George Canty was an
internationally renowned
Pentecostal pioneer
evangelist and teacher. He was previously President of the Elim Pentecostal Church (Worldwide) and during his distinguished career did much work as a journalist and television and radio broadcaster.
“Whatever we think is gold or silver must be submitted for assayal to the institute of the Word of God, ‘the only rule of faith and practice’; and that includes revival itself.
That is the Pentecostal court of appeal, and always has been.
But the Charismatics are not always Bible-bound. That happens to be an important fact which accounts for some ideas and practices among them. Not all had held previously conservative views of the Bible, and maybe still do not.
It means their charismatic experience began differently.
Unlike the ‘classic Pentecostals, they did not seek tongues inspired by what they read about the gift in Scripture. They knew it was there, but critical scholarship had dealt with that.
Their interest arose because they heard of other people’s experience, perhaps Pentecostals, and began the search for the same ‘renewal’. I ministered to a convent full of eager seekers for the gifts of the Spirit and not one brought a Bible.
One told his story and had to face the question, whether Charismatics should revise their scholastic interpretations and become fundamentalists.
One British Charismatic has written books ‘to make people think’, aiming to be provocative, with obviously no high opinion about those who went before him. Sitting down for a whole day with his book and a notepad, I noted many passages where it seemed to me the Scriptures had not been called in, but should have been. Whether he accepts the evangelical view of Scripture as the infallible Word of God or not I could not It seems to me that such writings as his contain an awful lot of words, but not much ‘Word’. Some of my colleagues will accuse me of speaking far too mildly about books that quote Scripture no more than Shakespeare, as if evangelicals were so different. But that might be the raven calling the crow black, for I have found the same thing occasionally in the most fundamentalist circles. For example, Albert Barnes’ Calvinistic work The Atonement, has 358 pages with scarcely a Bible quotation anywhere except in one chapter, and I cannot imagine a less profitable volume.
Perhaps some are different. Not all are written either simply to shock people and ‘make them think’
.. It might be a ‘courageous’ book – even nonsense takes courage sometimes. But making people think is not necessarily the greatest aim in religion. In fact the usefulness of thinking could be a matter of thought itself. The Christian church is not a philosophic society.
Thought has proved to be a misguided guide in the past in the things of the spirit. Some better authority is wanted for Christian stability than mental considerations. That way we would have as many opinions as people.
There is no other direction we can look for truth and rightness about these things, except the Word itself.
There is another aspect also. The Bible must come first. To think up our own beliefs and practices first and then look in the Bible afterwards to see if it happens to support us, is a sure way to go wrong. ‘Can I quote it? Let me see what it might say? I tripped up that way when I first went forth to dazzle the world from my pulpit. Each week I got together a wonderful speech out of my head and out of the library, and then looked for a text to fit it. No amount of charisma, no display of gifts, will make up for a WORD-less ministry.”
The Hallmarks of Pentecost, George Canty, 1987
Rev John James 