Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
How can we know for sure what is a movement of God, and what is not?
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That is a good question. But how can we know anything? In reality, we cannot. We are impermanent creatures; how can we know of permanence? Of the things that abide, and remain?
Ultimately it becomes, for me, a matter of faith. I do believe that there is a world, that it is round, that it has history. In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Etc. And there's a narrative, in our hands, of the man Jesus. By faith I receive it. I believe it. And likewise it seems that the Spirit which raised Jesus from the dead has similarly operated among men, since those days. However, the problem is, how much is God, and how much is man? That, I cannot answer. As Orson Welles said of Paul Masson wine, "We judge no wine before its time". Jesus was judged, and raised; He's the Victor. You and I, and the rest, our time is not yet, so judgment still waits.
Nonetheless, I do believe God has moved among humanity, at least in part, and it seems to have occurred in the "Jesus Movement" of the 1960s. Those young people who swelled the ranks of the LCs also swelled the ranks of the Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, and other burgeoning groups, were responding to God's call. And yes there was some really weird stuff as well. Both you and Casci have testified of being almost caught by the CoG... "my feet nearly slipped' (Psa 73:2). And the Calvary Chapel's leading light of the young generation, named Lonnie Frisbee, was so charismatic that he couldn't keep his hands off the parishioners, both male and female, and died of AIDS in 1993.
Yet who can judge? We all fail. That's one thing that seems solidly established in this swirling world of impermanence. But it still pleased God to send His Son. That I do know. If anything is real, that's real.