Time certainly flies by, where I once used to refer to the Charismatic Renewal of the 60’s through to the late 70’s as just that, but as time goes by I have started to use the date format 1970’s; but for me, it will still be another six years before I can say it has been 50 years.
One of the unintended advantages that I had within the mid 70’s was that as a youthful member of our Armed Forces that I was able to experience a number of Pentecostal and Charismatic congregations within my country; where many of their members were recently cessationist, either by conscious choice or simply that it was what their particular community believed.
During this time within my own country, which was probably from maybe 1970 through to about 1977, the numbers that embraced the Full Gospel were seemingly astronomical, where they either joined (or fellowshipped) with a Pentecostal congregation, or where they remained within their own new Charismatic assembly or found a Charismatic assembly elsewhere within their particular denomination. Though in those days I should say charismatic and not so much Charismatic.
What would undoubtedly be the primary theological influence for many of them deciding to embrace the fullness of the Spirit, was for at least the Arminian Evangelical, was with the realisation that the final bulwark of cessationism, which is of course with 1 Cor 13:10, that this did not refer to the death of the last Apostle-of-Christ, with the release of the last Book of the Bible or with the compilation of the Canon of Scripture centuries later, but that it refers to the return of Christ with his Kingdom, which has been the traditional understanding of this passage by the Church down through the ages.
To be fair, for many others, they did not hold to a theological reason for not embracing the fullness of the Spirit, other than it being-the-way-it-was for their denomination and the second reason was how it was for me as well.
I fully agree with you on this. All it should take to understand this is with maybe a third or fourth year junior reading level. Paul goes to some length to describe how we pray in the Spirit (tongues) within the congregational setting as being just that, prayer, as in praise and worship that is always being directed to the Father, we of course worship the Father not to benefit or uplift others but to worship Him as Lord of all. The Holy Spirit never uses tongues as a form of communication to either the congregation or an individual, as he always speaks to us through prophecy which is always given in the vernacular tongue of the local Christian community. Then we have personal prayer which we can offer to the Father through the Holy Spirit, or to be more precise, that the Holy Spirit speaks through us to the Father with regard to our personal intercessions and needs.
Even though you have moved away from the Manifestations of the Spirit (1 Cor 12:7-11) to that of the agency of the Father, as with Signs & Wonders; the two are not one and the same, I cannot recall reading how the Apostles-of-Christ ever moved through hospitals healing anyone that they came across. For that matter, do we read where any of the Apostles-of-Christ walked through any leper communities which apparently existed in their day?
As for me, even though I regularly pray and worship in tongues, where I have seen many mighty outworkings of the Holy Spirit, I have never, nor do I ever expect to see a Sign and Wonder in my life time, though I would certainly relish being able to correct this sometime down the track.
As for the Office of healings (1 Cor 12:28), I would say that this Office is limited to that of the Congregational setting, where even I wonder if we should be praying for those who are unsaved to be healed - this is something that I still struggle with even after many years within the Full Gospel movement. For that matter, should we really be advertising 'Healing meetings' and the like, especially ones that are being aimed at the unregenerate?
