Neo-Pentecostalism

Let me give you a piece from a recent newspaper review

 

... quoting Biblical-sounding verse and promising to change our lives, awaken our inner powers, heal ourselves.

With a hot light shining on us, eyes still closed, we are ordered to banish our pain and ailments. To feel them leaving our bodies. And then sit back down again.

Next, he asks if anyone feels different, feels ‘cured’, feels released from their pain. And, amazingly, people really seem to.

Five minutes later we watch slack-jawed as a lady with rheumatoid arthritis can move her hands and feet freely and without pain for the first time in five years. And a bearded chap called Jack with a titanium plate in his skull feels the pressure in his head ease for once.

Suddenly, a pretty girl called Emily with glasses doesn’t need them. Eleven years of chronic neck pain floats into the ether from a stocky rugby player. An Aussie girl with a frozen shoulder regains full movement.

We clap and cheer and whoop — cynics included — as he yells: ‘Praise the Lord!’ ... Even I start wondering if my sore knee is cured. It isn’t.

As Brown shouts ‘We thank you, Father, we thank you. We are surrounded by a golden light!’ volunteers are hypnotised and knocked out in seconds, lowered gently to the floor. One man levitates — I’ve no idea how.

... At one stage, more than 30 people are queueing patiently in the stalls to be ‘healed’. They volunteer themselves, but of course he already knows their names, their ailments, their brothers’ names, their mum’s back problems. Afterwards, they skip back to their seats, beaming and golden from his touch.

 

It's not Benny Hinn or anyone like that. No, it's Derren Brown. As the reviewer (Jane Fryer) concludes

 

The point, of course, is to prove Brown’s belief that faith healing and miracles are all in the mind — and the work of clever showmen like him, rather than God.

You may or may not agree, but the show (or the second half, anyway) was gripping, utterly inexplicable — however much we all picked over it afterwards — and, for a while, it really felt miraculous. And that’s not even revealing the brilliant twist at the end.

So I take it all back. No one could fail to be impressed. Other than a genuine charlatan Christian faith healer.

And, perhaps, Emily, who ten minutes later had her specs back on again.

 

Derren Brown is an atheist and a profane man but his desire to expose the charlatanism of so-called evangelicalism is perhaps something to be thankful for.

 

The review is here.

 

 

Five "Christian" islands

Here is a list of five islands currently known in English by the name  of a traditonal Christian festival

1. Candlemas Island

A small uninhabited island of the Candlemas Islands in the South Sandwich Islands. It lies about 2 miles from Vindication Island, separated by the Nelson Channel.

2. Easter Island (Rapa Nui: Rapa Nui, Spanish: Isla de Pascua)

A Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people. It is a World Heritage Site (as determined by UNESCO).

3. Ascension Island

An isolated volcanic island in the equatorial waters of the South Atlantic, around a thousand miles from the coast of Africa and 1400 miles from the coast of South America, ie roughly midway between the horns of South America and Africa. It is governed as part of the British Overseas Territory of St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, of which the main island, St Helena, is around 800 miles to the southeast. The territory also includes the "remotest populated archipelago" on earth, the sparsely populated Tristan da Cunha archipelago some 30 degrees farther south - about half way to the Antarctic Circle.

4. Pentecost Island

One of the 83 islands that make up the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. It lies 120 miles due north of capital Port Vila

5. Christmas Island

A territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean, it is located 1600 miles northwest of the Western Australian city of Perth, 220 miles south of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta and 606 miles East North East of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands

Westminster Conference 06 C

The third session of the first day of this year's Westminster Conference featured Stanley Jebb, a retired minister of Reformed convictions who for a long period some 20 years and more ago was involved in the Charismatic movement. He took us through the events that occurred 100 years ago in Azusa Street, Los Angeles and that are remembered by Pentecostals and Charismatics as the origin of their movements. Dr Jebb took us through the events and introduced us to some of the men involved, men such as William J Seymour (1870-1922) and his mentor Charles Fox Parham (1873-1929), the chief originator of Pentecostal doctrine.

Reflecting on the immigration, pragmatism and genuine revival known in the period and the subsequent sad histories of Parham and Seymour Dr Jebb concluded that much that was spurious, even devilish, took place at Azusa Street but that there was undoubtedly genuine work going on too.

He noted disapprovingly the lack of preaching and teaching, the unwillingness to be discerning and test the spirits, the lack of order and the tendency to shape doctrine on the basis of experience. Prayer is good but extended prayer for things not promised by God are bound to lead to trouble. Holiness is an important thing to aim at. Greater discernment is always needed.

An interesting but slightly rambling discussion followed.