Reformation Revival Renewal and Restoration
Part 2
In “The Spirit Filled Church” we explored how vital the baptism of Holy Spirit is for all believers in the ongoing life of the Church and how this began to get lost during the second century. Following on from that, we are exploring how the Holy Spirit began to restore the Church over a period of time, beginning with revivals starting with the First Great Awakening from 1733 with more revivals breaking out over a two-hundred-year period, culminating in the outpouring of the Spirit in Azusa Street, Los Angeles in 1906 which was the beginning of the Pentecostal Movement. This led on to the Charismatic Movement that spread to all denominations from the 1960’s…
RENEWAL
In the early days of the Pentecostal Movement which began in 1906, those who received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit within the established denominations often experienced opposition or misunderstanding and even mild persecution.
The doctrine of the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, was that the gifts of the Spirit had come to an end with the end of the Apostolic age. This is known as Cessationism, which is still going strong today among groups as wide apart as Catholic, Liberal, High Church and Reformed churches.
It is an absolute tragedy that people’s theology is preventing them from seeking after the fulness of the Spirit!
Back in the early 1900’s clergy and laity alike could not accept what was happening as being from God and consequently rejected it and opposed those who were claiming to have received it in those early days. The amazing thing is that in the 1960’s the baptism in the Holy Spirit began to be experienced by countless people within the traditional denominations, which they could no longer deny, and so the Charismatic or Renewal Movement was born…
The "Neo-Pentecostal" or Charismatic Movement can trace its beginnings to a traditional denominational church in Van Nuys, California. Dennis Bennett was the Rector of St Mark’s Episcopal Church which was the American equivalent of being High Church Anglican - in other words, a very liturgical almost Roman Catholic style of church but nonetheless very well attended with a congregation of about 2,000 people that they had to accommodate in three morning services.
On Sunday morning April 3, 1960, Rev Bennett finally announced to his congregation that he had received the baptism in the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues. Prior to this, Bennett’s wife Elberta and a number of the members of his church had also received the Baptism. The great attraction for everyone who became interested in it, was speaking in tongues. This announcement caused a major controversy with some of the people, which included Bennett’s assistant minister, and Dennis was asked to resign the same day, which he did. These events quickly became worldwide news being reported in Time and Newsweek magazines.
Eventually, Dennis was invited to pastor St. Luke's church in Seattle. He accepted the call, so he and his wife Elberta and three children began a new life with a new loving congregation. A few years later, in 1963, Elberta died.
After three years of being a widower, Dennis married Rita Reed. They travelled much of the world together in their ministry and wrote books and newsletters together, including the best-selling: “Nine o'Clock in the Morning” which documents the story of how he experienced the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the ministry that followed. This book was read by people of all denominations around the world and was a major influence in the growth and spread of the Charismatic movement.
In ten years, the Charismatic movement spread to all the major denominations of the world, reaching a total of 55 million people by 1990.
We really cannot overemphasise the importance of these events.
God sovereignly poured out His Spirit at the beginning of the 20th century - just eight years before the First World War and despite the major denominations’ previous rejection of that, He did it again in 1960. This mighty renewal of the Church that went worldwide was followed by a further move towards restoring the Church to its first-century New Testament roots…
RESTORATION
During the 1970’s there began to be a widespread desire to return to true New Testament church principles and practices. This was based on a recognition that the Ephesians 4 ministry gifts of Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers were as needed in the Church today as they were in the first century, if not more so.
Personalities like Bryn Jones in the UK, who was greatly influenced by the well-known author, Arthur Wallis, wanted to see churches ‘restored’ to all that had been in God’s heart from the beginning for his Church.
Rather than perpetuating old structures of “Church” even if renewed under the Charismatic Movement, Bryn Jones wanted to sidestep that and start all over again. He connected with other men such as Tony Morton, Gerald Coates, John Noble and Terry Virgo (who is still going strong and maintains that the restoration of apostles is the most important and distinctive feature of Restorationism).
They also connected with others going in the same direction in the USA, Norway, Germany, Sri Lanka, India, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. This became known as the Restoration Movement that was greatly promoted by the annual Dales Bible Week, which was attended by thousands of people each year, and through the monthly Restoration magazine.
Although there was strong opposition in the early days from within the denominations including Pentecostal ones, in the end, the basic recognition of the Ephesians 4 ministries became integrated into the expectations and views of many Pentecostal/ Charismatic churches around the world to this day.
As time went by, human failures within the Restoration Movement notably “heavy shepherding” mudded the waters, but that does not negate the work of the Holy Spirit in restoring New Testament principles and practices to the Church for such a time as this.
It is undeniable that we still need all five of the ministry gifts to continue the ministry that Jesus Himself began. As the Head of the Church, He ordained the fivefold ministries in order to carry on His work after He ascended back to heaven (Ephesians 4:8-11).
So, we conclude where we began. We have traced from Church history how the gifts of the Spirit did not cease at the death of the last Apostle (presumably John) but they did fade away as time went by in the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Church. There is some evidence of isolated moves of the Spirit in succeeding centuries – God has always had a remnant of true believers - but because of the individual nature of experiencing the fullness of the Spirit this is not well documented.
The good news, as we have seen, is that God has been restoring the Church since the Reformation in the 16th century, which was a watershed moment. This was followed by the revivals that began in the 18th century and continued into the 20th century. The Pentecostal revival in 1906 and the Renewal movement in 1960, both went global and the Restoration movement has restored an expectation and openness to something much closer to true New Testament church life.
In all of this, it seems that God has been preparing for such at time as this - when the Church is nearing the completion of its second millennium here in the 21st century. There is a lot to be done, especially in evangelism, giving the world one more (last?) opportunity to turn to Jesus, which is why we need the strong leadership of true apostles and evangelists, and we need the other Ephesians 4 ministries too. It is equally important that every believer needs to be baptised in the Holy Spirit as they were in the early Church.
In other words...
The Church needs to be fully mobilised and Spirit filled around the world!
Even so come Lord Jesus
– and find faith on the earth!
FOOTNOTE:
We have looked in more detail at the 5-fold ministries in “THE HEART OF MINISTRY” series which can be found on the Messages of the Month page:
Messages of the Month - hodgsonpl