Jonathan Edwards and Manifestations of the Holy Spirit

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was the preacher of record when the Holy Spirit descended upon American in what's known as the Great Awakening.  He  is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologianHe was totally unprepared for what happened, especially when he saw his congregants showing such audacious and public manifestations of the Holy Spirit.  

Just like today, Edwards had a multitude of critcs who accused him of being unorthodox at best, and heretical at worst.  History tells the truth.  This was his reply to critics of public physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit

  "But if god is pleased to convince the consciences of persons, so that they cannot avoid great outward manifestations, even to interrupting and breaking off those public means they were attending, I do not think this is confusion or an unhappy interruption, any more than if a company should meet on the fireld to pray for rain, and should be broken off from their exercise by a plentiful shower.
  Would to God that all the public assemblies in the land were broken off from their public exercises with such confusion as this the next Sabbath day! We need not be sorry for breaking the order of means, by obtaining the end to which that order is directed. He who is going to fetch a treasure need not be sorry that his is stopped by meeting the treasure in the midst of his journey."
Jonathan Edwards, “The Distinguishing Marks of a Word of the Spirit of God (Click here to read online).” In Jonathan Edwards on Revival (Carlisle, Pa.: the Banner of Truth trust, 1984), p.127

Christ of St. John of the Cross

 
The previous entry about surrealism was written to introduce this one.  
Salvador Dali saw an original sketch that Saint John of the Cross drew sometime between 1775 and 1777. He said that he saw in a vision an unusual perspective of the crucifixion of Jesus . . . from above. I was a perspective one could associate with God the Father looking down on the Son He had just crucified. It looks as if it were ready to fall were it not held fast to the cross by oversized nails.  
Dali saw the sketch in 1945, and then again in 1950. In the 1940’s the artist was swerving back into the faith of his youth. He’d even met the Pope in 1947. When he saw this sketch, his surrealistic eye could now appreciate the spiritual value rendered in the sketch. And his encounter with this sketch resulted in his own version of Christ on the Cross.  
While Dali used the same perspective that he saw in the antique sketch, the concept of his painting was new and attuned to his surrealistic touch. “In 1950 I had a cosmic dream,” the artist wrote, “in which I saw this image in color and which in my dream represented the nucleus of the atom. This nucleus later took on a metaphysical sense. I considerate it the very unity of the universe, the Christ. I worked out geometrically a triangle and a circle, which summarized all my previous experiments. And I inscribed my Christ in this triangle.”  
While St. John’s sketch is an impressionistic recording of a vision in time, Dali’s painting is a rendering of an eternal Christ. Dali’s Christ, you’ll notice, has no nails holding Him to the cross. His artistic statement is of Christ of the Resurrection. Jesus here is the center and very focus of the universe itself. Hebrews 1 expresses it this way: Who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power. His own Word holds him to the cross.
It took four months to finish the painting, and it was immediately panned by critics around the world for being too religious and too realistic. Even the gallery who purchased it, Kelvingrove, in Glasgow, was criticized over the $16,000 spent for it. In 1961 a deranged student entered the gallery and attacked the painting with a brick, shredding the canvas. It took four months to repair.  
Dali’s masterpiece resided in a room all by itself in Saint Mungo’s Museum of Religious Life and Art. The Spanish government offered to buy it from Scotland for $80 million, but the Scottish authorities refused.  

I was sitting at my desk yesterday and I received a call from my friend, Mark Potter.  Mark's wife, Elizabeth, was called to plant and pastor a church in mid-town Kansas City in the 90's.  Fatima and I were a part of the core and associate pastors, and later became senior pastors there a few years later.   Mark, Elizabeth, Kate, Megan and Ayleen live in Napa, CA today. 

  Mark said, "Hey what are you doing for lunch today?"  My mind began thinking what he was planning.  Was he driving through town or already in town.  So I said, "Nothing that I know of.  What do you have in mind?"

  Mark replied, "Well, I'm going to hop in my plane and fly to see you and have lunch.  I'll be there in about and hour and a half.  Can you pick me up at the airport?"  So I did.  We went to lunch, spent an hour in coversation and I took him back to his plane.  And off he went!

How extravagent!  What a great friend and what a treat he gave me.  Thanks, Mark.