Paul King, who is a Bible teacher, evangelist, educator, historian, pastor, and cancer survivor, has distinguished qualifications to talk about what God has done and what God is doing. In this interview with PneumaReview.com, we speak with him about his own story and his recent book, Is It of God? that addresses crucial questions about biblical discernment.

PneumaReview.com: Please tell our readers how you came into the Charismatic Renewal.

Paul King: I grew up in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, which believed in the filling of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit on paper, but little in practice because of fear of Pentecostal excesses. I was baptized in the Spirit in my first year of college, out of the ongoing overflow of the Asbury College revival in February 1970. I was attending Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, and had returned from a beach evangelism team to Florida, feeling very frustrated that I had no power to witness. A student ministry team from the Asbury Revival came to Beaver Falls in April 1970, sharing their testimonies of the great outpouring of the Spirit upon the students. They had something I didn’t have and I began seeking. A few weeks later, I wandered into an Assemblies of God church and the pastor laid hands on me and prayed for me. I did not speak in tongues, but I went out from there with a power I never had before, and I began doing street witnessing with great power and effects, and kids were getting saved.

Even though my Pentecostal friends said I didn’t get it, I did realize that although I didn’t speak in tongues, Jesus said the evidence of the baptism in the Spirit was power to be a witness (Acts 1:8). My ministry was so powerful and effective that Young Life asked me to join their staff. I prayed for the Lord to give me His better gifts, not tongues. I began to get words of prophecy and supernatural words of knowledge even though I had not spoken in tongues. But the Lord convicted me, saying, “If you are not willing to receive what you consider the least of my gifts, what makes you think you should receive any of my gifts?” I was so humbled and convicted, I repented, and began praying, “Lord, I want what you want. If you want me to speak in tongues, I want to speak in tongues. If you don’t want me to speak in tongues, I don’t want to speak in tongues. I was praying this 10 months after I was baptized in the Spirit while driving to my uncle’s home to paint his house. Strange words came to my mind and I spoke them out. I prayed, “Lord, if this is genuine, give me an interpretation.” Immediately to my mind came the words, “The arm of the Lord is extended to you,” and I knew it was real. I had no emotion like I did when I was baptized in the Spirit, just a calm peace (Good thing while I was driving!)

Jesus the Lord according to Paul the Apostle will both educate and resonate well with its intended audience. One who has heard Gordon Fee preach can hear him preaching in this book, passionately communicating the fruits of his exegesis in language that can profit nonscholars as well as academicians. As I noted in my comments to the publisher, the book is “intertextually rich and theologically provocative,” inviting readers “to rethink traditional academic constructions of Paul’s theology in light of the primary data provided more conspicuously by Paul’s own letters.” While not ignorant of wider scholarly opinions, in this book Fee plunges the reader into more immediate contact with Paul’s own words.

Fee’s extensive Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Hendrickson, 2007; Baker, 2013), which treats all the present work’s questions in far greater detail, is not on a level accessible to the average reader (sort of like my four-volume Acts commentary). By contrast, Jesus the Lord offers a more accessible introduction, in the way that his Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God (1996) complemented Fee’s larger academic tome on Pauline pneumatology, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (1994).

Jesus the Lord according to Paul the Apostle is certainly accessible. The foreword also is a touching tribute from Fee’s daughter Cherith Fee Nordling, a theologian in her own right.

As an exegete who has written commentaries on 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, the Thessalonian correspondence and the Pastorals, Fee systematizes some elements of Pauline Christology only after inductive study of the biblical text. Granted, he displays unabashed theological commitments, but they are commitments ably articulated and defended, reflecting carefully considered convictions. For example, although he sees Jesus as divine, he rejects application of the title “God” to Jesus in Rom 9:5 (124n1).

Some of the convictions that he articulates are less widely shared than others. As defended in his Pastorals commentary, Fee accepts a thirteen-letter Pauline canon (albeit with a different amanuensis and thus different vocabulary in the Pastorals; cf. Jesus the Lord, 125n1). Nevertheless, Fee establishes his central case for divine Christology more than adequately from the undisputed letters. (Given their distinctive content, the Pastorals do not figure as heavily in this work as do the earlier letters in any case.) For those of us who do accept the more disputed letters as Pauline at any level, however, Fee’s treatment of ideas there, alongside those in the undisputed epistles, may prove very enlightening for interpretation.

Although a more popular work includes much less documentation than the academic work on which it is based, it can sometimes also provide a more mature synthesis of the issues, highlighting the issues that further reflection deems most central. In Jesus the Lord, Fee develops the central elements of his case clearly.

When: Wednesday, May 30, 2018, 9 am to 3 pm.

Where: All Gospel Church in the city of San Fernando, Philippines.

Not gifts, not healing, not revival—seek the LORD.

Thus says the Lord to the house of Israel, seek Me and live. But do not seek Bethel, nor enter Gilgal, nor cross over to Beersheba. Seek the Lord, and Live (Amos 5:4-6a).

Definition: To “seek the Lord” means that we move from an approach to God that is centered in ourselves with our own self-interests at the forefront, to an approach that is centered in Him with His interests at the forefront of the relationship. We must no longer relate to God on the basis of what He can do for us, but on the basis of how we can know Him and be more fully conformed to His will and purpose.

Here some practical suggestions for making the transition. Understand that I am not suggesting that we should never ask God for anything. But as a matter of principal, we must change our attitude from one that is ego-centered in me and my needs and desires to one that is centered in the Lord, His kingdom, and His will.

Don’t Seek Gifts, Seek the Giver of Gifts

In the early 1950s a certain pastor attended a William Branham crusade and was awed by the miraculous gifts that he saw demonstrated through Brother Branham. This pastor returned home and announced to his wife and congregation that he was shutting himself away in his office to fast and pray until God gave him a ministry like Brother Branham. He fasted for 84 days and died without hearing anything from God. What was the problem? He was not seeking the Lord. His fasting and praying were self-serving. He was seeking a ministry that he thought would give him personal status and prestige. If the modern charismatic movement is to move to the next level of God’s will and purpose, we must move away from an approach to God that is self-serving to one that gives priority to knowing and serving Him.

The LORD ALMIGHTY sent me this message: Say to all your people and your priests, “During those seventy years of exile, when you fasted and mourned in the summer and at the festival in early autumn, was it really for Me that you were fasting? And even now in your holy festivals, you don’t think about Me but only of pleasing yourselves (Zech. 7:4-6).

Don’t Seek Healing, Seek the Healer

When I was 3 weeks old my 7-year-old brother, nicknamed Pete, was run over by a large farming tractor that also pulled the large discs behind it over him. Unconscious and with blood bubbling from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears, my parents rushed him to the nearest hospital where he was examined by three physicians. They all agreed in their assessment that he would not live more than 10 minutes since he had, at least, a broken rib that had punctured a lung.

How is it that early Christians, who were mainly monotheistic Jews, showed such devotion, even worship, to Jesus Christ while still worshipping God in heaven? Larry Hurtado answers that question and more in this book and he does it in intricate, scholarly detail. In fact, Hurtado argues that this attitude towards Jesus stretches back to earliest Christianity in Jerusalem. This doctrine, this concept, he says, did not arise out of much later reflection and theological development, as some would argue.

He begins by setting his study in the context of first century Jewish monotheism, making it clear that generally the Jews of that time believed in one God and one God only. He then shows that from early on Christians, while still demonstrating devotion and worship to God in heaven, also demonstrated devotion and worship to Jesus Christ, a man dead but risen. In other words, these monotheistic Jews engaged in “binitarian” worship.

Hurtado examines Paul’s letters in chapter two, arguing that they are the earliest forms of Christian writing available to us. Hurtado notes that while Jewish critics of Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles complained about his mixing with Gentiles and his attitude to the Law, particularly his apparent rejection of circumcision, none seems to have complained about his using divine terms for this risen Jesus. Whilst arguments from silence can prove little or nothing, sometimes they carry weight, and this one, I believe, does that. The conclusion Hurtado draws is that the reason they did not reject Paul’s teaching on “devotion to Jesus” was because they too were teaching it and that even before Paul did. Indeed, Hurtado wonders whether this could be one of the reasons Paul originally so strongly opposed Christianity.

Even in Paul’s early writings “devotion to Christ is presupposed”. This would date its origins to not later than the 40s A.D. For example, in the first chapter of 1 Thessalonians (probably written in 50 A.D.) Paul speaks of “our Lord [kyrios] Jesus Christ” (v.3) and of God’s “Son from heaven … Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath” (vv.9-10). Scholars commonly regard Philippians 2:5-12, which begins “Christ Jesus, ‘Who, being in very nature God …’”, as an early Christian hymn that Paul uses in his letter. That hymn, if such it is, glorifies Christ in unmistakable terms. If that letter was written in about 60 A.D., as is commonly believed, then that hymn must have been composed earlier, perhaps much earlier.

In fact, this belief and its associated practices seem to have become common remarkably early in different Christian groups. Hurtado says, “for such a major cultic innovation to have so quickly become widespread, conventionalized, and uncontroversial among various Christian groups, it must necessarily have originated among one or more sufficiently influential, respected, and very early circle of believers.”

After looking at Paul’s letters Hurtado goes on to examine “Judean Jewish Christianity”, the synoptic Gospels, and then John’s Gospel. After that he looks at early Christian writings that are not part of Scripture, and in the process moves into the second century.

John’s Gospel is generally regarded as the last of the four Gospels to have been written, but it (or most of it, some would argue) was still written in the first century, so soon after the events it speaks of. Yet John’s Gospel has an undeniably high view of Jesus. A striking example of this is John’s frequent recording of “I am” (Gk. egō eimi) on the lips of Jesus, most significantly “before Abraham was born, I am!” (Jn. 8:58). Hurtado says, “this absolute use of ‘I am’ in the Gospels amounts to nothing less than designating Jesus with the same referential formula that is used in the Greek Old Testament for God’s own self-declaration.”

Strikingly, Hurtado also suggests that John’s portrayal of Jesus as the Word (logos) in his first chapter is not really connected with the Old Testament concept of wisdom, as is often suggested. Rather it is more related to “the name of God and the angel of the Lord” found in the Old Testament and later “Jewish traditions”.

Image: Bill Williams.

Easter is the centerpiece of the Christian Faith. It is the annual celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The proclamation of “He is risen” and its response “He is risen indeed” will keynote Easter services all over the world. The only reason I write these words is that resurrection.

The Apostle Paul wrote that if Christ did not rise, our faith is in vain; useless, meaningless, totally lacking in value and merit; a waste of time. But when Paul wrote those words, he had already encountered the risen Christ. Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus. That momentary meeting changed Paul from one who persecuted the followers of Christ into one who led them and still today leads and shapes the church through his writings.

Paul wrote that anyone who becomes in Christ is a new creation and that everything in that person becomes new; the old passes away. We learn from Paul that while sin came into the world by the disobedience of one man, that redemption, grace and truth which readily overcomes the evil and the consequence of sin also came by one man, the one we call Jesus, savior, the lover of our soul.

Jesus loves us. Moreover Jesus loves you. I heard those words for the first time 45 years ago. I was still a young man when I heard those wonderful words: “Jesus loves Murray”. Jesus was standing at the door of my heart, knocking and hoping that I would open that door and invite him to come in.

I heard those words that day and invited Jesus into my heart. I did not understand what was to come. I had no background in this form of thought. I only knew that I wanted to be loved by God; that I needed a savior. I wanted the circumstances I faced to change.

So I swallowed my pride, my self assurance, my assumptions, traditions and simply, in my mind’s eye, opened that door and asked Jesus to come into my heart. And he did! Something happened, something wonderful, so wonderful that 45 years later I invite you to do what I did. Jesus loves you, dear one. He is standing at the door of your heart and knocking right now. Jesus is hoping that you will invite him in.

Will you? If you do, this Easter season will be filled with delight and wonder. You will become a child of the King. King Jesus, son of God and son of man. He is the mighty God whose arm is not short but able to save all who call on him.

This article was originally featured in two daily newspapers in Hawaii on Easter Sunday, 2006.

In the published world of often confusing or even misleading titles and subtitles, this collection offers clearly what its title promises: perspectives on constructive pneumatology. The authors of the ten chapters are well-known theologians from a variety of Christian perspectives and speak from these traditions to a common concern for a more complete understanding of the Holy Spirit. The editor provides both a general introduction to the book and a historical introduction to the range of existing theologies of the Holy Spirit that opens up the space for various themes of constructive pneumatology, touching on the relationship between Spirit and Scripture, the Spirit and world religions, and the Spirit’s presence in the world.

Essays by Amy Plantiga Pauw and Moly T. Marshall address the relationship of the Spirit and the biblical texts. Pauw connects with the editor’s theme of discernment and shows that a reading of Scripture without the Spirit can lead to a manipulation of the Word, and she suggests that Scripture itself needs to be exorcised from any false spirits. Marshall focuses on how the reading of Scripture can be understood as the Spirit’s activity that makes possible understanding and consensus, not only in our use of the Bible but also in our relationship with one another.

Essays by Roger Haight and Amos Yong speak to the question of the Spirit’s relationship to other religions and faith traditions. Haight explores how the “symbol of the Spirit of God” extends the important relationship between Christ and other religions and proposes that Christians must conclude that the Spirit is operative in other religions. His essay examines different strategies for using traditional theological language and shows how understanding the Spirit as symbol can inform a (cosmic) Christian understanding of God at work in the world. Yong’s essay investigates a pneumatological understanding of hospitality as a root metaphor for the Christian engagement of other religions. Engaging in dialogue the basic Christian attitudes of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism, Yong proposes that a hermeneutic of hospitality – from a pneumatological perspective – can offer clarity and invigorate Christian relations with the worlds of other faiths.

The concluding essays by Rieger and Cobb venture more closely into the world of political theology. Rieger analyzes the relationship of Spirit and empire and the possibility of resistance. The embodied Spirit, Rieger argues, overcomes the fragmentation of the postcolonial empire and bring a new sense of personhood and relationship. Cobb concludes the collection with a sweeping investigation of the Holy Spirit and the present age. Engaging economic and political tensions in today’s world, Cobb sees the Spirit as the power of balance, resistance, and transformation.