Not really... My use of this scripture was not meant to say if we are operating in love we must believe everything. I should have amplified it more and made myself more clear. My concern is that is seems many who APPEAR genuinely hungry for a move of God have doubt and unbelief as their knee jerk reaction. Example, "Oh I hear that revival has broken out in Lakeland", the response, "Friend that cannot be true revival. The city isn't changed yet. There's to much glorification of a man. Where's the weeping and wailing that's evidence of repentance? etc..."
It seems that when we hear a report of something happening we (even if we're right sometimes) come at it from an angle of doubt and unbelief. Do we forget that the great men of God like G Campbell Morgan denounced the Azusa Street Revival as "the last vomit of satan."? Another great one, RA Torrey, denounced it and stated they were founded by a "soddomite"? The "soddomite" in question was Charles Parham, who was accused of sodomy in Zion, also denounced Azusa Street saying that God was sickened in his stomach at the sight of blacks and whites worhsipping together.
Jessie Penn Lewis in her bizarre, grossly unscriptural and "way to popular with anti revivalst crowd" book, War on the Saints, denounces much of the phenomena associated with the Welsh Revival as being demonic and fleshly. Forget the fact that the fruit of this revival abounded, it was the physical manifestations and unintelligilbe cries of the people that discredit it. (...how sad) An interesting side not is that Evan Roberts himself referred to War on the Saints as being a failed weapon that had divided God's people.
History proves my point. When individuals come at something with a pseudo-berean approach (which is doubt all and then prove your doubts through study) end up with the same conclusions about moves of God - the were of the devil. Sure some good may have come from them, like the salvation of thousands, but the negatives, bizarre physical manifestations, were far to abundant for the movement to be considered beneficial. (last statement laced with sarcasm...)
The Berean spirit is receiving the message with joy, hoping this could be what you're praying for, then studying the scriptures to see if it be true. We have entire ministries that are based on the opposite approach.
If joy, laughter and physical manifestations discredits a man or movement than forget about John Hyde, Evan Roberts and the Welsh Revival, Duncan Campbell and the Hebrides, Johnathon Edwards and the Great Awakening, Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Cane Ridge, John G Lake, Smith Wigglesworth, CL Culpepper and the Shantung Revival, and the list could go on and on and on . . . (and, by the way, not ALL of the manifestations attending the afforementioned ministries occured in the context of repentance and sorrow over sin...)
I dunno...I'm gonna quite typing now. Maybe this will speak to someone... Jeff _________________ Jeff
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