By David Middlemiss
SCM Press Ltd. 278 pages.
ISBN 0 334 02652 0
The central concern of this book is: 'If a person claims to have encountered God in his or her experience, how can one tell if this is what has really occurred?'
The author gave up his 'Sunday job' as a Baptist minister to research the question and this book is the fruit of that research. He begins by linking the contemporary charismatic movement with the 'enthusiast' movements of the 17th and 18th centuries. The term 'enthusiast' is used in the sense defined by R.A. Knox in Enthusiasm: a chapter in the history of religion, 1950, which is characterised by the supernatural being an expected part of everyday life, a desire to be holy, a subjective emphasis in worship, a heightened expectation of the parousia, experiences of ecstasy.
