AFORISMOS MÁS RELEVANTES
3. LAS EDADES DEL HOMBRE
Land refuses to accept a fundamentalist understanding of Pentecostal eschatology, which makes a sharp distinction between the church age and the kingdom age. Instead, he asserts that Pentecostals rejoice in the presence of the kingdom of God in the present age.32
According to Land, the kingdom of God is already present in the world, and signs and wonders of the apostolic age have not yet ceased. For Pentecostals, the restoration of the apostolic age does not simply mean the reappearance of the early church; rather the restoration aspires to recapture the apostolic desire for the kingdom of God. For Land, Pentecostals are those who live within the tension of the ‘already but not yet’
consummated kingdom of God.33 In eschatological tension, they are looking forward to the second coming of the King, Jesus Christ. This longing for Christ’s return is not only a final
32 Ibid., 44. 33 Ibid., 46.
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destination of their spiritual journey to restore all creation, but is also a driving force to overcome barriers in the present world.
For Land, like Moltmann, the return of Christ does not mean simply the
cataclysmic destruction of all creation, but rather the full restoration of the kingdom of God. God’s reign has already come down, but has not yet been accomplished in fullness. Land elaborates upon God’s reign as follows:
It is that society and situation in which persons, created by God in the divine image, love God and their neighbour with their entire being. The kingdom is ‘present and future’, ‘already and not yet’, ‘in but not of this world’. The community of Christ acknowledges and agrees to submit joyfully to this reign.34
Land’s eschatology reflects a transformational advent of the kingdom, which bears upon the intense apocalyptic eagerness of early Pentecostalism.35 God’s kingdom has entered the world through Jesus Christ36 and the Spirit.37 However, God’s reign will be
accomplished ultimately only through the return of Christ, when all creatures will be restored as new creation. This is the ultimate purpose for the kingdom of God.
Nevertheless, God’s rule in fullness is still the hope or expectation of people living in the present. For early Pentecostals, hope for the return of Christ was crucial to overcome obstacles and difficulties in their lives, because the expectation of God’s reign excited a passion towards the kingdom of God both in the present and for the future. Such hope for the future kingdom of God was closely associated with the present life, and kept early Pentecostals ‘pure, utterly sincere, and devoted to the mission’.38 Thus, early Pentecostals,
34 Ibid., 174.
35 Peter F. Althouse, Spirit of the Last Days: Pentecostal Eschatology in Conversation with Jurgen Moltmann (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2003), 76.
36 Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 133.
37 Ibid., 174. Land asserts that to be filled with the Spirit is to be disposed towards the kingdom of
God. He also argues that prayer by the Spirit provides a foretaste of the kingdom. See Ibid., 55, 134, 173.
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living in their present, were people of the promise of the second coming of Christ, and that promise became an impelling force for the dynamic of the Pentecostal life.
This yearning for the coming of Christ is the same as the longing for the Spirit and for the kingdom of God. Land extracts the concept of a longing for the kingdom from the early Pentecostals’ desire for the dawn of the day of the Lord.39 The longing for God, the ‘hunger’ or ‘thirst’ for God’s love and compassion for the lost, is to be found in classical Pentecostalism in songs, testimonies, sermons, articles and books.40 Land claims that the yearning for the kingdom is an eagerness to see God and to be in God’s kingdom as new creation.41 He also asserts that a passion for the kingdom means ‘yielding to the Spirit as he searches, fills with love and sighs and groans for the kingdom’.42 Thus, Land’s ‘one passion’43 signifies a longing for the kingdom of the trinitarian God: the Father, the Son and the Spirit.44 The trinitarian God works actively towards the transformation of creation as new creation, not towards its annihilation.45
The relationship between Christ and the Spirit reinforces the trinitarian approach to the kingdom of God, and in classical Pentecostalism there exists an intimate connectivity between Christology and pneumatology. According to Land, the so-called fourfold or fivefold gospel is characterized chiefly by being Christocentric, but starting with the
39 Ibid., 147–57, 176.
40 Ibid., 149. Peace and rest are results of whole-hearted love for God. See also 174. Land asserts that
twentieth-century Pentecostal apocalyptic vision is evidenced by worship and witness (49–50).
41 Ibid., 57. 42 Ibid., 176.
43 Land considers a longing for the coming of the Lord, for the Spirit and for the kingdom of God as
one passion (Pentecostal Spirituality, 58). He holds the trinitarian view of the kingdom of God, and argues that the journey towards God is a journey with God in God, walking towards the Father with Jesus in the Spirit. See Ibid., 69.
44 Ibid., 197. God works in history for the good regarding His purpose. Land’s assertion derives from
Moltmann’s claim regarding the trinitarian origin, presence and goal of Christian existence. His stance reveals continuity with Moltmann’s trinitarian concept of the kingdom of God. For Land, history as eschatological trinitarian procedure moves ‘by God, in God, to God’.This yearning for the kingdom of the trinitarian God has made Pentecostals pure, utterly sincere in spirituality.
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Spirit.46 He intends not to dichotomize Christology and pneumatology, but to integrate and amalgamate the two, through the relationship between love and power.47 Land clarifies the intimate relationship between Christ and the Spirit in the following manner:
Jesus is presented to the person through the scriptural testimony by the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who moves upon the person to receive Christ. To receive the witness of the Spirit is to receive Christ.48
For Land, the intimate relationship between Christ and the Spirit and the role of this relationship for the kingdom of God are crucial within the concept of the Trinity. Regarding the question of how Pentecostals participate in the kingdom of the trinitarian God, Land emphasizes the way of the kingdom through justification, sanctification and Spirit baptism.49 The journey to the kingdom of God (ordo salutis) begins with a turning away from sin and walking in the light through justification. Justification is an event of forgiveness of sins and regeneration from God by Jesus Christ through the Spirit.50 Sanctification, the second definite work of grace, starts from new birth and involves a whole yielding to God, which leads one’s life to holiness. This sanctification is a ‘burning passion for souls’51 to love both neighbours and persecutors. Spirit baptism is the ‘gift of power upon the sanctified life’.52 The Spirit empowers believers to walk in the light towards the kingdom of God. Through the Spirit, Pentecostals can travel back and forth in salvation’s history to participate in experiencing the kingdom of God. The Spirit is an agent of the kingdom of God, because the Spirit disposes the kingdom of God.53 Thus, for
46 Ibid., 12. Land claims that early Pentecostals’ spirituality is Christocentric precisely because it is
pneumatic.
47 Ibid., 54. Land tries to harmonize Christology and pneumatology rather than split them apart. 48 Ibid., 129–30.
49 Ibid., 74–88. 50 Ibid., 75–6, 121–2. 51 Ibid., 124.
52 Ibid. The Apostolic Faith 1.3 (1906), 2. The Apostolic Faith newspaper was first published in
September 1906 by the Azusa Street Mission. The paper contained news, testimonies and sermons by Seymour and others.
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Land, the trinitarian God participates in the fulfilment of the kingdom of God from the Father through the Son in the Spirit.
In order to extract the ethos of Pentecostal spirituality, Land analyses Pentecostal beliefs and practices with reference to the classical Pentecostal resources such as prayers, confessions and testimonies. A longing for Christ’s return, which is a yearning for the Spirit as well as a passion for the kingdom of God, was a dominant distinctive feature of the first ten years of the classical Pentecostalism. Then, he concludes that the apocalyptic vision for the kingdom of God has been revealed to Pentecostals through the body of Christ and the works of the Spirit. Pentecostals gain a foretaste of the kingdom of God and expect the kingdom to come through the work of the Spirit. They are eager for the ultimate coming of the kingdom to restore all creation. For Pentecostals, the Spirit is ‘the reigning power who forms persons in accordance with the requirements of the kingdom’.54
Therefore, not only is empowerment by the Spirit a foretaste of God’s future kingdom but also a longing for the kingdom derived from the Spirit is a power enabling one to live a dynamic Pentecostal life as an integration of Pentecostal beliefs and practices in
affections.55 The apocalyptic vision is not confined to the work of the Spirit or of Christ but expands to the kingdom of the trinitarian God. Through the trinitarian approach to the apocalyptic vision, Land overcomes the limitation of a dispensational eschatology that is divided into the three eras: of the Father, Son and the Spirit.
In this subsection, I have highlighted how Land’s trinitarian approach to the
apocalyptic vision differs from a fundamentalist understanding of Pentecostal eschatology. An apocalyptic longing for the kingdom of the trinitarian God, as described by Land, was
54 Ibid. More details follow in 1.3.1.
55 ‘The Latter Rain restoration of Pentecostal power was for last-days evangelization. The everlasting
gospel was to be heralded by witnesses whose mouths had tasted the power of the age to come and whose eyes had seen evidence of that power at work among them.’ See Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 44.
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at the centre of the early Pentecostal movement. The apocalyptic vision is bound not only to Pentecostal beliefs and practices but also to affections in spirituality, because an apocalyptic vision transforms Christian affections into Pentecostal or apocalyptic
affections. An examination of the intimate relationship between an apocalyptic vision and affections follows in the next section.