The gifts of the Holy Spirit (2)

31 December 1900, Topeka, Texas.

On the evening before the new year 1901, a man named Charles Fox Parham with his pupils, amounting to ± 120 people perform prayer. They fasted and prayed earnestly to beg God to have what is called "baptism of the Holy Spirit." 11 o'clock that night; Agnes Ozman, one of his students asked to pray. Parham initially hesitant because he had never done it before. After agreeing, Parham then began to pray, suddenly Ozman began speaking in a language that sounded foreign to them. Parham argues, Ozman sounded utter sentences in Chinese. They continued to pray until the morning, but only Ozman received the new language. Not just talk, Ozman also can write letters that are similar to Chinese characters.

After the era of Parham, came William Joseph Seymour, an African-American who is also a student of Charles Parham in Stone's Folly. Seymour background (black spirituality) strongly affect the service which was held at Azusa Street, which was considered by outsiders as being exaggerated and frightening, like the rhythmic accompaniment of drums, dancing and singing and all forms of physical expression in order to prepare themselves to be possessed by a spirit. On his way, the sharp differences of opinion arise between Charles Fox Parham with the pupil: William Joseph Seymour. Later figures show that makes movements like this are widespread, such as: Demos Shakarian (Founder of Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International), David Johannes du Plessis (also known as: Mr. Pentecost), Dennis Bennett, Oral Roberts, Gordon Lindsay, Kathryn Kuhlman (she is well known with the term "slain in the spirit"), Billy Graham, and so on.

On December 20 to 24 January 1994, at the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church, there was what was then known as the "Toronto Blessing" in which occurs the manifestations of holy Laughter Holy Spirit, slain in the spirit, dancing in the spirit, even to the manifestation an extreme that is hearing the sounds of certain animals from the mouth of some revival meetings the participants.

Suspicion of Western Church (Catholic) on the manifestations of the Holy Spirit as a result of the bad memories of Montanism, in turn making becomes more dogmatic theology, logic, and not accompanied with the powers of the Holy Spirit and experience the energy that the human memanunggalkan with Christ. Here the spiritual drought in the Western Church so that the Charismatic movement and Pentecostalism known as the debt of the Church (West) unpaid. The phrase that often appears in such movements is: "No need to theology what is important is the Holy Spirit."

Unfortunately, the widespread experience called the "outpouring of the spirit", in turn, often leads those who experience the symptoms that indicate the existence of spiritual pride or some form of new Montanism feared by the Western Church (Catholic). This is shown by people who felt a "outpouring of the new spirit", see themselves more powerful, greater, higher than those who do not or do not have the experience and accuse the churches that do not hold the Revival Devotional is a church that does not have the Holy Spirit . Here occur spiritual elitism or spiritual caste classification. People who do not have this gift are considered as second-class Christians.

Eastern Churches, which do not have problems as happened in the West, saw signs of this spiritual pride, always warned that spiritual pride is the "supreme crime that fully take the place of all other crimes." (John Climacus), which also Abba Evagrios calls, "demon of pride is the cause of all the horrible crimes of the soul". In the Philokalia, Patriarch Kallistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos warned, "if our minds begin to feel comfort thanks to the Holy Spirit, then Satan himself slid comforting himself into the soul ...".

READING LIST

- Jean-Jacques Suurmond, Word and Spirit at Play: Towards a Charismatic Theology (London: SCM Press, 1994)
- M. M. Paloma, "Toronto Blessing" Pages 1149-1152 in M. Stanley Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas, eds. New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Rev. & Exp. Ed. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2003)
- R. P. Spittler, "David Johannes Du Plessis." Pages 589-593 in M. Stanley Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas, eds. New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Rev. & Exp. Ed. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2003)