Quote:
Originally Posted by NHisMage
Hi John,
Can you tell me what good has come from it? Also, can you give me a biblical precedent for kicking people in the face and barking like a dog? There was speaking in tongues (languages), Peter preached, the people were cut to the heart and asked, "what should we do?" Peter told them to repent and be baptized in Jesus' name and receive the Holy Spirit and thousands were saved. Even the great revival where Jonathan Edwards preached his Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God sermon many were saved simply by God convicting them of their sin. There were no "signs" involved.
I don't discount your wife's experience. I don't question that something actually happened there. What I question is if it is of God. The Bible tells us to "test the spirits" to see if they are from God. I would ask a lot of questions about that experience if someone were to tell me about it and then I would see if it lined up with God's word. What was the significance of the gold dust in regards to God? Could a deceiving spirit not do the same thing make that happen? Did everyone there see what she saw?
Just as you stated that a person needs to not judge something based on outward appearance, I also think that a person should not be hasty in saying something is of God when it's not backed up by scripture.
Blessings to you and welcome to CARM! 
Crystal |
from Bible.org
Jonathan Edwards and The First Great Awakening
Along with the other great church luminaries mentioned in the last chapter, Jonathan Edwards also never spoke in tongues nor believed that the revelatory gifts continued past the apostolic age.
84 Generally thought of as America’s preeminent theologian, this Calvinistic minister is perhaps best known for his role in sparking America’s first and greatest revival, the Great Awakening of the mid-Eighteenth Century.
In 1733 and 1734, Jonathan Edwards preached on “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence” and “Justification By Faith Alone.” As a result of these messages, in Edwards’ own words, “the Spirit of God began extraordinarily to set in and wonderfully to work amongst us,” so that souls began to flock to Christ, as the Savior in whose righteousness alone they hoped to be justified.”
85 The Great Awakening had begun. Within a single year, in a town of some 200 families, about 300 souls were saved.
86
The former “dullness in religion,” “night walking, and frequenting the tavern and lewd practices” were replaced by a focus on God’s redemptive work.
87 The town “seemed to be full of the presence of God: it never was so full of love, nor so full of joy; and yet so full of distress, as it was then.”
88 Revival rapidly spread to other New England towns and villages.
With regenerated souls came awakened emotions. At the time of conversion, the newly saved frequently manifested an extreme agony over their sinful condition. Edwards wrote that their consciences were “smitten” -- “as if their hearts were pierced through with a dart.”
89 They experienced “awful apprehensions” about the depths of their corrupted souls, and a sense that God was just in condemning them. Upon conversion, there was often laughter, tears or loud weeping.
90
Meanwhile, revival fires continued to burn. In 1740, George Whitefield visited Northampton and quickened the fervor. The manifestations accompanying conversion this time were “even more bizarre than the earlier ones;” parishioners “bewailed their sins aloud and groaned in fear and repentence.”
91
Like Edwards, Whitefield was also a Calvinist who understood the role of emotions and experience in the Christian life. He decried the cold rationalism that infected the Anglican clergy of the day, emphasizing the centrality of the New Birth experience to salvation.
92 He was himself prone to tears as he preached.
93 When Whitefield preached in Northampton, the power of the Holy Spirit was present. “Few dry eyes were in the assembly.”
94 Even Edwards felt “weak in body” and “wept during the whole time of exercise.”
95 One account has it that “Mr. Whitefield had scarcely spoken for a minute on the same text when the whole auditorium could be seen to be deeply moved, to be in tears, and to be wringing hands, and the sighing, weeping, and shouting of the people could be heard.”
96
Sometimes, however, the manifestations went beyond the emotions of repentence. Occasionally, enthusiasts heard voices and beheld visions, claiming that they had received revelations from God. Extreme manifestations of ecstasy also occurred during some of Whitefield’s sermons. As one account of Whitefield’s Scottish tour put it: “the Bodies of some of the Awakened are seized with Trembling, Fainting, Histerisms in some few Women, and with Convusive-Motions in some others.”
97
Edwards strongly condemned these extreme manifestations. He discounted such “false signs” as crying aloud repeated mantras (“Hosanna, Hosanna”), bodily behavior, self-induced affections, and “all other signs testifying not to the faith of children of light but to ‘the presumption of the children of darkness.’“
98 He denounced persons who believed that fainting, bodily tremors and “all manner of natural passion” were positive elements of revival.
99 These signs were negative, in Edwards’s eyes, because they were unrelated to the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit. and evinced no integration with the redirected heart.
100
Yet despite Edwards’ strong condemnations of false affections, he did not fall to the other extreme of rejecting religious experience altogether. To the contrary, Edwards’ life-long theme was that true religion “is a matter of true affections that incline the heart away from self-love and towards God.”
101 As Harold Simonson has stated:
note - although Edwards denounced these manifestations, they kept happening. if he had a different perspective they would have developed and I'm not saying he should have - I'm saying there is historic precedence.....
be blessed, andrea
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