Pentecostalism & Prophecy Explained - Lea Anne Smith (Sermon Audio) - Go Teach All Nations

SPEAKER 1 Jesus said in Matthew 28:19, Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Welcome to Go Teach all nations, bringing you Christ's teachings through Australian and international speakers and hear is Today’s presenter Lea Ann Smith. SPEAKER 2 This weekend we're going to explore what I think is probably one of the most relevant topics in Adventism today. It really started with me trying to make sense of my own journey. I trained at the nursing, the Sydney Adventist Hospital over here. And during my training I had some interesting experiences which I'll tell you a little bit about. But I found that along the way that other people were asking the same questions that I was about the Pentecostal movement. And that led me to further study. So what we're going to do tonight is we're going to look at how this movement actually rose in Christianity and then the first wave. And then tomorrow morning I'm going to look at a broader picture of this type of spirituality in scripture and history. And then tomorrow afternoon I'm going to be looking at what's happening in Pentecostalism right now because that has quite a significance for us as Pentecostalism and prophecy intersect. But my own journey, my journey began in my 20s when I was over here at the Sydney Adventist Hospital. I enrolled in a college in the city to complete a counseling qualification. And in my naivety I had no concept that I'd actually signed on to a Pentecostal college. And the first three days of the academic year were actually a camp, a spiritual retreat. And I thought, oh, isn't this great? You know, us Adventists could learn a few things. And I went along and I was pretty impressed. We went up to the Blue Mountains and the first night another student came and knocked on my door and invited me to a student led prayer meeting. And I really, really was quite excited about these new friends that I was meeting. So I went along to that meeting and we all prayed and everyone was throwing in their prayers and then suddenly I realised I couldn't understand what they were saying. And then I realised that they were actually speaking in tongues. And it dawned on me in that moment that I'd actually signed on to a Pentecostal college without realising it. And then the leader started moving around the room and placing his hands on people and they slumped to the floor. And by the time I glanced around the room and realised I was the only girl standing, I was ready to head for the door too. Well, my roommate was slayed in the Spirit that night and she had a rapturous experience and it was an answer to prayer for her. And very quickly I was deeply conflicted. All I knew about Pentecostalism was what my parents had told me. I'd grown up being told Pentecostalism is spiritualism. And here I met some of the most sincere Bible reading Christians that I'd ever met and they were on fire for the Lord. Deeply spiritual, beautiful people and they became my friends. And the things that ricocheted through my brain were these questions how could the Spirit that my Pentecostal friends have not be the Spirit of God? And if they truly do have the Spirit, how come my Adventist church doesn't have it? And lastly, where does the supernatural phenomena that occurs in Pentecostal worship services come from? In the subsequent months I switched away from my traditional Adventist church to a new church that was starting in Sydney, one that used something other than what we used to call the Three Hymn Sandwich. And not long before there were rumours floating around about the fact that there were people speaking in tongues in the church and it eventually split and it split. And this is now the church that came from that and it's still here in Sydney 30 years later. My best friend still goes to that church. I have a number of friends that go to that church. So this is a very deep thing for me as to how this could happen. So a few years ago I decided that I wanted to put to bed my questions. And whenever I would talk to an evangelist I would ask them how come, how do we know that this Pentecostal movement is what is referenced in Revelation 13? And they'd say oh this, that and the other thing and I'd go away and I think I just don't see it, I just don't see it. But a few years ago when I saw it tearing a church apart, I decided that I really just had to put it to bed. And so I started to read about Pentecostal history and I started to download books on Kindle and they were written by Pentecostal historians. And as I read them all of my questions got answered. And so tonight I'm going to tell you some of those stories that I read that convinced me where the Spirit was in this particular movement. Now this movement, it's happened in a series of waves. It came out of something called the Holiness movement which was around in the early Adventist period. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about that. We then have the first wave which was the first 60 years or so of the Movement, where it had its own denominations and its own churches. We then had the second wave, which happened in the 1960s to the 1980s. And this is where Pentecostalism actually spread into mainline Protestant churches. It was regarded as fringe, but you could go along to your own church and practice these things. If it was a mainline Protestant church in the third wave, it actually spread to evangelical churches. And it spread basically through the music that started to come out of the third wave in that period. And today we live in an era which I think is quite different to those first three waves and which I. And there are some other scholars out there who call it the fourth wave as well. And I think you will agree that it really does. It is really quite different from the third wave, even though it came out of it. But firstly, what I'd like to do is I'd like to tell you a little bit about the holiness movement. Now, the holiness movement, it arose because it was a reaction to the cold formalism of churches that were happening at that time. And it was from this movement that Pentecostalism came. And I'm going to be talking to you about two men, one by the name of Charles Parham and one by the name of William Seymour. And both of these are considered leaders in Pentecostalism today. In fact, there's quite an academic debate about which one is truly, truly the leader, whether it's one or whether it's the other. Not a lot of them really think that it's both. But we'll talk a little bit about that. So the doctrine of holiness, it's a very good doctrine, isn't it? We're called to live holy lives. That's what scripture calls us to do. Be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy. We have that same call in our lives today. But why did it actually arise? Well, during the Middle Ages, the doctrine of holiness really got lost. Religion became a series of transactions and rituals and rites. And you participated in certain things and confession or whatever, and these things assured you of a salvation. And Martin Luther came along and he changed that, and he said that none of these things will save you. You know, traditions replace the Bible. We need to get back to Scripture. And Scripture says that we're saved by grace alone. So Luther highlighted that beautiful doctrine of justification. We're made right with God through faith, but it was not complete. God raised up another man by the name of John Wesley, and he restored another very important doctrine to the Christian church. What was it? Sanctification. Sanctification, yes. You know, that yeah, so he was saying, how you live your life matters. And he started the Methodist Church. His concern was with holy living. It started as a reaction to secular influences in the church. There was this desire for holiness and human perfection. It was really a response to a lot of moral decline in the 1800s. You know, people who went to church started playing cards and dancing and skirt lengths came up a few inches, those sorts of things, and they reacted against that. So we had the Civil war in the 1860s, and morality has a way of slumping through war, and it really did. And so there was this resurgence to capture holiness, but there was confusion around the doctrine of sanctification. And the movement actually peaked in 1898, which is a really interesting year for Adventism. So you will find when you read Ellen White, if you read her writings, she references things that were clearly from the holiness movement in that period. So one of the beliefs they had was this confusion around the doctrine of sanctification, that it was actually instantaneous. Now, what do we know about sanctification? It's the work of a lifetime. That's right. But they believed it was instantaneous, and they believed that it was marked by things. And so if you read her writings, you'll find that her comments about instantaneous sanctification or instant sanctification really start to peak after that period. So the key beliefs of the holiness period, you were converted and you repented, but you weren't saved at that point. Today, we believe that if you repent, you're justified and you are saved. They didn't believe that. They believed you needed something called a second blessing. And once you had the second blessing plus salvation, plus your repentance, then you were actually saved. And that moment that you received the second blessing was marked by some phenomena. And it might be you laughing, it might be you dancing, it might be you crying, all sorts of things, trembling, jerking, et cetera. All sorts of things could be that marker of second blessing. Now, Adventists themselves actually had an encounter with this movement any of you have heard of in the Indiana camp meetings? No. Okay. Some of you have. So, you know, Adventists ran into some of these holiness movement people in the late 1800s, and. And they came away saying, oh, we've got the truth, they've got the spirit, and we just need to get them together. And so they did. They tried to get them together, and they came up with some really interesting theology. They taught that believers would pass through a garden of Gethsemane experience and become sinless in order to be translated to heaven. In a state of perfection that their worship service was really quite loud, quite a high pitch of excitement, lots of instruments and loud singing. And they also had this phenomena which we would today call slaying in the spirit. And when someone slumped to the floor, they would say, oh, they've received translation faith. They're now ready for heaven. And so that was the Adventist version. Ellen White was so concerned about it. She was here in Australia when it happened, that she actually did something she was never going to do. She said she was going to retire and live here in Australia until she died. She was so concerned that she actually packed up and went back to the United States to meet the crisis that this church was having through the intersection with the holiness movement. Well, now that you know a little bit about the holiness movement, I'm going to tell you a little bit about the first wave and how this actually happened. So this was a holiness minister. His name was Charles Parham. And the origins of Pentecostalism can be traced to New Year's Day in 1901. Now, to understand the significance of that, you know, we would say the new century starts on the year 2000. They actually said it started in 2001. Guess what? They were right. But so they. In the year 1900, New Year's Eve, 1900, they were holding a prayer vigil because Charles Parham had become convinced that the second coming was about to happen. And so he came up with this new teaching. And the teaching was this, that God wanted to gift them with the gift of tongues. And this special gift would enable them to become super apostles. And they would be able to evangelize the world very quickly. And so this miraculous ability to speak in tongues, they started praying for it. They prayed in earnest. On New Year's Eve, they had this 24 hour vigil. And on New Year's Day, after praying all night, one of the students, a woman by the name of Agnes Sanford, actually started to pray in tongues. She broke out in these ecstatic utterances. So very quickly it spread. There were 40 students in that Bible school and they thought that they were speaking 21 different languages. There's no way of knowing. They didn't know any other languages, so how could they know it was 21? But the reports say that the room assumed a glow and that tongues of fire appeared over people's head. We don't know how accurate this is. I think there's probably a little bit of exaggeration happening here. But basically, as a result of this, one of these students, Agnes, she was said to Be speaking in Swedish and. Sorry, she was said to be speaking in Chinese and she was unable to actually speak in English for three days. And she started writing in Chinese. And this is her Chinese. Doesn't look like Chinese, does it? That she thought she was speaking in Chinese. It's clearly not Chinese. Well, some of the students felt that madness had swept over the school. They felt that it was some sort of mass hysteria. And so they defected, they ran away. They alerted the media. It was quickly discovered that these languages people thought they were speaking weren't real languages. And within six months, the school was closed. Parham moved away in disgrace. But he started again because he was convinced that this was the key to quickly evangelise the world. This time, he accepted a student by the name of William Seymour. And this is William Seymour. He was actually an African American man. And he became a student in Charles Parham's new Bible school, which was further south in America because of racism. He had to sit in the hallway. But he was only there for six weeks before he received a call to go and pastor a church in Los Angeles. So despite Parham's approval, he didn't really approve of Seymour going off so early. Seymour headed off to Los Angeles, and when he started to preach this new message of speaking in tongues, he was very quickly locked out of the church. Found himself out on the street with nowhere. With nowhere to go. But some people took him in, and as a result, he started in a small group just sharing what he thought was this truth about speaking in tongues started to break out in that group. It started to grow very quickly. They had to find a place to worship. And they found this place. It was called. It was an old stable on Azusa street in Los Angeles. Anyone heard of Azusa Street? No. Okay. Some. Just a few, yeah. You can see on the side there, Apostolic Faith Gospel Mission. That's what they painted up there. And it was started. Started by. By. By William. So that was a place where it started to happen in an unprecedented way. It never happened quite that much. And so when people began to speak in a language, in some sort of sound, someone else would have the gift of discernment and they'd say, oh, you're speaking in. Or the gift of interpretation. You're speaking in Swedish, or you're speaking in Yugoslav, or you're speaking in Chinese, or you're speaking in African. Not realizing that there was lots of different dialects in Africa. And they then decided that once people started to speak in what they thought was a language, that they should send the people to those countries. And so today they're referred to as missionaries of the one way ticket because they were only given enough money to go one way. Because the idea was that the Lord was going to come very quickly and they would never need to return to the United States. And so they headed off. There was something like, I don't know, 200 or more missionaries that I know of that was sent to around 70 different countries around the world. So what happened when they arrived? Well, they couldn't speak the local language or communicate, so they had no money to return because they had these one way tickets that they'd been given. A number of these countries were tropical countries. So these people fell sick with malaria and tropical diseases. The movement had been started by a faith healer, Charles Parham. So they didn't believe in medical care. So many of them actually ended up dying. When I think about this, I think about it as Pentecostalism's great disappointment. Now, as Adventists, we know something about great disappointments, don't we? We certainly do. So the thing is though, how these two movements responded to their disappointments was very different. So for Pentecostalism, the experience of speaking in tongues had been so, so real. And they were so convinced that what they had was biblical that they simply redefined what the purpose of speaking in tongues was. So rather than speaking real languages for the purposes of evangelism, they transformed what it was actually for. And they said that they were speaking an unknown language for a personal benefit. That's not how Adventism ended up dealing with their great disappointment. Adventism's disappointment was visible. The whole world knew it was pretty cataclysmic. It was not something that could be swept under the rug. Azusa street had kept sending out missionaries, even though it would have been apparent that they were not speaking the language of where they were going. And so Adventism was forced into a position where they really went back to scripture to really find out. And here's an account that we have. It says, after the passing of time in 1844, the early advent leaders searched for the truth. As for hidden treasure, I met with them and we studied and prayed earnestly. Often we remained together until late at night and sometimes through the entire night, praying for light and studying the word. Again and again, these brethren came together to study the Bible in order that we might know its meaning and be prepared to preach it with power. You know, I am so grateful today for the great disappointment in Adventism because it forced us to do something. It forced us to be really biblical. In our approach to scriptures. And what this has meant is that even though Adventism and Pentecostalism both have the same roots, we both came out of Methodism, we both had roots in the holiness movement, which we don't have time to talk about at the moment. But there was lots of similarities between early Pentecostalism and early Adventism, but they've actually ended up in very different places because what happened at those disappointments, they got pushed in different directions. And to understand that, we need to just talk about spirituality for a minute. Now, spirituality, I'm going to use this word a lot this weekend, so it's really good to get in your mind what it means right now. It simply means how humans connect to God. That is spirituality, how you connect to God. But there is another part to it. So it's how you connect to God, but it's also your Christian experience, your thoughts, your feelings and behaviors. And really there's two types of spirituality. There's what I call genuine spirituality, which is based on God's word and which interacts with our thinking brain. We make a rational decision on what we learn in Scripture under the illumination of the Holy Spirit. That impacts our emotions and that impacts our behaviour. And I call that a cognitive, biblical centric spirituality. The other type is something I would call more a counterfeit or maybe even an immature type of spirituality. And it's a spirituality that's dependent on signs, it's dependent on feelings and emotions and ecstasy and mysticism and the miraculous. And that gives you the evidences that God is actually with you. And that impacts not so much your thinking brain, but your feeling brain. And that then impacts behaviors, et cetera. So it's an emotional, experiential, centric spirituality. Now it just so happens that this is the type of spirituality that Pentecostalism now tends to run on. And I'm not saying for a minute that every Pentecostal operates out of this type of spirituality. Not at all. You know what? Let me tell you a secret. There's many Adventists who function out of this type of spirituality. I did for many years. And the other type, that genuine spirituality, there's many Pentecostals who function out of that model of spirituality. The Bible is more important to them than the evidences that they get. But it's pretty hard to swim against the stream. And so if you're in the movement, you tend to get dragged towards that emotional, experiential spirituality. So here's a fairly classic definition of Pentecostal spirituality by one of the Leading scholars in the world on Pentecostalism. He says central to Pentecostal worship is the experience of being possessed by the Spirit, receiving the Spirit's gifts, and breaking out of the constraints and limitations of everyday life. See that word there? Experience the experience. How it feels to actually be possessed by the Holy Spirit. Well, no one really thought that Pentecostalism was going to go very far, but it actually became a worldwide movement, even though it was not regarded well at the time. How did it go to the world? It went to the world through this little newsletter. And basically they spread it around. People came from all over North America. They would subscribe to the newsletter. People would write and subscribe. Ended up with a circulation of 50,000 subscribers around the world. And wherever the newsletter went and people prayed over the newsletter, that phenomenon would start to break out. Now, what was that phenomena that was breaking out? We know that it wasn't the gift of tongues because we know what happened with the missionaries of the one Way ticket. But what was the other phenomena that was actually happening at Azusa Street? Well, they were speaking in tongues. There was prophesying, healing, slaying in the Spirit, trances and visions, jumping and rolling, laughing, shouting and barking and jerking. So some things that are not terribly biblical were actually happening there. Some of you might wonder what some of those things are. Well, barking is where a person would just make these animal sounds and it would seem to be involuntary jerking was where someone's body might jerk, similar to an epileptic seizure. So things got quite exciting there. People came from all over. Three services a day for three years. As many as 1500 would cram into that building on a Sunday. And this is what another one of the eminent Scottish scholars on Pentecostalism have described this period as like. And he says soon such physical demonstrations as the jerks, the holy laugh, the holy dance and singing in the spirit, which Seymour called the heavenly choir, were in evidence in the mission. Before long, spiritualists and mediums from the numerous occult societies of Los Angeles began to attend and to contribute their seances and trances to the services of. Disturbed by these developments, Seymour wrote Palmer for advice on how to handle the spirits and begged him to come to Los Angeles and take over supervision of the revival. Well, Parham headed there, and this is what he said about his account. I hurried to Los Angeles. To my utter surprise and astonishment, I found conditions even worse than I'd anticipated. Brother Seymour came to me helpless. He said he could not stem the tide that had arisen. I saw the manifestations of the flesh, spiritualistic control saw people practicing hypnotism at the altar of a candidate speaking the baptism. Parham wasn't the only one that was quite appalled. It attracted a lot of media. The newspaper reporters went and some of the reports they left are quite interesting. It's apparent as you read that things were pretty, pretty out of control. There's quite a picture of pandemonium with a fair bit of mass hysteria, but also undeniably, some sort of spiritual, supernatural power as well. So where was it coming from? Well, to understand that, we really need to understand the influences that were present at Azusa street, and we've already looked at them to some degree. So there was this instantaneous sanctification which came from the holiness movement, which we talked about, this idea that you would get sanctified and suddenly something would break out and you would speak in tongues or whatever. Also this idea that glossalay was now the second blessing. It couldn't just be anything, it had to be speaking in tongues. And there was also African American slave religion, which is a highly experiential form of religion. So how did this actually happen? Well, today, basically, Pentecostal scholars recognise that there is the influence of something called hoodaism on what happened at Azusa Street. So where did hoodooism came from? It was a religion which combined Catholicism and voodooism. So when people in West Africa were captured by slave traders and taken back to North America, terrible, terrible thing that they did to them. They took the only things they could take, which is their religion and their culture. And then in a certain part of America, where some of the landowners wanted more Catholic numbers on the books, they forced their slaves to become Catholic. Can you ever force someone to convert? No. So what they did was they basically mixed their religion, voodooism with Catholicism, and it gave rise to something called hoodooism, or it's known as slave religion today as well. And how is it formed? Well, we just talked about that, so we'll keep going. So voodooism ended up becoming part of slave culture and that included things like symbols, spells, incantations, magic, signs and wonders, miracles and healing, trances, visions and dreams and spirit possession. And, you know, academics are smart people. They put it together and said, oh, some of this actually happened at Azusa Street. It was obviously the influence of hoodooism, because we know the individuals that were there and we know that some of them were actually caught up in this practice. And so today it's acknowledged by many historians to be a significant factor in the events that occurred in the revival at Azusa Street. Now, you're probably wondering why you've never heard this. And it's for a complexity of reasons. When people went back to their own churches after having visited Azusa street, they couldn't actually worship there. And it was considered that these two men, Haram and Seymour, nobody wanted to own them as pioneers. Haram turned out to be a practicing homosexual who also molested children. And he was involved with the Ku Klux Klan and did a number of terrible things. So nobody wanted him as the founder of their movement. Seymour was a lovely man. Everything I've read about him is just beautiful spiritual craft, Christian man in so many ways. But he was a black man in white racist America. And so as whites caught onto this, they didn't want him either. And so what they did was they produced the first account of the Assemblies of God was this book Suddenly from Heaven. So there's this concept that this just came down out of heaven. We don't really have founders. And there's a chapter in there called Call no Man Father. In other words, you know, God is our father, not these men that we don't want to own. And so you come across statements like this in the literature, the literature on Pentecostalism fails to recognise that every ritual and practice of Pentecostalism had a precedent in African American traditional religion. I actually find that quite concerning. You know, the man who wrote this doesn't find it concerning. He's actually saying we need to give it credit where credit's due. He doesn't see a problem. He just thinks that African Americans should be given credit for how this movement started. But when I look at it, and in the context of the great controversy, what was the spirit of Azusa Street? Well, you've got the influence of African traditional religion, which we've spoken about, you've got the attraction of spiritualists and hypnotists and occultists who flock to the meetings. People described something entering them and there was this non biblical phenomena associated with witchcraft that actually happened. And the eyewitness at the time actually said that this was demonic. What do we call this? We call it syncretism when two different religions merge together. And so syncretism is something the Bible takes a pretty strong stand against. It talks about not mixing the things of God with anybody else. So people couldn't worship back in their own church once they had gone to Azusa Street. And so basically it gave birth to a whole fleet of church denominations that came out of Azusa Street. And for our intents and purposes only, One of those is really a factor in Australia and that's the Assemblies of God. And then out of that has come a lot of sub movements within the waves. So the first wave was glossolalia and supernatural Phenomena. We've got the Healing Revivals of America, North America. If we had time, I'd love to tell you about those because they're fascinating. And Ellen White said some interesting things which I think points to this. The 1940s, the word of Faith movement, which now we know it as the Prosperity Gospel, which there's a lot of big names, some of the biggest churches in America now came out of this movement called Word of Faith. The second wave was really the ecumenical developments where you were able to practice these things in your own church. It was also where spiritual warfare began to rise. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that tomorrow. And the Jesus People movement. Fascinating era of history as the hippies collided with the Pentecostal movement when they were deeply disillusioned and weren't receiving what they wanted from the hippie movement and found Jesus and gave birth to worship renewal, which became very much a part of the third wave. And some of you will have lived through this era. So you'll know some of these things, the signs and wonders, power evangelism, the prophetic movement in the 1980s as well, something called the Apostolic movement, which we'll be talking about tomorrow afternoon, because that's the most influential movement in Pentecostalism and in much of evangelical Christianity today. And in this era we have the megachurch spirituality and something called the New Apostolic Reformation, which I'm going to talk about tomorrow afternoon. But I just want to take you to an event in the third wave. So if we just go back here. So this third wave. Something happened in the third wave which is relevant to a lot of what's happened today. And it's something called the Toronto Blessing. How many of you have heard of the Toronto Blessing? Oh, lots more of you have heard of the Toronto Blessing than anything else. So that happened in January 1994 and it was sort of known as the Little Azusa street when it started to happen, the second Azusa street, sorry, because people started to experience the same thing in a very intense way. These things had always happened right through, from 1900 through to this period. But it began to happen in great intensity. People falling down, holy laughter, gold toothed fillings, shaking and convulsing, sort of like seizures, barking, roaring, hissing. And spiritual drunkenness was a new one. Somebody went along, had this to say about it. A lot of it was very ugly, that the leaders claimed that it was actually God imparting these things. Someone else had this to say. I inadvertently got prayed over by some people who received the Tronde blessings. So she didn't go there herself. She actually just got prayed over by people who had gone there. I ended up that night with uncontrollable flopping and shaking of my limbs, being drunk in the Spirit, uncontrollable laughter. At the time, it felt right. But later, as time went on, these manifestations came at inopportune times and were uncontrollable. It soon became very clear to me that this was not the Holy Spirit. And she goes on to tell the story of how she repented from this and how it cleared up and went away as she prayed. So some of the biggest churches in the world today were actually came out of the Toronto Blessing. Some of you might have heard of Holy Heidi and Roland Baker, who have a mission in Mozambique, wonderful mission. But they're very heavily into the phenomena that they found at the Toronto Blessing. Bill and the late Benny Johnson from Bethel Church in Reading. So most of you probably would have heard of Bethel Church. Bethel Church is where Christianity gets a lot of its music today. And you likely will have heard some Bethel songs somewhere along the line. I find it hard to believe that an Adventist wouldn't have heard Bethel music somewhere along the line. And we'll be talking more about Bethel Church tomorrow afternoon. John and Carol Arnott. So formerly the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church is now called Catch the Fire. What an interesting idol, by the way. Catch the Fire. We're going to talk more about that tomorrow. And this is the biggest one of the lot, but we don't seem to know about it. Hundreds of thousands of churches belong to Harvest Rock. This is the website of Toronto Blessing Today. You can see up there, Catch the Fire. We are a movement born from revival and for revival. So let me tell you, that type of spirituality is very attractive. And today, even though we started at about the same time, there are 35 people in the Pentecostal Charismatic Renewal movement. For every single Adventist on this planet is grown at a phenomenal, phenomenal speed. So this movement has had the largest impact of any movement on the Christian church In the past 2000 years, apart from the Reformation. The time frame of change is 100 years. For the Christian church to go through that much change in just 100 years out of 2000 years history, we have trouble really understanding and comprehending how much change has happened in the Christian church in our lifetime. And a lot of it's related to this movement. It was initially considered a cult, but now it's a mainstream movement that encompasses 600 to 700 million Christians. And you know, we've got to ask the question, are we in the midst of the greatest revival the Christian church has ever seen, or is this part of the great deception that Scripture predicts will happen just prior to the Second Coming? And to answer that question, we need to go to something called the Great Controversy, a chapter called Modern Revivals. And now you know about the holiness movement and instantaneous sanctification and those things. It would be a good idea to go back and read it because it's going to make a lot more sense to you after we work through this. And she says this before the time for such a movement to come. And she's talking about true revival. He, Satan, will endeavour to prevent it by introducing a counterfeit in those churches which he can bring under his deceptive power. He will make it appear that God's special blessing is poured out there will be manifest what is thought to be great religious interest. Multitudes will exult that God is working marvelously for them. When the work is that of another spirit under a religious guise, Satan will seek to extend his influence over the Christian world. And we have to ask ourselves, is Pentecostalism a match for this? Well, that counterfeit revival has certainly happened before. What we know will be the genuine revival at the end of time. It's been running for 100 years. Over 100, 120 years, which makes us wonder how much longer it's really got to run. Special blessing. They talk, the quote talked about they would claim a special blessing. I put it to you, that's what they call the second blessing. And in many times they even call it a special blessing as being the baptism of the Holy Spirit. She says there would be great religious interest. I put it to you, 700 million people, that's a fair, fair religious interest right around the world. And she says it's another spirit. She's saying the manifestations are clearly not from the Spirit of God. Now note here, she doesn't say that they're all from the evil one. He doesn't say that at all. I think there's varying reasons they happen, but it's spread over the Christian world. You know, wherever you can find an Adventist church, you can find a Pentecostal one. So she says this too, in many of the revivals which occurred during the last half century, and she's talking about the holiness revivals when she says that the same influences have been at work that will be more manifest in more extensive movements of the future. So she's saying there's going to be more extensive movements in the future. Well, let's have a think about when she wrote this. He wrote this in 1888. So she's talking about the 50 years prior to that time which we know is the holiness movement era. We know that the holiness movement was hitting its straps in 1888 as she wrote great controversy. And she was talking about something that would come from the movement in the future. The birth of the SDO Church 1863 and the vineyard camp meeting which organised the holiness movement was just four years later. What an interesting coincidence. Very interesting. Azusa street happened in 1901, that was definitely futureed in 1888. Sorry, the Bethel Bible School happened in 1901. Azusa street happened in 1906 and that became the Pentecostal era. So clearly he talks about more extensive movements and I'd put it to you, that's the first wave, second wave, third wave and fourth wave and all those other sub movements we talked about that she said would come from what was happening in her time which we know was the holiness movement. So why does the false revival occur before the genuine revival? Well, he says this before the final visitation of God's judgment upon the earth there will be among the people of the Lord such a revival of primitive godliness as has not been witnessed since apostolic times. The spirit and power of God will be poured out upon his children. At that time many will separate themselves from those churches in which the love of this world has supplanted love for God and His word. Many, both of ministers and people will gladly accept these great truths which God has caused to be proclaimed at this time to prepare people for the Lord's second coming. The enemy of souls desires to hinder this work. And before the time for such a movement shall come he will endeavour to prevent it by introducing a counterfeit. You know, just in way of summary because that's a very long quote. The latter rain will come and many genuine seekers will join the Adventist church. That's what she's saying and I can't wait for that time and I don't believe it's very far away. And she says Satan aims to head it off first by introducing a counterpeak revival. And as we said a minute ago, that revival has now been running for 120 years. I think it's worth noting that she also says this notwithstanding the widespread declension of faith and piety, in other words, the decline of these things. There are true followers of God in these churches. And I, you know, Daniel, I appreciated your burden for Pentecostal friends, and I've got the same for Pentecostal people in my world as well. And I know many people do, and we haven't really understood how to reach them. But this is why I think what's important, the type of spirituality that we engage with matters. And the reason I'm so convicted about this and the reason I do these, these seminars is for this reason. Jesus said something in Matthew 7, and he's talking about people who get caught up with a certain type of spirituality. And it's this. He says, not everyone who says to me, lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers. And so I ask the question, is it possible to get caught up in a type of spirituality where you think you're so close to the Lord, you might be doing all sorts of amazing things. Interestingly enough, it's all supernatural things that are pointed out here. Prophesying and healing, miracles. You can get caught up in those things and you can feel so close to the Lord. But he comes back and he says, I never knew you. I can't think of anything worse. And so I think, you know, we need to guard against a spirituality where we just rely on feelings of being close to the Lord. And I think, you know, there's a Pentecostal version, the experience of being possessed by the Holy Spirit or filled by the Holy Spirit. The Adventist version is the experience of feeling close to the Holy Spirit. And so I think, you know, sometimes we now gear our worship services towards feeling close to the Holy Spirit instead of actually making it a legitimate outcome of our spirituality. And as I said before, you can be an Adventist and be caught up in the one on the. The red one. And you can be a Pentecostal and be firmly grounded in God's Word. But the type of spirituality that pervades in the movement tends to drag people in one direction. Why is this important? The type of spirituality we engage with governs what we do with the Bible. And I want to, as a last text today, I want to share this one with you. Why is that important? You said search the scriptures or in them you think you have eternal life. And these are they which testify of me. So nothing should keep us away from the scriptures, should they? And you know, today there's millions and millions of people that are caught up in this type of spirituality. And it operates at every level. The miraculous, the emotional, the mystical. And, you know, I think what's at the centre of this, if you're caught up in an emotional, experiential spirituality, or if I'm caught up in it, what's at the centre of it is actually me, me, my feelings. And if I'm caught up in the other one, what's at the centre of it? It's actually God. Today, much of Christianity is opting for the experiential root. But, you know, genuine spirituality puts us in touch with the Bible. And I don't think ever on this earth has the spiritual war raged so fiercely. And I think by the time we get through tomorrow afternoon, you'll agree. And if there's one thing that Satan wants to do is to keep you away from the Bible. Why? Because these are the scriptures that testify of him and it contains the truth which sets us free and it also helps us not get caught up in the deceptions that exist in the time that we live in. So that's my appeal to you, to commit to genuine spirituality at all costs. Not build your faith on feelings, but on the words of scripture. Let's bow our heads and have prayer and then we can talk more if you want. Dear Father, we thank you for your goodness. To us, it's always. Even as I present, it always blows me away. Just how the enemy has worked to create an undercurrent in Christianity that is different to what you designed. And Father, today I just pray that as we review our own lives, I pray that we won't just look at what's happening out there, but we'll look at what's happening in our own hearts. And that we will ground our faith not in how we feel in any given moment, but on your word. In your name, amen. SPEAKER 1 This message was made available by the Waitara Seventh Day Adventist Church. For more resources like this, visit WaitaraChurch.org.au. SPEAKER 2 This program has been brought to you by 3 ABN Australia radio.