Your Sons & Daughters Shall Prophesy - Prophetic Gifts Today In The New Testament Church

Denominational Response to Prophecy in the Charismatic Renewal

a diminished one to the saving work effected by Jesus Christ....Whatever may be the relationship of Christology to pneumatology in individual cases, the charismatic renewal was and is more in danger of slipping into a Jesus cult than into a Spirit cult.The experience and on-going life is wholly cen tered on Jesus Christ. 10 Kilian McDonnell ...The renewal restored the gifts of the Spirit to the realm of the ordinary, where they belong to the everyday functioning of the normal Christian community."A church that is fully alive undoubtedly possesses all the gifts of the Spirit." They are signs that the community is truly alive. Fundamentally they are not adjuncts to the life of the church; rather they belong to the basic structure of the church."If anything in history is to be rightly called 'the charismatic movement,' it is the church itself." 11 Kilian McDonnell But it would be churlish to end this brief evaluation of the charismatic movement on a negative note.I believe it has done much more good than harm.I believe that it has emphases which the modern churches will neglect at their peril.It has taught us to believe in God's reality and his ability to break into the even tenor of our lives with the invading power of his Spirit. It has taken the doctrine of the Spirit off the dusty shelf and put the person of the Spirit right in the heart of the living-room.It has taken the formality, the stuffiness, the professional domination, the dreary predictability out of worship, and made it living, corporate, uplifting and joyful.It has recog nised the variety of gifts God has given to his people, discovered some which had been forgotten for a long time, and increasingly insists on a structure of church life where these gifts can be exercised.It has brought together in inti mate fellowship men and women of the most diverse backgrounds.It has driven the silent Christians into bearing joyous and courageous witness to their Lord.It has taken seriously the dark element of Satan and the demonic, and has revived among Christians the sense of spiritual battle.It has opened the flood gates to prayer and praise in many a heart that had run dry.In every generation, God raises up some counterpoise to the current weakness and abuses in his Church.In our own day he has raised up this remarkable movement which we call charismatic.It would be tragic if the Church did not learn from it what God wants us to learn.21 Michael Green A comparison with other Christian movements also underlines the importance of CR.Its genesis indicates that it had no one human founder, that its arrival was unexpected and unplanned, that it did not come as a set of coherent ideas or with any strategic methodology, and that it was not in its origins the product of any one Christian tradition more than others.Peo ple were first baptized in the Spirit, and then they faced the question of its meaning and what to do with it. 13 P.D.Hocken 309.