Date: 19-Feb-1995 12:02pm EST
Subject: Response for Mark Pritchard
Dear Mark,
Teresa Seputis forwarded to me your query concerning the Toronto Vineyard and the manifestations associated with it, and asked me if I might interact with you on some of the things that you asked about.
You mentioned that you had some superficial doubts about the manifestations, and that, beyond that, you also had more serious doubts, and you asked, "I wonder what good the people at your church, and the others which are experiencing them, think is being done, aside from a certain fun-thrills spiritual feeling. Do the manifestations prove God's presence to anyone besides the recipients? I don't think so. Are they having any effect outside these churches? I haven't seen any. Are they causing the recipients to act with more charity, love and as peacemakers? I don't know."
I'll attempt to interact with you on these more serious doubts, and then I'll say a little bit about the more superficial ones.
You'll be happy to know that what is happening is having a tremendous effect upon the outside world. I'll give you a few examples.
(1) Here's a quotation from Steve Witt's testimony at the CATCH THE FIRE Conference at the Regal Constellation hotel, Wednesday evening, October 12, 1994, sponsored by the Toronto Airport Vineyard (Stephen Witt is pastor of the Vineyard in St. John, New Brunswick): "The final thing of this phase is that we're beginning to pour it out now into the streets. And last week we heard about--I call that a prayer walk to MacDonald's. That was my destination. And I got there and there . . . the manager of the MacDonald's was arguing with some teenagers--about 12 or 13 of them out in the parking lot. And they were giving them a real problem, so I walked up, and said, 'Is there a problem?' And she said, 'Well, there's always a problem.' And I knew about the problem she was talking about. Every Friday night there's about 150 to 200 teens that gang up at the MacDonald's--there's been gang fights--there's been all kinds of drugs and everything else that takes place and they can't do anything about it. The police have tried to get rid of them--they can't get rid of them. So I said, 'You know what?' The Lord gave me a plan at that point. I said, 'I've got a plan that will get all the teens off this property.' She said, 'What's that?' (Well, first of all, she said, 'It's impossible. We've tried everything.') I said, 'We'll send a team up here and tell them about Jesus.' She said, 'That might work.' [laughter from the audience].
"So last Friday night during our renewal meeting, this, at the advice of John Wimber, actually began to pour it out. We called a team forward of guys--I thought we would send the guys first, since it was a pretty rough situation. We laid hands on them. They were not a macho-looking group at all, but we sent them over to MacDonald's. They got to minister to over 150 teens in the MacDonald's parking lot! One came to the Lord Jesus Christ. And then one of our other prophetic-type individuals--he started ministering and praying for people, and they started trembling, and all the kids started saying, 'We want that! We want that!'
"So--there was a real touch of the Spirit of God and . . . this Friday now we're doubling the team; we're sending men and women out to go back. The police came up to our building because that night a gang of kids had run in to our renewal meeting, fleeing another gang of kids that had baseball bats. We had just prayed the week before that God would make our church a refuge and that the teens would come in. So we ARE a seeker-sensitive church. They're running in now. And the police showed up with their lights going and everything, and I thought, 'Oh, no!' you know, this is--they had showed up before--but they came this time and he got out of the car and he says, 'I can't tell you guys how much we appreciate what you did at MacDonald's tonight.' He says, 'You'll never know.' This is the policemen in our city. 'You'll never know the impact that made. This morning I called my secretary and she said, we've got a call at the office today-- one of the mothers of one of these teens who the parents were concerned. They knew they were down there but they didn't know how to stop them from going and she says, you know, he came home, he told us all about what had happened, and she says, "Do you have a youth group that I can get him involved in?"'
"So we're just seeing now a real breakout in evangelism and you know for us, that wasn't even the ultimate thing. The ultimate thing for us is to develop a passion for Jesus. That, to me, is higher than evangelism. But when you get the heart of Jesus Christ, something of evangelism comes into your heart because that's His heart, so hopefully that's beginning to pour out in our church more."
(2) Randy and Paula White (pastors of South Tampa Christian Center in Florida), after being touched at a Rodney Howard-Browne meeting in July of 1993, reported a year later that within that year, God had brought to fruition a vision that Paula had when she had gone down under the power of the Spirit, and the Lord had asked her, "how many souls do you want?" and she said by the Spirit "fifty thousand." After this had happened, in her own natural thinking, she thought, "how can I ever get fifty thousand souls?" But it did happen. Their "Operation Explosion" program, in which they take a truck into the inner cities for evangelism especially among children, has been highly successful. Operation Explosion is a highly energetic and entertaining show on wheels for kids, where there is a high level of audience participation, in which Jesus is lifted up as savior. Because of the success of this program, their church has been identified as the second fastest growing church in the United States. When they took a truck to Los Angeles in October of 1993, several thousand were saved as a result of this ministry.
(3) Mike and Kim Francen (pronounced Franceen) of Tulsa, Oklahoma, are such pace setters in the area of world missions that they have been called "the T. L. Osborne of the 1990s." Since 1985, they have been holding crusades worldwide, with 10,000 to 100,000 people in attendance per night. As of the summer of 1994, they had been to forty-three countries and over one million people had accepted Jesus Christ through their ministry. They have a vision to win 500,000 people to Christ per year, to flood the mission field with Christian literature, to train national leaders, to provide 100 mobile evangelism units, and to plant churches worldwide. At his summer campmeeting in Louisville, Kentucky in July of 1994, Rodney Howard-Browne asked Mike Francen to say something about the "frog boy," who was a boy who came to the crusade who was lame, and had never stood in his life. He had had polio at three or four months of age, and had crawled on the ground all of his life. At one of their crusades, the Lord enabled this boy to walk, and as a result of this, tens of thousands more people came to Christ.
(4) Bob and Rose Weiner have a ministry among university students in Russia. They had 1,200 people in attendance in a Charismatic Conference in Moscow in July of 1991. They sent out fifteen kids to every major center in Russia, and told them to start cell groups. Various churches arose from these cell groups. Three of the largest of these churches grew to 800 members, one thousand people, and three or four thousand members respectively. Now they are working in China, where they are getting one thousand people to teach English and distribute Christian literature in the process. Rose Weiner spoke on this at Rodney Howard-Browne's July campmeeting.
Examples of this type can be multiplied many times over, but let me get on to some of your other questions. You asked if what is happening is causing the recipients of these experiences to act with more charity and love, or as peacemakers. In my study of Pentecostalism, and of revivals in generally, including the present revival, I have found that people change dramatically as a result of these experiences. In most cases, they do not become great leaders, scholars, champions of social causes, or scientists, but they do change for the better in their daily lives as Christians. To give you a case in point, my wife, Kathryn, came out of many, many years of depression as a result of her involvement in the revival. With respect to her personality, many people do not even recognize her any more. She is cracking jokes for the first time, and it just isn't like her. Her quality of life has improved, and as a result, her relationships with others have improved markedly. We have a friend, Richard Swanson, who was away for two years. He returned a week ago Friday, and visited us the following day. He hardly recongizes Kathryn, and he is rejoicing in the change that has come over her. A few months ago, when my parents were visiting, they were amazed that Kathryn was joking about things. She had never done this, in all of the years that they have known her. There has been a major change in her quality of life as a result of what has happened to her during this revival. The result of this is that she has become more loving toward those around her. Testimonies of this kind are very, very frequent from within the current revival.
This, I would say, does constitute proof of that God has been present, so, yes, I would say that what is happeneing does prove God's presence to people beyond the recipients. Wouldn't you say that, indeed, if these testimonies are genuine, that plenty of good is being done, aside from the fun-thrills spiritual feeling that you described?
Now, lets go back to the more superfical doubts that you expressed. Wouldn't you say that the hypothesis of demon- possession would be highly unlikely in view of the results that we're seeing? People are becoming Christians by the thousands. The lives of multitudes of people are being turned around for the better. People are being healed of longstanding physical and emotional wounds. Satan doesn't do these things. Not only that, but people are re-orienting their lives in such a way as to put God first. Their passion for Jesus is being renewed. Why would satan want to do these things?
And finally, the question as to whether the phenomena we're seeing isn't really a manifestation of lower-class rural superstition. No, actually, in the U.K., it seems to have been manifested among the highest classes. Holy Trinity Brompton is attended by many in the very highest classes in London, and that church has become a center of this revival (with all of its attendant manifestations) since late May or early June of last year. Nevertheless, even if no such manifestations had taken place among the highest echelons of society, that, in and of itself, would not be a good argument against the revival. God would have us to be humble about these things, and lower ourselves, as did Jesus. After all, Jesus was God Himself, yet He did not disdain that which pertained to the lowest strata of society.
I hope that these considerations will be beneficial; feel free to contact either Teresa or myself if you have further questions.
With every good wish to you in the Lord,
Richard M. Riss
RRISS@DREW.EDU