Testing the Fire

Testing The Fire
By Mark D.J. Smith
St. Matthew Publishing. 221 pages. £6.25
ISBN 0 9524672 7 5

This splendid book is subtitled A Biblical Analysis of the Toronto Blessing, and is the most readable and helpful one that I have read on the subject. He tackles, in a loving and measured manner, the teaching of Mark Stibbe, Gerald Coates, Guy Chevreau and Patrick Dixon. He shows how the use of phrases like 'seasons of refreshing' can be quite wrongly applied.
He deals with the point that if 'the fruits of the blessing' are good, then we should not judge all the phenomena badly. The 'test of the consequences' is kindly but properly considered. He then asks two key questions: is it spiritual and is it due to ASC? It was Dixon who used the phrase 'altered states of consciousness' (ASC) to describe hysteria, and Smith shows the dangers of ASC's being given 'spiritual' value. It is so easy to forget 'epidemic hysteria' and its long history.
Reading as a practised doctor, I felt that if ASC was spoken of in more familiar terms: trance, suggestibility and audience manipulation (at which hypnotists are so expert), we as readers might make better sense of it and of other mass movements and other 'induced phenomena'. But this is a minor criticism.
What Mark Smith wants is to see both the Word of Christ and his Spirit restored to their proper place, and their full glory. He wants God-given reason to be welcomed back so that the understanding process is not bypassed. The coinage and currency of Christian discussion has been devalued by 'the blessing'.
Discernment, Smith argues, must mean loving but truthful criticism. Some well-known leaders perform as spiritual bully-boys. They are as immature as boys, and seem blind to the damage caused by their power trips. To 'invite the Spirit' as if it was a bucket of water being thrown, or a ball of fire being passed on: this is near-blasphemy. Smith wants us to recover the fact and experience of the Holy Spirit as a member of the Blessed Trinity, and not a piece of 'charismagic'.
Smith rightly says that for John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards, the gospel was central and the phenomena peripheral. In the Toronto Vineyard meetings, he found the reverse was true. The central talk, six nights of the week, was of the strange experiences on offer, with any gospel preaching being forced to the sidelines. I hope this excellent book will be widely read and discussed.

Gaius Davies

© Evangelicals Now - May 1997
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