TRANSFORMATION AND THE ANOINTING -CHAPTER 6

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CHAPTER 6

TRACING THE RESTORATION OF THE TRANSFORMATION

IN THE MODERN CHURCH AGE

I. First Rays of Light Out of Darkness

A. The Mysterious Gap: A Night in Which No Man Could Work

Today's Church stands at the end of a gap in time between the first apostles and the last days Church of Revelation. This 1900 year period opened with a virtual dying out of both the gospel of transformation and the ministry of the anointing. In the ensuing Dark Ages, the concept of holiness degenerated into a religion based in human works, tradition and ritual. Genuine sanctification was preserved in only a few isolated groups of monks and others who were willing to walk in the truth of the cross.

At the same time, the anointing also dried up. Except for the second century Montanists who exercised some prophetic gifts, there is little record of anyone ministering under or teaching about the anointing for 1500 years. The true anointing ministry was replaced by superstitions of miracles centering about shrines and religious objects which were used to reinforce the human religion that had come to supplant the true gospel.

Beginning about the year 1500, a great work of restoration was initiated by the Lord for recovering all that had been lost to that time. He began to recreate His Church out of the corruption into which the original had collapsed. This restoration eventually recovered the Spirit's work of transformation and the work of the anointing, a restoration that continues to this hour. In this chapter and the next we will study what has been recovered of these two works and how it happened. By the end of the eighth chapter we will also learn why today's Church stands divided over what has been restored of the transformation and anointing.

B. The Reformation: A New Dawn Appears

The movements in Church history that have restored to us the larger realities of transformation and anointing are like plants which began with seeds and then came to full bloom later. Before their appearance as fully grown plants, they were hidden within earlier blooming streams of spiritual activity and restoration.

The first great act of Church restoration out of early and middle Church Age darkness was that great movement known as the Reformation (alias, the Protestant Movement). Probably the best known event of Church history, the Reformation did not specifically speak to or even acknowledge the greater truths of transformation and anointing. Yet as a work of living restoration, the seeds of these realities were present with that movement. This is because wherever God moves to restore men to relationship with Himself, some degree of transformation and anointing is required. Although it did not restore the larger truths on which we are focused, the Reformation laid vital groundwork without which the later restoring of complete transformation and anointing could not have emerged. Because of this, and in spite of the general familiarity we have with the Reformation, we must briefly discuss what was established by this movement.

1. The Light Recovered

Justification by Faith

During the years 1517-1680 the lost doctrines of "justification by faith" were recovered. Justification teaches us about the prelude to our transformation in Christ. It refers to the basic salvation we obtain when we believe in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of our sins. The teaching of justification by faith centers on what Christ did for man on the cross in paying for his sin with His own blood. It relates to our legal standing before a righteous God, emphasizing the atoning (or covering) nature of Christ's sacrifice. Justification deals with our record concerning past sins. As such, we can call it "objective salvation," "positional salvation," or "introductory salvation."

In justification, we are saved from eternal damnation because the legal price of our sins has been paid by Another. Our past record has been washed away. Hence we stand as "just" before God. (To help us remember the meaning of this, some use the little phrase "just-as-if- I never sinned.") To appropriate this forgiveness, a man need only come to Christ in repentant faith, ask God to forgive him, and receive His gift of the new birth and eternal life. The Reformation assaulted the lie that we can be forgiven by a man for our sins and earn our way to receive forgiveness from God. For restoring this most basic light, the Reformation has become the most recognized move of God in Church history.

Sola Scriptura

Along with the doctrine of justification came the restoration of the Scriptures into the hands of the common people. For over 1200 years, the Scriptures had been locked up in Latin and were available only to trained clergy. The Scriptures were made subject to the clergy's interpretation and to whatever traditions or decrees were subsequently added by church hierarchy. The battle to restore Scripture access to all saints was perhaps the costliest battle in terms of physical life ever suffered by those on the front lines of any restoration.

By restoring the Scriptures to the people, the Reformation enabled the ordinary man to enter his own genuine personal relationship with God as the Spirit revealed Christ to him through its pages. The term sola scriptura ("scripture only") became a watchword of the Protestant Movement. In bringing the Scriptures to the people, the Reformation secured the truth that "there is only one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."

2. Incompleteness of the Reformation

The restoration brought by the Reformation was essential. By teaching on the initial faith that inducts men through repentance into that first step of new birth, it laid the groundwork for the restoring of full transformation. With its recovery of the Scriptures to the common man, the Reformation also contained the seeds that promised the restoration of the anointing. The Reformers' teaching on the personal illumination of the Holy Spirit for understanding the Scriptures embraced the bare rudiments of anointing ministry.

Beyond this, however, the Reformation did not go. The salvation preached by the Reformers, while covering the penalty of sin, did not save from the power of indwelling sin and natural life force. It did not establish the truth of the believer's new intrinsic sinless identity. Nor did it bring the complete release of the anointing into the Church.

Deficient Identity

Though the Reformation revived the concept of the new birth, the understanding of it was more theoretical than real. The new birth was taught mainly in theological terms of justification rather than as an actual transformation. It was a descriptive term for a transaction delivering us from hell, but which did not create a righteous identity delivered from sin itself. The Reformation had no understanding of the believer's intrinsic righteous identity and nature in Christ. According to the Reformers and Puritans, a "saved" man was still essentially a sinner who had been covered by the blood of Christ and could simply "repair" to Christ for forgiveness anytime he did sin. The only difference between the saint and sinner was that the saint believed in Christ for forgiveness of sins while the sinner will pay for his own sins in hell. Beyond this, there was no real distinction.

Deficient Holiness

Based on such a concept of identity, the Reformed idea of holiness remained anchored in good works. Righteousness was measured by keeping the Law, something no one could do. Because of this, holiness was always an elusive ideal to be admired, not a reality that could be experienced. Because the believer was still essentially a sinner, and was subject to a performance-based standard of holiness that only reinforced his sense of sinfulness, he could never really hope to have any closer relationship to God than to come as a sinner in constant need of forgiveness. Holiness was proven therefore by one's state of perpetual contriteness before the Almighty Judge.

To the Reformers, spirituality could be increased and measured by one's knowledge of Scripture. Therefore reading, studying, and memorizing Scripture became a parallel means of developing holiness along with law keeping. As a result, the Reformation and Puritan eras produced great minds noted for their theological prowess. Today's most noted seminaries and publishing houses belong to the evangelical descendants of the Reformation thinkers. But beyond filling the mind and attempting good works, the Reformation produced no recognition of internal transformation through a literal work of the cross in the life of the believer. Nor did it acknowledge an internal experiencing of the Father through a sanctifying process that could save from the actual power of sin.

Denial of the Supernatural

The Reformation also recognized no anointing work of the Holy Spirit except in the area of preaching and illumination of the Scriptures to one's mind or heart. Scripture was seen as the only level on which God could speak to man. Outside of this, the Holy Spirit was largely regarded as the silent third partner of the Trinity, working quietly in the realm of conviction for sin. The Reformed school taught that all supernatural expressions of the anointing had passed with the apostles and were no longer for the Church. The concept of the baptism of the Holy Spirit was a taken-for-granted occurrence automatic to and simultaneous with conversion.

3. The Reformation Continues

In spite of the Reformation's blindness to the ongoing work of transformation and anointing, it's contributions were indispensable to preparing the way for full entrance into these realities. In this movement, the first threads of transformation were visible through the teaching of personal conviction for sin, the washing of the soul by the blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sin, the concept of the new birth, and the establishing of personal repentance and faith as the means of conversion. The initial strands of anointing were also present through the activation of ministry that came upon the Reformers by personal illumination of Scripture. From that point, personal illumination of Scripture, a function of the anointing, was recognized as a valid work of God.

On these foundations the restorations of transformation and anointing were able to proceed. The Spirit of God was now free to build toward the fuller truths of the cross and of the Holy Spirit. The overall restoration of these truths has occurred in overlapping stages. In keeping with all we have seen, first came the ministry of transformation, followed by the anointing. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to the restoration of transformation truth and ministry which culminated throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

II. Restoration of the Ministry of Transformation: 1680-1900

The touchstone for the full restoration of transformation ministry occurred in the life and work of John Wesley during the 1700's. Although the Reformation provided the platform from which the rebuilding of transformation reality was able to gain widespread visible expression, what eventually became Wesley's doctrine of "entire sanctification" had its roots in a long line of hidden away followers of Christ who predated and otherwise lived outside of the Reformation. These little known saints had discovered reality to relationship with the Father that transcended head knowledge and good works. Their experience and teaching of these inward depths was marked by the two keys of transformation: internal soul suffering through the work of the cross, and the soul's experiencing of the Father's love.

A. The Monks

The first saints to recover the deeper truths of transformation set themselves apart from society that they might devote the whole of their lives to having this process worked out in them. Called "monks," they majored on giving up the outward comforts of the temporal world while dwelling in the Father's love through meditation and prayer. There were many different "orders" of monks. Some were founded within the structure of the established church. Others sought for a greater purity, separating themselves entirely from the corrupt church system.

In spite of its separation, monasticism fell victim to its own weaknesses over the generations. Not all monks, nor even most, had discovered the true inward life for which they had separated themselves out from society. For the large part, monasticism became its own self-centered religion of works in which the true ministry of the cross was replaced by imitative asceticism. Knowledge of the Father was replaced by ritual prayers and fastings. Those orders which remained within the church establishment inherited its pollutions as well.* Nevertheless, the true monks who stayed the course were the first glimmers of light presaging the full restoration of the inner work of transformation that would come with Wesley.

B. The Mystics

During the centuries of the Renaissance, some of the monastic experiences in transformation salvation became penned and exposited by various teachers such as Meister Eckhardt. These writers became known as the "mystics." Several significant books still survive from this period, one of the better known of which is The Cloud of Unknowing.

The mystics attempted to translate into human words their internal experiences of the Father's love along with their revelations of the eternal. This was a difficult task because the spiritual life and experiences they sought to communicate were comprehensible only to those who were already sharing such experiences. To anyone else, the intricate discussions of the soul's internal workings were generally unprofitable. Consequently, mysticism did not penetrate the masses of the church-at-large.

There were some exceptions, however. Spanning the time of the later Renaissance to the end of the Reformation, a few obscure saints managed to pen their experiences with enough simplicity and clarity that their books survived, circulating even to the present time. These writers include Fenelon, Thomas A Kempis, Brother Lawrence, and Madame Guyon. Brother Lawrence's Practicing the Presence of God is still today a devotional classic relating the many ways one can maintain unbroken hourly awareness of the Father's intimacy during daily routine affairs. Other classics from this period include A Kempis' The Imitation of Christ and Guyon's Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ.

C. The Pietists and Moravians

Beginning with the period of the 1680's we find the first major corporate stirrings toward restoration of the work of transformation. This restoration came as an offshoot of the Lutheran branches of the Reformation in Germany and Eastern Europe. First came the Pietists led by Jakob Spener and August Hermann Franke. These were followed by the Moravians personified by Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf.

Combating "Head Faith"

Together, the Pietist and Moravian movements restored internal spiritual reality and experience as the basis for measuring true spiritual identity and maturity in the Church. Spener was a Lutheran pastor who became grieved over the lack of evidence of salvation in the life of the average professing believer. He traced this to the inadequacy of the Reformation's teaching concerning the new birth.

As a movement, the Reformation was more theologically than experientially oriented. When the Reformers spoke of new birth, they did so more as part of a belief system than as an experiential change in nature. They did not address the issue of transformed identity. Consequently, conversion had largely become regarded as a mental assent to the doctrine of justification by faith without any link to fruit in a man's life proving conversion. Living faith in Christ had largely been replaced by faith in the concept of justification. To combat this, Spener began teaching that justification by faith had no effect unless a man could point to his soul and note an actual change in his inner life. Declaring that more was required for conversion than assent to belief in Christ, Spener identified the new birth as an experiential event.

As is common in the recovery of any truth, the new emphasis on experiential reality eventually came to pose its own problems. The emphasis on experience led to a muddying of the simplicity of faith. Spiritual change became confused with emotional experience. As a result, many came under bondage to seeking proof of salvation through a particular identifiable emotion. Salvation by emotional witness eventually became as great a problem as salvation by mental assent.

In spite of the problems over the experiential factor of regeneration, Spener succeeded in laying a foundation for establishing the truth of the internal reality of the new man. Inward change became established as the issue behind regeneration. This became the foundation for restoring full transformation truth to the Church.

Vision For the Church, the Society, and the World

An outstanding feature of Spener's burden for experiential truth was the outwardness of his vision. Spener's vision was for the entire Church. This is in great contrast to the earlier work of the monks and mystics whose burdens remained fairly private. Using wisdom, Spener did not try to convert the entire Lutheran church to his teaching. Instead, he depended on small group work within the larger church. Developing the idea of the "church within the church," he believed that a smaller group of responsive people could successfully impact the larger body. Because of this, the new "pietism" became a movement influencing wide segments of Lutheranism.

The Pietist Movement continued to grow in strength through the work of August Hermann Franke. As successor to Spener, Francke enlarged the Pietist vision to reach the surrounding society with the truth of the transforming gospel. At the University of Halle where he was a professor, Francke established a center for Pietist ministries. Among other enterprises, he began ministry homes for the poor, for orphans, and for unmarried women. He also founded a publishing ministry for spreading Pietist teaching.

Following Spener and Francke was Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf. Through his participation in and leadership of the Herrnhut Christian community, Zinzendorf sought to advance the truth of inward experiential relationship with Christ. He wanted to see a community of true believers who were set apart from the world, marked by the hidden realities of life in God, and growing in ardent passion for Christ.

Like Spener and Francke, Zinzendorf had an outward vision for spreading transformation truth. Passion for the indwelling Christ was not something to be bottled. The end goal was for believers to take their "love life" with the Lord out to the world. Where Francke had been used to reach the immediate outlying society in Germany, Zinzendorf was instrumental in bringing the message to the entire world. Resulting from a number of significant contacts, the first disciples left Herrnhut in 1732 for the West Indies. Out of this was born the Moravian Movement, the first extensive Protestant missions movement in history.

Significance of Pietism

For the first time in modern Church history, a revival was born that brought the work of transformation into open restoration. Through a Scriptural base, a corporate vision, and the harnessing of the Spirit that ignited the Reformation, Pietism succeeded in establishing a permanent base for the developing of ongoing transformation reality in the life of the Church.

Until the Pietists and the Moravians, teaching concerning inner spiritual life and experience was relegated to private contemplation and the expositing of personal experiences. The Pietists and Moravians however began to formulate a communicable theology of the transformed life. Though experience-centered, they sought to define their experience in Biblical context. Through their use of the Scriptures, they were better able to relate their understanding to the rest of the body of Christ. Armed with this base of understanding and practice, the Pietists and Moravians took the gospel of transformation out of the closet and brought it to the larger Church and the world. Their vision for transformation did not remain inward, but bore outward fruit in changing society.

Restoring the new birth as a real event proved to be the power from which true evangelistic ministry was able to be launched worldwide. Here was reality worth evangelizing for and to which men were lastingly converted. At the heart was living relationship with an indwelling Lord, not a theology. This was the restored power of the gospel of transformation in its first phase of ability to change men, the only gospel that could impact the ends of the earth. All that we recognize from that time to the present as evangelistic ministry stems from and owes its existence to the work of the Pietists.

In taking this incipient work of transformation to the outer world, we see more early threads of the anointing. The Pietist-Moravian Movement witnessed the harnessing of mystical transformation truth to the energy of Spirit that drove the Reformation. As in the Reformation, the Pietists did not recognize the supernatural work of the anointing as we know it today. Yet it was the anointing on their ministry that fed the flame of continuing transformation restoration.

D. John Wesley and the Methodists

It was through the 18th century ministry of John Wesley that the restoration of transformation doctrine and experience came into its fullness. This occurred through a broad work of the Spirit in the Anglican church together with a clearly enunciated teaching of the nature and extent of transformation in the Christian life after conversion. Wesley's teaching detailed the entering of the Christian into the full sanctifying love of the Father. It described how to both obtain the full habitation of the Father through the experiencing of perfected love, and how to maintain that state of grace in ever increasing sanctification and dominion over sin.

To Wesley was committed the task of unveiling the mystery of inwrought holiness and spreading it to an entire generation. Starting from the time he was 23, Wesley grappled for most of 40 years over the experiential issues, aspects and terms of practical deliverance from the power of indwelling sin in the believer. Like a scientist in a spiritual laboratory, he carefully documented the various testimonies of sanctification experience he could uncover, seeking firm conclusions about the Spirit's transforming work while ever modifying his understanding wherever evidence required him to qualify earlier conclusions.

While the trail of his journalings appears contradictory at times, patient endurance and waiting on God brought John Wesley the understanding that put the pieces of the sanctification puzzle together. Through his lifelong persistent observation together with illumined revelation of Scriptures, Wesley established the mainframe understanding upon which transformation restoration was able to proceed for 130 years, and from which all understanding of the inner workings of holiness is descended to this day.

1. Beginning of the Search

John Wesley's search for the truth behind "Christian Perfection" began as a student at Oxford where he trained for ministry in the Anglican Church. During the formative years of the mid to late 1720's he came under the influence of a number of writers who spoke of a deeper holiness to be found in Christ through the power of the Spirit. He was also enamoured of the Scripture that says, "Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord." These ignited in him an unquenchable desire to uncover the true meanings of conversion, holiness, the relationship between the two, and the nature of experiential certainty pertaining to them.

To this time, there was no clear teaching or belief in transformation reality beyond conversion. Except for a few lonely voices, the English-Reformationist context in which Wesley was raised recognized no such further work. The Pietists on the continent did recognize further works of transformation experience, but were mixed, divided, and otherwise unclear in their teachings. Some did believe in a further "witness of the Spirit" which assured one of sanctification.

In 1735, Wesley encountered the Moravians on a ship bound for mission work in Georgia. Not having determined the certainty of his own personal conversion, he was greatly impacted by the Moravians' testimony to experiential regeneration. Soon afterward in 1738, he testifies to a personal encounter with the Spirit providing him a certain assurance that he really knew the Lord-- a certainty the Pietist Moravians emphasized as necessary to salvation. For a few years thereafter, Wesley remained influenced by Pietist teaching.

By the mid-1740's, John Wesley was no longer satisfied with the teaching that lumped conversion and sanctification into one general event. He knew there must be more to sanctification because his 1738 experience did not deliver him from his root struggle with sin's power nor deliver to him a permanent awareness of the Father's indwelling fullness. Moreover, through the course of years, he encountered many others who had given long evidence of knowing the Lord but had only recently entered a still deeper encounter with Christ that set them free from sin's rule.

2. A Search Partially Rewarded

While John Wesley meticulously documented the sanctification testimonies of others, his own experience continued to elude him. Throughout this time, his theology concerning a "second work of grace" in the believer was quite tentative. Then, in 1760, a Revival broke out in the Yorkshire region of England. The centerpiece of this Revival was the mass experiencing of the inward cleansing of soul from "inbred sin" together with the revelation of the Father's love which pervaded the inner man. This Revival gave Wesley the final positive witness that established the crown jewel of his teaching.

Wesley established the truth that there exists a definite work of soul cleansing after conversion that drives out the root of carnality and enables a Christian to live free from the power of sin. This cleansing or "entire sanctification" is completed by the infusion of the fullness of the Father's love enabling the believer to live a life of practical holiness empowered by the Spirit. Wesley called this love experience "perfect love " or "Christian perfection."

In 1766, John Wesley compiled his spiritual "doctoral thesis" into a work entitled A Plain Account of Sanctification. Here, he detailed the sound, flexible explanations to the intricate questions with which saints eager for purity and maturity have wrestled ever since:

- Is sanctification a gradual process or an instantaneous

experience?

- Does the instantaneous experience happen automatically

at conversion or is it later?

- Does the sanctification experience eradicate all sin or does

it only suppress sin?

- Does eradication of sin mean we become sinlessly perfect?

- Is sanctification an inward experience only, or does it

manifest through power for ministry?

- Do we enter into the fullness of sanctification by simply

believing it to be so, or must we endure a process to

bring us into that fullness?

- Once we experience inward sanctification can we lose it?

(Must we act to retain our state of sanctification or does

sanctification keep itself?)

- Is the experience of sanctification always conscious?

The Plain Account became part of the "second Bible" of the early Methodist Movement, laying the ground for ongoing sanctification as Revival continued spreading. From this point forward, the gospel of full transformation was restored. All subsequent illumination and exposition of transformation realities since that time looks back to Wesley's work for its basic understanding.

In spite of the spiritual legacy he left, and despite of his great lifelong scientific interest in the experience of sanctification, it remains an irony that John Wesley leaves no conclusive record that he ever personally obtained the promise he sought so long. Yet through his own lifelong search, the Lord used him to pave the way for following generations who would enjoy the fruit of his labors.

3. Wesley: Anointed Evangelist and Apostle

While the term "anointing" as used today would no doubt have been foreign to John Wesley, his ministry and outlook bear the marks of the Lord's outward work of the Spirit. His giftings as an apostle and an evangelist greased the track that enabled the new ministry of sanctification to travel far and wide.

In his early years at Oxford, John Wesley's own search for holiness coupled with an apostolic gift for administration and structure led him to form bands of disciples dedicated to the quest for holiness. Becoming tagged as the "Methodists " for their ordered principles of practice and accountability, the groups multiplied throughout the Anglican church. As Wesley's teaching took shape over the decades, the Methodist class system became the vessel by which they were perpetuated.

Wesley's evangelical gift came to the fore in the 1740's through the influence of his friend George Whitefield, one of the lightning rods of the Great Awakening in America. Evangelism became his medium for promoting a second work of holiness. Like the Pietists and Moravians before him, Wesley believed in active holiness evangelization-- that holiness was not an experience to be privately bottled, but spread throughout the Church whereby the Church would in turn impact the world. But his work went beyond theirs, calling the masses to a definite further work of transformation after conversion.

These giftings for apostolic administration and evangelism reveal the part played by the unrecognized anointing in advancing the transformation. A fresh medium and new wineskin now existed enabling multitudes to drink of the Spirit's transforming elixir. No longer was it the private wine of isolated mystical seekers after Christ. Methodism's connection to the spirit that drove the Reformation is clear. So are the influences of the Pietists. They set the example in taking their regeneration experience out to the world, by first planting their own small groups within the larger church.

4. The Baptism of the Holy Spirit

Wesley's teaching eventually became known by many names: Entire Sanctification, Christian Perfection, Perfect Love, and later, the Second Blessing and Second Work of Grace. But it was his associate John Fletcher who as early as 1770 first recognized and described this momentous event as the baptism of the Holy Spirit. For the first time in modern Church history, the baptism of the Holy Spirit was clearly identified as a separate, distinguishable post-conversion event in the believer's life, something which neither the Reformation nor the Pietist Movement recognized.**

At this time, only the transformation-based meaning of the term was understood. The baptism of the Spirit was an event of inward eradication bringing death to sin's power and the replenishing of the Father's abiding love. No concept of supernatural anointing was recognized. Yet significantly, this was the first meaning restored concerning the baptism of the Spirit. For the next 80 years, this transformation version of Spirit baptism prevailed as Revival spread.

**********

From its humble beginnings, the Methodist Movement caught like wildfire both in England and on the American frontiers. Methodism's distinctive emphasis on experiential sanctification became the igniting force for Revival throughout the American states at the end of the 1700's. Eventually, the Methodists were no longer endured by the Anglicans. Against Wesley's deepest feelings, the movement was forced into becoming its own denomination. From this point, Methodism continued as the guardian of restored transformation truth and remained the dominant force of Revival in the front-line of God's restoration until the 1870's.

E. Century of Transformation: The Holiness and Keswick Movements

The word "transformation" as we have used it in this book has been specially coined to bring under one umbrella all truth that relates to the hidden inward changes wrought in us by the cross to conform us to Christ's image. The word has not generally been used this way by other historians. It certainly was not used in the 19th century when transformation truth came to its zenith of experience and exposition. Yet for purposes of our study, we can say that the 19th century was the crowning century of transformation truth.

As important as that century was to the restoration of transformation reality, it is absolutely astounding how little is known or remembered of it today in the overall body of Christ. The key players of the 19th century restoration are all but forgotten except by those whose smaller denominations and Bible schools are directly descended from their labors. Even the ones who retain great name recognition like Charles Finney and D.L. Moody are not remembered for their contributions to transformation teaching, but only for their evangelistic Revivals.

-- Two Trees with Many Branches

With the crossing of Methodism to America and its following of the westward settlements, the story of transformation restoration becomes painted largely in American context. The spread of "holiness" teaching in American church history is a marvelous saga unparalleled for depth and scope of influence in modern society. Throughout the mid and late 1800's, the Lord added more and more colors of understanding to the various facets of transformation. Experience and teaching grew as a tree from the original trunk of Methodism into branches and other plantings that permeated every corner of the evangelical body of Christ. Eventually, two significant trees were bearing the fruit of transformation truth.

The Springtime of Holiness: 1835-1865

Like all trees, spiritual trees go through seasons. Soon after the turn of 1800, the tree of sanctification nurtured by Wesley entered a wintertime of hibernation. Between 1810 and 1840, the doctrine and experience of the "second work" suffered a major decline. It became a largely ignored, hollow teaching within the Methodist denominational structure.

Phoebe Palmer's Methodism

In the late 1830's, the Lord began another Revival within the original Methodist body. After entering into their own sanctification experiences, two married sisters, Sarah Lankford and Phoebe Palmer, began house meetings in New York City dedicated to advancing holiness teaching. This fellowship called the "Tuesday Meetings" touched the lives of the top leaders of Methodism and other denominations.

Over the course of years from 1835-1865 hundreds of similar house fellowships sprang up across the country. Alongside of these arose publishing houses and journals dedicated to teaching on the work of transformation. Through overseeing the popular Guide to Holiness and traveling a convention circuit with her husband, Walter, Phoebe Palmer became the central figure of Methodism's springtime transformation renewal. As the networker through whom the later Holiness Movement would come forth, Mrs. Palmer's teachings had great impact on the development of sanctification understanding. She can properly be called the "matron" of the 19th century transformation restoration.

Finney and Mahan: Oberlin Perfection

At the same time the "Tuesday Meetings" began, the Lord began a separate planting of transformation Revival at Oberlin College in Ohio. Here in 1836, the newly arrived professor and famed evangelist George Finney together with president Asa Mahan came into their own soul-cleansing experience in Christ. Like Wesley, Finney had come to see that, as wonderful and powerful as were the conversions under his earlier ministry, there must be more to Christian experience than what conversion offered. Under personal agitation, Finney sought out that reality til he found it for himself.

From 1840-1870, Finney and Mahan became significant voices for advancing their brand of sanctification teaching which came to be called "Oberlin Perfectionism." Their conversion to the further work of transformation brought what was til now a Methodist doctrine into the older stream of Calvinist Reformed churches. From this point, a second viable tree of transformation separate from Methodism was in bloom. Other significant non-Methodist leaders came into sanctification reality and began promoting it among their own circles. These include Presbyterian William Boardman, Baptist A. B. Earle, and Congregationalist Thomas Upham. New bridges began forming between previous denominational foes through the common desire to bring transformation reality to the people of God.

The Summer of Holiness: 1865-1900

The Holiness Movement

After the Civil war, what had transpired through the medium of house fellowships in the Methodist church was spread through the wider corporate medium of campmeetings. In 1867, a group of ministers who had been profoundly influenced by Phoebe Palmer's ministry began the National Association for the Promotion of Holiness. From this was born the Holiness Movement, one of the most important spiritual movements in American history. For the next 30 years, the camp meeting served as the dynamic medium through which a Revival of transformation blazed that could no longer be confined within the Methodist institution.

What began as a single national organization led by John Inskip quickly multiplied into hundreds of regional, state, and local holiness associations that met through camp meetings outside the sponsorship of local churches. These associations reached out through their own journals and newsletters. In western regions, itinerant holiness evangelists went from church to church, holding campaigns in and out of every kind of church. Men from every "tongue, tribe, and kindred" in Christendom were swept into an experience and life of inward transformation by the Spirit.

The Holiness Movement peaked in the 1880's and 90's. Many of those in the Midwest and Far West who came into a full sanctifying experience in Christ had no ties to the Methodist church where the work began. Consequently, many new independent "Holiness" churches sprang up whose sounding cry was entire sanctification. Later, many of these merged to form their own denominations, the largest and most noted of which is the Church of the Nazarene. It is said that more churches were born during this period than during any other comparable period in American history.

The Keswick (Higher Life) Movement

The 1870's also saw the summertime for the transformation tree planted outside Methodism. Sanctification experience and teachings of many shades spontaneously arose in many leaders from other denominations. The Revival that blossomed after 1870 through the Holiness Movement overflowed to other streams of the faith. It swept back upon the shores of England whence the teaching of entire sanctification had been generated. It even made inroads into the very heart of Europe where Pietist remnants survived. In America, this stream came to be called the "Higher Life" (or "Deeper Life") Movement. In England it was called the "Keswick" Movement (or on the continent, the "Oxford" Movement.)

In 1874, a series of meetings was instituted in England through the traveling ministries of William Boardman together with Robert and Hannah Smith. These teamed together with English holiness advocates to establish an annual conference known as the Keswick Convention. Keswick became a world renowned center for promoting transformation truth. Outstanding teachers associated with Keswick were F.B. Meyer, H.C. Moule, and the renowned South African pastor Andrew Murray whose deeper life writings inspire multitudes to this day.

At the same time as the Keswick Revival, notable testimonies to spontaneous "second blessing" encounters with the Lord occurred in American evangelistic leaders outside the Holiness Movement. These included D.L. Moody, R.A. Torrey, and the Presbyterian A.B. Simpson. Some of these traveled to England where they came into fellowship with the Keswick renewal. Shortly thereafter, they also began holding their own conventions for promoting the "Higher Life."

Moody and Torrey conducted the renowned Northfield Higher Life Conferences in Massachusetts through the 1890's. Simpson held similar conventions at Gospel Tabernacle in New York and proceeded to found the Christian and Missionary Alliance. These leaders together with the Keswick leaders went on to cross-pollinate with one another, speaking at one another's meetings. Even the aging Charles Finney and Asa Mahan, the original proponents of sanctification outside of Methodism, were drawn into the new network.

**********

Here, with the generation of leaders from 1870 to 1915 and the full blossoming of the transformation movements, we arrive at the most momentous period in our "tale of two restorations." For it is here that the anointing not only finally broke out into its own fullness, but broke away from the stream of transformation to create what has ever since been the impenetrable barrier between these works. As it lies at the heart of this book, we will zero in on this separation and its effects in Chapter 8. First, we must go back and tell the story of the restored anointing, observing its continued growth to this day in spite of its separation from the work of transformation.

* It was in fact out of this counterfeit form of transformation that Martin Luther, the leading Reformer, was converted. This perhaps explains why the Reformation was immunized against pressing on into the full true work of transformation.

** Fletcher's discovery was the seed that prepared the way for the Church's entire shift of mind concerning the work of the Holy Spirit 100 years later. He was first to look back to the Book of Acts as the reference point for the Church's role in the present age, observing this to be the age of the Spirit. More on this in Chapter 8.

[Chapter 7: TRACING THE RESTORATION OF ANOINTING MINISTRY IN THE MODERN CHURCH AGE ]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chris Anderson
Merrimack, New Hampshire

First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org

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