My mother, Assemblies of God Evangelist Verna M. Linzey, enjoyed taking time out of her busy schedule to fellowship with fellow Navy Officers’ Wives as part of her “Ministry of Presence” on the base. My father, first-ever Assemblies of God Active Duty Navy Chaplain Stanford E. Linzey, Jr., was stationed on the USS Holland, which was homeported at Charleston. Mother was on the Navy Wives Bowling League and had won a trophy for being an outstanding bowler.

I was looking forward to my donut on that mild, sunny day in October 1963. Then a short while after crossing the Wappoo Creek Bridge, we came to the railroad tracks before an intersection, and the light turned red. The cars ahead of us did not cross the intersection and we had to come to an abrupt stop on the railroad tracks.

It seemed like an eternity that we waited for the green signal so that we could get off the tracks, but finally the light turned green. Then, just as the car in front of us accelerated, the railroad lights started blinking and the bells began ringing. Mother pressed on the gas pedal, but the front tires were stuck on the railroad tracks. The car would not accelerate. The train was quite a distance away, but it was coming quickly. Mother kept pressing the accelerator pedal while praying, but the car would not budge. We were stranded on the tracks.

I was in the far back of the station wagon, which was off the tracks, and Mother knew there was no time to get me out of the back of the car. She figured that I would survive if the train hit the car. So, praying all the while, she threw open the door and jumped out of the car so that she, too, could survive.

Suddenly, a man appeared and told her to get back in the car and floor the gas pedal, and “don’t let off.” She risked her life for me, rushed back inside the car, and floored the gas pedal, with her heart pounding and the palms of her hands and forehead perspiring. Then the tires screeched and the car abruptly “jumped” off the railroad tracks to safety just before the train crossed the street. After the train cleared the street, the stranger was nowhere to be found. We had never seen him before, nor did we ever see him again. But I’ll never forget the day when my life was saved by an angel.

Image: Jad Limcaco

Not only did the angel come to us in our time of need, but also my mother’s unhesitating obedience to what the angel told her to do saved both of our lives.

Looking back, I think about what would have happened had I been killed. How deeply would this have impacted the lives of people to whom I would not have ministered as a military chaplain and as a civilian minister? And what about the lives of those who would never have been spiritually impacted by the Modern English Version Bible, which I edited?

God had plans for my life. He gave me a mother who risked her life for me and He sent an angel to intervene that day so that His purpose for me would be fulfilled.

Are you comfortable or are you ready to give up everything to make Jesus more real to people that desperately need him? Pioneer missionary Griffith John wrote A Voice in the Darkness over 100 years ago, but the challenge he wrote about laying down our lives for the kingdom of God is both timely and powerful.

“He saved others; Himself He cannot save.” Matthew 27:42

What did these men mean to express by this taunt? Did they mean to express a disbelief in the reality of our Lord’s miracles? “He professed to save others; but we have found Him out at last.”

“We know now that it was all sham, all pretension. He cannot save Himself! How could He save others?” Or is there here an admission of the fact that our Lord did save others, and a faint hope expressed that He might come down from the cross and prove Himself to be the very Christ? Did they imagine that, by taunting Him in this way, He might be induced to give this proof of His Messiahship? “He has certainly saved others. Why does He not save Himself? Let Him do so now, and all our doubts will be removed. We will crown Him king, and follow Him wheresoever He may lead.” Whatever their thoughts may have been, we know that our Lord did not gratify their vain curiosity.

In this taunt there is a great truth expressed. It is true that He saved others; it is true also that He could not save Himself. But there is another truth, and this other truth was hidden from their eyes. Why could He not save Himself? The reason was not obvious to them but it is perfectly clear to us. He could not save Himself because He would save others. To deliver others He must surrender Himself; to save others He must sacrifice Himself.

It must be one or the other. He could not do both—save others and save Himself also. And what is true of the Master is true of the disciple. We, the disciples of Jesus Christ, can be saviours to men only in so far as we are willing and ready to sacrifice ourselves on their behalf. Let us then spend a little time in devout meditation on this great truth.

“Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” That is God’s voice to us, and it rests with ourselves as to whether we will respond to the Divine voice or not. But the moment we do respond and say, “Here am I, send me,” that very moment our life must become a life of service and self-sacrifice. Let me give you two or three examples as illustrations of this great truth.

There is Moses in the Old Testament. When the time had come to deliver Israel from the bondage of Egypt, God’s voice came to Moses, saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?”

It was optional with Moses to go or stay. But the moment he resolved to obey the Divine voice, that very moment his life became a life of service and sacrifice. Having said yes, it was not optional with him as to whether his life should be a life of self-indulgence or self-abnegation. His magnificent position in Egypt had to be renounced; his brilliant prospects of future aggrandisement had to be abandoned; his dire conflict with Pharaoh, and his forty years of suffering with and for his people in that terrible wilderness, followed as a matter of course. He lived for his people, sacrificed everything for his people, and was prepared to die for them at any moment. We know the result. Israel was saved, and God’s purposes were fulfilled. Moses saved others, himself he could not save.

There is Paul in the New Testament. When the time had come to make known to the Gentiles God’s redemptive purposes, a fit agent was needed, and God’s voice came to Paul, saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” It rested with Paul to decide as to whether he would or would not respond to the Divine voice; but having responded, it did not rest with him as to whether his life should or should not be a life of service and sacrifice. The moment he said, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” that moment his life became a life of self-renunciation and suffering. The hunger, the thirst, the fastings, the toil, the stripes, the imprisonments, the anxieties for the churches, and finally his martyrdom followed as a matter of course.

We know the result. The Gospel was preached to the Gentiles, many churches were established in the Roman Empire, and multitudes of men were saved. Paul saved others, himself he could not save.

This excerpt is a chapter from Griffith John, A Voice in the Darkness: Lessons from 60 Years in Ancient China (Underground Publishing, 2023).

David Livingstone saved others; himself he could not save.

And there is Jesus Himself. The time had come for the full manifestation of God’s redemptive purpose. The time had come “to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness.” The voice of God is heard, saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” It rested entirely with the Eternal Son of God as to whether He would respond to that voice. There was no power in the universe to compel Him to leave heaven and come down to this earth to suffer and die. But the moment He did respond, the life of sorrow and suffering, Gethsemane, and the
cross, became inevitable. The life of the world depended upon that great sacrifice. Of Jesus it may be said emphatically, He saved others; Himself He could not save.

Let us now look at this great truth as an all-pervading, all-embracing law.

As a law it pervades the whole of Nature. In Nature, receiving there always means giving here; life there means death here. The animal kingdom lives on the vegetable, and the vegetable lives on the mineral. The mineral must die to itself in order to build up the vegetable, and the vegetable must die to itself in order to build up the animal. The development of vegetable life depends upon the concurrence of certain agents, such as heat, air, moisture, light, and soil. All these must die to themselves if the tree or the plant is to live and grow.

In Nature there must be giving wherever there is receiving; this must be sacrificed if that is to be realised. It is the law of natural instinct. No sooner is the child born than natural instinct steps in, and imposes this law of self-sacrifice on the mother. From this moment, her life becomes a life of holy ministration, wherein, for the sake of the child, she cannot save herself. It is the law of family, social, and political life.

Would you be a father or a son worthy of the name? Would you be a mother or a daughter worthy of the name? Would you be a husband or a wife worthy of the name? Would you be a brother or a sister worthy of the name? Would you be a neighbour worthy of the name? Would you be a statesman worthy of the name? If you would, you must come under this law as the law of your life. It is the law of philanthropy.

A true philanthropist, a lover of mankind, is a man who cannot save himself, because he will save others. Such was Paul, such was Howard, such was Livingstone, and such have been many more whose names I might mention. It is the law of the Divine life.

Let us not fall into the delusion of supposing that, because God is omnipotent, the forth-putting of His power costs Him nothing. This is a very common supposition, but nothing can be more erroneous. Even of God Almighty it is absolutely true that He cannot save Himself. He is ever saving others; Himself He cannot save.

It is the law of the Christian life. Service, rising up to self-sacrifice for the good of men, is the ideal Christian life. Every true Christian is a priest, not merely because he stands before God alone, without the intervention of a human mediator to intercede for him, not merely because he offers to God the sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise in daily adoration, but because his life is a life of priestly ministration for others, and that in sacrifices wherein, for the sake of others, he cannot save himself. He presents himself daily to God, on behalf of humanity, in sacrifices which save men from sin and misery. Such is the priesthood of the New Testament and such is the ideal Christian life.

Can you imagine a higher life than this? Can you imagine anything more God-like? It is the Christ-life. It is the noblest life possible to man.

It is emphatically the missionary’s true life. It was the life of Henry Martyn. “Now,” said Henry Martyn, as he set out for India, “let my life burn out for God.” And it did burn out for God. There you have the true missionary.

It was the life of William Johnson, of West Africa. “Had I ten thousand lives,” said William Johnson, “I would willingly offer them up for the sake of one poor African.” There you have the true missionary.

It was the life of Dober. “I determined,” said Dober, the Moravian, “if only one brother would go with me to the West Indies, I would give myself to be a slave, and would tell the slaves as much of the Saviour as I know myself.” There you have the true missionary.

It was the life of Francis Xavier. “Care not for me,” said Xavier; “think of me as dead to bodily comforts. My food, my rest, and my life are to rescue from the granary of Satan the souls for whom God has sent me hither from the ends of the earth. They will destroy me by poison, you say. It is an honour to which a sinner such as I am may not aspire. But this I dare to say, that whatsoever form of torture or death awaits me, I am ready to suffer it ten thousand times for a single soul.” There you have the true missionary.

This, then, is the missionary’s true life. A self-seeking, self-centred, self-indulgent missionary is a pitiable object to behold. He may call himself a missionary, the directors of his society may put him down as one of their missionaries, and speak of him as our able missionary, our highly valued missionary, our well-known missionary, and so on and so on, but in God’s sight he is a contemptible hireling.

Every missionary ought to be a self-sacrificing man, and every missionary worthy of the name is a self-sacrificing man. Still, the true missionary will not look upon himself as a self-sacrificing man, neither will he speak of his work, and the trials in connection with it, as if he looked upon God as his debtor. His sense of indebtedness to his God and Saviour will make it impossible for him to do that. “Can that be called a sacrifice,” asked Dr. Livingstone, “ which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to God which we can never repay? Say, rather it is a privilege.”

Then the missionary finds that his best work is very poor and imperfect, and that, try as he will, he can never come up to his own ideal. “My doings! my doings!” said John Elliot, the apostle of the Indians, “they have been poor and lean doings. Oh, child of the dust, lie low; it is Christ that hath triumphed.”

Such is the Christian’s true life. Such emphatically is the missionary’s true life. But how far is this life from being fully realised by Christians generally? How far from being fully realised by ministers at home and missionaries abroad? How far from being fully realised by any one of us? Some of us may have lofty ideals as to what we should be in this respect; but is there one among us who has realised his ideal?

Some will sacrifice much in one direction, but not in another. They will sacrifice in the line of their liking. But can that be called a sacrifice which a man does in the line of his liking? Ask them to step out of that line, and you will find that the idea of the Cross has never entered into their conception of the Christian life. For instance, some will talk much and talk eloquently, but are slow to do. They are born preachers, and their Christian life begins and ends in telling others what to do.

We must be prepared to sacrifice in all directions. The element of self-pleasing must be cast out, and the will of God must become to us the one law of our being. What some seek in the Christian life is the salvation of their own souls. This is a worthy aim.

PR

This excerpt is a chapter from Griffith John, A Voice in the Darkness: Lessons from 60 Years in Ancient China (Underground Publishing, 2023). Used with permission.

For more about Underground Publishing, read the PneumaReview.com interview with Bethany Hope about rediscovering the writings of missionaries and Christian pioneers.

Despite the fact that we, as mere fading mortals, go out of our way to not think about death, great works of art and literature tend to inexplicably draw us into the obscure world of mortality. The End of the Christian Life is one of the latest books to wrestle with this topic—a topic that is increasingly inconsistent with mainstream cultural mores. J. Todd Billings provides a freshness and unobscured clarity to a difficult conversation that can be attributed both to his erudite scholarship and present experience with terminal cancer. Billings increases the veracity of his book by engaging with numerous authoritative voices—from early Church Fathers to contemporary scholars. Based strictly on the title, this book concerns a critical phase in the life of a Christian, but believers and non-believers alike, who want to know how to “truly live,” will benefit greatly from the gems found at the surface and buried beneath.

Following the informative introduction, chapter one presents the reader to the pit of Sheol where those who are imprisoned within it feel abandoned, helpless, and cut off from God. Contrary to the belief of some, “no mortal lives for long without visiting Sheol for a time,” Billings muses (p. 30). Often Sheol is experienced in the death of someone close to us, frustrating our attempt for complete control over life. Our consistent denial of the recurring experience of Sheol engenders a false sense of control. Maybe we should stop fighting, “open our eyes and breathe deeply in the Pit itself,” Billings suggests (p. 45).

Billings ponders the views of his friend Walter and that of Irenaeus, a second-century bishop, both of whom approached death as part of a divine pedagogy, in the second chapter, “Two Views of Mortality.” Contrasting views, as seen through the theology of St. Augustine and the author’s experience of the memorial service for his friend Melissa, are then presented as a counterbalance. Although death may testify to God’s love for us, it is both irrational and a consequence of sin (p. 66). The reality of these opposing views is that both death and dying are, simultaneously, gifts of the “arc of human life,” and “an enigma and a wound” that point us to the redemptive death of Christ (pp. 57, 68).

Chapter five addresses two extant views of flourishing—the so-called prosperity gospel, and God’s counterview. With cancer patients as his focus, Billings talks about the religious hope that keeps them enheartened and living. He finds that deeply religious patients choose extreme measures of treatment, their risky choices revealing their view of flourishing. How Christians are formed theologically leads to important questions such as, where does our hope lie, how does God act in this world, and does God want us to prosper? Billings looks at the theology of healing as espoused by Joseph Prince and then turns to the teachings of St. Paul to examine the difference between how humans and God define prosperity. He completes this chapter by redirecting the discussion towards the Pauline emphasis of a life hidden with Christ.

Timing is everything, so it goes without saying that this book could not have been released at a better time. The global COVID-19 pandemic and its hourly coverage by an impassioned media has served to remind us of our frailty by resurrecting a once-dormant fear of mortality. Dying and death is the obvious theme of the book, but this is ameliorated by many other themes such as the human desire for control over death, and the idolatrous trust in modern medicine. I was encouraged by how the author treats these universal human perceptions with informed grace. All Christians and non-Christians will recognize themselves—their thoughts and attitudes—within the pages of this book and not feel condemned. Also, I found the discussion questions placed at the end of each chapter helpful for assimilating what was read. My only frustration was found in a minor misstep that fails to include Christians from outside of the Reformed faith tradition. Some readers may be uncomfortable with Billings’ implicit theology of God’s sovereignty, water baptism, and irresistible grace; however, any noticeable doctrinal differences do not detract from the book’s overall message. Altogether, J. Todd Billings offers to his audience a gripping message of resurrection hope in Christ, thereby lifting everyone with faith in God, up and out of the deep, dark, and ensnaring pit of Sheol.

Reviewed by Joseph R. Fiorentino

This book review previously appeared in Didaskalia: The Journal of Providence Theological Seminary, Volume 30 2021-2022, CS ISSN #0847-1266. Used with permission.

Publisher’s page: http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/the-end-of-the-christian-life/392000

A Week in the Life of a Greco-Roman Woman is the sixth book in A Week in the Life Series from InterVarsity Press. Previously published are: A Week in the Life of Corinth, A Roman Centurion, Fall of Jerusalem, Rome, and A Slave. These books attempt to combine historical fiction with historical and archaeological data. Dr. Holly Beers, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Westmont College, is eminently qualified because of her doctorate in New Testament and past studies in the gospels (The Followers of Jesus as the Servant). She is also a member of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Institute for Biblical Research, Society of Biblical Literature, and Evangelical Theological Society. Her portrayal of the Greco-Roman life is commensurate with the historical and archaeological data that we have.

The concept for the series is a creative one, aimed to reach a larger audience with the story of the early church. Greco-Roman Woman is the story of Anthia, wife of Philetus, a fisherman in Ephesus, during the early first century period when Paul, Priscilla, Aquila, and Timothy are ministering in Ephesus (Acts 19; c. AD 53-55). Unlike many historical studies of the past, Beers mainly highlights the lives of the poor and of women, those who lived day by day for their “daily bread.” She begins with a delivery of a stillborn baby that results in the death of the mother, Dorema, Anthia’s friend (Prologue). Then a regular day is catalogued in a fisher family’s life (day 1); the pregnant Anthia’s onset of her own bleeding (day 2), a neighbor’s (Lampo) son Euxinus’s suffering from fever, while not being healed by idols Asclepius or Artemis, but by Jesus (day 3); Anthia shopping for food in the agora (while she still bleeds) (day 4); Anthia discovering her husband Philetus visiting a prostitute while she herself attends a Christian service led by Paul and Priscilla, where Anthia is healed (day 5); a Christian (Epaenetus) leading the other Christians in publicly burning his expensive magic books (day 6); ending on a rainy day with Anthia’s summary thoughts about the generosity of the Christians, the healed fetus, but the anger of her husband (day 7). The book ends with Anthia asking herself if she should “transfer” her loyalty to “Jesus and the Way? What about Philetus—his honor and his anger—if he discovers me? What might this cost me?” (166). It was a very full week.

But, in contrast, Beers presents a beautiful picture of the Christians and Christianity. She portrays an attractive picture of Christian equality between male and female, rich and poor, slave and free (e.g., 124). Worship at Ephesus is described from 1 Corinthians 14:26 where “everyone contributes” (123). The Christians by prayer (and by handkerchief!) (see Acts 19:12) heal all who ask. The poor are assisted by the wealthy Christians with a generosity of food and employment opportunities (e.g., 164). Paul asks Priscilla to help with communion (120).

The intention to combine historical fiction with archaeological and historical data is not always successful, in my opinion. Some of the previous authors in the Week in the Life Series used footnotes and others used inserts of explanatory text. In Greco-Roman Woman, the data is inserted periodically throughout the chapter. I found the nonfictional data intrusive in the narrative. In addition, the narrative does not provide a clear portrayal of the characters. The plot does not sweep the reader along. Eventually, I read the inserts at the end of each chapter so as not to break up the narrative flow. The value of Greco-Roman Woman is it provides the reader with a feeling for everyday ancient first century life so that we learn in narrative form about the life of a poor woman in Ephesus who is beginning to learn about Christianity. What were her costly challenges in becoming a Christian? Beers has done much research to present to the twenty-first century reader the challenges and differences of living in the first century. For all Beer’s research, we should be most thankful.

Reviewed by Aída Besançon Spencer

Publisher’s Page: https://www.ivpress.com/a-week-in-the-life-of-a-greco-roman-woman

Valentyn Svit shares three of the ways we can be assured we are following the voice of the Holy Spirit.

You’re driving on the way to work and you hear a voice speak to you in your mind:

“Move to California.” You look around. The radio is off and everything is quiet.

Now you’re wondering… where in the world did this thought come from?

Was this because I watched that documentary last night on Yosemite or is this God trying to say something to me?

In these crucial moments, it’s important to be able to know the real from the fake.

In this article, I’m going to show you 3 practical ways to discern the voice of God in your life so that you can know when He’s speaking to you with confidence.

Here’s what you need to know.

1. The Bible

If God truly is speaking to you, He will never contradict Himself. One of the best ways to confirm what you’ve heard is really from the Lord is to compare it to what the Bible says.

For Example: The Lord will never ask you to lie, steal, or sin in any way, no matter what the circumstances look like.

If you know that what you’re hearing goes against the Bible you can be sure that it’s either your voice or the voice of the enemy.

I know what you might be thinking…

What about an answer to a question that is more neutral? Something like:

“Yes, you should take that job offer.” How can you confirm that?

That brings us to number 2.

Tolkien: A Life of Love, Courage, and Fellowship

I was skeptical. I fully expected the film to about the inspiration behind The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and these were represented, but not the focus. If you are familiar with his works, then you will easily find glimpses here and there, but if you have never picked up a Tolkien title, the experience is still powerful.

I am no longer skeptical. The film is about the man, which includes his imagination, but centers on who J. R. R. Tolkien was, the friends that influenced his early years before WWI, his abiding love for Edith Bratt, and his passion for words: wonderful, meaningful, inspiring words. The sound of them, the depth of them, their story.

And there’s the rub. If you are fond of the English language, of literature, Tolkien the film will move you. And I am pleased to say, there are no verbal vulgarities (though some brief nude art appears).

Some that love his writings have written concerns about how Tolkien’s Catholic faith is not on display in the film. Colm Meaney plays Father Frances in the film, he was a man of considerable influence on Tolkien’s life and was his legal guardian after the death of his parents. There is no question that Tolkien’s faith was well established and vocalized in his latter years, he was even instrumental in helping C. S. Lewis come to faith. However, it may not have been as important when he was of college age and younger—the predominant period covered in the film.

If the film had any fault, the soundtrack was highly synthesized and ignorable.

The characters are believable with some fine teen actors as well as established thespians like Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins, the previously mentioned Colm Meaney, and Sir Derek Jacobi. This is Disney’s first release of a Fox film since the merger, which is a tad ironic, as Tolkien allegedly despised Walt Disney’s butchery of classic literature.

To what degree the film is historically accurate, I do not know nor care. If you have considered going—go soon. It has limited cinematic release and won’t be in theaters for long.

Reviewed by Kevin Williams

Editor’s update: The DVD was released on August 6, 2019.

Eccentric Prophets

Some people try to justify their conclusion that it is spiritual to act strange by pointing to the eccentric behavior of prophets in the Old Testament. For example, Isaiah walked around naked (Isaiah 20:1–4)—some scholars say, wearing only an undergarment—and Ezekiel lay on his side for 430 days (Ezekiel 4:4–6). Some also point to Saul, who “changed into a different person” when the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he prophesied (1 Samuel 10:6, 10).

These examples, however, don’t prove that one should expect to act strangely if one is to be truly spiritual. First of all, Saul might have just “changed into a different person” in the sense that “God changed Saul’s heart” before he prophesied (v. 9).

The Frantic Prophets of Baal

Furthermore, when you read about the prophets in the Old Testament, you don’t get the sense that the prophets were usually ecstatic and acting strangely. To illustrate the point, when Elijah had his standoff at Mount Carmel, it was the prophets of Baal who “danced around the altar they had made,” shouted, slashed themselves with swords, and engaged in “frantic prophesying,” while they endeavored to get Baal to send fire on their sacrifice (1 Kings 18:26–29). By contrast, when Elijah called on God to send fire on his sacrifice, he merely “stepped forward and prayed” (v. 36).

Strange or out-of-the-ordinary things might happen when people experience the Spirit—like speaking in tongues, dreams, or visions (Joel 2:28)—but such experiences are not the primary indicator of spirituality. That is a myth!

Spirit with Hardships

Another myth some Christians believe is that people who are really Spirit-filled will always experience victory. This belief is a cousin to the idea that if you have enough faith you will always experience health and wealth.

Just as faith doesn’t guarantee a life free of disappointments and hardships, the Spirit-filled life is not a life free of disappointments and hardships. Jesus is the epitome of spirituality, but he never became an earthly king. Instead, “through the eternal Spirit [he] offered himself unblemished to God” so his death might give us life (Hebrews 9:14).

In the Bible, “the one who is victorious” (Revelation 2:11) may suffer and face poverty (v. 9). Their victory is that they resist their culture’s anti-Christian values and are “faithful, even to the point of death” (v. 10). And their “victor’s crown” is eternal life, not achieving success in the eyes of the world around them (vv. 10–11).

Recent scholarship on the rapid expansion of Christianity in the Global South consistently affirms the Pentecostalization of the church. Scholars are producing histories and theologies on the efforts of Pentecostal missionaries from the Global North and the rise of independent Pentecostal churches (hence the series at hand). In this work, Jakob Egeris Thorsen gives a much-needed history and analysis of another dimension of Global South Pentecostalization, namely the role of Charismatic experience and praxis within Catholic parish life.

In this revision of his PhD dissertation defended at Aarhus University in Denmark, Thorsen delivers a Missionwissenschaft, a methodological blend between science of religion and mission theology, to assess the rise of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) in Latin America and specifically Guatemala. Thorsen argues that the rapid Pentecostalization of the Catholic Church created increased blurring between CCR and the institutional Church. He discovers renewalists who reject institutional religion for more particularistic and countercultural praxis and witness, but paradoxically remain in the tradition and embrace institutional hierarchy.

Thorsen focuses on the religious life of Charismatic and non-Charismatic Catholics in La Colonia, a small parish in the lower middle-class district of Santísima Trinidad on the outskirts of Guatemala City. He conducted six months of fieldwork in this small Guatemalan Charismatic Catholic parish (from June to December 2009) in order to assess the ecclesial contributions of Guatemalan Charismatics, particularly their negotiation of parish life alongside priests, bishops, non-Charismatics, and non-Catholic Pentecostals. Apart from routine participation in weekly parish events, Thorsen concentrated his research on three Charismatic groups, namely, a full-scale Charismatic youth group, a soft-Charismatic Bible study, and an upper middle-class non-parish based Charismatic youth group. He conducted more than thirty interviews of parish members including Charismatic and non-Charismatic parishioners as well as four priests and two Charismatic auxiliary bishops. Along the way, Thorsen reveals his personal connection and possible motivation for this project; he first came to Guatemala as a sixteen-year-old high school exchange student and subsequently converted to Catholicism in his early twenties. Thorsen’s wife is from this community, and their daughter was baptized in this parish. He describes himself as a non-Charismatic lay theologian and a friendly critic of the CCR.

PneumaReview.com speaks with Christian historian and renewalist, Frank Billman, about John Wesley, the Methodist Church, and the supernatural ministry of the Holy Spirit today.

PneumaReview.com: You have written a book called The Supernatural Thread in Methodism. Please tell our readers a little bit about the book.

Frank H. Billman, The Supernatural Thread in Methodism: Signs and Wonders Among Methodists Then and Now (Creation House, 2013).

Frank Billman: I have always had an interest in history, especially church history. And when I took the Methodist history course required for United Methodist ordination at a United Methodist seminary, I really enjoyed the course. The course was taught by the author of the textbook we used, a well-known Methodist historian. However, sometime after seminary graduation I began to read some other books and articles that highlighted supernatural elements of our Methodist history that I never learned about in seminary—like John Wesley praying for healing and casting out demons, and experiencing angelic encounters, and even raising a man from the dead. Wesley taught that all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Bible (including speaking in tongues) are valid for today. Methodists rested in the Spirit, and experienced trances and visions and dreams. The power of God would show up in Methodist preaching services, love feasts, communion services, camp meetings, even annual conference sessions. This supernatural history is not only the heritage of United Methodists, but all the denominations today that trace their history back to John Wesley and the Methodists.

So as I would share in various settings about what I found in our history I was encouraged to gather my findings together in a book. It was published by Creation House Press, a publishing arm of Charisma Magazine. Charisma Media shut down that part of their publishing business so the book has gone out of print. (Aldersgate Renewal Ministries still has some copies and I have some.) I am in the process of revising and updating the book with some additional chapters and I need to connect with a new publisher.

PneumaReview.com: How did you personally come into the charismatic experience of the Spirit?

Frank Billman: I grew up in the Methodist Church. My parents and grandparents were Methodists. I gave my life to Christ at a Lay Witness Mission that came to our Methodist church in Philadelphia when I was in high school. Although this event was not about the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit was very much a part of that weekend. It was during that weekend that I first heard people speak in tongues.

When I went to college I got involved with a Catholic Charismatic prayer group. Although the majority of those in this group were Catholic there were also a number of us Protestants from various denominations. That group prayed for me to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and shortly thereafter I began to speak in tongues. In my college and seminary years I was involved with a number of different charismatic groups. And when I graduated from seminary and began pastoring a local United Methodist church I knew I would have to find some like-minded Spirit-filled United Methodists if I was going to survive.

When: March 1, 2018, 8 p.m.

Where:  Thin Man Brewery in Buffalo, New York.
Thin Man Brewery, 492 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo, New York 14222

Can a person practice charismatic spirituality and be intellectually serious? What are the philosophical implications of an active engagement in a spiritual world?

Dr. Amos Yong is Professor of Theology and Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

Dr. Yong has authored or edited almost four dozen volumes, including In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology and Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences (with James K.A. Smith).

Amos Yong writes: “We’ll see what the Spirit has to say among the spirits present at this event! Come and join us if you can.”

Buy your ticket (meal included) at the door or online: atonement.gvtls.com

The Nickel City Forum is a monthly gathering to learn about and discuss big ideas: theology, ethics, and culture. NCF is organized under Church of the Atonement. http://www.atonementbuffalo.com

Information temporarily available at: https://www.nickelcityforum.com/this-month/