Dear friends, 

A quick google search will give you all sorts of reasons to study, be aware of or be suspicious of history. Churchill telling us that ‘history will be kind to me because I intend to write it’, Martin Luther King Jr giving a far less power-based assessment: ‘We are not the makers of history, we are made by history.’ But even as Churchill had a sense of wanting to control the narrative so he also drew on philosopher George Santayana who said

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

God in the Bible is often encouraging his people to historical recollection. In an antidote to Paul’s ‘forgetting what is past’ passage, God, in Isaiah 51 shouts out to his people:

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness

    and who seek the Lord:

Look to the rock from which you were cut

    and to the quarry from which you were hewn;

look to Abraham, your father,

    and to Sarah, who gave you birth.

Yet we’ve all known churches and people who are stuck in the past. Within charismatic renewal you can find churches that are temples to the 1960s/70s; others that are mementos to the Wimber years, and a few carpeted tabernacles to Toronoto. There are even some which have a revolving altar pointing towards whichever place on the map is newsworthy at the moment within revivalist spheres. Helpfully, these are usually in North America – Brownville, Lakeland, Ashbury etc so the wheels on the altar don’t need too much greasing.  

But while God doesn’t want us to be swept along by every fad that comes our way, nor does he want us to be stuck in the past. Paul is clearly right to ‘press on to what is to come’, and not get stuck reliving a series of anecdotes about ‘when I was in Corinth/Ephesus/Antioch etc’. 

So why does God encourage his people to look back to Abraham, Sarah et al? Why enshrine in his people’s very calendar physical acts of remembrance, such as the feast of tabernacles, when they acted out living in the wilderness, or the Passover, when they remembered the great escape from Egypt? Why step into history at all, in the incarnation, and then ask us to ‘remember’ him at a time and place that would seem increasingly alien to his growing scattered people as the centuries go by? 

I want to suggest three reasons why we in the infant charismatic church should at this point in our development engage with history. 

  1. To know where we have come from – and hold up a mirror to where we are now
  2. To know where we are going – and check that that is onto over a cliff hidden to us as we gaze at our toes. 
  3. To hear the encouragement of the Hebrews 11 ‘great cloud of witnesses’ and Revelation 6 and Revelation 20 martyrs, cheering us on and crying out to God ‘how long’ on our behalf. To realise that we are part of a marvellous church mystical as well as part of whatever small or large fellowship we may stumble into on a Sunday. 

The Mirror

In my thesis I point to Welsey, Whitefield, Stott and Wimber as antecedents of the contemporary charismatic church, each in different ways, and simply ask: do we still believe, speak and act in a way that is congruent with them? Where there is a gap is that because we have evolved a higher level of understanding, or because we have truncated their scheme of salvation into something simpler, more immediately applicable or frankly easier. 

Of course you have to be careful with this. 

I first studied Wesley when I was a 19 and 20 year old undergraduate. In a first draft of a thesis, submitted to the longsuffering and quite wonderful Brian Stanely, I began with words to the effect of: 

In the eighteenth century England was spiritually moribund and so God raised up John Wesley. 

Leaving aside the use of the word ‘moribund’ which I had just stumbled upon, Dr Stanley rightly suggested that my level of critical analysis would struggle to scrape a third class degree. I rewrote it all in a week or so, and it was far better for it. The reality was the more I looked into Wesley, Whitefield or reformers like Luther, Calvin or later tried to make sense of the little we really know about the Celtic Saints, the more I had the same feeling I had when I started to read Genesis each year. In Genesis I ‘looked to the rock from which I was hewn, Abraham your father and Sarah who gave you birth’ and came away decidedly unimpressed. In the history books I had to grapple with Whitefield as a narcissistic ‘divine dramatist’, Wesley as a polemicist riding 19,000 miles partly to get away from his wife, Luther as an angry depressive, Calvin as an instrument of human power and control. All with an inspiring faith. But couldn’t I just look at Jesus? 

No one is perfect. 

But that’s the interesting thing about Christianity. It doesn’t come in the form of a tract. A propositional truth. A two ways to live, a bridge to life, a 12 week course on key questions you may have. It comes in the form of a story.

  • His story. 
  • History.  
  • History of humanity
  • History of a people chosen from humanity. 
  • History of a person born into humanity. 
  • History of a new humanity birthed out of an old humanity. 
  • His story of what will happen at the end of history… 

It is all immersed in history.

And a lot of the lessons are seen in the mess. 

Yesterday I went to a parents evening at school. As the teacher described my son I had a flash of self-recognition. Of course I want and hope that he will be a better version of me having enhanced his gene pool so admirably by marrying well. But I kept getting flashes of ‘I was just like that at his age’ or (more worryingly perhaps) ‘I am still like that too’. 

We are born into history. It’s very hard to make sense of ourselves outside of it. 

History is there partly to show us that ‘no temptation has seized you except what is common to people’ and that ‘God is faithful and will always give you a way to stand under such temptation.’ 

As with the famous Johari window, the more we know our church history, the more we know ourselves. Who we are. Where we come from. When we may have wandered off course. 

Sometimes we will look in the mirror and see a family resemblance and smile. ‘I’ve got my father’s eyes’. ‘John Wesley/ Wimber / Collins’ would cheer this on’. Sometimes we look in the mirror and see a darker side, that history helps us spot. A cowardice moment reminiscent of father Abram in Egypt, a laugh/lie combo that reminds us of mother Sara. A narcissistic sneer, an angry turn, a self-absorption. 

The more we look in the mirror at our spiritual family tree the more likely we are to avoid these pitfalls, and stand on the shoulders of giants rather than have them fall on us. 

Trajectory

We look back partly to check we are walking ahead well. 

Imagine you got to have a supervision session with a saint from the past. St Brigid, Theresa of Avila, Florence Nightingale, Jean Darnell… whoever comes to mind. What would they ask you to cut to the core? What perspective would they bring to your 21st Century mind, heart, soul? Would you look them in the eye as they looked around your spiritual life and home? 

There was an old China Inland Mission hymn with these words; 

We bear the torch that flaming

Fell from the hands of those

Who gave their lives proclaiming

That Jesus died and rose

Ours is the same commission

The same glad message ours

Fired by the same ambition

To Thee we yield our powers

But we also remember the words of the Venite, Exultemus Dominus [Psalm 95] which the Church of England Common Worship brackets to encourages us to miss out: 

Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts :

as in the provocation,

    and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness;

    When your fathers tempted me :

proved me, and saw my works.

  Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said :

It is a people that do err in their hearts,

    for they have not known my ways.

  Unto whom I sware in my wrath :

that they should not enter into my rest

In other words history can get us thinking: am I on track (which sounds costly), or off track (which sounds calamitous).  

Don’t be like the desert forefathers. But do be like the desert fathers and other martyrs near God’s throne.

But finally – I believe in the communion of saints

I want to finish with something completely different. What if we are not just talking about history in this chapter, but a living and ongoing present reality. 

What if we are talking about the communion of saints. The church mystical. The cloud of witnesses and cry of heaven’s martyrs. 

What if these redeemed, once fallen, now exalted ‘heroes of history’ are really doing what the book of Hebrews claims and they are cheering us on? 

You may have more or less theological issues with that depending on what you think happens to people who have died in the time leading up to the Second Coming of Christ… do they sleep and in an instant rise at the Second Coming, or do they go with the thief on the cross to Paradise, are they out of time completely, or are they, like the characters in Revelation 6, 20 and Hebrews 11 seem to be watching and observing us and shouting out for us. 

I haven’t had much cause to think about what we mean every time we say the Apostles Creed and recite: 

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins… 

What did the author’s have in mind? 

But imagine they are there today, cheering you on. Your great aunt Mabel who no-one else knew much about but you imagine has been received into heaven with treasures galore. The theologians, bishops, and ministers who in this life received abundant praise and may or may not have stored up treasures in heaven as well. The missionary martyrs. The ancient celts. The disciples of Jesus. What if they were shouting ‘How Long O Lord’ on your behalf? What if they could see a perspective you can’t and were still cheering you on? 

Wouldn’t that be an encouragement as the Day approaches? 

Wouldn’t that spur you on? 

I had reason recently to kneel at the cross of St Patrick in Downpatrick, and then at St Hilda and St Cuthbert’s icon/tomb respectively in Durham Cathedral. Not to venerate the dead. Not to bypass the Lord Jesus Christ the only mediator and advocate but to enjoy the communion of saints. To remember that I (and my generation) are not on our own. To remember that bishops have faced far harder things than nailing their colours to the LLF mast. To remember echoes of history like Luther’s ‘Here I Stand, I Can Do No Other’ or like Polycarp:

“Eighty and six years have I served Christ, nor has He ever done me any harm. How, then, could I blaspheme my King who saved Me? … I bless Thee for deigning me worthy of this day and this hour that I may be among Thy martyrs and drink the cup of my Lord Jesus Christ.”

Dear friends, we ‘charismatics’ are a very young church, but our family likeness goes back down the centuries, past the apostles, and prophets to the patriarchs of faith. 

We have much to learn and be inspired by, and perhaps even more friends close to hand than we first thought. 

Don’t look back in anger, but do remember the rock from which you were hewn. It will help you for today and for tomorrow.

Previous Posts in this series: Foreword | introduction | Remember The Baby | The Bathwater Needs Flushing | Driven to Distraction by Success | Whoever Pays the Piper | Losing My Religion | Spiralling Out of Control

HTB Network Thesis in 30 Parts: Featuring: Origins | Renewal | Success Culture | Managerialism | Theology | Trajectories.