You’ve seen it before … an old house that goes through an extreme makeover—It’s like a brand new home!

The attraction is the compelling contrast between life before and life after.

Image: Milivoj Kuhar

Consider, then, the contrast between the Christian life before and the Christian life after the Holy Spirit comes upon you!

After for Christians:

• receive power, be witnesses (Acts 1:8)
• magnify God (Acts 10:46)
• live according to the Spirit (Rom. 8:5)
• put to death the deeds of the body (Rom. 8:13)
• receive gifts of the Spirit (I Cor. 12:4)
• walk in the Spirit (Gal. 5:16)
• be led by the Spirit (Gal. 5:18)

This is the Promise. The Gift is the Holy Spirit. Embrace the Spirit on this Pentecost weekend!

Scot McKnight shows in this book that the vision of Heaven the Bible gives is precisely what we need for a vision of what life should be on earth through Jesus by the gospel through the church.

If you want a book recounting traditional teaching from scripture on Heaven, you need to look elsewhere. But if you want a book that moves toward breaking new ground and is potentially a paradigm changer in one’s faith, you’ve found a great book here.

McKnight begins by considering how the subject has been approached, and how it ought to be approached. McKnight’s writings seek to be true to what the Bible says. In McKnight’s understanding, the reason Heaven matters is because God promised it to us. Thus, it’s as good as the God who promised it. And the promise of Heaven relies on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Heaven is a resurrection world.

The most important part of the book is the groundwork McKnight lays from scripture, listening and challenging tradition. Orthodoxy is often much wider than many seem to acknowledge. The important thing is to remain faithful to the spirit and truth of the gospel.

Heaven is essentially the promise from God in and through Jesus and Jesus’s resurrection from the dead. What will be true of Heaven? God will be God, Jesus will be Jesus, Heaven will be the utopia of pleasures, Heaven will be eternal life, Heaven will be an eternal global fellowship, and Heaven will be an eternal beloved community.

What will the first hour of Heaven will be like? McKnight’s view is a stark contrast from the traditional Roman Catholic view of Purgatory. His emphasis is not on human cooperation but on God’s grace. Entrance into Heaven will be a transformation that will leave no stones unturned, including the need for reconciliation in what was left of very broken relationships on earth.

The issues addressed near the end of the book are near-death experiences, rewards in Heaven, who will be there, the fairness of God, whether our children and even spouses still have a special relationship to us, children who die, cremation, purgatory, pets in Heaven, and why one should believe in Heaven in the first place. Be ready for some surprises, and to be challenged as to what scripture actually teaches on some things. McKnight places an appropriate emphasis on the hope and the wideness of God’s mercy without resorting to universalism.

The two great views of Heaven in the church, that it is an ecstatic worship experience largely between gathered individuals and their God, or that it is a time of great communion in love and work and service in the kingdom end up being joined together in God’s vision of Heaven from scripture. Heaven is a dynamic, not static existence.

I would commend this book as a good model to help us think biblically. This book helps us see that the vision of Heaven is related to the entire Story found in scripture. Our view of Heaven directly impacts our view of earth and life in the present, since Heaven is destined to come down to be joined to and become one with earth in Jesus. God’s will is to be perfectly done on earth as it is in heaven.

Reviewed by Ted Gossard

Engage Further:

“Scot McKnight Answers Questions on the Topic of Heaven – The Heaven Promise” [Vimeo]

Scot McKnight, “10 Things I Wish Everyone Knew About Heaven: Who will be there? Are near-death experiences reliable? And more on eternal life” On Faith (October 6, 2015).

Scot McKnight, “The Heaven Promise Podcast” Jesus Creed (November 5, 2015).

Preview The Heaven Promise: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Heaven_Promise.html?id=JHYlBgAAQBAJ

Publisher’s page: http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/books/236717/the-heaven-promise-by-scot-mcknight/

In the days of Pasteur and Lister, was the Divine Healing movement out of touch with what American society believed about medicine?

Introduction

The late nineteenth century was a time of monumental change. It witnessed a cyclone of transformation and progress rivaling, at least, that of any preceding era. Not surprisingly, it was a time of key advances in medical science. This era was home to Pasteur, Röntgen, Lister, and a number of lesser known, but still significant, medical pioneers. These inventors and their discoveries radically reshaped and significantly advanced the practice of medicine. New advances seemed to be dawning with every new day. At the end of the nineteenth century, the promise of medical science seemed unlimited.

At the same time, the late nineteenth century also saw religious change. There was the emergence of the Divine Healing movement, a loosely associated group of religious teachers and practitioners who sought to promote and practice the healing power of the indwelling and resurrected Christ over that of natural means. This movement gained tens of thousands of adherents in a significantly short span of time. Key figures in this group included people from a wide-variety of denominations, men and women, ministers and physicians. Furthermore, this movement played an essential role in the birth of Pentecostalism,¹ the greatest religious movement of the twentieth century.

Therefore, there rose simultaneously on the American landscape at least two significant approaches to health and healing in the late nineteenth century, each with its own biased and ardent champions and devotees. Yet, the opinion of the late nineteenth-century Divine Healing teachers did not, as one might expect, thoroughly dispense with the value and goodness of physicians, their diagnoses, and medical treatment. While they did not completely dismiss the advances, usefulness, and propriety of medical science, they did assert that it was, at best, a deficient approach to the gravity, complexity, and depth of human disease. While they believed that physicians and their medical treatments may be gifts from God, they were convinced that medical science was fundamentally unable to bring to humanity the kind of health and life intended for them by God and found solely in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ.

This chapter will explore those common and key responses—both the affirmations and the denials—of the late nineteenth-century Divine Healing proponents to the growing popularity and use of medicine, remedies, and physicians.

Divine Healing Affirmations of Medical Science

Almost to a person, Divine Healing advocates readily granted that doctors and many of their treatments exist by the providence of God. A. B. Simpson, founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, noted that physicians and their medical treatments are “among God’s good gifts” to humanity.² Charles Cullis, the renowned Boston homeopath and father of the Divine Healing movement in the United States noted the “valuable” role that doctors and their treatments may play and continued his own homeopathic medical practice in harmony with his ministry of Divine Healing.³ Carrie Judd Montgomery, one of the Divine Healing movement’s more celebrated authors, speakers, and founder of the “Home of Peace” in Oakland, California, granted the skill of those physicians that worked with her during her own infirmity.⁴ One lesser-known figure, Kenneth McKenzie, a member of Simpson’s Christian and Missionary Alliance and author of no fewer than two significant texts on the theology and practice of Divine Healing, noted that only those with an immature theology of Divine Healing and “extremists” would deny that there is good in doctors and medicine.⁵ Furthermore, the fact that most Divine Healing proponents continued to refer to physicians as “Dr.” shows that only by caricature could one assert that Divine Healing movement saw absolutely no good or use in consulting with physicians and implementing their prescriptions.⁶

These affirmations of physicians and medical treatment by Divine Healing proponents, however, were not blanket endorsements. Rather, as we will see, they were limited to particular and specific arenas. What is particularly interesting is the seeming unanimity of the Divine Healing proponents in regard to those particular areas that they affirmed in regard to medical science. Almost universally, the Divine Healing teachers affirmed three separate but related aspects of the goodness of physicians and medical science: 1) the recent and substantial advances in medical science, 2) the physicians’ ability to diagnose the physical cause of disease, and 3) the physicians’ occasional ability to alleviate symptoms of disease.

As the title indicates, this book is concerned with who owns the Holy Land. At the outset, Gary Burge explains how he struggles with rival biblical versus historical claims to the land by both Jews and Arabs, asking if it can really be justifiable to evict Arabs who have lived on the land for centuries on the basis of an ancient promise made in the book of Joshua. He also questions the eschatological zeal driving Christian Zionism which he believes ignores major ethical problems in Israel today. Hence, Burge is keen to provide an alternative view of the situation in the Middle East to Christians he believes are not being told the entire story. Yet despite championing Palestinian self-determination without Israeli interference, nonetheless he also believes Israel’s security and right to exist must be secured if there is to be lasting peace in the region. Moreover, while the Old Testament covenant has been abrogated, this “should not diminish the church’s respect for Judaism nor the rights of the Jewish people to live in the land of Israel” (xviii).

The book begins with a description and historical survey of the land, before moving on to theme of land ownership in the Old Testament. Burge demonstrates how the land is intimately connected to God’s covenant with Abraham and Israel. Yet control of the land was conditional upon Israel’s faithfulness: “Possession of the land is linked to covenant fidelity” (74). Israel does not actually own the land, rather she is a tenant entrusted with it only as long as she is in a covenant relationship with God. Thus, the promise of the land is indeed eternal, but only provided Israel remains faithful to God.

Burge then moves on to explore the theme of the land in the New Testament, noting how, by and large, it is absent there. Focusing on the abrogation of the Old Testament law, he argues that the promises made to Abraham are now spiritualised in and through Jesus, who is a new Moses:

Jesus himself becomes the locus of the holy space … Just as Moses was leading the people of Israel to their promised land, so too, Jesus leads God’s people. But now we learn that Jesus himself is in reality that which the land had offered only in form. To grasp after land is like grasping after bread—when all along we should discover that Jesus is ‘the bread of life’ (175).

Gary M. Burge is professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School.

Thus, the book argues, the true descendants of Abraham (that is, Christians rather than simply Jews) will inherit the whole world, rather than simply the tiny strip of land which is modern day Israel. Yet Burge cannot quite bring himself to reject fully the notion that the Jews and Judaism retain some special significance in the divine plan, stating that unbelieving Judaism is still beloved of God and retains an ‘enduring role’. “For the sake of their history, for the sake of the promises made to their ancestors, God will retain a place for Jews in history” (187). But whether Burge is simply suggesting Jewish believers are grafted onto the Church (cf Rom 11:17ff), or else something more substantial, is unclear. The book concludes with a brief survey of Palestinian Christianity, a critique of Christian Zionism (“Many of us within the evangelical church are offended by Christian Zionism”, 246), and highlights Evangelical organisations that reject Christian Zionism.

Pastor Jack Hayford, President of the Foursquare Gospel Church purchased a special run of this book and mailed a copy of this book to every minister in his denomination. Hayford has traveled to Israel many times in the past 40 years and has known Don Finto for more than 30 years.

Finto spent 25 years as pastor of Belmont Church in Nashville. Now in his mid-seventies he is active with the growing community of Jewish believers in Jesus. This interest which began 40 years ago has taken Don to Israel often; and the insights and experiences that he gathered over these years give him unusual insight to the move of God in the mid-east and across the world.

Finto divided his book into two main sections. The first reviews the tremendous growth in the Christian church over the last half century across the world. No other period of history has experienced this sort of Christian expansion. Finto discusses his opinions of what the conversion of several hundred thousand Jews to faith in Jesus portends for the world in general and for the country of Israel. He writes that 40 years ago there was not a single congregation established to foster the continuing Jewish identity of Jews who believe in Jesus. Today there are 400 or more congregations throughout the United States, the former Soviet Union, Latin America, Israel and other countries.

Moreover, these congregations are not covert. They do not have to be silent and are featured in Jewish newspapers and on national television. The congregations include people from all ranks of the community. 7,000 of these live in Israel, all over the land and in every walk of life.

Finto continues with reviews of the growing church in Africa, the effects of 25,000 new believers a day in Latin America, Africa and China. That is 75,000 believers a day. 60 million Nigerians profess faith in Christ; and other African countries besides Nigeria are experiencing significant growth in believers. We read of success and persecutions, victory and defeat but a church growing in ways that have not been seen in the 20 centuries of its existence.

South Korea has 60,000 churches and 40 percent of its population are professing Christians; South Vietnam has seen 800,000 conversions in the last 25 years. 150,000 Muslims have come to Christ. Finto describes corporate and individual conversions.

I found his review of the growth of the Kingdom fascinating. We are so assailed with negative criticism of the church and Christianity from many quarters that it is good to remember that we are a triumphant church and that this triumph is being acted out in vast numbers across the earth.

The second part of the book has an eschatological bent. Finto tells the reader of his personal interpretations of various prophetic texts and how and when they are and will be fulfilled.

I am glad that I was one of the Foursquare pastors that received a copy of this book. It is an interesting and lively read that will add to your understanding of what is really happening across the earth and challenge your thinking on what is yet to come.

Reviewed by H. Murray Hohns

Publisher’s Page (As of May 2019, this title in print by Chosen Books): http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/god-s-promise-and-the-future-of-israel/358911

In this review essay from the Winter 2005 issue, Pastor Graham Old reviews the book The Healing Promise by cessationist Richard Mayhue.

Richard Mayhue, The Healing Promise: Is it always God’s will to heal? (Christian Focus Publications, 2001), 228 pages.

Richard Mayhue states that his purpose in writing this book is to “develop a biblical model of healing by which we can test anyone who claims to heal—past, present, and future.”¹ Thus, I had high hopes for this book. I hoped that we would finally encounter an argument that relied upon a thorough examination of the biblical data and avoided the focus upon testimonies of bad experiences within the fringe element of the Charismatic movement. I hoped that we would find someone genuinely attempting to interact with the finest of Pentecostal and Charismatic scholars, rather than repeating the arguments of a former generation of anti-supernatural cessationists. I was disappointed.

Let us not build an argument on experience—good or bad

The book begins with the usual mockery of the fringe elements in the Charismatic movement. Mayhue is something of a protégé of John MacArthur, so it should not cause too much surprise to find the same methodology employed here that MacArthur resorts to in Charismatic Chaos. What is surprising is the way that Mayhue questions the place of experience in Charismatic theology, while simultaneously using bad experiences as a negative defense of his own position.

Yet, he seems completely unaware of the irony. The book contains a chapter on the bad experiences people have suffered at the hands of healers, a chapter on how healers can create the illusion of healings, a chapter on Joni’s struggle with physical infirmity and what she has learned through it, a chapter on the healing of John MacArthur’s wife, Patricia, and a number of references to the paucity of healing in the post-biblical Church. All of this from an author who would suggest that the problem with Charismatic theology is that it is based on experience!

Mayhue criticises Jack Deere, claiming, “one gets the distinct impression that experience at least equals scripture” in Surprised by the Power of the Spirit.² This is ironic, because Deere actually makes the point that Charismatics are accused of basing their theology on experience, when what often happens is that cessationists do exactly the same.³ Their lack of an experience of the supernatural—and their consequent perception that such a lack mirrors Church history—is the actual basis for their theology of cessationism. While Deere is ready to admit the place of experience in his theology—which is fully supported by the biblical approach to formulating our doctrine—Mayhue seems painfully unaware of the place that experience is playing in his theology.

Perhaps the lesson here is that we need to carefully assess our theological arguments and be aware of the place that experience plays in that. Pentecostals have often acknowledged the invaluable role of experience in confirming or clarifying theology (more so than Charismatics, who have not always been as honest as Deere in this respect).⁴ The thing that is to be avoided on all sides is using experience as the foundation of our theology. The degree to which Cessationism has done this is a topic that merits further consideration.