Faith, Hope, Love, And The Eschaton

Click to join the conversation with over 500,000 Pentecostal believers and scholars

Click to get our FREE MOBILE APP and stay connected

| PentecostalTheology.com

               

Faith,

Hope,

Love,

1

and the Eschaton

In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also.

John 14:23 (NRSV)

And he … said unto them, “Occupy till I come.”

ments with

eschatological to Pentecostal

the movement come.

They

son’s famous

many early

Pentecostals restoration movement important part

Luke 19:13(b) (AV)

Movement,

the

promise

of

as a

harbinger

of

things

to

Millenarianism

Indeed,

from the time

fest

Destiny”

millennial

expectations

From the earliest

days

of the Pentecostal

the return of Christ has

played

a

very significant

role. The movement came into

being

in the midst of a complex confluence of several move-

overtones. Restorationism contributed

greatly

self-understanding. Participants

viewed themselves and

in which

they participated

were the “Latter Rain” Movement. Aimee

Semple

McPher-

sermon “Lost and Restored”

epitomized

the conviction of

who viewed the Movement as a

Holy Spirit

for the whole Church.

Primitivism, too, played

an

in the lives of

many

restorationist Pentecostals.

They searched the Book of Acts, and

attempted

to participate in the restoration of the Church

by bringing

their lives further into

conformity

to the life and

teachings they

understood to be revealed there.

played

a role in this rich confluence of ideas as well.

the idea arose that the United States had a “Mani-

within the

country

had reached a on the

continent, military

inter-

feverish

pitch.

Westward

expansionism

vention

abroad,

and the rise of the

country

as an economic

power gave

a national

optimism

that tended to raise millennial

expectations. Post-millennialism was in its

heyday,

even

among many Wesleyan-

way

to

Holiness

people.

In the midst of the

optimism

movement from darkness to

dawning

movement

expectations, stopped singing

and the Post-millennial

many people

in the

Wesleyan-Holiness

“We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations” with its chorus that

spoke

of the

to noonday and

began to sing “Work for the

Night

is

Coming.” They were, brightness, it seemed, already in

“Evening Light.” Optimism,

after

all,

was not shared

by everyone. Inherent in the millennial

expectation

was the

pessimism

or realism of those who, in

spite

of the rhetoric, did not see

things improving.

What

was increased alienation,

estrangement, turmoil,

even

despair. Theirs was a view of life from the underside and

many

of them came to

of Christ. Premillennialists were not convinced that the world was

getting

better. On the

contrary,

the Church

they

saw

believe in a Pre-millennial return

1

2

had

always provided

the last safe

place

in a world

rapidly sliding

to destruction. Now

it, too,

was in a state of

rapid

deterioration.

Higher critical

methodologies

were

making headway

in the seminaries and the pulpit,

the social

gospel

was

being adopted,

the seeds of liberalism were being sown,

and it seemed that the

very underpinnings

of the conserva- tive

safety

of Biblical literalism were

being

undermined. There was no room for

optimism

without the

hope

of Divine intervention first. With the return of

Christ, peace,

the end of alienation and

despair,

and the beginning

of the millennial

kingdom

would come.

As William J.

Seymour

noted in brief

expository homily (“Rebecca: Type

of the Bride of Christ-Gen. 24,” The

Apostolic

Faith

[Los Angeles, CA]

1.6

[Feb./Mar., 1907], 2.3-4),

“Now we are

living

in the eventide of this

dispensation,

when the

Holy Spirit

is

leading us, Christ’s

bride,

to meet Him in the clouds.” It was

only

after the bride of Christ had been taken

by

the

bridegroom

that,

“We shall be

priests

and kings

unto

God, reigning

with Him a thousand

years.” (“Behold

the Bridegroom

Cometh!” The

Apostolic

Faith

[Los Angeles, CA]

1.5 [Jan., 1907], 2.1-2). Pre-millennialism,

and John Nelson

Darby’s

dis- pensationalism, popularized

and

brought

into a wide

range

of churches at the turn of the

century through Prophecy

conferences and the notes in C. I. Scofield’s Reference Bible, had a strong effect

upon early

Pente- costals. Pentecostal

periodicals lavishly

advertised the “Scofield” Bible with its Dispensational

features, simply

because it provided the eschato- logical

scheme which

they

wanted to see

proliferated.

In

spite

of its dismissal of modem

day

charisms such as

speaking

in

tongues,

it was often used as the sole or primary text in Pentecostal Bible schools. Charles Parham’s

heavy

involvement in Zionism, another of the con- fluents, contributed substantially

to some restorationist

expectations. The return of the Jews to Palestine

through

the efforts of the inter- national Zionist

movement,

he

argued,

stood for both the

spiritual

and temporal

welfare of the Jews.

“May

God hasten the

day

when this awful prejudice

between Jew and Gentile shall cease, when Messiah shall reign

and earth

keep

her jubilee a thousand

years,”

he went

on,

with “the sword a shear, the

spear

a pruning hook and nations shall have war no more.”

(“Rev.

Parham’s Zionist Talk,” The

Apostolic

Faith

[Melrose, KS]

1:5 and 6 (October-November,

1905), 9.

Parham’s commitment to Zionism was shared

by

Aimee

Semple

McPherson in the 1920s and

may suggest why

Pentecostals are

among

the

leading proponents

of Zionism among

the conservative churches of the United States even now.

[Cf. Ken

Sidley,

“For the Love of

Zion,” Christianity Today

36:3

(March 9, 1992), 47].

All of these confluent

“isms,”

when taken

together,

add

up

to a sub- stantial commitment

by

Pentecostals to a clear and

convincing

articula- tion of a doctrine of the Second

Coming.

In most Pentecostal

groups

it is a highly nuanced doctrine. In one sense it is a simple declaration that Christ’s return is imminent. In another sense it is

very complex.

It is

.

.

2

3

imminent,

but not dateable. It is imminent, so one cannot look for cer- tain events which must occur before it happens. It is imminent, therefore it must be

pre-millennial.

It must be articulated as such to avoid the many

errors of amillennialism

(a sort of spiritualized approach),

or post- millennialism which is viewed as being too

optimistic

in its

anthropol- ogy.

Its

imminence, too,

means that it must be

pre-tribulational,

not mid-tribulational or post-tribulational. It is, after all, a blessed

hope

that not

only

will Christ

gather

all believers before

things go

bad for a period of

tribulation,

but it is a blessed

hope

that Christians will not have to suffer such a devastation.

The Second

Coming

is a cardinal article of faith for all Pentecostals. And

rightly

should it be. It has

provided

enormous

hope, especially

to those who have been

oppressed, marginalized,

and excluded from places

and

positions

of influence and

power

in

society

around the world. It has

played

a significant role from African-American slave

religion

to worldwide Pentecostalism. This

hope

has

helped people

to

cope

and survive in

extremely

stressful situations. It has

long

motivated Pentecostals to action, action not

only

on behalf of themselves but also on behalf of others.

Pentecostal

teaching

on the Second

Coming, however,

has not been merely

a blessed

hope.

It has also served the

personal

interests of some as a not so blessed hammer. The

thought

of an imminent return of the Lord has threatened some. Others have used it to manipulate crowds at the time of altar calls, to scare individuals into

making

a decision. Creative

prophetic

schemes,

charts which

identify probable

Anti-Christ figures,

science-fiction-like films

depicting

the

rapture,

and

prolonged and

agonizing

altar calls

designed

to induce

guilt, fear,

and

anxiety, especially among

these with low self-esteem and

personal insecurities, have been used

very effectively by

some to raise the “commitments” count in annual

reports.

But in

spite

of the misuse to which some have put

this

doctrine,

it has

kept

ever before the movement the idea of

per- sonal

holiness, perspicuity

of

life,

and it has even acted as an aid in de- cision

making.

It represents the

possibility

of immediate

accountability. The

prospect

of an imminent Second

Coming

has motivated still others to

beauty-filled

acts of love for the Lord and for other

people.

Love anticipates

obedience,

Jesus told the

disciples (John 14:23).

Love also does not seek its own, as Paul

put

it

(1

Cor.

13:5).

It moves out to others. It is not

inwardly

directed. The return of the Lord is a hope to be, shared. The

teaching

that it is imminent can

heighten

the

hope,

but sometimes it can also truncate the acts of love

accomplished

in its

light. The artificial distinction between the work of

evangelism

and acts of social

justice may

be one

place

where this is most

clearly

seen. On the whole,

Pentecostals have seen the work of

evangelism

in

light

of the immanent return of Christ as an act of love. Works of social

justice, however,

have often been viewed as a waste of

time,

as an unwelcome competitor

for the limited commodities of

time, energy,

and

money

.

3

4

which Pentecostal believers

possess. And,

after

all,

even Jesus noted that the

poor

would ever be

present (Matt. 26:11). Thus,

for

some,

the idea of an imminent blessed

hope

has enabled them to

respond

to the calls for

greater

love in the social arena, with a denial that such acts in the end would be viewed as

loving. They

would

merely prolong

the problem, provide

false

hope,

and detract from the

personal

assets of those called

upon

to give. At times it has

supported

a selfish

lifestyle by providing

a reason

why

it is

unimportant

to be

socially

involved. This world,

after

all,

is a lost

cause, socially speaking.

The Pentecostal Movement is now

nearing

its centennial mark. A new century

and a new millennium are in the

offing. Many

of our

groups have

designated

the current decade as one of harvest or of destiny or of evangelization.

But other factors are also at work

among

our

people.

No

longer

are we all

poor, uneducated, rural, southern,

or

marginalized. Some of our

people

are no

longer

motivated

by

the

promise

of Christ’s s return within their lifetime. Some of them have even

begun

to question whether our

teaching

on the

subject

is

adequate.

We are much like the people

addressed in the book of Hebrews or in Luke-Acts, a generation of people in a movement whose initial

hopes

and

expectations

are

being questioned

as a result of the

continuing passage

of time. The

reality

that many

of our

people

have been

upwardly

mobile

educationally,

economi- cally,

and

socially only compounds

the crisis.

In this issue of

Pneuma,

James Goff reviews the role which

primi- tivism and millenarianism have

played

for Pentecostals. It is

profound. The

change

of the social location of the movement as a whole, he

sug- gests,

undercuts our

original

vision. Robert Cornwall focuses

upon Aimee

Semple

McPherson’s articulation of that vision as well, a vision which found its clearest

expression

in her

dispensational, primitivist, restorationist

eschatology.

As we move toward the culmination of this century,

it is not too

early

to ask whether our

understanding

and articu- lation of this

hope

is

adequate

to meet the

challenges

of a new millen- nium,

one in which our

society

will become

increasingly secularized, our

place

in it will come

increasingly marginalized

or relativized as pluralism

moves to center

stage,

and our

government attempts

to meet its debts with ever

declining resources,

at our

expense. What, now,

moti- vates our

people

to holiness in

life,

to

evangelistic

and

missionary commitment,

to acts of love in word and in deed? How do we

keep

the Blessed

hope

alive

apart

from

imposing

it as a

hammer,

or

making

it something macabre,

or

titillating

the worst in

peoples’

fascinations? How can we best articulate this doctrine in such a way that it serves as a motivation based not

solely

on

hope,

or faith, but also on love? Jeffrey

Snell re-examines for us the

Spirit’s eschatological work,

the work of

carrying

out or

implementing

the marvelous work of the atone- ment

accomplished

in Jesus.

Clearly,

Pentecostals are comfortable with the

missionary activity

of the

Spirit

in the world and we have invested ourselves

heavily

in this work. But Snell

argues

that

new,

non-tradi-

4

5

tional ministries

might emerge

were we to take another serious look at the

Spirit’s role,

not

only

in convincing the world of

sin, righteousness, and

judgment,

but also in the bestowal of

power

and charisms to carry out a broader

eschatological ministry

than we have seen to date. To focus our attention on some of the

Spirit’s

other

gifts may

enable us to participate

in the

Spirit’s

work of renewal

throughout

the world in new, valuable,

and

energizing ways

that also

point

toward Christ.

Charles Self looks

carefully

at the

strengths

and weaknesses of certain Roman Catholic ecclesial base communities in Latin America. He

argues that

they

have much in common, both

spiritually

and

politically.

“Can we raise

hope through cooperative

efforts?” he asks. The

subject

of hope

is a high priority item

among many

Pentecostal

groups

in Latin America.

“Hope,”

Self

suggests,

“is faith

looking

ahead.” What

might the

Society

for Pentecostal Studies

bring

to such a discussion? What might

the

Society

do to aid

greater cooperation

in our Movement? One thing

that is

needed, argues

Luis Fontalvo, is unity. We need

unity

until Christ returns, he

says.

His

experiment

in a

Hispanic-Anglo-Franco context is worth review. There

may

be some

important

lessons to be

learned about

hope,

the essentials of life and

faith,

about

community, and about

ministry

from this

fascinating experiment.

Finally,

Jim Purves looks at one small

aspect

of Edward

Irving’s work.

Irving,

founder of the Catholic

Apostolic

Church in the

early nineteenth

century,

is viewed

by many

as a genuine

predecessor

to the Pentecostal movement.

Irving’s christology

was

problematic

for

many in his

day but,

Purves

argues,

the interaction of his

christology

and pneumatology

in the area of

soteriology

lead to some

interesting

and worthwhile results. Furthermore,

Irving’s emphasis upon ecclesiology instead of

anthropology suggests

that the

emphasis

has

implications which

point

toward the value of the

community

over

against

that of the individual.

Each of our authors, then, has worked with an eschatological theme. It is a matter of faith, to be sure. It is also an

object

of

hope.

In what

way can we demonstrate more

forcefully

its

relationship

to love? Faith and hope may provide

us with

security,

but love casts out fear and it alone will move us to action.

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

‘

1 Cor. 13:13 (NRSV)

Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. Editor

5