The Gifts of the Holy Spirit: - Vital Christianity

125
A visionary element marked the spiritual leaders of the Peasants' War and fanatics like
Matthys and John of Leyden were driven by strange apocalyptic fantasies. There were wild
prophesies claimed.
One example is a girl at St. Gall in Switzerland who vacillated between claiming to be Christ
and antichrist. There were also the so-called "dreamers" who rearranged their marriages according
to a revelation of their "proper heavenly pattern."
The issue here, as with the heretical Montanists earlier, is the claim that they possessed
prophecy, which to them, meant that the Spirit was teaching new truth and conduct in
accordance with the advance knowledge that He also gives of future events. 29
In answering these various types of "heavenly prophets," the reformers, instead of pointing
out that their predictions were falsified by events, maintained that the Spirit of God does not add
to or replace the Word.
Prophecy, they taught, could not be understood as an extension of revelation. The written
Word is the only authentic and irreplaceable basis of criterion of true proclamation. Thus there
can be no antithesis between the spoken and the written word, between the Spirit and Christ.
Zwingli, Bullinger, Calvin, Whitaker and Luther constantly emphasized the fact that the
Word and the Spirit belong inseparably together. The gift of the Spirit are thus properly
exercised when they serve the ministry of the Word. 30
Luther, who had earlier denied the gift of healing for his time, lived to see his friend
Melanchton miraculously brought from the point of death through his own bold prayers. Luther
demanded Melanchthon to get well and God honored his fervent faith. Toward the end of his life
when he was asked what to do for a man who was mentally ill, Luther gave instructions for a
healing service based on James 5:13-16. He wrote: "This is what we do, and what we have been
accustomed to do, for a cabinetmaker here was similarly afflicted with madness and we cured him
by prayer in Christ's name." 31
The reformers recognized prophecy as a legitimate gift. They did not relegate it to the
apostolic age. John Knox announced doom in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets on
many occasions, although he made no claim to new and special revelation. Zwingli had at least a
premonition of the Cappel disaster of 1531. There was also a widespread belief among the
reformers that they were living in the last times with Rome on the seven hills and the Turkish
antichrist advancing from the east. 32