The Problem of Pentecostal and Charismatic Hermeneutics: Prophetic Reenactment as a Way Forward

Abstract

To bridge gaps between Pentecostal and Charismatic hermeneutics, I will use two examples to propose a method, namely prophetic reenactment. First, the Azusa Street revival dramatically represented Acts 2, reflecting an interpretation of that chapter. Although the revival most explicitly interpreted one chapter, we can discern a more thoroughgoing hermeneutic of Scripture through actions that flowed out of the revival. Specifically, I will argue that the prophetic reenactment of Acts 2 also interpreted Acts 4:33–37. Attendants came from various racial, economic, and ecclesiological backgrounds in a culture that disapproved of such intermingling. Through racial integration and actions against poverty, they implicitly interpreted Acts 4:33–37. That hermeneutic directed their newly formed spiritual community. Secondly, Revelation 14:1–5 shows a prophetic reenactment of the defiled angel myth prominent in Second Temple apocalypticism. John introduces characters who act out a reversal of 1 Enoch 12:4. Nevertheless, John shows a wider interpretive schema that extends beyond noncanonical apocalyptic hermeneutics. John never alludes to Acts 4:33–37. As a result of the prophecy and drama involved, however, John writes about a community of “144,000 virgins” that embodies Acts 4:33–37, thus including an implicit interpretation of the Acts pericope via 1 Enoch 12:4.

1. Introduction

1.1. Introduction to Pentecostal Hermeneutics

Pentecostal scholarship has only recently begun to assess its hermeneutical methods. In 2013, Lee Roy Martin edited the significant volume Pentecostal Hermeneutics: A Reader, collecting essays that documented and assessed a century of Pentecostal biblical interpretation for the first time. In his introduction to that volume, Martin noted that one can easily ascertain a transparent Pentecostal reading of Acts—or at least Acts 2—among early Pentecostals, because the outpouring of the Azusa Street revival followed the biblical narrative almost perfectly. He argued that, although only Acts 2 appears clearly, we can find broader tendencies of early Pentecostal hermeneutics that also resulted from the revival; he pointed out how those trends inform Pentecostal interpretation to this day (Martin 2013, p. 1).

Chris E. W. Green attended to this wider hermeneutical schema present at Azusa Street, explaining that the revival’s attenders understood Scripture “as one grand unified story” in which they must participate (Green 2012b, p. 15). Taking the accessible English translations of biblical stories literally, early Pentecostals often expected that all narratives repeat themselves as signs of the end times, calling them to play a role in the unfolding of the eschatological narrative through global evangelization and unifying applications of the charismata (Green 2012a, pp. 7–8).

Later Pentecostal hermeneutics have continued in these initial tendencies established through Azusa Street. While describing the aim of the essays collected in Pentecostal Hermeneutics: A Reader, Martin stated: “Our goal should be to produce a Pentecostal hermeneutic that is faithful to our theology and ethos and appropriate for our context” (Martin 2013, p. 8). Since that goal has its foundation in early Pentecostalism’s literalistic approach to interpreting English translations of the Bible within a North American setting, Martin risked a lopsided understanding of Scripture’s authority. At Azusa Street, believers valued translations and personal experiences for interpretation, without access to the best extant preservations of the original words. As such, both they and those who follow Martin’s more erudite hermeneutic likely view the Bible through Western, individualistic, English-language lenses (even if they know the original languages as Martin does), far removed culturally and temporally from the languages and societies of Scripture.

The 2012 annual meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies (SPS) pursued a unified Pentecostal approach to interpreting Scripture. At that meeting, Green began his presentation with a list of agreed upon precepts that possessed similar values regarding Scripture as the Azusa Street revival. Nevertheless, the list reappropriated those values to fit a twenty-first century Pentecostal context (i.e., more globalized in scope but more experientially individualistic in practice). Unsurprisingly and unobjectionably, these principles all assume that the Holy Spirit plays an integral role in believers’ interpretation of the divine messages (Green 2012a pp. 182–83). John Christopher Thomas characterized this role as an ongoing ministry of the Spirit that began in the formation of the biblical books. Just as the Spirit breathed the messages of truth into the biblical authors, so he breathes the empowerment for accurate interpretation into all believers (Thomas 1994, pp. 49, 55).

The 2012 list of criteria expressed a confessional tone and a priority for diverse voices contributing to a unified hermeneutic. This ecclesiological emphasis should ward off individualistic tendencies that tempt believers to find meanings of Scripture that align perfectly with their perceived personal experiences with God’s Spirit, apart from what the words mean collectively (Green 2012a, pp. 182–83). The pneumatological and ecclesiological aspects of the SPS’s proposal appropriately remain within the bounds of traditional hermeneutics, displaying how the distinctive aspects of Pentecostal theology fit within the proposed method. The society’s determinations on how to practice this method, however, threaten to counteract the positive impact that the tenets promise.

The approach demands an amalgamation of narrative criticism, canonical criticism, and reader response theory. While lauding these three disciplines, the SPS explicitly dismissed all historical critical exegesis and never mentioned the value of biblical languages for interpretation (Green 2012a, pp. 182–83). Certainly, all believers should seek personal encounters with the Holy Spirit, participation with the biblical story, and an understanding of how Scripture can impact its readers. Nevertheless, when scholars divorce these worthy goals from the literary, historical, and sociological worlds into which the books of the Bible first appeared, relativistic and individualistic interpretations seem inevitable amongst congregations influenced by this approach to Scripture but without the training of the SPS scholars. In such scenarios, experiences that contemporary audiences have with the Holy Spirit and with Scripture can eclipse the history that is foundational to the faith.

The SPS’s tenets try to eschew what I perceive as an inevitability through their ecclesiological focus. Further, Pentecostalism has grown into a global religious movement. The scholars who formulated this approach expressed value for cultural and racial diversity within a Pentecostal interpretation. That desire should ideally invite people of modern collectivistic cultures into hermeneutical conversations to display a worldview that shares more in common with biblical societies than Western individualism. However, if people of different cultures reach differing conclusions that history and/or linguistics could clarify, the rejection of all historical critical methods renders their discussion a stalemate. The three chosen disciplines, void of historical context, leave Pentecostal hermeneutics vulnerable to some of the most dangerous postmodern excesses, potentially allowing all interpretations to carry an equal weight.

The recent contributions to Pentecostal hermeneutics addressed in this section have attempted a global scope. Nevertheless, the roots of this scholarship occurred mostly in the USA near the beginning of the twenty-first century, just as mainstream Pentecostalism began in the USA at the beginning of the twentieth century. This present paper is written within a twenty-first century Pentecostal and Charismatic ecclesiological context in the USA; for these reasons, the entirety of the paper focuses its attention on Pentecostal and Charismatic hermeneutics in the USA.

1.2. The Problem of Pentecostal and Charismatic Hermeneutics

The Pentecostal movement manifests itself through divergent denominations, most of which do not possess a strong reputation for intellectual grounding of their religious expressions. The SPS consists of scholars across the wide spectrum of Pentecostal and Charismatic circles and extends to Catholic and Protestant scholars who express a degree of sympathy with the SPS’s goals but do not consider themselves to be Charismatic (Society for Pentecostal Studies: https://sps-usa.org/download/WHAT_IS_SPS_Brochure_9_18_18.pdf, accessed on 25 July 2023). The people most instrumental in the hermeneutical approach proposed at the 2012 SPS meeting, however, all identify with either the Church of God–Cleveland or Assemblies of God denomination. Many local churches of those denominations throughout the USA do not demonstrate an awareness that the SPS even exists, therefore interpreting Scripture in ways that diverge greatly from the SPS proposal and from other approaches that embrace critical thinking. Like the first Pentecostal interpreters, they depend on translations colored by contemporary cultural experiences (Nel 2016, pp. 3–4; cf., Nanez 2010, esp. pp. 38–40).

The problematic scope of the SPS’s influence over Pentecostal congregations demonstrates that the organization’s hermeneutical method unifies only a group of scholars and not average Pentecostals. Further, only two denominations had dominant voices in the formation of that method. The lack of input from scholars associated with the prominent Foursquare, Church of God in Christ, and Vineyard denominations impugns the purported universality of this hermeneutic, even amongst Pentecostal scholars in the USA. Foursquare leadership, throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, expressed great interest in the critical study of Scripture. Their “spirited hermeneutic”—albeit more of an operating assumption than a critical method—expects believers to encounter the Holy Spirit in all actions of learning. It views intellectual activity as an act of worship whenever open to hearing the voice of God as the source of all truth, especially when applied to grasping the meaning of Scripture (Duncan 2020, pp. 345–47, 357–60). Though not a hermeneutical method per se, the Foursquare “spirited hermeneutic” values the historical inquiry into the Word of God, thereby suggesting that Pentecostals do not share the unified hermeneutic that the SPS claimed.

If Pentecostals do not possess a consistent hermeneutic, then the denominationally broader Charismatics certainly do not. The most significant volume on the role of the Holy Spirt in biblical interpretation makes this lack abundantly clear. Craig S. Keener wrote Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in the Light of Pentecost with international and ecumenical objectives, distinct from the Pentecostal movement sourced firmly in the USA of the early twentieth century. Keener’s inclusive scope combined interpretive methods that evangelical circles accept widely, showing how the objective reality of the Bible espoused by all evangelicals interacts with the subjective, experiential aspects of a hermeneutic open to the voice of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the book called for hermeneutical humility expressed through the willingness to receive correction concerning an interpretation and through attending to the voices of a wide variety of interpreters (Keener 2016, p. 45).

Through Spirit Hermeneutics, Keener’s broad scope demonstrates that no unified Charismatic hermeneutic exists. His work can easily apply to all continualists, regardless of specific convictions about or applications of the charismata; some of his work can even extend in applicability to cessastionists (Keener 2016, p. 287). The Foursquare commitment to a “spirited hermeneutic” and Keener’s amalgamation of approaches flowing from historical grammatical exegesis and socio-cultural background studies help to display the problems associated with Pentecostal and Charismatic hermeneutics. They also point a way forward. These two convictions remain foundational for the proposed method that I will call “prophetic reenactment”, which can bind together divergent streams of Pentecostal and Charismatic biblical interpretation.

2. Prophetic Reenactment in Action

Though I have coined the term “prophetic reenactment” for this article, the method is not new. Dramatic representations of biblical texts can occur as part of church services, where congregants recognize them as outpourings of the Holy Spirit. These events direct corporate interpretations of Scripture. Pentecostals and Charismatics understand such events as orchestrated by God himself and therefore not as occurrences that can be manufactured. Nevertheless, Pentecostals and Charismatics should attend to the gnomic nature of the grammatical construction in the Eph 5:18 command, πληροῦσθε ἐν πνεύματι (Wallace 1996, pp. 525, 717). If modern Spirit-filled communities take that summons seriously, then prophetic reenactment can become a regular, liturgical aspect of our churches. It can become an outflow of our openness to the Spirit, not a manufactured display of ecstasy. Since the method has been practiced but not developed academically, it defies a concise definition. For that reason, I will allow the examples of two of its most important practitioners to define the method for us.

The people who attended the Azusa Street revival received empowerment to act out the events of Acts 2. Since this empowerment did not end when the revival concluded, we can identify a more comprehensive hermeneutic amongst the earliest Pentecostals. We will investigate how they used prophetic reenactment to interpret Acts 4:33–37 indirectly. We must remember, however, that these believers did not have exegetical training. They depended on their experiences with the Holy Spirit and on English translations of Scripture, void of tools that could help them to recognize and resist the impact of their culturally ingrained biases. For that reason, this example is not sufficient to promote the ongoing practice of prophetic reenactment as a viable Charismatic hermeneutical method.

The second practitioner, however, wrote the last of book of the Bible, thereby possessing the authority to instruct believers toward accurate interpretation. Through John’s prophetic reenactment par excellence, we can begin to grasp what it entails to partner with the Holy Spirit toward a regular practice of the method. I will argue that Rev 14:1–5 includes a prophetic reenactment that, although alluding to an Enochic text, indirectly shows a way toward a more complete hermeneutic of all theological literature. John provides a visual reversal of the Enochic text (Storbakken 2022, pp. 112–14), introducing his audiences to characters who demonstrate how to interpret canonical Scripture, therefore not limiting prophetic reenactment to the pseudepigraphic apocalypse to which he alludes. As with the Azusa Street example, I will attempt to demonstrate that the prophetic reenactment of Rev 14:1–5 circuitously interprets Acts 4:33–37. The biblical example ensures that this proposed hermeneutic attends to both author and reader, to both history and experience.

2.1. Prophetic Reenactment through the Azusa Street Revival

“Spirit baptism”, as understood by the leaders of the revival, echoed the narrative of Acts. Attenders, after their salvations, encountered God as evinced by the charismata, with glossolalia as this baptism’s most obvious feature. As in the events of Acts 2, most messages and songs presented in tongues during the meetings utilized human languages previously unknown to the speaker. In both settings, the reception of glossolalia accompanied a conviction that recipients obtained power useful for evangelism.

Charles F. Parnham was most instrumental in clarifying the relationship between the Azusa Street experience of glossolalia and global evangelization to prepare all people for Jesus’ return. Through Parnham’s leadership, the revival imbued early Pentecostals with the conviction that they should take these languages to nations where the tongues would be understood. Although other leaders, especially William J. Seymour, raised concerns and criticisms of Parnham’s teaching on this matter, many attenders expected to receive tongues they could speak in evangelistic settings. (Robeck 2006, pp. 236–39). Despite the division and ultimate unpracticality surrounding Parnham’s teaching, it led early Pentecostals to the appropriate belief that all the charismata empower believers for ministry that reaches the lost worldwide. In this way, the revival sought to reenact the part of Luke’s narrative explaining that “…the crowd gathered and was confounded, because each one began hearing their speaking in his/her own language.” (Acts 2:6; author’s translation of NA28).

Nevertheless, some instances of glossolalia remained untranslated and were understood as angelic tongues amongst the earliest Pentecostals. This phenomenon displayed the only significant divergence between the records of Spirit baptism at the revival and the text of Acts 2 (Irvin 1995, p. 26). The biblical viability of such expression hinges on the interpretation of 1 Cor 13–14. No records from the revival provide evidence that this text was central to any of the gatherings. However, the prophetic reenactment of Acts 2 involved a divergence from that passage’s story, but the recipients of Spirit baptism at Azusa did not view that divergence as anything unbiblical that would impugn their experience. As such, the corporate acceptance of Spirit baptism demonstrated an interpretation of 1 Corinthians that understands some expressions of glossolalia, albeit less common, as divine gifts for self-edification that do not require interpretation. Such a reading of 1 Cor 13–14, therefore, presents one example of an implied hermeneutic of prophetic reenactment that extended the interpretive scope beyond the pericope from Acts being reenacted.

Stephen Dove treated the practice of worship through music at Azusa Street. His discussion on the hymns sung during the meetings provided detail regarding the hermeneutics of the worshippers. The choice of Francis Bottome’s “The Comforter Has Come” interpreted the worshippers’ current events as an eschatological recreation of the Joel 2:28–32 prophecy that was fulfilled in Acts 2 (Dove 2009, p. 244). Further, the hymn’s text (retrieved at https://hymnary.org/text/o_spread_the_tidings_round, accessed on 25 July 2023) contains references to all of the charismata listed in Pauline literature, helping to display an interpretation of the reenacted passage as an outpouring of gifts that should be utilized throughout their lives.

The decision to make “The Comforter Has Come” a theme of all meetings (Bartleman 1980, p. 57) carries significant implications for the general hermeneutics of the revival. The first line of that hymn, “spread the tidings around, wherever man is found”, clarifies the revival’s dedication to and perception of the call to global evangelization, as evinced by the reception of glossolalia. It surely reminded worshippers of Paul’s assertion that he could not convince people of the Gospel message using words only but rather with the power of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 2:1–5). As such, the hymn choice implicitly interprets that Pauline verse as a summons to continue using the charismata in general as a demonstration of God’s power to the spiritually needy around them. Specifically, the decision recognizes glossolalia as a means to reach people beyond language barriers.

Dove detailed the paradoxical nature of the Apostolic Faith Mission’s verbal opposition to liturgy and its practical creation and revolutionization of liturgy. Of course, those associated with the revival resisted high church traditions, not liturgy per se, despite their outspoken antagonism toward the ecclesiological reality that they called “liturgy” (Dove 2009, pp. 445–48). The revival’s character of expectancy for the Spirit of God to reveal himself demanded responses to that self-revelation. Various expressions of worship demonstrated the communal responses to the community’s ongoing encounters of the Holy Spirit. Those responses, then, are the new liturgies to which Dove referred. Just as high church liturgy establishes and celebrates a communal relationship between worshippers, so the revival’s ostensibly unorganized order of worship implied emphases on community, unity, and evangelization as reasons to receive and use the biblical charismata according to early Pentecostal theology.

Although the hymns chosen and composed during the revival remain more useful for reconstructing early Pentecostal theology than biblical interpretation, we can still trace the skeleton of a hermeneutical approach. Dove’s work with liturgy related more explicitly to hermeneutics when he wrote about the phenomenon known as “singing in the Spirit”. Some of the new hymns sung could never be replicated because of the spontaneity and lack of written scores. The phenomenon was often accompanied with interpretations of the heavenly lyrics. These lyrics came directly from Scripture. Therefore, the revival cemented a high view of biblical authority for the first Pentecostals; that conviction of biblical authority undergirded all attempts to understand Scripture that flowed out of the revival. After participants interpreted such an occurrence into English, public readings of the relevant passages in their greater context would follow. Pastors and lay people occasionally presented sermons, usually spontaneously, but the emphasis in the revival services stayed on speaking and hearing the Scriptures, not on promoting a unified understanding of the words spoken (Dove 2009, pp. 51–52).

This priority for recitation, then, suggests that we must look beyond the surface events of the revival to find an implied hermeneutical method. We must extend our search to the collective attitudes and the later actions that resulted from it but coincided with the scriptural interpretation we have already noticed from the revival itself (i.e., a direct interpretation of Acts 2 and an indirect interpretation of 1 Cor 14). Those gathered at Azusa Street comprised a highly ecumenical group since no Pentecostal denomination had yet been established. Likewise, the revival broke boundaries between races, genders, and even languages (thanks to the gifts of tongues and interpretations thereof) that separated many Christians in the USA (Irvin 1995, p. 26).

Those associated with the revival understood the meetings as God-ordained gatherings that could unify the church, viewing the charismata as a source of that unification, thereby interpreting 1 Cor 12:1–11. Much of Seymour’s ministry (before, during, and after the revival) consisted of displaying his perceived relationship between glossolalia and the destruction of racial barriers until certain white Pentecostals attempted to usurp his leadership and weakened his influence amongst an interracial community of believers. Holiness for Seymour centered on love, manifested through racial, ethnic, denominational, and gender equality (Irvin 1995, pp. 29–33).

Seymour’s vision of equality distinguished the days of the Azusa Street revival. As Luke’s narrative unfolds in Acts, the unity of the church continues, always flowing out of the Pentecost experience recounted in Acts 2. In various parts of Acts, Luke elucidates that the eradication of societal boundaries (e.g., Peter’s vision that leads to the conversion of Cornelius and his household) is a result of the Holy Spirit’s work within the church. Seymour’s connection between Spirit baptism and social equality, therefore, spread into a broad interpretation of the entire book of Acts embraced by early Pentecostals.

Acts 4:33–37 explicitly connects δύναμις (the same δύναμις that is accredited to the Holy Spirit elsewhere in Scripture) with an equitable community among whom “no needy person existed” (v. 34). This community viewed everything in the world as belonging to God and therefore not to an individual or family but rather to the whole community. Western individualism distracted much of the church from this aspect of its calling, but early Pentecostalism partially recaptured it, thereby manifesting an interpretation of this passage flowing out of their reenacted experience of Acts 2.

Frank D. Macchia expressed the communal nature of the Azusa Street worshippers in a way that beckons comparisons with Luke’s description of the congregants in Acts 4:33–37. Macchia wrote: “In glossolalia is a protest against any attempt to define, manipulate, or oppress humanity … it is the language of imago Dei” (Macchia 1992, p. 61). He reached this conclusion because he interpreted the gift of tongues as something that transcends all sociological and socio-economic realities. Using the gift, according to Macchia, empowers recipients to partner with the Holy Spirit toward involvement in communities that also transcend those realities and to end the unjust practices that surround those communities (Macchia 1992, pp. 47, 49–50). Ernst Käsemann shared this view of tongues, albeit with a different interpretation of 1 Cor 14 that understood the chapter as a wholesale injunction against uninterpreted glossolalia. According to Käsemann, the gift presents an ecclesiological “cry for liberty” (Käsemann 1978, p. 128).

We have seen how the Azusa Street revival distinguished itself through unity resulting from the charismata. Its participants believed rightly that their experiences with the Holy Spirit were biblical, must continue beyond the temporal and spatial confines of the revival, and could unify a divided church. Unfortunately, however, doctrines about the charismata, especially glossolalia, eventually created divisions among Pentecostals. That division rendered the dream of global Pentecost-inspired church unity unrealized. Further, it created the need for us to return to the prophetic reenactment of Acts 2 that occurred at Azusa Street (see Irvin 1995, pp. 40–45). The first Pentecostals understood their roles at the revival as a response to the Spirit that would continually counter injustice and offer an inclusive welcome for all people to join with them in the worship and work of God’s Kingdom. As such, we find in their interpretation of Acts 2 an additional interpretation of Acts 4, and even of the entirety of Acts. In other words, they not only interpreted Scripture but also interpreted their place in the ongoing biblical story through the Spirit’s power.

We have gleaned some aspects of a hermeneutic present at Azusa Street. Nevertheless, it remains impossible to reconstruct a full interpretive schema from people without tools at their disposal for critical exegetical studies. Our survey of a piecemeal hermeneutic at the revival, nevertheless, presents a launching pad to lead us toward a fuller Pentecostal/Charismatic interpretive method. Having completed the first example of prophetic reenactment, we will now move to the biblical exemplar from whom we can learn what it entails to read and live Scripture via prophetic reenactment.

2.2. Prophetic Reenactment in Revelation 14:1–5

Revelation 14:4 introduces a unified group of characters οἳ μετὰ γυναικῶν οὐκ ἐμολύνθησαν. Daniel C. Olson labeled this phrase as a certain allusion to 1 En. 12:4. The purported Enochic counterpart presents this phrase exactly as John does, albeit without the negation. The author of the “Book of the Watchers” places this clause in the context of fallen watchers. Olson traced the Second Temple ubiquity of the fallen angel myth that originated in Genesis. Throughout his survey of relevant literature, only the Greek manuscript (ms) of “Watchers” found in codex Panopolitanus (Panop.) uses a cognate prepositional phrase (Olson 1997, pp. 492, 496–97). Mitchell G. Reddish presented a more detailed survey of these myths throughout the OT and Second Temple eras, corroborating the evidence that Olson displayed (Reddish 2001, p. 176). The Greek mss consulted for my dissertation (Smith n.d.: textexcavation.com) and an independent study of relevant literature confirmed Olson’s assertion that only “Watchers” displays a prepositional phrase akin to John’s (Storbakken 2022, pp. 112–14, 174–78).

We cannot detect a Johannine allusion to the Genesis story, out of which the fallen angel myth developed. Rather, John places the Enochic phrase in a new context in reference to characters he identifies as the antithesis of the Enochic author’s evil watchers. John furthers his contrast by using the noun παρθένος. Despite the grammatical masculinity in this sentence, authors of the NT and related literature only use παρθένος to describe women (Danker 2000, p. 777). Both the OT and the writings of the Second Temple period describe angelic beings as male. No evidence exists that shows John diverging from this traditional angelology. John’s development of this reversal, therefore, points toward the conclusion that John’s 144,000 virgins represent the same group of humans that John labels in feminine terms as “the bride of the Lamb” in Rev 19:7 and 22:17 (Storbakken 2022, pp. 112–14).

Although the origins of fallen angel mythology unambiguously charge the characters with sexual sin, a survey of Second Temple hermeneutics exposes no evidence of Jews using these stories to form a sexual halakha. The emphasis of these stories within the apocalyptic worldview always laid on the watchers’ decision to leave their God-ordained position of perpetual worship to YHWH. Rather than promoting halakha, the mythology should have aided Jewish communities in their faithfulness to the Shema, convincing them to shun anything that could threaten their identity as worshippers of YHWH. Sexual purity should flow out of that faithfulness but appears to be of secondary concern for apocalyptists who reappropriated the myth (Storbakken 2022, p. 281).

When John alludes to 1 En. 12:4, he does so in a fashion that not only retells the story but reenacts it dramatically. As unsatisfactory as proposals that John wrote Revelation as a Greek drama are (e.g., Smalley 2005, pp. 6–7), they nevertheless help to recognize one of the rhetorical purposes of apocalyptic literature. Through promoting a hermeneutic of imagination, apocalyptists seek not to perform a play for audiences but rather to teach hearers how to experience the apocalypse for themselves, listening to the images they hear, as if a play is unfolding in their minds (Humphrey 2007, p. 151). This hermeneutic of imagination, then, carries an inherent responsibility to interpret Scripture with the apocalyptist. John’s audiences not only interpreted the apocalypse before them but also integrated it with the writings and biblical oral tradition with which they were already familiar, thereby leading to rhetorical goals for the use of 1 En. 12:4 that extend to NT passages.

Just as the Azusa Street worshippers implied their interpretation of Acts 4:33–37, so John’s apocalyptic “drama” invites audiences to imagine his reenactment of 1 En. 12:4 with him, despite the likelihood that most audience members were unfamiliar with Enochic literature. This reenactment demands a type of communal lifestyle that “follows the Lamb wherever he goes” (Rev 14:4). In the previous section, we saw how the actions and attitudes flowing out of the Azusa Street revival reflected this value for unified Christian community. Since prophetic reenactment presents a broad interpretive schema that dramatically presents one passage while instructing audiences toward a complete hermeneutical approach, John also employs rhetoric that implies the correct way to understand Acts 4:33–37 via Enochic reappropriation of the fallen angel myth.

Unlike Azusa Street, John’s audiences lived in a collectivistic society with relational and economic values opposed to modern Western individualism. As such, Revelation’s original hearers could easily submit to the communal aspect of the summons to join the passage’s virgins in their consistently unified pursuit of the Lamb. Moderners often understand this passage in moralistic terms. Even when they recognize the ecclesiological character of the passage, they tend to read a modern ecclesiology into it, thereby unintentionally bringing their individualistic worldview into their reading of words that contradict that worldview.

Rhetorically, John seems to place this pericope here as an Aristotelian παρέκβασις (digression). Revelation 13 depicts the beast’s violent rule over the earth. Following an angelic warning in liturgical fashion, Rev 14:8 returns to the dark imagery of Rev 13. Aristotle promoted the use of the παρέκβασις to integrate commendations for exemplary people into epideictic speeches in the middle of laying blame on other individuals (Rhet., 3.17.11). John, therefore, creates this παρέκβασις in an attempt to imbue a shared understanding of good and evil and the spiritual sources of each (cf., Rhet. 1.4.1). By creating characters that reenact the reversal of 1 En. 12:4, John introduces his hearers to people who exemplify the kind of worship he expects them to offer God (Storbakken 2022, pp. 286–87).

This Johannine call for worship, although never alluding to Acts 4:33–37, interprets the pericope indirectly. It expects that hearers of Revelation will subconsciously recognize that “following the Lamb wherever he goes” entails the lifestyles that the Acts 4:33–37 worshippers embody. John’s παρέκβασις demands that worshippers of the Messiah follow him together, as an interdependent community that does not segment its worship to special gatherings but worships YHWH through its understanding that nothing anyone has belongs to him/herself but to God, therefore expressing worship through generosity and unity that extends far beyond the tithes, offerings, and calls for solidarity common in the modern Christianity of the USA. John’s implicit interpretation of Acts 4:33–37 to a collectivistic audience, therefore, upholds that collectivism not only as the way to worship YHWH within the audience’s Zeitgeist, but also as a worldview that should be upheld whenever and wherever people seek to follow Jesus as their Messiah.

3. Prophetic Reenactment in Today’s Church

The examples from Azusa Street and Rev 14 demonstrate prophetic reenactment in action. Further, they point a way forward to unite Pentecostal and Charismatic hermeneutics. They do not, however, display a way that the method can be practiced amongst today’s believers. Just as the proposed method defies definition, so its dependence on divine initiation and ecclesiological reception precludes any set of instructions and criteria. For these reasons, in lieu of the typical academic conclusion, I will end by presenting a list of attitudes and actions that can help church leaders in the USA invite the method of prophetic reenactment into the lives of their congregations.

• Expect the Holy Spirit to speak in all avenues of biblical research, including historical-critical exegesis.
• Remember that we can all misunderstand biblical messages and the voice of the Spirit, so be willing to hold interpretations loosely enough to allow your personal and congregational hermeneutic to develop and change when necessary.
• Teach congregants to value the contributions of trained biblical scholars and to express the humility that they cannot understand Scripture appropriately under an individualistic theological framework.
• Demonstrate for your congregations a broad range of hermeneutical influences across denominational, racial, ethnic, national, and if possible, language barriers.
• Stop disparaging and avoiding liturgy.
• Respond to ecclesiological expressions of the charismata with liturgy that helps congregations interpret the Scripture behind the charismatic messages.
• Allow these responses to impact preaching with a more dramatic and liturgical quality than normally occurs in Pentecostal/Charismatic preaching (see Appendix A for an example).
• Use these responses to demonstrate a high view of Scripture that shows how the interpretation of any text treated in a service (via charismatic experience or liturgical response thereof, including but not limited to homiletics) can extend far beyond that individual passage.
• Regain the value for Scripture recitation as something out of which worship, employment of the charismata, and communal biblical interpretation can flow as they did at Azusa Street.
• Re-embrace Seymour’s view of holiness that expects the charismata to unite the church, therefore leading congregations toward uses of the charismata that allow congregants to interpret Scripture communally with people whose backgrounds are different from their own.
• Recapture an ecclesiology that sheds hermeneutics bound to the biases induced by Western individualism.
• Re-align with the responsibility undertaken by early Pentecostals to use the gifts of the Spirit toward demonstrations of Scripture that stand against social injustice as opposed to the complacent entitlement that accompanies the ever-growing adoption of Western individualism in many segments of the church in the USA.

4. Concluding Remarks

I have presented these examples of prophetic reenactment for a scholarly audience. Nevertheless, my deeper hope for this article is to provide Pentecostal and Charismatic scholars and scholarly pastors with a tool to help local Pentecostal and Charismatic congregations to think thoroughly and powerfully about the Word of God, as empowered by his Holy Spirit. This tool can apply equally to Pentecostal and Charismatic circles. For that reason, I hope that this work can begin a new attempt toward unifying applications of the charismata that empower the church to live collectively in power and holiness that demonstrate divine love to the world.