Thursday, August 01, 2019

A "Word & Spirit" Move of God

(Redeemer sanctuary)

Craig Keener, in Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost, ends his book with these words. 

"An early Pentecostal voice invites us to bring Word and Spirit together—a collaboration that I would envision as the best of evangelical exegesis of the text combined with the best of charismatic power to embrace and carry out its message. Smith Wigglesworth, one of the most prominent early Pentecostal healing evangelists, felt disappointed toward the end of his life that the Pentecostal revival had not directly ushered in the end of the age, as the earliest Pentecostals had hoped. He did not, however, relinquish hope for the future. He believed that in addition to the Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit that brought a restoration of the gifts, there would someday come another revival emphasizing God’s Word. 

“When these two moves of the Spirit combine,” he prophesied, “we shall see the greatest move the Church of Jesus Christ has ever seen.” May it be so, Lord." (289)