For more Significant Articles:

Please see in this issue “Recent Articles about ‘How Much Does God Control?’”

Doug Murren, Churches that Heal: Becoming a Church That Mends Broken Hearts and Restores Shattered Lives (W. Monroe, LA: Howard Publishing Company, 1999), 256 pages.

The church needs to be about the work of healing people. Churches need to be places where the whole gospel is heard and people are wholly restored to what God intended. This kind of healing process in the community of believers glorifies God.

Doug Murren says that this book is not a theological treatise, but rather a process of looking at biblical texts and sharing true stories about healing. He relates several incidents of people receiving healing that happened during his ministry. He learned he had to teach people to reach out to those who were hurting and not criticize them. The church needs to create an environment of healing.

Answering the question as to why churches do not heal, Doug Murren relates that sometimes Christians work too hard and take themselves too seriously instead of planting people in an environment that will let them grow in the Lord and their healing. The church too often is not a safe place for people to let their guard down. They may have been injured and they will not take that risk again. He relates in this book that every decision we make as a Christian is driven by one of two motivations: fear or the power of God’s love in us. “When churches live in fear, they destroy leaders, and they send away broken people.”

Doug Murren

So, how does the church change its environment? There are three basic factors that must be in place. First, is the desire to change, second, there must be within the group the energy to change, and thirdly, you must have a plan to change.

Another point that Doug makes is that a church can only help heal as many people as the strength of its core allows at any given time. They must pay the price of stepping out of their comfort zone, and many are not willing to do this.

Some scholars believe that when Yeshua (Jesus) and his disciples were walking the earth, messianic expectations were extremely high. There were those Hebrew scholars of the day who were well acquainted with Daniel chapter nine, and according to the “weeks” and “sevens,” they knew the Messiah’s arrival was imminent. As a result there were many people calling themselves “the messiah.” We see a glimpse of this in the book of Acts, when the famous Torah scholar Gamliel (as it is pronounced in the synagogue) speaks:

But a certain Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the Law, respected by all the people, stood up in the Council and gave orders to put the men outside for a short time. And he said to them, “Men of Israel, take care what you propose to do with these men. For some time ago Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody; and a group of about four hundred men joined up with him. And he was slain; and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After this man Judas of Galilee rose up in the days of the census, and drew away some people after him, he too perished, and all those who followed him were scattered. And so in the present case, I say to you, stay away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or action should be of men, it will be overthrown; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them; or else you may even be found fighting against God.” And they took his advice (Acts 5:34-40).

Indeed, from the days before Yeshua, up until the Roman urban renewal program of 135 CE when the city of Jerusalem was plowed under, “messiahs” popped up on a fairly regular basis.

If you were alive in those days and “yet another” messiah candidate appeared, like yesterday’s bad meatloaf, what would it take to set him apart and capture your attention? Even today we have rumors of this prophet or that prophet, this healer or that healer, this move of the Holy Spirit and that move of the Holy Spirit. It is difficult to not become jaded, particularly when frauds are so often exposed.

There were certain telltale signs for which the religious community of Yeshua’s day were looking. We find them encapsulated in a message Yeshua sends to his cousin John.

“Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have the gospel preached to them” (Luke 7:22).

These elements, along with a superlative ability to elucidate the Torah, would mark the “one” as the Messiah. What made Yeshua’s ministry stand out among the crowd? He fulfilled their expectations and He fulfilled what the prophets had promised. This makes him such a likely candidate that the Pharisees begin to tail Him, watching His actions and questioning His motives. Yeshua certainly was the most likely candidate they had seen yet.

In part six we saw how Yeshua was not only able to explain the Torah, but to put it into a deeply spiritual application exceeding “mere works.” In this part, we will see if He was able to meet the other items on their “wish list.”

Elmer Towns and Douglas Porter, The Ten Greatest Revivals Ever: From Pentecost to the Present (Destiny Image Publishers, 2000), 231 pages.

I like history and I like revival history most of all. For this reason, I found this book enjoyable. It is an easy-to-read presentation of ten revivals that the authors selected as the greatest to have occurred since the Church began. The revivals were put in the order of importance based upon the opinions of 17 of the best-known preachers in the world.

The greatest revival is cited as the 1904 revival that began in Wales, touched Korea and Manchuria, and ended at Azuza Street. If you are a Pentecostal, you will not be content with the scope accorded the greatest revival for you will not read it culminating in 600,000,000 full gospel adherents across the globe. Indeed, to my viewpoint, the book suffers from its lack of a Pentecostal perspective.

Putting aside my preference, Towns and Porter list the first Great Awakening from 1727 to 1750 with Zinzendorf, Wesley, Whitefield, and Edwards as the second greatest revival. The third greatest was the post independence revival from 1780 to Cane Ridge in the early 1800’s. Then we go to Finney and the Hawaiian Revival lead by Titus Coan in the first half of the 19^th century. The book also cites the Layman’s pre-civil war prayer revival, the Second World War revival, the Jesus people/baby boomers of the 1960’s and 70’s, the pre-reformation Lollards and Savronarola, the 16^th Century reformation and the original revival of Acts 2 called Pentecost.

Dr. Elmer Towns is a college and seminary professor and an author of popular and scholarly works. He co-founded Liberty University with Jerry Falwell in 1971.

I found much new material in the book, including little told stories of people and places that added to my overall knowledge of this fascinating subject. I also found the insights of the authors to be provoking and valuable. My own treatment of the history of revival starting in 1300 AD is a continuum of a loving God calling people who for some reason were compelled to initially seek or to offer to others His blessing into periods of visitation that changed much of the community forever and builds ever more upon what has passed.

Treating revivals as unrelated and uncommon incidents as this book does, in my view, takes away from the purposes of God in his never ending efforts to bring man to salvation. Revivals are wonderful periods in the life of believers. They also are demanding and exhausting periods and—as with any move of God—bring all sorts of controversy and scorn to the fore for discussion and absorption. Revivals mean lack of sleep, time for everyday things and all sorts of consequences.

May the Lord revive us all again and again.

Reviewed by H. Murray Hohns

Read an excerpt from Elmer Towns’ website: http://elmertowns.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/10_Greatest_Revivals_EverETowns.pdf

Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001), 377 pages.

Readers of this journal tend to be inhabitants of the Pentecostal/charismatic movement, and are thus to some degree familiar with the theological terrain of the early Pentecostal movement. Pentecostals have not been, at least in the past, the best keepers of their own history. They have preferred to concentrate on evangelism and propagation in light of the “soon coming return of the King” (as I so often heard it expressed in my home church as a child) rather than wasting time on worldly things like records and oral histories. They did, however, leave a historical record in their printed justifications of their doctrine and doctrinal experiences. In recent years there have been a number of histories, pioneered by Edith Blumhofer and William Menzies among others, attempting to give an account of how Pentecostalism came to be. These accounts have tended to focus on the discovery of the theological distinctive of Spirit Baptism and how that distinctive survived and thrived.

Early Pentecostals defined themselves and were known to the outside world as those who “tarried” in the “upper room” until they had “prayed through” to the “baptism in the Holy Ghost and power.” But what were those believers like outside of the “upper room”? How did they manage to maintain the reality of their experience within the pressures of “real life”? It is this which has motivated Grant Wacker to crawl through the recycling bins of used bookstores and the shelves of archives and Bible colleges to retrieve this lost story. Wacker painstakingly excavates the world of these first Pentecostals because the “ideas, practices, and institutions they set in motion persisted long after their deaths and, to a great extent, continued to define Pentecostal patterns in America at the end of the twentieth century. From them later adherents learned what questions to ask of life and, perhaps more important, what questions not to ask.” (p.8) Wacker sifts through an enormous amount of evidence to allow us, eighty years later, to listen in on and observe the dynamic of the Pentecostal experience in the lives of these believers across the whole realm of human experience, from the upper room to the bedroom.

Heaven Below details the worldview and experience of life among early Pentecostals and the implications of Pentecostal belief in all areas of life, including some areas not previously focused on in standard Pentecostal histories: temperament, authority, rhetoric, customs, boundaries, nation and war, to name a few. All are examined in pursuit of establishing Wacker’s key premise for the book:

The genius of the pentecostal movement lay in its ability to hold two seemingly incompatible impulses in productive tension. I call the two impulses the primitive and the pragmatic…idealism versus realism, or principle versus practicality…Pentecostals’ distinctive understanding of the human encounter with the divine, which included both primitivist and pragmatic dimensions, enabled them to capture lightening in a bottle and, more important, to keep it there, decade after decade, without stilling the fire or cracking the vessel (p.10, author’s emphasis in italics).

The primitivist leaning of Pentecostalism is well documented; early Pentecostals (and many of their present day descendents within the Pentecostal and Charismatic tents) believed that by means of their baptism in the Holy Ghost they had bridged 18 centuries of institutional and experiential obstruction to direct contact with God, as had been experienced by the first believers in Christ on the day of Pentecost and after. But less known and, Wacker argues, less acknowledged has been Pentecostal pragmatism, the success that shows, “that at the end of the day pentecostals proved remarkably willing to work within the social and cultural expectations of the age. Again and again we see them holding their proverbial finger to the wind, calculating where they were, where they wanted to go and, above all, how to get there. That last instinct, the ability to figure the odds and react appropriately, made them pragmatists to the bone.” (p.13-14) Some may take this quote to mean that Wacker is accusing Pentecostals of being mere opportunists, who have naturally followed what works rather than what is right. In truth, some Pentecostals have been anointed more by the spirit of pragmatism than the Spirit of God—in larger truth, all believers in all ages have faced that temptation. But Wacker is not convicting Pentecostals of this; rather, he is pointing out that those first Pentecostals were adaptable and willing to change the way they delivered the message while keeping the content the same. This is perhaps the key lesson to take away from Wacker’s tome; if we are to honor our predecessors in the faith, we would do well to face our own culture with similar flexibility.

Galaxy NGC 6744.
Source: ESO. eso.org

I always enjoy reading contemporary articles that offer fresh evidence for faith in the God of the Bible, even if such “evidence” is somewhat indirect. I found this recently in a well-written summary and critique of another “faith,” the predominantly non-Christian belief in extra-terrestrial life. Science journalist Fred Heeren summarizes the search for intelligent life in the universe and focuses on why no such life has yet been found.

Despite what popular culture in America has been led to believe about “the awful waste of space” if aliens are not out there, most extra-terrestrial intelligence believers are unaware of recent evidence for and against ETI. “If the public knows little about the best reasons to believe in intelligent extraterrestrials, it knows even less about the reasons to doubt” (p. 42).

Perhaps you have never heard of Fermi’s Paradox, but it is still one of the strongest arguments against the existence of intelligent life anywhere but Earth.

It all happened over a Los Alamos lab lunch in the summer of 1950, when renowned Italian physicist Enrico Fermi had one of those napkin-scribbling epiphanies. His conclusion stemmed from the indisputable premise that there are billions of stars in our galaxy that are older than our sun, and that life routinely develops under favorable conditions.

Exhausted planet resources and dying stars would provide good motives for exploration and homesteading. Some cultures, like our own, would find other motives for colonizing, and it would only take one enterprising population to begin exponential expansion. Fermi showed that, even assuming modest speeds, every habitable star system in the galaxy should have been colonized within mere millions, not billions, of years. Complete colonization could take place in the relative twinkling of a cosmic eye, many times over, in a ten-billion-year-old galaxy like the Milky Way. “So,” asked Fermi, “where are they?”

It is not a stretch to say that since no satisfactory answer has yet been given, perhaps some of those “indisputable” premises are, in fact, rather disputable. However, evidences against believing in extra terrestrial intelligence do not stop here. Heeren goes on to list some other significant reasons to show how unique and unlikely Earth is: its large moon, its “main sequence” Sun, special gas giant neighbors like Jupiter, location in the galaxy, and just the right amount of radioactive elements in the just-right crust. Then there are all of the “coincidences” biological evolution (if one believes in it) required for the development of human intelligence. Improbable events that Darwinian evolution could not predict had to have occurred according to today’s evolutionary biologists. Two of these they claim must have taken place to make way for man were something to wipe out dinosaur life (I believe the flood of Noah is the best explanation) and the “Cambrian explosion” without the evolutionary development of any major animal groups (called phyla) since then (supposedly 530 million years ago).

British astronomer John Barrow is quoted as saying that “there has developed a general consensus among evolutionists that the evolution of intelligent life, comparable in information-processing ability to that of Homo sapiens, is so improbable that it is unlikely to have occurred on any other planet in the entire visible universe” (p. 44). This leads Heeren to affirm that the laws of nature seem stacked against intelligent life developing, “Neither biologists nor astronomers see anything imperative about the many contingencies that had to be met, against all odds, for us to be here” (p. 45). Therefore, the idea that the universe is teeming with intelligent life, or even life, is not a presupposition supported by science.

Reinerio Arce, Manuel Quintero and Elizabeth Carrillo, eds., Carismatismo en Cuba (Quito, Ecuador: CLAI, 1997).

This book is made up eight essays written by Cuban clergy and university faculty, which provide a panoramic view of the Pentecostal/charismatic movement inside Cuba. Six of the essays provide us with the understanding that in spite of forty years of communist rule the Pentecostal/charismatic movement is alive and well in Cuba. This is further supported by the excellent interviews with a Catholic layperson, a Methodist minister and Pentecostal pastor found at the end of the book. The remaining two essays address the doctrine of Spirit baptism and the creative and renewing work of the Spirit.

In keeping with the intense missionary emphasis of the early Pentecostal movement, various denominations established churches in the Cuba at the beginning of the 20^th century. Many of the major North American denominations such as Open Bible Churches, Church of God, Assemblies of God and the Foursquare Church established churches throughout the island.¹ The first major period of Pentecostal expansion (1930-1960) was due to widespread temple building, public evangelistic and healing services. It was during this period that many Cuban Pentecostals leaders separated from their parent churches to establish their own denominations. During the 1970s and 1980s the difficulties brought about the Communist government led to a decline in membership and the inability to educate leaders. There was, however, the continued establishment of Cuban national Pentecostal churches.

From the late 1980s, till present, Pentecostalism in Cuba has seen a revitalization and increase in its membership. The disillusionment experienced by the Cuban people with the atheistic and materialistic Communist government has led many to seek spiritual answers to life’s problems. The churches during this period have had some success in establishing positive relationships with the government.

Cuban Pentecostalism shares many of the doctrinal and liturgical emphases found in Pentecostalism throughout the world. Its doctrines of salvation, baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues and healing are similar to what is found in most Pentecostal churches internationally. Its worship services, which follow an informal liturgical program, are open to spontaneity and the participation of members through public prayer and testimonies. It is this freedom of expression within the worship service that attracts new converts.

The influences of modern society have made inroads in Cuban Pentecostalism, which is seen in the adaptation of modern dress, and activities once prohibited such as mixed bathing (swimming). Cuban Pentecostals are also involved in many ecumenical organizations within Cuba, Latin America, and beyond. The essays also point out the interest shared by Pentecostals and Charismatics about the social and political implications of the gospel message for Cuban society.

The early Pentecostals had an expectation of the soon return of Jesus. That expectation drove them to urgently share Jesus with the world. This urgency is what has fueled the worldwide growth of the Pentecostal/charismatic movement.

Let us talk about that for a moment. As Bible-believing Christians, we affirm that Jesus is the only way of salvation. We understand that there are many who do not know Jesus as Savior. If we believe—as I think we should—that Jesus is coming soon, then we should have no greater passion than telling those who have not yet heard.

I believe that the church needs to return to having a love for the Second Coming. Pentecostal/charismatics of today should return to the eschatology of the early Pentecostals. We certainly need a renewed urgency for sharing Jesus with a hurting world.

Let us ask the Father, in the Name of Jesus, to fill us fresh with God the Holy Spirit. The Spirit empowers us to live like Jesus today.

Jim Dettmann at an editor meeting in 2005.

Come, Lord Jesus. The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come!”

—James M. Dettmann

Pneuma Foundation President

This issue concludes our fifth year of publication. I trust that this effort has been an encouragement and blessing to you, and I look forward to many more should our Lord tarry His return.

Everyone following the “How Much Does God Control?” dialogue should be sure to read the responses from readers section and other features included in this issue.

May the Lord Jesus our Messiah reveal to your heart more of His grace, love, and power in the coming days.

— Raul Mock, Executive Editor