Quote:
Originally Posted by Friedel
I am not a champion for Jessie Penn-Lewis but Evan Roberts co-authored "War on the Saints". It was exactly the matter of whether Christians can become demon-possessed that had many people disagreeing with especially Penn-Lewis. Witness Lee spoke of that on more than one occasion.
Evan Roberts was very independent and spiritually immature. Initially, the main thing that drew people to his meetings, was his habit of "calling out" people. For example, "In the third row on the balcony is a man who hates his neighbor", or something like that. In the early stages of the revival a "guilty one" would stand up and confess, leading to "oohs" and "aahs" and "amens". Some "guilty ones" were regularly openly shamed by Roberts. Later, it often happened that there was no response to his "calling out". This caused him to despair and to become more and more erratic in his conduct. His behavior increasingly certainly did not endear him to many of his followers.
Evan Roberts' style was similar to that of the Benny Hinns of today.
Jessie Penn-Lewis wrote a well-documented book on the Welsh Revival. She was very positive and credible about the awakening of 1904–1905.
I my opinion the main destroyer of the Welsh Revival was Evan Roberts himself, not "Jezzie".
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Interesting perspective. I have read numerous reports of people saying that Penn-Lewis destroyed Roberts' ministry and the Welsh Revival. Thanks for providing a counterpoint.
It seems that the Scylla and Charybdis of the Christian journey is that we can become "dead letters" people on the one hand (like the Pharisees), and on the other side we can become too enamored of sensory experience and thus unbalanced, easily suggestive and led astray. The local churches of Lee perhaps had the worst of both worlds. On the one hand they were influenced by the jot-and-tittle Exclusive Bretheren. On the other hand they were heavily influenced by the Charismatic and Revival themes. I never forget Witness Lee incessantly pounding the theme that we were dead, dormant, stagnant, etc, and we had to "stir ourselves up" and get revived. People were drunk on the Charismatic experience, not on the Holy Spirit. I still remembered the glassy-eyed look in the meetings: ecstasy, euphoria, and excitement, but very little truth. As soon as you critically examine the Nee and Lee teachings, and compare them to the Bible, they fall apart.
So we shouted slogans at each other. Open shaming was habitually practiced, but it was called "training" and so forth. But one sacrificial lamb would be dragged up for all to feed upon. Terrible.
But when you soberly examine scripture, you see a vast disparity between what was taught in those trainings and conferences, and what is written. I now have come to believe that the Holy Spirit will indeed come if you remain and abide in the Word. Yes it may involve repetition, it may involve declaration and insistent prayer. But it is not something for public spectacle. It is more like a private mountaintop kind of experience, that when you come down people can see that you are different. When you open your mouth something else comes forth, instead of the usual vanity.
What showed me that Lee was selling a pseudo-spiritual experience of soulish excitement with little substance was the fact that he habitually ignored and belittled the Word of God. He declared that much of it was a dry hole, void of Christ or Spirit. He could not have been more wrong. Much of the words which he called "vain" and "natural" and "fallen" and "soulish" was actually full of God's Spirit. But Lee didn't linger there, and wait. He simply aped some 19th century Bible teacher and passed on. He was in a hurry for the next teaching, the next revelation. And we all, hungry for the next wave of excitement, went along with him. We quickly passed over the Word in pursuit of more sensory affectations. The Word became "old" to us, and our excitement became "new". So we remained in ignorance, waiting for the next "revival".