Fourth Verse Adventage

It is Advent, an essential season in the church calendar too often neglected by Pentecostal churches. So naturally I want to talk about the fourth verse. 

Hold on, it will make sense in a moment. 

Years ago I taught part of a Worship and Creative Arts Workshop course at Masters College & Seminary. One of the classes was all about leading in a Pentecostal context. I began this class by asking the students for words they would use to describe Pentecostal Worship. The answers were predictable:

Spontaneous. Lively. Free. Charismatic. Experiential. Loud. Alive. Dramatic. Spirit-led. Crazy. Flag-Waving.

After I collected all of their answers on the whiteboard I said there was an essential word missing:

Eschatological.

An argument can be made that the core of Pentecostalism is not the charismatic or speaking in tongues, but its hope in Christ’s soon return. In this view, Spirit baptism is not an end in itself, but a sign of God’s in-breaking kingdom, a foretaste of the kingdom which is inaugurated in Christ’s ascension and will be consummated in Christ’s return. 

Pentecostal worship, then, also needs to be a sign of the in-breaking Kingdom. It needs to points us to the great hope we have in Christ’s return. How does it do that, beyond the manifestation of the Spirit? 

The fourth verse. 

This past Sunday our church sang O Praise The Name (Anástasis). When we got to the fourth verse we sang these words:

He shall return in robes of white
The blazing sun shall pierce the night
And I will rise among the saints
My gaze transfixed on Jesus’ face

Think of the fourth verse to many classic hymns: Amazing Grace (“When we’ve been there ten thousand years…”), How Great Thou Art (“When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation…”), It Is Well With My Soul (“And Lord haste the day when my faith shall be sight”), My Saviour’s Love (“When with the ransomed in glory…”). They all point us toward that future hope. This verse is not found in every hymn (and it is not always the fourth verse). It can also be found in a number of contemporary songs too. The point is we need to be singing of this hope and expectation, which brings us back to Advent.

Advent is a season of waiting. For a few weeks in the winter we acknowledge that darkness exists all around. There is pain and suffering, war and injustice. Admitting the existence of darkness does not lead us to despair, but to longing. We long for a time when all will be made right. We long for the return of Christ in glory to make all things new. We sing that fourth verse, not as a denial of our present reality, but in knowing that the ultimate remedy to the darkness we face is the coming of the light.