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Connecting with the Almighty
Article Launched: 09/25/2007 01:00:00 AM MDT
Lee Williams of Loveland, front and about 200 people are praying during the Fire on the Front Range Revival Network in Loveland, CO on Thursday night. (Post / Hyoung Chang)
Colorado is “an area of intense spiritual warfare,” said world-famous revivalist Steve Hill – and he was here to do battle.
“There are demons and devils flying all around this building. And there are great angels,” Hill told a crowd of 400 at the three- day revival, called “Fire on the Front Range,” that ended over the weekend at the Larimer County Fairgrounds in Loveland.
The Pentecostal revival has moved from the tent into venues with big screens, lighting effects, amped-up musicians and DVDs for sale.
Still, adherents say, it remains old-time religion.
“Mainline churches wouldn’t have us,” said David Meek, pastor of Glad Tidings Church in Greeley, part of the 93-year-old Assemblies of God
Pastor Steve Hill is blessing one of participants in the Fire on the Front Range Revival Network on Thursday night. (Post / Hyoung Chang)
fellowship of Pentecostals.“They didn’t want us speaking in tongues,” Meek said. “Just about every service we have people falling under the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Pentecostalism and related charismatic movements are among the fastest-growing segments of global Christianity, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
The World Christian Database said that in 2006 at least a fourth of the world’s 2 billion Christians were identified as members of these highly personal faiths seeking baptism in the Holy Spirit.
The percentage of Pentecostals in the population ranges from 5 percent in the United States to 33 percent in Kenya.
If other charismatic Christians – who are not members of Pentecostal denominations but share many of the same traits of exuberant worship – are added, the numbers jump to 23 percent in the United States.
Pentecostal literature describes the gifts of the Holy Spirit as special insights, restorative faith, healings, prophecy, speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues, discernment of spirits and miraculous powers, such as casting out demons.
Worshipers raise and wave their arms during songs of praise. Some dance or
Stephanie Sivahop, 22, of Loveland, front and about 200 people are praying during the Fire on the Front Range Revival Network in Loveland, CO on Thursday night. (Post / Hyoung Chang)
jump up and down. Some weep at the experience of being “slain by the Holy Spirit.” “When God shows up, anything can happen,” Meek said.
Hill became famous for a one-day speaking engagement on Father’s Day 1995 at a Pensacola, Fla., church that turned into the five-year, almost-nightly Brownsville Revival that drew about 2 million people.
Hill said revivalists will speak to five people or a million, but they would speak until they sparked spiritual renewal, a movement “to get rid of some of these devils around here.”
We have yet another. Possibly I have read so much of this type thing recently that I’m becoming desensitized to it because this article didn’t shock me. It does sadden and sicken me, and again, how much more, the heart of THE Father.
In this article; however, there are red flags all over, almost every sentence. So I’m going to attempt to pick some of this apart with my limited knowledge.
* What exactly is “special insight” and where is it mentioned in the Word?
* What is “restorative faith” and does it differ from “revival” (which is not a specific gift of the Spirit)?
* Does the Bible say that power includes the casting out of demons?
List of Spiritual Gifts
The article goes on to mention people “weep at the experience of being ’slain in the Spirit’”. Sorry, but I have to interject something for my own amusement here. Did they weep because they got hurt or out of a true repentant crying out to God?
I agree that anything can happen when God “shows up” because He is supernatural. What I see is more between the lines though. (I shouldn’t have to mention but considering the content of this article, I feel it’s necessary, God is not some sideshow. He is not someone or something that we pay a quarter admission fee so that we can walk inside a tent at the county fair to take a gander at for our momentary pleasure and amusement. He is Almighty God and there is no other) Does this statement from the article indicate that God left the building? We should show up to God’s house. It’s not like He comes home to find company. Even in our own bodies (which are to be His temple), are we not only earthen vessels that are intended to be temples of His Spirit? Our bodies are not our own. Paul says in 1 Cor 3:16 says “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?”
It seems to me that Mr. Hill’s focus is more on the demonic than on God who has control over it.
* The term “spiritual renewal” implies that there was once a fresh or new birth that is in need of something fresh and new. While I do believe that there is such a thing as a true revival but the purpose of revival is to bring a refreshing (revival) to the Body of Christ. So why are there “devils around here” to begin with?
There is a quote further into the article made by Scott Van Lanken that is the last thing I’ll mention here. He says “I didn’t say that God wasn’t going to scare you. I said you were in a safe place”. Why would I want to enter into the presence of a god that scares me? The opposite is actually true. The Psalmist wrote in chapter 16 verse 11 “ You have made [a] known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.”
