Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Filled With the Holy Spirit - What does Pentecost Mean? || With Jonathan Black || SLP411

Transcript

Filled With the Holy Spirit - What does Pentecost Mean? || With Jonathan Black || SLP411 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and thank you so much for downloading episode 411 of the Speak Life podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: Today we have an interview that Glenn Scrivener and Paul Feese recorded with Jonathan Black about Pentecost.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna jump straight into that and then I will join you at the end with Paul Feesey for some final thoughts.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: Enjoy.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_05: Well hello and welcome to the Speakeasy.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_05: My name is Paul Feasy, and today I'm joined by I'm Glenn Scrivener.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: Hello!
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_05: Last week we were thinking about the Ascension, weren't we?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and we had a really good discussion about that because I think we we kind of decided that the Ascension is one of those things that we probably as Christians know we know of.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_05: We know what the Ascension is.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_05: To some extent.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_05: But perhaps we don't really think about it that much, and we don't really think what are the implications of it.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_05: And so we took a bit of a dive into that.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_05: And actually, we you know there's lots of great stuff in there about the Ascension and kind of what it means for us and why it's important and why Ascension Day maybe is something we should maybe make a bit more of a big deal of than we do.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: People get like a day off in Germany and places like that.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_05: Alright, isn't it?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_05: Let's do that then.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, we'll definitely do it.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we're getting this Thursday.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's true.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's true.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's because of a different sovereign who ascended a different throne.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_05: Um, yeah, so that was a really good discussion.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_05: If you've not seen that, do go back and check out last week's Speakeasy.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but uh ten days from now, we have Pentecost coming up.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_05: And so we thought it might be good to have a look at Pentecost as well.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_05: Again, something we probably know about as Christians, but maybe we've not thought about hugely and the significance of it uh for us.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um it's always good to get people in to talk about these things who know more about it than we do.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_05: Um so do you want to kind of introduce our guest that we've got today?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: So, yes, ten days after Ascension, there is Pentecost.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so we thought, why not talk to a premier Pentecostal theologian, Jonathan Black?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: And we've got Dr.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: Jonathan Black coming in on the line.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: He is a lecturer.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for joining us.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, thank you.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're at Regents College, is that right?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I am indeed, yeah.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Where is that?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um in uh Malvern, in Worcestershire, up in the hills.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: And is it a particular training college for Pentecostals who who want to uh get into ministry or or is it sort of interdenominational?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um we have students from lots of different denominations, but it's um it is primarily a Pentecostal college and it's run by the Elam Pentecostal Church.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: So we will get into what that means, what it means to be a Pentecostal uh as we go.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: But uh what we wanted to do is dive really down into the depths of the goodness uh of Pentecost and what is it we might be missing if we don't have a full appreciation for Pentecost?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: So maybe the first question is we celebrated Ascension Day uh last week.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um how does Ascension and Pentecost fit together?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, they fit together really importantly, that you can't have one without the other.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's uh I think sometimes there's the temptation to try and separate bits of what Jesus has done apart uh as if uh as if somehow we can focus on one bit without the other.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, we worship not a thing, but we worship a person, we worship Jesus, and so everything that he's done for us is uh is essential, and um, and especially that close connection between the ascension and Pentecost, that on the day of Pentecost, when Peter gets up to explain what's happened, he he goes back to the cross, he goes back to the resurrection, but it goes back especially to the ascension that it's because um Jesus has ascended to the right hand of the Father that the Father has now given him the spirit to pour out on the church.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you just can't have Pentecost without the ascension.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so Jesus goes up and the spirit comes down.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um why why did Jesus have to go up for the spirit to come down?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really good question.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um because Jesus said so.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: He said it's it's expedient for you that I go away, um, because he is sending now uh another comforter, and uh it's another one like him.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: He's sending not someone instead of him, not someone uh because we're we're done thinking about Jesus now and we can think about the Holy Spirit instead, but the Holy Spirit has come into the world to glorify Jesus, that he takes what is Jesus and declares it to us.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it's important that Jesus has risen up and sent it into heaven uh to pour out the Holy Spirit so that the entire church throughout the entire world can know the presence of the Lord with them.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: That um we don't just have uh Jesus with certain disciples in certain places now, but by his Holy Spirit, he is present with all of us.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_05: Very good.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_05: And I guess I mean we were gonna we were gonna ask sort of what the significance of Pentecost is.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_05: I guess you've touched on it there, and that the spirit therefore, I mean, Jesus, I suppose, as a in the incarnation is um is limited to one place, one time as a man, but yet when the spirit comes, Christ's the spirit of Christ can be present in all believers at all times.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_05: So that's I suppose that if we were to say, you know, it would it would you say that is the major significance of Pentecost?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think sometimes I think sometimes we diminish Pentecost a little bit by saying things like it's the birthday of the church or something like that.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think that really misses the main points because when we think of it that way, we're thinking of something about us, um, that something new now about what we're doing now.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, Pentecost is about Jesus, that he is the one who pours out the spirit, that he is the one who's promised to come to us, um, that he would come to us and the father would come to us when the spirit is poured out on us.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, so so it is that that presence of Jesus.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's that that's the big difference we see with Pentecost, that the people of God haven't suddenly started to exist.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, um Abraham's the model believer that uh if we want to know what a Christian looks like, the New Testament points us back to Abraham, that we can we can go all the way back to Eve um when um uh in in Genesis and see her declaration of faith in the coming um of Christ.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we have we have the we have Christians, we have the church, we have the people of God, the people who are united to Christ by faith, all the way back to the beginning of time.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but now it's it's this it's this presence of the Lord with us um by the spirit that is the big thing.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So um so it's not simply a birthday party for the church or something like that.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's something much greater than that.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the presence of the Lord with us, it's about that uh that access we have um uh through the spirit and in Christ to the Father um uh at all times and in all places.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_05: That's really helpful.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_05: I think and for me, when we when I think about Pentecost, that is something that comes to my mind, this idea of presence, because I think one of my the themes I get most excited about biblically is the idea of where does God dwell.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_05: God dwells sort of you know in the garden, he's walking with his people, and then of course, people are separated and he dwells in the temple in the Holy of Holies, you know, in the tabernacle, and then you know, Christ tabernacles among us, but yet here we are, now we are the temple, and the spirit is in us, and of course you look forward to Revelation where you know um you know Christ dwells amongst his people again.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_05: Um and for me that's I like that that that is an exciting uh theme that I see kind of running through scripture.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_05: So I guess Pentecost is a very integral part of that.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_05: It's maybe isn't something we think of that often.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: Is is there an uh is there a link then?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_03: I just just thinking out loud that at the end of the building of the tabernacle in Exodus 40, you know, the glory of the Lord kind of fills the temple, and and I guess you've got in One Kings when Solomon builds the the temple, so it was the tabernacle back in Exodus, the temple in Solomon's day, and again the the glory of the Lord sort of fills the temple.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: Is is this what's going on in in Pentecost?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: That the the glory of the Lord is filling the temple of the church?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that's what uh Pentecostals love those passages in the Old Testament because uh uh because they've always seen that connection.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's here we have this demonstration with the physical tabernacle in the temple in the old testament, but now we have a fulfillment of that with with this uh just this emphasis that the church is now the dwelling place of God in the spirit, that we are being built together as a living temple um in the Lord, that um that now we have um, and it's not just it's not just glory, or it's not just fire, or it's not just something that symbolizes the presence of God, um, but but rather it is that we really are this temple.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: We might not see that.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's far easier for us to see something like in the Old Testament with this physical temple and this physical fire and uh and the cloud and the glory and the and and the priests falling down.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh but but we're but those things have been written to teach us um that even though we might not see in the same way, um that that that's the reality, that we are the true temple, we are the true tabernacle, we are um the dwelling place of gods.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we have on the day of Pentecost, we have we have even that symbol of the the tongues of fire, um uh just as the fire fell in the old testament.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we have the fire falling on the day of Pentecost to show that um this isn't just you know about some experience, a nice experience in a meeting that some people have in the upper room, but this is something much more powerful than that.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is something much more significant than that, that this is this is the new temple, that we are not because you know, not because of us, um, but because of Jesus.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because if Jesus is the true temple, um and the church, what is the church is the body of Christ, that we are we are his members, we are um we are in Christ, we we are part of um the body of Christ, and so we we dwell in this uh this new temple, um, even though we might not always see it.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yet the Bible um tells us that you know um that uh blessed are those who haven't seen but believe, um, that we have this great blessing assured to us that we don't need to have seen that reality um of the temple, but um but as we believe what Jesus has told us, as we believe what we see um in the scriptures, um that Jesus is our head, we are united to him, and he is the anointed one, and so we uh we partake of his anointing.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_05: Wow.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_05: I was just thinking, uh something you said there was, you know, we are the temple, um, even if we maybe we don't always see that.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_05: And it just got me thinking, I I wonder Do you think that uh now that we have the Spirit living in us, what do you think that we as believers now have a different experience of the presence of God than an Old Testament believer in the sense that you know God would have been where's the presence of God in the Old Testament?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_05: Well, in the tabernacle, sort of over there.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_05: God is not in me specifically.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_05: Um do you think day to day there's a difference between the experience of the Old Testament believer and New Testament believer, apart from the obvious kind of things about where we know who Christ is more clearly and things like that?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I I think there seems to be, I think it's something quite mysterious um uh in the Bible that we know the Holy Spirit was active in believers' lives in the Old Testament.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: So um David prays, but take not thy Holy Spirit from me.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh but we seem to have more examples in the Old Testament of the Holy Spirit coming upon people for specific tasks or um at specific times.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so it seems like we have access to something new.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Isaiah um uh and in fact Ezekiel as well, they both they both talk about a time that's coming when when through the outpouring of God's spirit, that people will say um people will realize the uh the sort of how they really belong to the Lord.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's not that they didn't belong to the Lord, but but people are gonna say, I am his.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um that um that there's this fresh realization of of of that closeness that we have to the Lord.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh and uh so so there really does seem to be that promise in the Old Testament that there is some something new that's gonna come about um in the future, which is now the future we live in, um when the spirit is poured out.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: So um so we have the same salvation as old testament believers, but yet there does seem to be something that is different, some new closeness of access that we have um after the die of Pentecost.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_05: And I guess ultimately there will be an even greater closeness at the end of all things, you know.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_05: As we think about this idea of dwelling, you know, now God dwells in us, but one day we will, you know, we'll we will see Christ face to face, and that'll be a different experience again.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's really important when we think about the Old Testament too, because um because I think sometimes the temptation is to think if if if we have something different because the Holy Spirit is poured out now, that then to start thinking as if our salvation is different or something like that.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately we'll all share in that same fullness of the spirit um in in the age to come.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: That um nowadays we only have Hebrews calls it a for uh uh we taste of the powers of the age to come um when the spirit is poured out.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we only just have a little bit of a taste uh of the future through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit now.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh so we're privileged in having that.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but one day, along with the believers in the Old Testament, we will know the fullness of that um when we see Jesus face to face, when we when we dwell in his presence forever.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: Let's have a look at scripture, let's have a look at Acts two and where it all began.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um so uh what's immediately striking to me is Acts 2, verse 1, when the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: Pentecost is already a thing.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, it's fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus, but it's also a reason why, you know, there were, according to Acts 2, verse 5, they were staying in Jerusalem, God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: Why were they there?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: They were there because there was already this thing called Pentecost.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_03: Can you explain what this thing called Pentecost was uh in the Jewish believers' life?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, so this was one of the three times of the year where people were to go up to the temple in Jerusalem, that's why it's people from all over the world there, and they're going up for this festival, and it's the festival, it's connected with the harvest, but it's particularly particularly connected with the first fruits of the harvest.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: So um so it comes uh 50 days after the Passover, that's why it's called Pentecost, because that's about to do with the Greek word for fifth day.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh and now they're they're gonna celebrate the first fruits of of the harvest together as they come up and uh and they wave uh um uh uh offerings in the presence of gods to give thanks for the first fruits.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: So we've had firstfruits, and fascinatingly, the first fruits is on the third day after Passover.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: So you've got Passover, and then on the third day, there's first fruits, and then 50 days after the first fruits, which is kind of this pledge of the coming harvest, then you have the sort of the coming of the crop that's been promised by firstfruits.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: And it's it's incredible.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's all laid out there in Leviticus chapters 26 and following.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, or it was in chap chapter 23, isn't it?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and following.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so what you've got there is Passover, where the blood of the Lamb is shed, firstfruits, where you get, you know, the first pledge of the coming future, and then 50 days later you get the the the coming, you know, the the actual harvest comes in.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: Fast forward into the New Testament, and you get the blood of the Lamb shed at Passover, Christ dies, and then on the third day he rises again from the dead as the first fruits of the coming bumper crop, and fifty days later we get we get Pentecost, which is why they are there on that day, they're all together in one place.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh Acts 2, verse 2, suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_03: They saw what seems to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: All were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: So help us out with tongues.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: What what are these tongues?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_03: What are these languages?
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: What is the meaning of them, especially in uh in an Acts 2 kind of context?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got these tongues in Acts 2, and uh the people are there.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, now these are all people that are there for this harvest festival.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um they come up to Jerusalem, they've come from all over the world, and we've got this list of uh places they've come from and how they all hear that people speaking in their own language.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um but they are not, but they're Jewish people who've come to celebrate um the festival, that they are believing uh people that have come to celebrate in the presence of God, and so they know enough of the language um to be able to come and take part in that celebration.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: So they're hearing the languages of the countries where they live, um, but they don't actually need someone to speak in their language, uh, and so they're surprised when it happens um because they uh this is not what they're expecting.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're not expecting a whole pile of people in Jerusalem to be speaking their language.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so um the Lord gives them uh this gift of tongues, they go out, they start proclaiming the mighty uh works of God in all these different languages, and people are astonished that um in the languages of other peoples, in the languages of the world, um uh the works of God are being proclaimed.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: And why do you do you see something going on that's similar to sort of Babel?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, quite often people um draw the link between in Genesis 11, um, there is the desire to have a community, a community together.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's both a city with a tower that has its head in the heavens, and so it's kind of like an anti-church in that sense.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: It wants to have its head in the heavens, but it's a sort of a fleshy desire to unite and get to heaven, as opposed to the way of the spirit that begins in Genesis 12 and the and the promises to Abraham and that sort of thing.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: So at that point, languages were scattered.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then in in Acts 2, what you see is is languages kind of united.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: Is is there is there something to that as a link?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think there is.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think that we have this division of languages where people can't understand that's coming out of that rebellion against God, and now as the sort of culmination of what God has been doing to restore people to Himself through the cross, the resurrection, the ascension, and now the pouring out of the spirit of Pentecost.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: We have now people hearing um that that those barriers of communication uh have have disappeared now, that they've been undone in some way.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And okay, it's not it's not entirely um that uh we are just in in the first fruits of this uh of this age to come, that there will be a day when when those human divisions are done away with um entirely, but but we have this this sign that that God is reconciling people, that God is that God is reuniting what has been divided by sin.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um but also that sign that um that what he is doing is not just for one group of people, but what he is doing um through the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus is for all the peoples of the earth.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so it has to be proclaimed in every language of the world because this is not just this is not just for the people of Israel, this is not just for the Greeks, this is not just for for for Western people or something like that, but this is for this is for every people on the face of the earth.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_05: So um often when people talk about this, they they talk about this idea of speaking in tongues, and then when you compare it to say passages sort of one Corinthians, there's this question about whether it that it's the same kind of thing going on there in 1 Corinthians as in Acts 2 or these different things.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_05: So, would you have any kind of thoughts on that?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's really interesting.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're actually really confused um at the very beginning of the Pentecostal revival um uh in America in Azusa Street and things, um people got uh got a bit confused about that because they saw people in Acts 2 speaking languages that people understood.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they thought, oh, every time somebody speaks in tongues, it must be to help us make the gospel known to someone who wouldn't understand it otherwise.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: So um so maybe it's to help us in missions or something like that.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but actually what we see in 1 Corinthians is um we see warnings because people don't understand what is spoken in tongues.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul says, unless there's an interpretation, don't speak in tongues in church because people come in and think you're mad because nobody understands what.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Going on, and how can people how can people say amen to something if they don't understand it?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: So so Paul makes it really clear in First Corinthians that um that normally other people don't understand what is spoken in tongues, and so it needs some sort of supernatural interpretation from God.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh so it seems like what happened on the day of Pentecost was something quite unique um in the history of uh of of salvation and what God was doing.
• 22:30
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  SPEAKER_05: Let's get back to the podcast.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_05: And so what then do we think might be going on?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it what is tongues then when we come to sort of the Corinthians passages?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_05: Do you have any thoughts on that?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, uh I it is a mystery.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I think that's a good thing to say.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I and I think that's the point of it, that um that we we we want to understand stuff.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um we always want to understand stuff, and sometimes we need to be reminded that the Lord is far beyond our understanding, that yeah, we want to grow in our knowledge of God's, but but he is so far beyond the creation that we can we can only grasp onto uh what he has revealed to us, and only partially in that none of us have that perfect knowledge of the Lord.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think partly that's one of the things that tongues is saying in First Corinthians, that that we have something that we don't completely understand, we have something that is beyond us.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: That it seems to be um so Paul says if there's no interpretation, um, that someone can speak uh to themselves and to God in tongues, and it seems to be here is some way that people can pray that is beyond what we can do with our own words, that is beyond our own understanding about prayer.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and that reminds us um not only of the greatness and the glory of the Lord and how far beyond us he is, but it reminds us too that our prayers don't rely on on the perfection of our words um or how good we are at remembering everything we need to pray for.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, every time we pray, we're relying on Jesus, we're relying on the Holy Spirit, that it's the Spirit who helps us pray, Paul tells us.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that the scripture tells us that we we pray in Jesus' name, we pray relying on what he has done for us.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: He is our mediator and our great high priest, he is the one who is before the throne of God for us, and he takes our feeble and imperfect prayers and our misremembered things that we're supposed to be praying for, and we're sometimes saying the wrong words.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and he purifies them and he perfects them and he presents them right to his father in heaven.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that um, as Calvin said, we pray as it were through Jesus' lips.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh uh and I think tongues in a way reminds us of that, that it reminds us how weak we are, it reminds us how we're not relying on ourselves, that we need to rely on on Jesus and on the Holy Spirit when we come into the presence of the Lord in prayer.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: So you mentioned uh Azusa Street uh earlier.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: That's obviously um got a huge uh importance in sort of Pentecostal kind of history.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, can you tell us um what is Azusa Street?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: What happened there, and where where really did sort of the modern Pentecostal movement come from?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, um that's a really complicated question to ask um uh um uh to ask an academic because um academics have lots of arguments about where did Pentecostalism come from and things like that.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think God seems to have been doing things in different places around the world that were very similar at the same time.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: So in this country we had the Welsh Revival, and there was big emphasis on um on the on the Holy Spirit's work and the baptism of the Holy Spirit in in the Welsh Revival, and we see um things like people speaking in tongues and prophecies and healings and things during the Welsh Revival.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_03: What kind of year are we thinking about here?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: So Welsh Revival is the last Welsh Revival was in 1904, 1905, um uh and uh and so just around the same time in America, 1906 in America, we've got um Azusa Street Revival.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh in Azusa Street, um there are actually some connections with Welsh Revival and things, but um what happens is there is um uh a preacher who has gone out to Los Angeles.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he's been invited out to um to be pastor of a church there.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: He gets there and he starts preaching about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and um people in the church aren't very happy.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so they say we don't we don't really want you anymore.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh so but um but some people um ask him to to lead a prayer meeting.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and in this prayer meeting, people start getting saved, um, people um start getting baptized in the spirit, and it grows out of the house it's in, they find an old um um run-down abandoned church that's been used as a stable on Azusa Strait, and they start having these meetings in Azusa Strait.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's often called like it's called the Azusa Strait Revival because it's associated with the place more than the person.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was William J.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Seymour was um the preacher, but he used to sort of hide his head behind the pulpit because he he didn't want any attention drawn to him.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he insisted all the time that um all the glory had to go to Jesus for everything that was going on.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and people start hearing about what was happening in Azusa Street.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: People traveled from all over the world to Azusa Strait to find out what was going on.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: There were reports in newspapers around the world, um, and uh and from there um Pentecostalism started to spread um all over the world very quickly.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_05: So you mentioned there that um he came to the church and started preaching about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and I can already hear lots of conservative evangelicals shifting uneasily in their seats, um, thinking, what's this?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_05: What are you talking about?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_05: Um go into a bit of detail if you can, just about what do you mean by the baptism of the Holy Spirit?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_05: Uh are we talking about something distinct from coming to faith?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_05: Um yeah, it'd be good to get your thoughts.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, so interestingly, at the time, most conservative evangelicals were quite happy with something called the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: So uh the Keswick Convention and stuff like that, there's lots of preaching and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, all the great um sort of uh well-known uh evangelical preachers of the day, like Andrew Murray, and people were preaching about the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: So um so that sort of flows into the Welsh Revival and things like that.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think sort of the way we think about that now has been transformed, partly by the rise of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movements.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so people have quite different um reactions to phrases like that today than they did um uh a hundred years ago.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, so Pentecostals um saw the Baptist of the Holy Spirit as something different from getting saved.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um so they look what they saw in the book of Acts was a sort of pattern that people got saved, but people also um encountered um the Lord in some sort of powerful way um that was tangible um uh and looked different from salvation.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it happened at the same time as people got saved.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you have like Cornelius and his household um in Acts 10, 11.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but a lot of times there's there's there's some distinction in time, might not be a very big distinction in time, um uh, but it might be shorter, might be longer.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we have um, for example, the Smartan believers in Acts chapter 8, that they believe the gospel, they receive the word of God, they're baptized in water.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then somehow it says they they have none of them had yet received the Holy Spirits, and uh and Peter and John have to come down from Jerusalem and pray for them, and then they receive the Holy Spirit, and and people see Simon the sorcerer sees that something has happened when they receive the spirits.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Paul he meets some um disciples in um in Acts 19 in Ephesus, um, and he asks them, um, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, We don't, we didn't even know there was a Holy Spirit.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh, so he baptizes them in water, and after they baptized in water, they received the Holy Spirit.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the Pentecostals sort of look to this as a as a sort of pattern um uh in in the book of Acts.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so they uh they were saying this could be something that happens at the same time as people get saved, it could be something that happens at another time, but their distinction wasn't so much about the time it happens, but it was what's what is this?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um that and they saw it as as the Holy Spirit coming on people and empowering them um to tell other people about Jesus, essentially.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so they often talk about power for evangelism or for mission or something like that.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that the idea was that's what the Holy Spirit does, he glorifies Jesus.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: So when he comes in in a tangible, powerful way in our lives, that's not so that we have some feeling, but that's to glorify Jesus in our lives so we can make Jesus known that he can be glorified as other people put their faith in Jesus as well.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: So, how does that relate to our first baptism?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: How does that relate to our coming to faith, let's say?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um if in Ephesians 1 language every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms is ours in Christ, what what room is there for extra spiritual blessing?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_03: How do you how do you relate those two things together?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: Ah, good question.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um so um uh Rory Shiner wrote a great little book called uh One Together, I think.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh One Forever, yeah.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: One Forever.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh and where he talks about Union of Christ and he uses this great illustration of an airplane about what what happens to the airplane happens to you.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: That um your destiny um when you're traveling by plane, um your destiny is is controlled by being on the plane.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and he compares that to union of Christ, and um, and to expand upon it, he might not like what I have to say, but um to expand on his illustration.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think that's a bit like how we can also tell baptism how spark too, because when you get on an airplane, um if you go anywhere far, because um you've been on far airplanes, Glenn, to go to um and uh sometimes when you're on an airplane for a very long time, you need to eat some things.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you need a few meals uh on a long journey.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't just get when you sit down and put on your seatbelt and the emergency demonstration is done.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: They don't just dump all the food in front of you and on your tray table and say, There you go, keep yourself going for the next 16 hours on the flight or whatever.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but but those meals come to you at the right time.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're yours.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: You've bought the tickets, you've paid for the foods, um, uh, they are yours as soon as you get on that plane, but you don't get them the moment you get on the plane.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and the Christian life's like that.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um we know the Christian life's like that because we, as part of our salvation, get a resurrection body, and we don't have it yet.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh uh we might wish we had it yet, um but uh um but it's something we look forward to um uh in the future, and um but it's it's not like something extra that's added on to our salvation, it's it's part of the salvation that we already have.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh uh so so when when Paul writes that every that we're blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, um that he's not saying every spiritual blessing except for the resurrection body or uh or anything like that, but but that resurrection body that is included in the blessing that we've already been blessed with in Christ when we were united to him.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd say the same thing about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that um that it's something that we might experience um later on, um, that we might experience it straight away, but we might there might be some delay before we experience it.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um there might even sometimes be a long delay before we experience it, but it's something that is um that is that is ours through our union with Christ, that it's not something we have to do something extra to get or something like that, but it is it is through what Jesus has done for us.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: So Peter in the Day of Pentecost he says about um about this same Jesus um that you took and crucified, that God has raised him up, um, and it's he who now pours out what you see in here.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: So he connects um the baptism of the spirit back to the cross and the resurrection and the ascension.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's nothing we need to add on to that.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus has accomplished it all.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus has uh Jesus has has done that for us.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh but that doesn't mean that uh we experience everything that Jesus has for us right at the very first moment of salvation.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh salvation isn't just like a change of categories or something like that.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Salvation is being united to Jesus, having a new life in Christ, and uh uh and that's so salvation is that ongoing thing with Jesus and and he will be with us uh in in in fresh ways uh at moments when we need it uh in our Christian life that um that we all know that we've gone through um we've gone through hard times and uh and known the presence of the Lord in a very uh precious way that that might seem different to to what we've known before.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um because he doesn't just say, right, that's it.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've done uh um you've had everything the moment you got you got saved.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: The Christian life isn't like um it isn't like a a children's toy that you wind up a weak hour that you wind up and then uh Jesus just lets it go off mechanically it yeah yeah yeah um that it is that that ongoing relationship with Jesus.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: Given the ongoingness of it though, wouldn't that be an argument for many, many, many blessings, not just second blessings, many baptisms of the Holy Spirit, not just the baptism of the Holy Spirit, many meals on the way to Sydney, not just one halfway.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: Depends on good therapy and food is clamored.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, exactly.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um so Paul writes in Ephesians to be filled with the spirit, but it's in the continuous keep on being filled with the spirits.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um we see that the people who are baptized in the spirit in Acts 2, we see them being filled afresh in Acts 4 in a prayer meeting.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's it's not a one-off thing, and I think the what that could be one of the dangers in Pentecostalism that people could sort of think as if the baptism of the Holy Spirit is like a goal to arrive at, and um, and then that's it.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I can sit back now.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've had uh I've had it.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it's not it's it's it's the beginning of something.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: We use the term baptism of the Holy Spirit for that sort of first one because that's the way we sort of see scripture using the language, um, that we only seem to see it used once.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Baptism is a sort of initiatory language, um, but the Bible does keep talking about being filled with the spirit, and it looks quite similar to um to that to that first one.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: So um so yeah, um uh that's uh yet another reason why I don't like language about second blessings and stuff like that, because uh we're best of every spiritual blessing in Christ, um, and and there's much more than uh for us in Jesus than simply dividing up into one or two blessings.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, the idea of the the kind of backwards of the Holy Spirit often it's often talked about in a way that it's it's quite like it's a very dramatic event.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_05: Um do you would you expect it that to be a dramatic thing for all people?
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_05: Because I'm just thinking there might be people thinking, well, have I have I had an event like this?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_05: Has this happened to me?
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_05: And would we expect I mean again, lots of people associate it with speaking in tongues as well.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_05: So I mean, what would you kind of say to people who are asking those kind of questions?
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_05: Like, should I be, you know, should I have been spoke speaking in tongues and I haven't, or could I have had this happen to me and I don't really know it's happened?
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: And good question.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think in the Bible what we see is the difference between getting saved and and the baptism of his part is that the baptism of his part seems to be something that is quite tangible.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you seem to know that something has happened, and and other people seem to know what that something's happened too.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: So especially that example of Simon the Sorcerer, that he sees this thing, he wants to buy this power because he sees that something has happened.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um so there seems to be something tangible that is there.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: Often in the Bible, um, in the book of Acts, often it's linked with um speaking in tongues, sometimes with prophecy.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but more generally, I think if if we zoom out from the book of Acts, um when the Holy Spirit comes upon people in the Bible, um, when we have this language of the spirit coming on people, um, or the spirit um uh falling on someone, um we often have um some sort of um uh uh theologically often say about inspired speech of some sort.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um so um so you can see examples even in in the area chapters of Luke that you see uh Mary's Magnificat, you see um uh you see um Simeon's song, um that uh you see some sort of response that people speak out something of the wonderful works of gods.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh and uh so it is um I think uh Pentecostals would argue that uh you know uh quite quite often, quite normally, that would be um Satan first and speaking in tongues.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um but um but I think there are other ways that we can see as people speak out good news, as people have that sort of freedom in speaking out that good news of Jesus, that there is some powerful thing that brings glory to Jesus in our lives, that fills us with love for Jesus, that causes us to want to speak out um of the wonders of Jesus.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think in Ephesians 5, when Paul says about being filled with the Spirit, he talks about um giving thanks for Jesus, about singing uh the praise of Jesus, um uh about speaking to one another about Jesus.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so it's something that will overflow in our lives with with speech that glorifies Jesus is uh is I think how I can boil it down to its uh to its essential.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_03: That tangibility thing is is fascinating, isn't it?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_03: That so often in Acts there's just the expectation that you know who is full of the spirit and who isn't.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: That you uh and you you appoint um deacons, for instance, because they're full of the spirit and of wisdom, or full of the spirit and faith, um, as the beginning of Acts 6 sort of says, and you know, in the pastoral epistles, and um yeah, there there is an expectation a that people will be filled with the spirit, and that you will know that they are filled with the spirit.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um that's that's interesting.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I g I guess as a as a very Christ-centered theologian, you would say, Jonathan, the way to seek the filling of the spirit is is what?
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: How should how should we do that?
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: I would say um that it's Jesus is the one that pours out the Holy Spirit.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: So if we want to seek being filled with the spirit, we need to be seeking Jesus.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that he is the one who has been anointed with the spirit beyond measure, um, that he is the Christ, the anointed one.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um he is the one um uh from whom the spirit proceeds.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: So um so we need to be looking to Jesus.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um if we want experiences of the spirit, or if we want ex if we want to see spectacular gifts or something like that, we're looking at the wrong thing entirely.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we're looking um The Holy Spirit's work is always to bring glory to Jesus.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so if what we care about is miraculous signs, if what we care about is spectacular things happening in church on a Sunday, if what we care about is some feeling in our own experience that actually we've lost the point of what this is, and uh and we're getting distracted from what's most important, that Jesus is the one who um who baptizes in the spirit.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's what John the Baptist said.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: But John the Baptist told us two things about Jesus.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: He's the Lamb of God, he takes away the sins of the world, and he's the one who baptized in the Holy Spirit and fire.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so um uh so if we want to know the spirit's fullness, we need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_03: Very good.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um so earlier you you mentioned about the charismatic movement, um, as well as Pentecostalism.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: How do how do we fit these pieces of the jigsaw together?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_03: So, what what is the charismatic movement?
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: Is it separable from Pentecostalism?
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_03: Is it a distinct thing?
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: Is it yeah, how do we put these things together?
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh dear, another difficult question.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think I think there's there's a lot of similarity, there's a lot of overlap.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um they both influence one another a lot, um, uh more and more as time goes on.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um historically, they have different origins.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh but I think um uh I was trying to think about this lately because um I'm working on a book and uh uh and one of the chapters in the book is about what is the difference between Pentecostals and charismatics, and um uh and so I had to think about it.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and what really crystallized it for me was uh was was um something um something someone in New Frontiers said.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um because I think New Frontiers is uh is a charismatic movement that is really, really similar to uh to Pentecostalism, that um uh that many Pentecostals, many New Frontiers people, you can put much difference between them.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh and that's the way I always thought of it.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: Until someone, uh a new frontiers pastor said to me um that uh no one speaks about the blood of Jesus, just those crazy old Pentecostals.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Well, on earth, of course we think about the blood of Jesus.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: What's crazy about that?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: The blood of Jesus is the most important thing, um and uh and and that sort of helped me see a little bit what uh what the difference is.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think it comes down to those two words Pentecostal and charismatic.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Pentecost is about something that Jesus does.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um Pentecostals often talk about Jesus as the savior, Jesus as the healer, Jesus as the baptizer and the holy spirit, and Jesus as the soon-coming king.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so if they want to sum up Pentecostalism, they sometimes talk about um uh this four or four square gospel or something like this, um, about these four uh it's all four things about Jesus.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: So uh you sometimes see like old pictures of like well, they used to have um huge Pentecostal Easter services in the Royal Albert Hall, and they used to have huge big banners at the front, one saying Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, and the other saying four square upon the infallible word of God.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh and this four square was about these four things about Jesus.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, tell me about the four square, because I've heard is is there a four square businessman's association or something?
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um oh yeah, um I think there is, yeah.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_03: Referring back to the four square thing.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: What is the four square thing?
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the foursquare is just this um that Jesus is saviour, Jesus is healer, Jesus is baptized in the Holy Spirit, and Jesus is the soon coming king.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's the idea that Pentecostals don't we do believe in a thing called the Baptism of Holy Spirit, but our focus isn't on a thing called the Baptism of the Holy Spirit or a thing called healing or a thing called salvation or a thing called the second coming.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: Our focus is on Jesus, and he's the one who does all that.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh I think that's part of the difference between um just a little bit of the focus between Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: Charismatic movement gets its name from the charismata, the gifts of the spirit, um, and so sometimes maybe the emphasis is slightly more on um on the gifts, um, on the continuity of those gifts today.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: Pentecostals believe in that, um, just our focus is slightly different, um, that it's gonna be Jesus as the one who pours out the spirit, uh, and as a result of that, these gifts are are bringing glory back to Jesus, and and always at the center of that is going to be the blood of the cross that Jesus came to to shed his blood for us, that Jesus came to take our place on the cross of Calvary, and that every every spiritual blessing that we have now in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus has flown from what Christ has done for us in dying in our place on the cross and rising again victorious from the dead.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_03: Very good.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_03: And therefore, so the the historical development of the charismatic movement, you would say, is is that more a is that more a 1960s-70s thing than a sort of a 1900s kind of thing?
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_03: Where where would you trace things?
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, uh sort of uh a few things come along in the late 1950s, the early 1960s.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um you have um in this country it starts with um some Brethren assemblies where um the Brethren and Pentecostals always had a lot in common, and um uh and some uh so there's some uh Brethren assemblies that suddenly start to uh experience the gifts of the spirit in their meetings.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um then some things start happening in the Church of England.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um you have uh Michael Harper also's Langham Place, um uh and which sort of begins these discussions within the Church of England.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: Some people uh uh some people like what he has to say, some people don't, even within also Langham Place, that um that there that um so John Stott writes uh a book in response, um uh setting out um what we'd think of, I suppose, now more uh more as the as as what nowadays we'd call the conservative uh evangelical position.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh and we see that sort of parting of the ways um a little bit between the two.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um in America, again, it's if in the Episcopal Church in America that you have um um some some ministers um starting to teach about the baptism and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: And um and as I say, a lot of this is really similar, especially at the beginning, a lot of this is really similar to what Pentecostals are saying, um uh and uh um just in a in a different setting.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh and um and often there are church settings where people just would never have met Pentecostals before or had any interaction with them, and uh and so it's sort of like when Pentecostals and charismatics start to discover each other, it's uh it's a bit of a surprise on both sides.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_03: And and what's going on there for sort of globally world mission-wise, um, because we we hear lots about you know the the church in South America and and lots of you know um Pentecostal kind of church growth uh in Africa as well, and and so give us a give us a global global picture of uh what the state of Pentecostalism is.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um Pentecostalism is m huge outside of the Western world.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh that um there are countries now where um where Pentecostals um and charismatics make up the majority of of Christians.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um so um so you can think of somewhere like Brazil, um where between the Pentecostal churches and the charismatic movement within other churches, um that mo that the vast majority of uh of of Christian churches in in Brazil, um which are about hundreds of millions of people, um uh have these sort of Pentecostal beliefs.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um so Pentecostalism has been a missionary movement from the beginning.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: So right from the beginning, it's this idea that the reason that the Holy Spirit is poured out in this way um is to empower us to go and tell other people about Jesus.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so right from the beginning, at this little uh this little mission in Azusa Street in Los Angeles, where the people are really poor, it's it's a rundown church that used to be used as a stable that they've cleared out to have these meetings in.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yet, right from the beginning, they start sending missionaries all over the world.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's um uh that they have this confidence that just as the Lord has poured out the spirit to give people boldness and assurance to talk about what Jesus has done for them, that he's going to provide the means to do it as well.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh so they have the confidence that they're not relying just on their own resources, but uh they have that confidence to pray for the resources that are needed to buy tickets, to uh to sail across the ocean, to to go and um uh and take the gospel.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: And and and so we see that right from the outset.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and I think you would be hard-pressed to find any Pentecostal movement anywhere today that doesn't have a huge missionary emphasis um uh and a huge uh a huge desire to be praying for world missions, to be sending um people um uh to spread the gospel all over the world.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and that's reflected not just in foreign countries, but also locally.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: People want to tell people round about them about Jesus, people want to see new people coming into church and and getting saved.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um people people want to see people's lives transformed by the living Jesus.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so that's huge emphasis on evangelism and missions, um, uh which has resulted in in huge uh growth in Pentecostal churches um all around the world.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: So like the denomination where I'm a minister is uh is um is really small in this country, um, and yet um where it started in this country, um and yet we've got like 16 million members around the world um because of that huge emphasis that has been right from the very beginning on on sending out missionaries, um, on sending out evangelists, on sending out people to make Christ known.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_03: And it seems to be a missionary movement that um has traction in a lot of non-Western cultures.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um any guesses as to as as to why there's an appeal to non-Western cultures more than to to Western ones?
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think um Pentecostals, I think this is why Pentecostals is much smaller in the West.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: We believe in strange stuff that most people don't want in our culture to believe in.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um we believe that the Lord is active every day in the world around us.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: We believe in we believe that the devil is real, we believe in angels, uh, we we believe that God provides in miraculous ways.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we believe that we can pray for people to be healed and uh uh and that the Lord does heal people.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm not saying that the Lord always heals, it doesn't guarantee that he'll always heal sometimes.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord works through sicknesses, um but but we have that but we have that sort of faith that we can bring all these things to the Lord.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I I sort of find it you know a bit difficult to to to sort of think from a Western perspective about in that I grew up as a Pentecostal, so these things are really normal to me.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh but um uh like my own life has been sort of shaped by this, that I was really sick when I was born.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um the pastor came to the hospital because he wanted to see my mother and see the new baby, um, but because he was just about to leave, he'd had his farewell service, uh, and I was born just before he left uh to come back to the mainlands.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh he came, got to the hospital.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I was sick, convinced the nurses that it wouldn't do any harm uh to take me out of the incubator just for a minute for a prayer, and um and I was healed.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so so so I've grown up with this this perfectly normal that people get healed.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's perfectly normal to see the Lord's intervention in all these ways.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I think a lot of people outside the Western world um have that um uh have that that that is normal in their mindset as well.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, whereas in uh in our Western culture these things are very weird.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um so um uh so I think uh I think that really resonates beyond the Western world that that we're not just you know you know doctrine is really important, um, what we believe is really important, um, but we're not just coming with a message of a historic faith that we're looking back, um, but on the basis of what God has done historically in Christ for us through his cross and resurrection, that uh that we can know his power by the spirit in our lives today.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_05: How can we, as Christians or as churches, be kind of more Pentecostal as Pentecost rolls around this year?
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think really fixing our eyes on Jesus is the most Pentecostal thing that we can do.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and talking about Jesus and telling other people about Jesus.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that that's that's what we see on the day of Pentecost.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: People are there, they're waiting, they're praying, they're looking to Jesus, and then they go out and they speak about Jesus, and they tell other people about Jesus, and other people come to faith in Jesus, and they're baptized and added to the church, and then they go out and tell others about Jesus as well.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that fixing our eyes on on Jesus and that desire um to to make him known, to bring glory to him in every way.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and in that part of that is is asking him um for um the outpouring of his spirit.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that's just limited to Pentecostals.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't think that has to be limited to how Pentecostals understand it, Oliver.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that Jesus talks in Luke 11 about uh about praying to the Father and asking him um for the Holy Spirit.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we're all encouraged by Jesus um to do that, um, but not because we want some spectacular experience or some nice feeling, we do that because the spirit glorifies Jesus, that that's what he's come to do, and and we want to glorify Jesus in every possible way.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_05: Very, very helpful.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_03: Jonathan, thank you very much.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_03: If people want to catch up with you more online or more with uh Regents College, how can they do that?
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_00: People can find me or can find the college um on Twitter, that's probably the easiest way.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_03: Very good.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_03: Jonathan is a brilliant follower on Twitter, so look for is it black underscore Jonathan?
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is that uh I think it's Jonathan underscore black underscore.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_03: Jonathan underscore black underscore.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant, brilliant.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's been it's been fascinating, uh Jonathan.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you very much.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you're you always help me to fix my eyes on Jesus a lot more, and uh I think if that's the the true meaning of being Pentecostal, then sign me up.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_03: Sign me up.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um brilliant, and uh next week we're gonna think about uh Trinity Sunday.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_03: So following Ascension Sunday, then you've got Pentecost Sunday, and then you reflect back on the whole of the gospel events and you start thinking about the God of the Gospel, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_03: So uh stay tuned next week and we'll think some more about Trinity Sunday.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_03: But thanks very much, Paul.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks, Glenn, and thanks, Jonathan.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, hello again.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm joined by Paul, who was actually involved in in that conversation.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_02: How are you doing, Paul?
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I'm alright, thanks.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_05: Good to be here again.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_04: It's the final musings.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_05: Well, first of all, I think it was a really good uh discussion.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_05: I'd never met Jonathan before uh that discussion, and uh yeah, what he said was really good value.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I think similar to when we've uh uh similar to when we've talked to about Ascension and we've talked about um Mothering Sunday, uh those ones, uh these are kind of things where generally I think you kind of get, you know, we've not given them a huge amount of thought sometimes, like Mothering Sunday in particular, because you just think it is a hallmark, you know, holiday.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_05: Um so I'd never really thought about I didn't even know it was part of the liturgical uh calendar.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_05: Um Ascension last week.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_05: Um again, you learn as you think about it, you go, actually, this is really cool.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_05: And I think with Pentecost in a similar way, it's another one of those areas where you've not really thought about it that much.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_02: And um Yeah, well, thanks so much for listening, everyone.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_02: A while back we did some feedback for this podcast, and some people kindly responded um just to kind of get a feel of some people unkindly responded.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_05: No, that's not true, that's not true.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_05: You know who you are, and we've got all your names and addresses, and we know where you live.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_05: No, that's not true.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_02: But it was really helpful actually just to get some thoughts on this podcast, and um remarkably, some people seem to like our little bits that we do, the bits of banter and occasional uh actual discussion that me and Paul do at the end.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: Occasionally, and we decided to massively strip that back because obviously we don't want to outstay our welcome on this podcast, we want to keep it quite concise and you want to get straight into the the content with the the proper presenters of the meats.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_02: The meats, absolutely.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but if you are interested in uh listening to me and Paul have have a bit of banter, what can they do?
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_05: Well, you can join us.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_05: We've got our own YouTube channel now uh called The Shallow Proclamation, uh which uh although it sounds very religious, doesn't it?
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_05: It sounds like we're proclaiming something very important.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_05: We're not at all.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_05: Uh we're actually attempting a watch through of every single Doctor Who episode from 1963 onwards um and related media.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_05: It's gonna be a lot of fun.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_05: We've already started, it's good, so come and join us, go on YouTube, search for the shallow proclamation, and you can join us for a bit of Doctor Who and a bit of banter, if that's your thing.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, do you have anything else to add, Paul?
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_05: No, I don't think so.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_05: I guess uh just enjoy Pentecost.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, enjoy Pentecost.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_02: God bless guys, goodbye.