WordsOut poems by
39
I'm no
raving charismatic (as you know!)
but what dogma brings you—David Watson's curate—
to say
some gifts are not
for us here and today? What then
are these
signs? Wishful thinking?
Something worse? Would you confine
his
supernatural utterances to one time and place,
say that the God of Job is bound
to speak
now only after proper exegesis? Andrew,
in God's supreme untidiness I only see
he will
do what he wants to when he wants to,
and speak in whatever tongue or form of silence
best
suits his purpose to confound
our stolid pharisaic study of divine behaviour.
David Watson (1933-84)
was a leading charismatic evangelical pastor and preacher in the 1970s
and 1980s, and an advocate the exercise of the spiritual gifts of
tongues and prophecy. Andrew Cornes was his curate at
St Michael-le-Befry in York.