The Fire of Heaven

THE FIRE OF HEAVEN

By

Rev. Robert J. Jones

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Rev. Robert J. Jones on Smashwords

The Fire of Heaven

Copyright © 2010 by Rev. Robert J. Jones

ISBN: 9781301428731

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Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter One - Counterfeit

Chapter Two - Dispensation

Chapter Three - Highly Critical

Chapter Four - Grace and Glory

Chapter Five - Testing the Spirits

Chapter Six - Feelings

Chapter Seven - The Price of the Kingdom

Chapter Eight - God in a Box

Chapter Nine - Quantum Christianity

Chapter 10 - The Shame Game

Chapter 11 - Revival C.S.I.

Chapter 12 - When in Rome

Chapter 13 - Call to Council

About the Author

Preface

We live in a time when there is a great deal of Christian discussion and authorship on the subject of prophecy, miracles, signs and wonders. Beginning in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and throughout the twentieth, there were a number of outbreaks of prominent revivals. Each major revival thrust the existing church into a quandary. While they benefited by the new found piety and the swelling numbers in their pews, these new church members came with an experience of God quite personal and quite different than that of the existing church membership. In an attempt to understand and fit the new converts into their scheme of things, there followed each revival a great deal of controversy as to the meaning, authenticity, and verification of these revival experiences.

The theological writings which followed usually came out of distinguished seminaries of the day in an attempt to write down and clarify popular responses and also to calm the troubled waters of controversy and dissent. Some ministers and entire churches at times burned with these revival fires, thus thrusting denominations and church authorities into the circumstances of trying to distinguish which was of God and which was heresy. Some prominent churches were torn asunder between those experiencing the revival fervor, whether it be evangelicalism, tongues, healing, baptism in the Spirit, or whatever form it happened to take that season, and the traditionalists who believed that what had quietly sufficed for generations should continue to be the teaching and religious experience of the day.

It was into this milieu that hastily prepared responses to these movements and experiences, along with other emerging ideas and trends, formed many of the prejudices that we know today in the mainstream Protestant Church. Many writings and teachings, with the ink barely dry, were heralded as doctrinal, implying a deep and long held belief that undergirds our faith.

One of the first doctrinal councils of the early Christian church at Nicaea did not occur until after 300 years of Christian experience. From that first doctrinal gathering came many of the fundamentals of our modern faith. Much prayer and hundreds of years of thought and writing culminated in some specific statements that most Christians still hold true today. This is contrasted with our contemporary scene where writings emerge during the last century as reactions to current events and are touted as having the same validity and authority as our deepest held beliefs.

While the newly emerging revivals were creating groups of those against and those for the new experiences, as well as men and women in the middle trying to determine what was of God and what was not, sadly the voices in the middle often got drowned in the sides foaming and clashing against one another. Attempting to buttress support and refuge from the emerging storms, the two sides quickly began building walls and quasi doctrinal definitions in a hasty manner. Many walls were formed on both sides, which unfortunately have been handed down to us as pure doctrine. Charges were leveled at the new Pentecostals that they were unintelligent. They responded that seminaries and colleges were of the devil and intellectualism could not be trusted. Main line denominations fired back that these revivals were heretical sects fired up by emotionalism and the fires of hell and should be avoided at all costs because of the hypnotic nature that could fool even a saint of God.

Unfortunately, hastily drafted documents were formed to defend each side, which in some cases have been taught and handed down as pure doctrine of the church or truth. Because these newly formed doctrines have not withstood the scrutiny of time, and in many cases on both sides cannot bear up to historical reality or scriptural integrity, it is time we begin to reexamine these hastily formed ideologies which continue to shape our thinking. In many instances, these newly formed doctrines which are supposed to promote peace and unity in the church are actually failing even that simple test, and inadvertently breed divisiveness and misunderstanding. There may be some truth and reality in each of the teachings, but there is also a lot of fear and ignorance as well.

The birthday of the Christian church is marked as the day of Pentecost. The disciples had been prepared by Jesus, witnessed his crucifixion, been profoundly impacted by his resurrection, and spent some time with our Lord before he ascended into heaven. They were instructed to wait in Jerusalem until they received the gift my Father promised, by Jesus. He explains to them in Acts 1: 5 that, John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. (NIV) All of the disciples had previously received the water Baptism. Since the church had not yet been organized, and there was no sacrament of baptism, this simple instruction did not seem to pose a problem and the disciples waited.

In Acts 2:1, we are told, When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them (NIV). Everyone agrees this is the moment of the birth of the Christian church.

Immediately following that agreement the church divides over the interpretation of the event and over the place and importance of these types of signs and wonders. There are those who say that this event was poetic, or metaphorical, or a representation of some deeper truth, but there were no mystical flames or loud sounds. There are those who think these events happened exactly as the eyewitnesses described them, but these type of events stopped suddenly, never to continue, for a variety of reasons including the main one which is they only occurred to get the church started. Then there are those in Christendom who believe these events happened exactly as eyewitnesses describe and continue to happen today, and will actually increase as our Lord prophesied until he returns.

Since that is a pretty wide gap between beliefs, which has created some rather wide rifts in the existing Christian church we really need to take a look at the doctrines or interpretations of the events and how they were formed. At the start of the 20th century, when denominations such as Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians were meeting to discuss ways of evangelizing the world, a small revival began in Wales, spread to Azusa Street and eventually became what we call today the Pentecostal movement. The American Church in its arguments over who was right and who deserved to be the one introducing Jesus to the world when we eventually arrived at the end of what was being labeled the Christian Century, were almost all universally in agreement that this new Pentecostal experience was somehow invalid. They classified many of the miracles, signs and wonders associated with this movement as counterfeit.

It is interesting to note that the dismissal of the miraculous actually divided into two camps. There were those who never believed in the miraculous and thought the whole thing simply primitive metaphorical illustrations, and another group which said that the original miracles happened but then stopped for some reason. The latter group further divided on when exactly the miracles stopped and why, with some supposing that the miracles ceased shortly after our Lord left, and those claiming they went on for three to four hundred years and then ceased. These groups argued as much between one another on why they agreed miracles no longer happen, as much as they argued against the emerging Pentecostal movement.

I use the term Pentecostal to refer to movements of believers who report having a profound direct encounter with God, sometimes accompanied by signs and wonders, and resulting in the permanent intensifying of personal and group piety. This encompasses a variety of spiritual experiences which may be organized into groups, denominations, manifestations, or simply be experiences such as revivals and retreats. The divisions over the place and importance of the miraculous has been with the church since the beginning. Augustine in his early writings seems to be against the miraculous, while much later in his career when he writes the City of God he now espouses them claiming that miracles occurred in over 70 of the churches under his bishopric. We see both sides of this debate raging for most of Christian history, with some changing sides during their own lifetimes.

The protestant Reformation did little to ease or clarify this debate. In their haste to move away from Roman Catholicism the reformers addressed a wide variety of topics. Sadly the charismata and the miraculous was not one widely written about. At best one might agree that they were indifferent to the whole topic. As a matter of fact, indifference was a reaction to the fire of heaven by large numbers of peoples and groups for a large part of Christian history. It is usually when the claims of the miraculous begin to arise that the issue is raised to prominence. People generally do not protest if Aunt Matilda suddenly gets a reversal of her ailment after a prayer service at church. It seems more the reactions begin when revivals or organized groups of people begin to emerge claiming divine miraculous power.

Indifference, which does mark a great deal of Christian history, as noted, should not be taken for doctrinal proof that the church or ecclesiastical institutions have stood against these phenomenon as is often mistakenly proposed. While there have been authors and proponents for the cessation of the miraculous, and we will examine those in this writing, they certainly do not make up the mainstream of thought and feeling on this topic. This work actually dispels the notion that these writings are doctrinal at all, rather representing a small often unorthodox view. It is during the twentieth century that some of these rather obscure views actually have begun to be touted as long standing doctrines of our faith. We will dispel that myth, as well as showing the rather shaky underpinnings of these writings themselves.

The purpose of this work is not to prove the current manifestation of the miraculous by decrying its opponents My goal is to show that there is no basis for a solid biblical doctrinal position for cessationism, and to open a dialogue once again about this issue for those interested. I also wish to show that the arguments for cessationism and against the miraculous are not only weak logically and doctrinally, but are often based on simple fear, prejudice, ignorance and misunderstanding. It is a minority view, and an extreme one at that. How it made it to the hallowed halls of prominent seminaries and distinguished congregations is a story.

The term counterfeit to describe Pentecostal type experiences was first coined by B.B. Warfield in 1917 in a series of lectures he gave in South Carolina at a Presbyterian Seminary. He was a respected theologian and Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary at the time. These lectures were subsequently published in a book by the title, Counterfeit Miracles. The term stuck and the idea that the whole movement was somehow counterfeit became a quick way to dismiss this emerging part of Christianity.

The Pentecostal movement in all its forms was beginning to be labeled not of God (counterfeit) in a variety of ways by established churches, theologians, seminaries, and the culture at large, yet it continued to grow in numbers and influence. Having begun in a variety of revivals, by the 1940s the work was spreading through tent meetings and rural villages, so it was then dismissed as being emotional, simplistic, uneducated, mystical, and experiential. Some of the very ingredients which had once been part of the main stream of Christianity now were pointed out and labeled as counterfeit.

The movement broke back into the American Church in the 1960s, called the Charismatic Movement. Some American churches welcomed it, but many others harkened to the belief that we had already washed out this emotional, experiential counterfeit and did not need to reinvestigate the claims that God might be at work. We begin to see that many initial prejudices had begun to coalesce into what some were calling doctrinal without really ever going through the timely process of investigating whether these views against pentecostal type experiences were doctrines at all. However, whether true or not the anti position was being taught at most main line seminaries of the day as a doctrine even though it had been hastily constructed and was not part of our long Christian history.

During the seventies and eighties experiential forms of Christianity were springing up on the American landscape along with the growing Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. The Calvary Chapel Movement born among a group of experiential hippies in California spread the word of the impact of knowing Christ personally as Lord and Savior. The Vineyard movement under John Wimber began to spread a quiet contemplative renewal of the original Quaker message, now adding pleasing worship music and an encounter with the Holy Spirit. And the new movement seemed to discover television as a medium for spreading its gospel from the tents of rural America into the living rooms of main street America. People got to watch Oral Roberts do healing revivals right in their living room, as well as Pat Robertson teach about the charismatic experience of the Holy Spirit.

Then in the 1990's, in a little vineyard church in Toronto Canada a revival began the likes of which had not been seen before. Millions came from all branches of Christianity and left with what they claimed was a direct encounter of God. People were talking about healings, visions, and life changing experiences. The American Church responded with a more vitriolic campaign to attempt to expose this movement as the work of the devil and the exact opposite of what we were supposed to be. Real Christianity they declared is not like this; it is not emotional, experiential, healing, and transformational. Real Christianity sits in a padded pew with its hands folded listening to a lecturer. They once again stamped the revival 'counterfeit' and felt assured that what they were doing was correct and doctrinal.

Ironically, during this same period of time, some of the early groups, such as the Evangelicals, full of fire and personal testimony about a dramatic life saving conversion by accepting Jesus as their personal Lord and savior, began to actually become mainstream by their swelling ranks. Evangelists like Billy Graham and his city wide crusades added integrity to this growing movement. Later large contemporary mega churches with members numbering in the tens of thousands caused the main line church to sit up and take notice. Some old time Pentecostal churches, such as the Assemblies of God and others, also began to grow and find distinguished middle of the road citizens in the ranks. Rather than using this as an opportunity to reopen the hastily constructed doctrines, whose edges were now becoming blurred, these newly admitted institutions to the rank and file of socially accepted churches began to clean up their act, so to speak.

The Assemblies distanced themselves from newer revival movements and attempted to control what they called the wild fire. The Evangelicals, while still espousing accepting Jesus as Lord, did so in a much more liturgically accepted format of well timed altar calls at the end of a worship service which could hardly be distinguished from an Episcopalian or a Lutheran one. Gone were the mourners’ benches and the weeping and wailing and repenting of one's sins. Gone were the fiery sermons of hell and damnation. Replacing these were sermons against political figures and social agendas that one could hardly distinguish them from the social gospel of the main line church they once decried.

One doctrine upon which all these groups seemed to agree was that Scripture is the only rule and test as to what is faithful and true. Following that test is the one which shows the faithful witness and testimony of those disciples who have faithfully followed these writings in application and practice. Another is the time tested and honored doctrines which all Christians agree, namely that Jesus Christ is our only Lord and savior. With these agreements it should be difficult for Christians to get so far apart on issues such as signs and wonders. Ironically, it is the doctrinal interpretation which should clarify and unify our responses, but in actuality ends up causing the divisiveness.

It is therefore imperative that we examine the doctrines with which people are examining and measuring these emerging events against scriptural and historical truths. There are those who say that scripture is literally true, and yet when it comes to miracles signs and wonders they have a doctrine which allows some events to be left neatly in the past, not for today. There are those who say scripture is true, but there are flaws in it, and if we edit out the flaws then we can have a much more perfect faith. They liken mystical occurrences to the superstitious and therefore not of reason, and therefore needs to be expunged.

Pentecostals approached scriptures with an emerging doctrine called sanctification. We will discuss this a little later on. Suffice it to say that they believed that God was doing an ongoing work of purifying and making his bride holy. Therefore the miracles signs and wonders continue today. The problem they had was that not everything in the Pentecostal movement fit so neatly into the doctrine of sanctification and there arose division among themselves on the importance of tongues, miracles, and faith healing. The emerging doctrines on both sides of the issues seem at times to cause more confusion than clarity.

The Pentecostal experience in all its varieties has now been a part of the Christian scene in America for over one hundred years, perhaps longer depending on where you mark the first experiences. If you begin with the First and Second Great Awakening, which often bear the exact marks of the 20th century versions of revival, then we have an experience much older and deeply rooted. Some argue that these types of experiences have been occurring throughout the long history of Christianity.

The emergence of the last 100 years is evidence that Pentecostalism is no flash in the pan, nor does it seem to be going away anytime soon. Adding to this evidence is the fact that it is the fastest growing branch of Christianity worldwide. Therefore, it is time we give some serious investigation into this phenomenon as well as the writings of its adversaries. The number of Pentecostals world-wide has grown into a movement which is numbered, not in the thousands, but in the hundreds of millions of believers.

Pentecostalism, described by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life as a group of charismatic movements, has grown, according to researchers, from 72 million in the 1960s to 525 million in 2000

David Puent writes This week The New York Times published a three-part series called House of Fire, about the rise of Pentecostalism — the world’s fastest-growing branch of Christianity.

Harvey Cox writes, Pentecostals, by far the fastest-growing wing of Christianity today, share most evangelical beliefs, but for them all theology is secondary. What is most important is an immediate encounter with the Holy Spirit in a style of worship that is exuberant and even ecstatic. Aimee Semple McPherson was the first Pentecostal preacher to achieve celebrity status in America.

Jessica Ravitz writes, "Modern Pentecostalism, now accepted as one of the world’s fastest-growing Christian movements, celebrated its centennial at the end of April in Los Angeles. Experts say the Protestant fundamentalist sects that make up Pentecostalism combine thousands of denominations and independent churches – making accurate membership counts impossible. But up to 500 million global followers or more hold in common the requirement to repent of sins, to accept Jesus Christ as savior and be baptized in his name, and to honor the