WesleyGospel Ministries

From the album Hymns (1982):

• Oh God Our Help in Ages Past
• Oh For a Thousand Tongues to Sing

From the album Hymns (1982)

From the album Hymns (1982):

• Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee
• Jesus, Lover of My Soul
• Alleluia, Sing to Jesus

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“The crusade team was filing onto the bus for yet another trip when my dad stopped Craig Smith. ‘You need to have this,’ he said. He held out a hymnal with a tattered woven cover. Craig wondered if the book was some castoff from the pile Dad was amassing at Leonard Ravenhill’s suggestions. But in a quiet moment that afternoon, as the bus hummed along, Craig dipped into it. The hymnal was published by the Methodists and was well over a hundred years old [ed.–something probably close to this edition–click here]…Craig was so enamored with the hymns’ beauty that he decided to try to record some of them…‘We did it in a baroque kind of classical style’…When they finished it, Craig gave a copy to my dad. I don’t remember my father ever being excited over a record, but he insisted on listening to this one with the Ravenhills in the Smith’s home. ‘We were all sitting in my little living room–David and Gwen, Leonard and Martha, Dianna and me–listening to the album,’ Craig says. ‘It was a full LP, with two sides, and you know Brother Dave was not given to sitting down for any length of time. Each hymn was long, five to six minutes, because there were a lot of verses. At the end of every song, David would say, ‘Wow.’ He wasn’t responding to me; he was responding to those songs and what it was like to hear them performed.’ The listening party continued for almost forty minutes. Everyone–Dad, my mom, Leonard, and Martha–were crying. ‘I’ll remember that evening till the day I die,’ Craig says. ‘I was so moved, and so incredibly humbled. I had never seen Leonard Ravenhill weep, and I’d never seen David tear up. They all let their guard down and were having a moment. I think Leonard particularly was reliving something of his past, maybe experiencing some of his younger years, listening to songs by writers who loved God with all of their hearts’” (Gary Wilkerson, David Wilkerson, pp. 237-238).

Enthusiasm – “Any of various forms of extreme religious devotion, usually associated with intense emotionalism and a break with orthodoxy”; “possession by a god”; “excessive religious emotion.”

What is Wilkerson grieving over here? The Toronto Blessing / Catch The Fire movement. Rodney Howard-Browne, Kenneth Hagin, and Kenneth Copeland. The Word of Faith / Prosperity Gospel Movement. And the “holy laughter” movement. All of these intermix. But mainly, this would be what is nowadays called the “Third Wave” / or the “Catch The Fire” / or even “prophetic movement.” Modern proponents of these heresies:

• Rodney Howard-Browne
• Randy Clark (Global Awakening)
  
• John Arnott (Catch The Fire)
  
• Todd Bentley
• Bill Johnson (Bethel Church)
• Rick Joyner (MorningStar Ministries)
  
• Kenneth Hagin
• Kenneth Copeland
• etc, etc, etc.

One word about holy laughter. I do believe there is a genuine and a counterfeit. I believe the genuine article occurred under John Wesley’s and Kathryn Kuhlman’s ministries. It was brief and under control, a flood of joy from the presence of God. But even Wesley saw the demonic counterfeit, and condemned it as the “simplicity of the people.” Others call it mass hysteria. When any laughter puts down the Word of God or supports carnal and immoral activities, that’s when you know its a demonic counterfeit, and not a supernatural manifestation of the joy of the Lord. Romans 14:17: “The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of RIGHTEOUSNESS, PEACE and JOY IN THE HOLY SPIRIT.”

Further Reading

Beverley, James. Holy Laughter and the Toronto Blessing.

Chevreau, Guy. Catch The Fire. Examines these manifestations in light of Jonathan Edwards’ writings. Supportive, but conditioned on holiness and fruit of the Spirit. I agree with Chevreau.

Hanegraaff, Hank. Counterfeit Revival.

Jennings, Daniel. The Supernatural Occurrences of John Wesley. Chapter 5: “John Wesley’s Experience with ‘Holy Laughter.’”

Martin, Larry, ed. Wild and Weird: William J. Seymour, Azusa Street and Early Pentecostalism as Reported by the Los Angeles Secular Newspapers.

Taken from page 245 in the Historical Dictionary of the Holiness Movement:

RAVENHILL, LEONARD (b. Leeds, England, 18 June 1907; d. Lindale, Texas, 27 November 1994). International Holiness Mission and Calvary Holiness Church (CHC) minister, evangelist, and author. Raised in a working-class Methodist family, Ravenhill was converted in 1921 and experienced entire sanctification under the ministry of Maynard James in 1929. While attending Cliff College (1930-1931), Ravenhill became one of a number of evangelistically inclined students known as “trekkers” who engaged in an itinerant evangelistic ministry throughout Great Britain. In 1934, he joined with Maynard James and Jack Ford in the organization of the CHC. He served as a CHC pastor and evangelist (1934-1951). He was a fiery evangelist, and his street preaching gained both opposition and notoriety during the 1940s and 1950s. Relocating to the United States, Ravenhill served on the staff of Bethany Fellowship (1958-1964) and as chaplain for David Wilkerson’s Teen Challenge in New York City (1964-1966). Ravenhill’s no-nonsense radicalism and open association with Pentecostals, such as Wilkerson, frequently angered Wesleyan traditionalists. But even as old doors closed, Ravenhill found new audiences among Pentecostals, Charismatics, and radical evangelicals. In fact, with Wilkerson, Ravenhill was one of the key figures in the emergence of the new youth-oriented, so-called Jesus People Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. His books Why Revival Tarries (1959), Tried and Transfigured (1963), and Sodom Had No Bible (1971), are important documents in the creation of an alternative evangelicalism that turned a generation of often unchurched youth into evangelical activists.

Artistic, universalist, liberal Christians are rising in Generations X and Y, under the leadership of Brian McLaren (A Generous Orthodoxy, 2004), Rob Bell (Love Wins, 2011), and other kindred spirits. It is called the “emerging/emergent church movement.”

UNIVERSALISM FOR GENERATION X.

An old, old spirit of the devil.

A good response to this type of universalism is in Mark Galli’s God Wins: Heaven, Hell, and Why the Good News Is Better Than ‘Love Wins’

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58:50 – 1:23:48 – The video has a section on “Contemplative Mysticism.” I have some reservations about this section, which could be more thoroughly explained in my e-book How to Experience God. But in brief, I agree with the critics that Rob Bell’s brand of contemplation should be rejected, because he is a universalist, and is therefore leading contemplatives toward union with a false god–namely, the god of Hinduism, the New Age, yoga, Eastern meditation, and universalism. But for these critics to reject the Desert Fathers is all wrong; A. W. Tozer would have thought it was ludicrous. A thorough study of their theology and practice will find they were one with the orthodox church fathers–namely Athanasius and Jerome, and in John Cassian’s The Conferences, you see a well developed Biblical theology of spiritual disciplines and charismatic experience. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because Christian mysticism is being abused or misused by liberal Christian universalists, it does not follow that the original mysticism of the Desert Fathers, or even of various Catholic saints, was all wrong. I continue to stand against devotion to the Virgin Mary and praying to dead saints. But I have yet to find any good reason to stop “looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2)–which all Christ-centered mystics see as the ultimate verse on contemplative prayer (for example, Isaac Ambrose’s Looking Unto Jesus). Also, to completely reject the tradition of Catholic mystical theology is not only ignore centuries of charismatic activity and wisdom in the history of the church–it is to leave the church with very little remaining to evaluate and judge modern moves of the Spirit.

1. Ray Comfort – Calvary Chapel-influenced open air preaching.

2. Jed Smock – Confrontational Evangelism.

3. John Arnott – Catch The Fire / The Prophetic Movement

4. Rick Warren – The Seeker-Sensitive Movement