Customer Reviews

Fire in the Fireplace: Charismatic Renewal in the Nineties

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We would expect a well balanced approach to writing about the work of the Holy Spirit in the church by the author who also wrote "Tyranny of the Urgent" and we get it! In this book, Charles E. Hummel, former president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, first reviews the history and growth of the various Charismatic groups within both the protestant and Catholic churches. He provides many valuable explanations of the meaning of related scriptures as well as observations of healings and prophecies that he himself has seen. He later gives his recommendations for keeping the Holy Spirit "fire in the fireplace" of a biblical church body. I came away encouraged in my own Spiritual gifts and reminded that the more extraordinary Spirit gifts have not disappeared and that "to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good."

This is a timeless book. Written in '93, this book gives a very balanced look at the Charismatic renewal. The author is very thorough and Biblical. He doesn't shy away from pointing out the areas of ill-theology like the Word of Faith Movement and Kenneth Hagin.

This is a great book for anyone interested in understand the Charismatic movement more from a balanced perspective from inside the camp. The author is well versed in the history of the movement and gives a good summary of how the movement began and spread.

Issues covered are some of the following:

-Spirit Baptism
-Word of Faith Movement
-Inner Healing
-Spiritual Warfare
-Divine Healing

Excellent and concise book.

Don't let the title fool you. This book is just as applicable to the Believer as it was when it first written in 1978, and then revised in 1993. Not only does it explain what charisms are and how they work in a truly Holy Spirit filled church, it makes the reader hold his church up to Jesus Christ's and Saint Paul's standards for good churches. Hmmm, I wonder how many of them there are really measuring up to those standards???