Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Vignettes from the TBN Appearance: Part 2-b
Here's another variety of the Praisegod Research Poll:
Tell us something about the first Southern Baptists you ever encountered who were Charismatics: Were they poor? Uneducated? Rural?
I'll start. The first Charismatic Southern Baptists I ever encountered were middle-class and wealthy Baylor students and employees attending Highland Baptist Church in Waco, TX.
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3 comments:
Interesting question.
In my case, he was a Professor and the founding Department Head of a noted Insurance School in a well-known SE University. He and his wife sat across the table from Peg and I at a convention dinner in 1976, and quietly explained what the gift of praying in an unknown language had meant in their lives. I pooh-poohed it at the time; they just smiled, and I looked for him a few months ago to tell him what all had happened to me.
I was too late.
PhD. World famous, and a widely-read author.
Alan Cross says,
I've never met any charismatic Southern Baptists. That is a contradiction of terms. A charismatic is someone who believes in a seperate baptism of the Holy Spirit with tongues as the sign. Regarding pneumatology, a Baptist is someone who believes that you receive all of the Holy Spirit when you are saved and you have subsequent infillings repeatedly throughout your Christian life as you submit to God and ask Him to fill you with the Holy Spirit.
But, I have met many Southern Baptists who had a PPL or believed that it was biblical. I knew of some in my home church, but it was a big traditional First Baptist church in my small Southern town. I met some in the farming communities of Central California when I was a BSU summer missionary in college. Then, I met one at a rural church in Mississippi where I was a youth minister. I met some in the campus ministry in college and I also met a pastor and quite a few others in a small church on the outskirts of my college town that I ended up going to. They saw PPL as quite normal. I met several in seminary and the downtown SBC church that I attended and I met several at the church that I am currently at now.
All of them have been very humble and they have not divided any churches. There were probably many more and I only found out about these folks because I am naturally inquisitive about spiritual things with people that I know and we had long talks about the things of God and how they saw certain aspects of theology. I can also tell you their positions on Calvinism and eschatology.
There have been a lot of them. It is amazing what people will talk to you about if you don't tell them that they're crazy.
Bart,
You're completely on the wrong track here in this post. Indeed, you're guilty of the false dilemma fallacy that you so aptly exposed in your previous post.
Obviously, all the wealthy preachers who presently anoint TBN with their ministry weren't wealthy and well-to-do when they became charismatic. Clearly, back when they were poor, uneducated, and rural, they were more open to the Spirit, and so they were open to becoming charismatic. And then, ever since they obeyed God in being open to Him in their humble state, God blessed their obedience by granting to them great wealth, even as God blessed Solomon for asking for the right things.
Surely this interpretation confirms what was said on the recent TBN show. Therefore, it must be right ;-)
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