holy spirit

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John Piper

Supremacy of Christ

1 Corinthians 4:15-21

For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. Therefore I sent to you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power. What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?
We begin a series of messages this morning that will probably take us all the way to the middle of April. It's called "Compassion, Power, and the Kingdom of God: Are Signs and Wonders for Today?" The series is unusual in at least two ways.

First, it is directly related to remarkable things that are happening in the world today and in our own experience; our aim will be to search the Scriptures concerning the rising worldwide tide of activity in gifts of healing, the gifts of prophecy, signs and wonders, personal spiritual warfare, territorial spiritual warfare, and power evangelism. Are these things of God? Are they biblical? Has God begun to draw us into the warfare in a way that demands greater discernment and zeal for spiritual power?

The other thing that makes the series unusual is that it will be coordinated with the Plenary Session of the BITC on Wednesday evenings. Wednesdays will take us deeper and give a chance for discussion and application. This series has been a kind of staff decision. We have been studying and discussing these things for some time. Tom Steller and I will team teach the course.

Today's message is an introduction to the series as a whole. What I want to do is show how the questions have been raised in our experience and then close with just a brief look at the text and how the New Testament itself raises the issues we will be looking at.

What Prompts This Series?
First, then, what is happening in the world that prompts this series?

A New Focus on Unreached Peoples

The first Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization took place in 1974 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Until now the most remarkable upshot of that congress was the new focus of mission agencies on unreached peoples. Ralph Winter sounded a startling cry that about 90% of the missionaries of the world were working with already reached peoples, while only 10% were working with people groups with no church at all. He pointed out that the completion of the Great Commission should not be understood as reaching all the individuals in the world, but all the peoples of the world. He showed that there are (today) some 12,000 of these unreached groups, and that this should be top priority for the mission agencies of the world. This new understanding of the missionary task has gripped almost all evangelical mission agencies and denominations today.

The Last Two Sentences of the Lausanne Covenant

I say this has been the most remarkable upshot of Lausanne until now. But now something else is happening in the world, especially in missions and evangelism, that may owe its strength to Lausanne and may prove just as significant as the concept of unreached peoples. Peter Wagner, of the Fuller School of World Mission, pointed this out to those of us who were at the second Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Manila last July.

He said that history may show that the most significant influence of Lausanne I was tucked away in two sentences of Article 14 of the Lausanne Covenant—the document that John Stott and Francis Schaeffer helped put together and which Billy Graham and thousands of others signed. Article 14 is entitled "The Power of the Holy Spirit." The last two sentences go like this:

We therefore call upon all Christians to pray for such a visitation of the sovereign Spirit of God that all his fruit may appear in all his people and that all his gifts may enrich the body of Christ. Only then will the whole church become a fit instrument in his hands, that the whole earth may hear his voice.

Many Christians today believe that some of the spiritual gifts that were manifest in the New Testament have no place in the church or in missions today—like gifts of healing and miracles and prophecy. But that was not the position of the Lausanne Covenant. The Covenant calls all Christians to pray that all the gifts of the Spirit may enrich the body of Christ. And it specifically connects this prayer with the success of world missions. "Only then will the whole church become a fit instrument in his hands, that the whole earth may hear his voice."

A Rapidly Growing Movement

Peter Wagner pointed out that this last sentence may prove prophetic because it seems that most of the remarkable breakthroughs in world missions and in church growth around the world today are happening among those groups that pray the way Lausanne urges us to pray, namely, for all the gifts of the Holy Spirit—groups that deal forthrightly in the supernatural realm and take evil spirits and power encounters seriously.

This movement can hardly be labeled anymore. It's not merely Pentecostal; it's not merely charismatic; it's no one denomination or group of denominations; it is theologically diverse and includes Wesleyans and Calvinists. It is a worldwide movement with no organization, but a common zeal to seek all the gifts and the power of God described in the early church. Whatever we think of it, this movement cannot be ignored. According to Wagner in 1945 there were 16 million; 1955—27 million; 1965—50 million; 1975—97 million; 1980—268 million; 1989—351 million. Thus about one in every five professing Christians in the world today is in this group.

Examples of What's Happening Around the World
Three weeks ago I was invited by Peter Wagner to a one day POST-LAUSANNE II CONSULTATION ON COSMIC-LEVEL SPIRITUAL WARFARE which is supposed to take place Monday, February 11, in Pasadena. Let me give you an example of the kind of thing that is happening today which we will be discussing.

Taking Seriously the Reality of Satan and Evil Spirits

More and more people today are taking seriously the tremendous reality of Satan and evil spirits in the work of evangelism and world missions. People are asking whether the demonic effect of Satan in blinding unbelievers1 calls for some kind of special power encounter. And the reference in Ephesians 6:12 to "principalities and powers and world rulers of this present darkness and spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places," has raised the question whether there is a hierarchy of evil spirits with some assigned by Satan over whole territories with the responsibility to keep them darkened and blinded from the gospel.2 So increasingly efforts are being made to identify territorial spirits and combat them in a direct way by prayer and spiritual authority, to prepare an area for more effective evangelism.

For example, in the fall of 1984 a group of pastors and leaders for the San Nicolas/Rosario area of Argentina gathered to discuss and pray about spiritual warfare. The gathering was prompted by the realization that 109 towns within 100 miles of their training center had no Christian witness. They did some preliminary studies and discovered that the town of Arroyo Seco appeared to be the seat of satanic activity in the region.

Years before a well known warlock (wizard or sorcerer) by the name of Mr. Meregildo operated out of that town. He was so famous and his cures so dramatic that people would trek to Arroyo Seco from overseas for his services. Before he died, he evidently passed his powers on to 12 disciples. Three times a church was established in Arroyo Seco and three times it closed down in the face of severe spiritual opposition.

After several days of Bible study and prayer, the pastors and leaders came together in one accord and placed the entire area under spiritual authority. A few of them traveled to Arroyo Seco. Positioning themselves across the street from the headquarters of Mr. Meregildo's followers they served an eviction notice on the forces of evil. They announced to them that they were defeated and that Jesus Christ would attract many to himself now that the church was united and pledged to proclaim him. Less than three years later 82 of those towns had evangelical churches in them. An unverified report indicates that as of today, all of them may have a church or a Christian witness.3 Unusual breakthroughs in world missions are increasingly being associated with spiritual warfare.

"Power Evangelism"

Another example of this movement and the kind of thing we will examine is what is called "power evangelism." The term has been popularized by John Wimber, the pastor of a church called the Vineyard in Anaheim, California (that has grown from one congregation to 270+ congregations in the last 10 years). He has drawn attention to the fact that almost every instance of successful evangelism in the New Testament involves some demonstration of supernatural power alongside the preaching of the Word—a healing,4 an exorcism,5 a prophecy,6 a resurrection from the dead,7 speaking of foreign tongues.8

His point is that this part of New Testament evangelism is missing in the western church for no good biblical reason and that this accounts for some of our weakness and ineffectiveness. These confirming miracles (called "signs and wonders") have a valuable function, Wimber says, namely, not to replace the verbal gospel but to win a more open hearing for it and confirm it. That's the pattern in Acts 14:3, "So [Paul and Barnabas] remained for a long time [at Iconium], speaking boldly for the Lord, who bore witness to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands." The "signs and wonders" were the Lord's direct miraculous witness to his Word.

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