The personal knowledge of God by Richard Roy

The personal knowledge of God: recovering our heritage. Paul prayed that his readers would be strengthened in their inner being ‘with power through [the] Spirit’ (Eph 3:16-20).1 This terminology, according to Gordon D. Fee, is the language of experiential Christianity and is connected to the ‘knowing God better’ of Ephesians 1:16-17.2 To know God in this sense is to experience strengthening in the inner being through the power of the Spirit. Whilst not referring here to an emotional experience per se, Paul was indisputably speaking about something tangible.3 The result of such an experience was not merely emotional uplift (though it certainly may have been), rather, it was life-changing in the sense of building Christ-like character. Paul prayed further that believers might ‘grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ’ and be ‘filled with the fulness of God’. The result, as can be easily seen, was to be life-transforming. Once filled with God’s love, love being what it is, believers would more fully love God and people. Likewise, being filled with God was not simply a warm, fuzzy feeling but the concrete experience of godly attributes and actions that affected church and community. In line with Paul’s prayer, then, the thesis of this paper is that presently we stand in need of continuing experiences of the Spirit.4 Without such experiences, the Christian faith may be reduced to a matter of creed, rationalistic observance, and legalism (i.e., trying to live for Christ through our religious methodology and spiritual energy). Having said that, everyone’s experience of God is different, and may vary in apparent intensity and nature from person to person. In addition, God may work powerfully on occasions, producing significant character change without a noteworthy emotional experience. However, it is my conviction that there will be tangible evidence of God’s power even on these occasions, and of a nature described below. Further, it is important that there are experiential landmarks in a believer’s life where he or she has met with God in a way that is memorable. Such encounters with God are our Christian heritage as clearly set out in the NT (e.g., Rom 5:5, 14:17, 15:13). As Orthodox theologian Olivier Clément says, ‘Christianity … is a mystical religion’5, Christian mysticism being loosely defined as the doctrine that the individual can come into immediate contact with God through subjective experiences which differ essentially from the experiences of ordinary life.6

For further clarification, I will cite recent church history to demonstrate what our forebears experienced and practised. In doing so, I will be addressing the following questions. Did our forebears believe and practise their faith differently, particularly in relation to the experience of God, and if they did, is there something to be recovered that has been lost to us over the last 50 to 150 years? One of the most significant movements in early Australian Christianity was Wesleyan Methodism. As spiritual descendants of John Wesley (1703-1791), they carried to Australia his form of evangelical Pietism. There were two distinctives, among a number, for which Wesleyans were known. These two were framed by a religious practice that some have referred to as emotional or mystical because Methodists frequently noted the manifest presence of God in a variety of ways in private and public devotions.7 The first distinctive was belief in instantaneous and experiential conversion accompanied by the ‘witness of the Spirit’. The second was an experience referred to as ‘instant sanctification’.8 For example, Methodist founder John Wesley described his conversion in terms of a religious experience including its instantaneous nature, saying, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.9

To Wesley, part of the nature of his conversion was ‘assurance’, the divinely given knowledge that he was forgiven and had received salvation. In addition, he said that he received ‘assurance’ that he ‘did trust in Christ alone’, something he had not felt sure about until then, believing that he was still in unbelief and bereft of ‘saving faith’ until this event.10

Wesley also recounted a ‘second-blessing’ experience that Synan calls a ‘second work of grace’; sanctification.11 It has also been understood as Spirit-baptism (or infilling of the Spirit) although Wesley recorded the event without comment, saying, About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, inasmuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of His Majesty, we broke out with one voice, ‘We praise thee, O God; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.’12

The question of how to label Wesley’s experience is unimportant. The crucial issue is that Wesley and his followers were not strangers to such phenomenal experiences recounting them throughout their writings.13 It is sufficient to note that conversion was regarded as a significant experience of the Spirit as was instant sanctification and other unnamed experiences which frequented Wesleyan spirituality. To clarify further, Wesleyans readily presented the message of the gospel through writing, sermon and personal witness but they expected conversions to be produced solely by work of the Spirit.14 They believed that at conversion, recipients would receive an immediate sense of the forgiveness of sins and experience a change of heart and mind resulting in devotion to Christ. Spirit-given knowledge of this forgiveness was frequently, even usually accompanied by a sense of profound peace. There were other accompanying evidences such as joy and overwhelming love, but peace and the knowledge of forgiveness were the primary two. Conversion was deemed genuine upon the manifestation of these experiences plus the subsequent fruit of holiness, characterised by devotion to Christ and love for people. The latter had to be proved by deeds not just sentiments. These points, then, are a reasonable though basic summary of the Wesleyan perception of conversion. In the light of this understanding, we consider now the means by which Wesleyans brought people to conversion using Australian examples. Two instances come from Rev John Smithies (1802-1872), first Wesleyan missionary to the Swan River Colony (1840).15 First, he tells the story of a Baptist minister’s son during a time of revival, reporting, The next day one distressed friend (a son of a Baptist minister) called upon me to unbosom his mind when counsel was given and prayer made with and for him. In a day or two after this the Lord blessed him with a sense of pardon, peace and joy.16

Similarly, he reported the story of Joseph Hardey’s children who were influenced by the same revival in 1844. He says, The Lord was pleased to answer prayer at Bro. Hardey’s at Peninsula Farm; the news and power of the revival had reached and effected several of his children, and this afternoon the house was filled with weeping and mourning by those who sought the Lord with all their hearts; after some two hours of praying and pleading with them the Lord saved three of the eldest children.17

As can be seen from these two examples, which are typical of many Methodist accounts from this period, no attempt was made to ‘lead these people to Christ’ in the present commonly accepted manner.18 For example, no instruction was given following the common introduction, ‘this is all you have to do to become a Christian’. There was nothing of the typical evangelistic meeting approach where people are brought to the front of a meeting on an ‘altar call’, led through a ‘sinner’s prayer’, then told they are now ‘born again’. This would have been abhorrent to Wesleyans who, as I said, believed that conversion was solely the work of God and that Spiritgiven knowledge of forgiveness, and Jesus as Saviour and Lord, constituted conversion and nothing less. It is true that Wesleyans were at the forefront of introducing the so-called ‘altar call’.19 However, this was predominantly in America in the early 1800’s and, even then, they were conducted in quite a different manner from that which it is done today being very much in line with the stories just related.20 2

So, how did Wesleyans bring people to faith? The usual pathway was first to present the gospel message then to urge seekers to use various ‘means of grace’ until they had personally experienced conversion. This meant that they urged seekers to read the Bible, attend class and other meetings and particularly to pray for the conversion of their souls. In other words, the enquirer waited on God for conversion. If a person was particularly ‘wrought upon’ (moved to tears over the need for conversion) in a meeting, prayer was usually offered there and then in expectation of an imminent (thought not necessarily immediate) result. This method may seem strange to modern ears but Wesley’s own experience was like this. Although he had been a serving priest in the Established Church for some years, including as a missionary to Georgia, he nevertheless believed he was not converted until his ‘heart warming’ experience.21 Accordingly, my appeal in this paper is for the recovery of what is missing in the light of past experiences such as those of the Wesleyan Methodists. As for our contemporary methods of bringing people to faith, we must ask ourselves if we have not substituted methodology for grace? Have we actually become legalists in this sense? In addition, have we created significant problems for Christians, who coming into the Christian faith on a ‘works’ basis, may have little understanding of the grace of God to convert and transform? Due to a lack of emphasis on the power of God in conversion, therefore, have we left the door open to Christian growth deficiencies because we know too little of either the experience of God to transform, or how to avail ourselves of it? Have we unwittingly entertained a powerless Christianity? A surprising illustration of this is Pentecostalism. It is an irony that contemporary Pentecostals, with their renowned emphasis on the power of the Spirit, have largely succumbed to ‘process’ conversion and Spirit-baptism and may therefore be working largely without the Spirit in these crucial events. To expand, in the early 1900s, Pentecostals were principally responsible for recovering to the Christian church belief in the experience of the Spirit. Although, there are prominent instances in previous times, notably under Wesley, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), and earlier saints and mystics, it was Pentecostals who made the experience of the Spirit part of present day Christian expectation. 22 They referred to ‘baptism of the Spirit’ as a subsequent experience to conversion wherein recipients were filled or empowered with the Spirit, often in an overwhelming fashion, and who inevitably spoke in other tongues (glossalalia).23 One example is that of Joseph Roswell Flower (1888-1970), an influential leader in the American Assemblies of God. He received Spirit-baptism after a month of tarrying for the experience. The evidence of Flower’s Spirit-baptism was not glossolalia initially, but ‘holy joy and laughter’ as well as an experience of ‘great light’ that shone around him.24 He publicly testified on several occasions that he first spoke in tongues two months after his Spirit-baptism A second example is found in letters from Azusa Street (Los Angeles) Pentecostals to T. B. Barratt regarding Spirit-baptism.25 Although glossolalia was prominent at Azusa Street, accounts show evidence of the significance of the experience of Spirit-baptism apart from speaking in tongues. This is brought out in a series of letters written to Barratt in 1906. Also noted in these letters is the early Pentecostal notion of tarrying for Spirit-baptism. Barratt, a Christian minister, was in New York at the time for the Oslo Methodist Mission. Due to political struggles with the New York Mission Board, he was stranded temporarily in New York where he wrote to Azusa Street seeking information about the revival and Spirit-baptism. The answers he received, which came from representatives of The Apostolic Faith Mission, provide a unique insight into early Pentecostals’ belief in Spirit-baptism.26 To Azusa Street Pentecostals, the purpose of Spirit-baptism is revealed in the first letter from Mrs I. May Throop who wrote, ‘We are praying for the full Pentecostal baptism upon you! So that you may be equipped for … [God’s] service as you never have been!’27 She spoke about a ‘wonderful shaking’ that occurs and that the Spirit ‘will be in your very flesh’ in a tangible way. The result of Spirit-baptism, she said, was a significant change in the recipient’s life.28 Obviously the writer expected Spirit-baptism to be a vivid and concrete experience. Glossolalia, therefore, was not the seeker’s sole evidence of the baptism. 3

Though not the sole evidence, glossolalia was nevertheless very important. As G. A. Cook said in another letter to Barratt, ‘look to God to give you the true Pentecost with the Bible evidence of speaking in other tongues.’ She also said that if Barratt had remained ‘under the power’ until God had done a complete work in him, he would have spoken in other tongues. 29 Although early Pentecostals highlighted glossolalia in Spirit-baptism, as shown in this example, they also expected other significant evidences. This is indicated in the words ‘remained under the power’. Also implied in Cook’s words ‘remained’ and ‘until’ was the notion of tarrying. Barratt was to wait until God’s work of Spirit-baptism was completed. Another point of interest seen in the above examples was the expectation that glossolalia was a result of God’s power. No instruction was seen to be given as to how to speak in tongues; it was expected to be by the power of God. The Apostolic Faith counselled seekers not to ‘ask the Lord for tongues’ but to ‘ask the Lord to give you baptism with the Holy Ghost’.30 This is an important issue when making a comparison with contemporary Pentecostalism which places more emphasis on the human role in glossolalia. B. H. Irwin’s letter to Barratt makes it even clearer that Spirit-baptism was expected to be perceptibly experienced apart from glossolalia. In this letter, he wrote about his experience of Spirit-baptism which was not immediately accompanied by glossolalia. Irwin’s experience was convincing enough for him to know that he had participated in Spirit-baptism without such evidence. The writer also reported what he called a vision of God’s glory. Irwin did experience glossolalia the following evening but knew he had been Spirit-baptised the day before.31 In present day Pentecostal experience, one still finds many examples of tangible experiences as were known in the earlier history of the movement but there has been a decided shift. In my own experience of over 40 years in Pentecostal churches, the shift has been perceptible but over the last 100 years it has been palpable. The difference? Pentecostals primarily sought an encounter with God over and above glossalalia. Evidence from my research in 1999-2000, plus personal observation over the last 40 years especially since the Charismatic movement, shows that people tend to equate speaking in tongues with Spirit-baptism.32 Rather than seeking an encounter with God which is life-changing, the gift of tongues is sought as the object. The second perceptible change is the way people are led into Pentecostal Spirit-baptism or, should I say rather, the gift of tongues. In the recent decades of Pentecostalism, a large number of evangelists and pastors have taught people how to speak in tongues through various methods in a similar way to which enquirers are coached into being Christians at altar calls. The expression, ‘all you have to do is …’, is a common introductory instruction to seekers of either conversion or Spirit-baptism. Whereas earlier Evangelicals and Pentecostals believed that these experiences were produced by the Spirit and seekers needed wait on God and use ‘means of grace’ until God bestowed these blessings, today people tend to ‘process’ others into such experiences. Donald Gee (1891-1966), famous and respected Pentecostal leader and teacher during the early to mid 1900s, wrote candidly about faulty means of leading people into Spirit-baptism. He said, I say very frankly that one of the curses that has marred this Pentecostal movement has been forcing seekers to speak in tongues when the Holy Spirit has not been acting. Speaking in tongues does not bring the Spirit; it is the Spirit who brings tongues. When believers are filled with the Holy Spirit, they will speak without anyone trying to force them to do it. They will be so full that they cannot contain it.33

Similarly, the famous Chinese teacher, Watchman Nee (or, Ni To-sheng – 1903-1972), when asked about speaking in tongues, said he believed that God did give such gifts but was skeptical of ‘faulty means’ of receiving them.34 Watchman had experienced a Pentecostal outpouring in a series of meetings in 1935 through which his own spirit had been renewed although it is not certain that he ever spoke in tongues.35

What is the sum of all this? I believe there is something to be recovered of the power of the Spirit working deeply in people’s lives. It is not my intention to call into question what people have received or to judge their spiritual state.36 However, I am sure that it is obvious to any serious observer that we have lost something of the vitality and the depth of our forebears’ Christianity. When a comparison is made between now and then, as shown above, reasons for this loss come clearly to the fore. These reasons provide us with a very real challenge to reach out to God for pristine and authentic experiences of the Spirit, the kind for which the writer of Ephesians prayed (3:16-20), namely, continuing infillings of the Spirit beyond conversion and so-called Spirit-baptism. © Richard B. Roy 2008 Endnotes 1

Although a majority of scholars do not accept Paul’s authorship of Ephesians, for convenience I will call Paul the author in accordance with the book itself (for Ephesians authorship see Arthur G. Patzia, ‘Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon’, in New International Biblical Commentary, ed. W. Ward Gasque [Peabody MA: Hendrickson, 1984]). Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 201, where Fee says that ‘Paul makes a clear connection between the Spirit and the experience of power’.

See Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 1, where he says, ‘For Paul the Spirit, as an experienced reality, was the absolutely crucial matter for Christian life, from beginning to end.’

Ibid., also 202, where Fee says, ‘For Paul life in the Spirit begins at conversion; at the same time its experienced dimension is both dynamic and renewable’; and, ‘Moreover, the reception of the Spirit is not a static or merely past event, but is pictured as an ongoing reality’.

Olivier Clément, The Roots of Christian Mysticism (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1993), 7.

R. C. Tannehill, Dying and Rising with Christ: A Study in Pauline Theology (BZNW 32; Berlin: Töpelmann, 1967).

E.g., Charles Goodwin, ‘The Religion of Feeling: Wesleyan Catholicism’, History Today 46, 10 (October 1996): 44–49.

David Lowes Watson, ‘Methodist Spirituality’, in Exploring Christian Spirituality: an Ecumenical Reader, ed. Kenneth J. Collins (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2000), 172–213. John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, 3rd edn. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998), i: 90-91; Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century, 2nd rev. edn. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 4-5.

See references in his journal to his absence of saving faith and unbelief before his ‘heart warming’ (Wesley, Works, i: 99-103); Synan, Holiness-Pentecostal, 4-5.

Synan, Holiness-Pentecostal, 4-5.

Wesley, Works, i: 170.

E.g., Gordon S. Wakefield, Methodist Spirituality (London: Epworth, 1999), 40; Watson, ‘Methodist Spirituality’, 172–213; Wesley, Works, viii: 107. E.g., Wesley, Works, v: 37ff, 57. Cf. Richard B. Roy, ‘A Reappraisal of Wesleyan Methodist Mission in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, as viewed through the Ministry of the Rev John Smithies (1802–1872)’, Dissertation (PhD), Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, 2006, 198-208. SOAS, Box 517, Smithies to WMMS, London, 26 October 1844; William McNair & Hilary Rumley, Pioneer Aboriginal Mission: The Work of Wesleyan Missionary John Smithies in the Swan River Colony 1840-1855 (Perth, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1981), 98.

14 15

Ibid., 100.

Cf. David Bennett, The Altar Call: Its Origins and Present Usage (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2000), 150–157, 163-166.

19 20

21 22

Ibid., 150-157; cf. SOAS, Box 517, Smithies to WMMS, London, 26 October 1844. Iain Murray, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism 1750-1858 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994), 185ff. Wesley, Works, viii: 299–300; John Telford, The Life of John Wesley (London: Epworth, 1953), 92. E.g., David D. Bundy, ‘European Pietist Roots of Pentecostalism’, in Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Gary B. McGee (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1988), 279–281; Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty–first Century (Reading, MA: Addison–Wesley, 1995). As Fee infers, Spirit-baptism is an incorrect title of a genuine experience better termed ‘infilling with the Spirit’, or ‘experience of the Spirit’ (Fee, Empowering Presence, 863-864). Robert P. Menzies, ‘Evidential Tongues: An Essay on Theological Method’, in Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 2 (1998); Gary B. McGee, ‘Flower, Joseph James Roswell’, in Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Gary B. McGee (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1988), 311-313. The Azusa Street revival of 1906 is regarded as the birth place of modern Pentecostalism (Vinson Synan, The Century of the Holy Spirit: 100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal [Nashville, TN: Nelson, 2001], 39-68.) David Bundy, ‘Spiritual Advice to a Seeker: Letters to T. B. Barratt from Azusa Street, 1906’, Pneuma, 14, 2, Fall (1992): 159-170.

Ibid.

The Apostolic Faith, 1, 4 (Los Angeles, December, 1906), 2.

Bundy, ‘Spiritual Advice to a Seeker’: 159-170.

Richard B. Roy, ‘The Place of Religious Experience in a Contemporary Pentecostal Congregation’, Dissertation (MMin), Melbourne College of Divinity, 2001. David A. Womack, Pentecostal Experience: The Writings of Donald Gee (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1993), 69.

Angus I. Kinnear, Against the Tide: The Story of Watchman Nee (Melbourne: Victory, 1973), 103-105.

Ibid.

Fee, Paul, 183-192.