by Scott
Below is a little chart I put together looking at the more modern-day continuationist views. Of course, contrary to some views, church history is full of individuals and groups that testify of the activity of God’s Spirit in revelations, visions, prophecies, healings, miracles, etc. But this below mainly looks at the more recent moves of the past 110 years – from Pentecostalism to charismatics to neo-charismatics.
[Note: click the chart to make larger.]
Posted in charts, continuationism, Gifts, Gifts of the Spirit, Holy Spirit
Tagged charts, continuationism, Gifts, Gifts of the Spirit, Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts
By Marv
My wife’s parents were like many French people, agnostic to atheist, covered over with a vague New-Age layer. Many years before the events of this story happened, she had a thought occur in her mind, with a comfort and confidence, and she took it to be the Spirit of God speaking to her. “Your mother will come to faith first, then your father.”
Now, regeneration and conversion is a miracle always, but in a country such as France, you tend to diminish your expectations by a factor of ten, no, more like a hundred. It’s a tough, tough place for Christianity. We talked to them about the Lord, but apart from a little more openness for our sake, nothing much happened. It was hard to have too much impact; we were in the U.S. and they were in France.
One day in 1999, we had just brought home a new electronic answering machine. Back then those things were still gadgety enough to be kind of cool. You had to put a code on it to be able to retrieve messages. My wife suggested 828, because she liked Romans 8:28: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” We were about to get a lesson about that verse.
We installed it, and the first time it rang, we decided not to answer but let the machine pick it up. What could it hurt?
Only it was her parents calling from France—with bad news. About 18 months earlier, my wife’s mother, Nicole had been operated on for cancer, successfully, we all thought. The cancer was back, and it wasn’t looking good.
In the next few weeks Nicole declined rapidly. My wife talked to her doctors, but French doctors are typically not frank with the patient or with family in regard to bad news. They told her they could treat her, which Nicole seemed to interpret as “cure,” but this was not what they meant. My wife eventually persuaded the doctor to level with her, since she was so far away and needed to know whether and when to fly over there. “Come now,” she was finally told, since they gave Nicole perhaps a couple of months.
While she was preparing to go over there, my wife spoke to her mother on the phone. We knew most of the evangelical ministers in their town and we wanted to get someone to her to pray for her. My wife quoted to her James 5:14: “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.”
She wasn’t in any church, but we were working on arranging a pastoral visit with someone we had contact with. But before this could happen, she was at the hospital for chemotherapy, and a Catholic priest happened by. She told him what her daughter had said, and asked him if he could anoint her with oil and pray over her, like James said. Now for Roman Catholics this verse has basically become the basis for extreme unction, last rites for the immediately dying. Yet he agreed, and came to her house the next day and did just as James instructed.
Well, my mother-in-law still died of cancer, but it was a year later, and here’s what happened in that year. First of all, though the cancer was not cured, she did have an immediate change of symptoms, whereas she was weak and also unable to eat, she had new energy and her appetite returned right away. She was up and out of bed, and was able to spend many pleasant months with her husband and later with us, when we came to be with her.
We still had “our people” come and pray for her, and they spoke with her about the Lord. Now she was ready to listen. And she did listen, and she placed her trust in the Lord, and she started attending that evangelical church. My father-in-law went with her, and seeing her faith, and impressed by the love that body was giving them, he came to faith as well.
The cancer was still progressing and eventually Nicole did become weak again and unable to do much out of bed. But the very last day, as it turned out, that she was physically able to attend church, both she and my father-in-law were baptized. Nicole gave her testimony, between tears, recounting the story of the priest’s prayer, and her healing, partial and temporary as it was. Then she said, “If I had not gotten sick, I never would have come to know the Lord.”
Nicole still had confidence that the Lord could heal her, and she even thought he would. Now the doctors still had not made it clear to her that they considered her terminal, and we did not wish to discourage her either. You have to understand something; in this beautiful, but post-Christian country despair fills the air, so thickly sometimes that you feel you could cut it with a knife. Cancer patients as a rule do not go gently into that good night, and if her oncologist did not spell out the doom she foresaw, it was to grant a measure of false hope to her remaining days. That is the only hope she was able to dispense, having seen so many agonizing as death approached.
One night my wife stayed with her mother in the hospital, conflicted over knowing the medical prognosis and yet not wishing to overtax her mother’s new faith. But Nicole had a dream about Jesus, and she awoke the next morning both radiant—and knowing she was going to die.
“There’s going to be a reunion,” she said mysteriously. Not understanding, my wife asked her what reunion, with whom? “A reunion with Jesus,” she said.
Her remaining weeks were spent in one hospital or another, and all her friends came and visited her. And Nicole told all her friends about Jesus and how wonderful he was and how she was so happy to be going to be with him. This was a new experience for the oncologist, who was not at all used to hopeful—dying patients.
The doctor told us she wouldn’t last until Christmas, but she did. She died in January 2000. In those last weeks, her estranged son came to see her, and there were tears and there was forgiveness.
At the end of the most difficult but amazing year of her life, she went to her dearly anticipated reunion. The church was packed for the funeral, all her family and friends had come. It was a long service. We gave her testimony. We gave our testimonies. The pastor preached to gospel. That day everyone Nicole loved was gathered together and heard about the love and grace of the Jesus she had come to love and with whom she was now joyfully present.
Perhaps I should think it inadequate that her healing was not quite a “New Testament quality” miracle, not complete, irreversible, permanent. Right.
I am persuaded that the Lord used experiences, in Nicole’s life, in all our lives, to encourage, to build up, to demonstrate His love. And to demonstrate the truth of His Word. Frankly, I really did not have much confidence in the Roman Catholic priest who had prayed for her. But our faith is not in men but in the Lord and in His Word. Besides, James did say to call for the elders, the presbuteroi in Greek, and in the history of the church that word became prêtre in French,“priest.” Of course, the greatest gift was not the physical healing, would not even have been her being totally cured of her cancer. James goes on in verse 15: “And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.”
And the Lord proved His Word that all things, even painful, grievous things work together for good to those who are called, and “those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” (Rom. 8:30b)
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (vv. 35, 37-39).
Posted in continuationism, Gifts of the Spirit, Personal, Power, prophecy
Tagged experience, healing, prayer, spiritual gifts
By Marv
1 Corinthians 13:9-10 reads: “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.” (ESV)
a. Does “the perfect” refer to the Bible here? No.
b. Does “the perfect” refer to the Second Coming of Christ? No, but (b) is closer than (a).
Think about it. Why would Paul refer to either of these in this enigmatic way? Yes, you can find reasons, excuses, to understand either one of those, and surely other things, by the title “the perfect.” But we don’t have to scour distant contexts to discover what is motivating this choice of words here.
“The perfect” isn’t any one thing; it is a class of things. Or rather it is a state in which many different things can be: whole, as opposed to partial. We know that is what “the perfect” is, because that is what “the partial” is. Paul states in verse 9 two things that we do “in part”: know and prophecy. The phrase for “in part,” ek merous, is the most prominent part of each clause in verse 9. It’s what he is talking about. Reading it in the Greek order: “In part we know, and in part we prophesy.”
Then he takes this prepositional phrase and nominalizes it by adding the article: “the in part,” to ek merous. This is what the ESV translates as “the partial.” Another way of saying this would be “that which is only in part,” not referring to a specific thing, but anything which is partial.
The contrast Paul is making between “the partial” and “the perfect” tells us what specific meaning he has in mind for “perfect,” teleion. It means the state in which something has reached its fullness or completeness. The phrase he uses parallels “the perfect” to teleion with “the partial,” to ek merous.
The point he makes about these two states of being is not so much a prediction as a principle, a proverb, something that is true across the board: when the full and complete version of something arrives, the preliminary, partial version of it loses its value.
He provides an analogy and two examples to illustrate. First, he states that at one time his thoughts and words were those of a child, but as a grown man, of full age, his education complete, the ideas he had while still under age were not worth holding on to.
So then “partial” and “complete” also correlate with “now” and “then,” in comparison with minority and majority. This is equivalent to “not yet” and “already,” and at this point we see that “the perfect” is not itself a reference to the Second Coming but the state of things that will only occur at the second coming.
Now we see some things but much remains unseen (v.12a) . For these we have “faith” and “hope” (v. 13). Then, at the consummation of all things, our partial sight yields to completeness of sight, as faith becomes sight.
The same is true for our knowledge (v. 12b), which is partial now, but will in that day be complete. The two phrases are unmistakably descriptions of conditions only available beyond this age; we will “see face to face,” and we will “know as we are known.”
Faith is the conviction of things not seen (Heb. 11:1). Who hopes for what he sees (Rom. 8:24)? So even faith and hope, which remain “now,” will give way “then” to sight and fullness of knowledge. Love, however, is greater because as it reaches completeness it has all the more reason to continue.
This is the reason Paul commends it above all that it “in part.” The examples he gives are prophecy, knowledge, and tongues. These are things that are in a state of “in part.”
Prophecy entails revelation in bits and pieces, riddles and puzzles (Num. 12:8). It reaches its fulness, obviously, when it is fulfilled. So even the prophecies of Revelation, of the completed Canon, are partial until all is fulfilled.
Knowledge too can only ever be partial in this age, but one day the knowledge of God will cover the earth as water covers the sea (Hab. 2:14).
If tongues is a “sign to unbelievers” (1 Cor. 14:22a), then it has value while there are still unbelievers. The contrast of faith and lack of faith exists only in this age when sight is partial. So tongues reaches its fullness when every knees bows and every tongue confesses (Phil. 2:10).
Love alone surpasses this age. The rest, even faith, even hope are for the present age, where knowledge and sight are partial. If Paul is telling us anything about the gifts he mentions, it is that they correspond to the age of the partial, they are coterminous with faith and hope. They come to an end, yes, they cease, yes, but only when they reach the state of their fulness.
It is odd that this passage is so often used to teach the previous cessation of these gifts, when it is such a very strong argument for their enduring until the end of this age.
Posted in continuationism, Gifts, Gifts of the Spirit, prophecy
Tagged 1 Corinthians 13, perfect, prophecy, Second Coming, spirtual gifts, tongues
by Marv
“Are the sign gifts for today?” one asks.
Well, excuse me, but if we wish to arrive at the right answer, hadn’t we better start with the right question? And the above is just not the right question. It is a wrong question, because it presumes the existence of a category called “sign gifts” in the first place.
For example, the very title of Daniel Wallace’s “Two Views on the ‘Sign Gifts’: Continuity vs. Discontinuity” casts the debate in cessationist terms. Even so, note the quotes around “sign gifts.” These disappear, however, in the body of the article. The problem is, while the concept of “sign gifts” provides a convenient holding tank for, as Wallace lists them: “the spiritual gifts of tongues, prophecy, miracles, and healings,” the designation is not a Biblical one, as the following evidence demonstrates:
1. The phrase “sign gift” is found nowhere in the Scriptures. This observation is only a starting place, since many theological terms are not found as such in the Bible. However, it is a fact worth noting.
2. There are no passages where “sign gifts” are separated from other spiritual gifts, as if they formed a distinct category. Gifts such as “prophecy” and “tongues” appear right along with “teaching” and “mercy.”
Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. (Rom. 12:6-8)
For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.
And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts. (1 Cor. 12:8-10, 28-31)
3. Paul uses the term “sign” (Greek: semeion) unambiguously for only one gift, tongues.
Thus tongues are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers… (1 Cor. 14:22a)
It is a question of interpretation whether in the second half of the verse, Paul meant to call prophecy a “sign” too. The Greek does not have the word for sign here, though it might be thought to be understood from the preceding clause. The ESV takes it this way:
“…while prophecy is a sign3 not for unbelievers but for believers,”
But includes a footnote: “Greek lacks a sign.”
The NASB has a similar reading.
On the other hand, the NIV takes the opposite position:
“Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers.”
The majority of English translations concur, for example: Wycliffe, Tyndale, KJV, RSV, NKJV, NET, NRSV, NLT, CEV, HCSB.
4. Paul does refer to “the signs of a true apostle” (2 Cor. 12:12), though he does not say what these are, but only that they were performed “with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.”
5. Luke refers to signs throughout Acts, and in one passage it specifically refers to a healing as a “sign.” However, he never refers to “spiritual gifts” at all, much less “sign gifts.” In acts “signs” and “wonders” and “mighty acts” are different ways of indicating what we call miracles.
“What shall we do with these men? For that a notable sign has been performed through them is evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it. But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name.” (Acts 14:16-17)
For the man on whom this sign of healing was performed was more than forty years old. (v. 22)
This is in reference to the healing of the lame man at the Beautiful Gate, which was performed by Peter (Acts 3:6). If this is an example of a “spiritual gift,” then perhaps there is some justification for calling it a “sign-gift.” Yet, Luke is not calling it both a sign and a gift; the word Paul uses for spiritual “gift,” charisma, is not in Luke’s vocabulary at all. He does use the entirely different word dorea, but this by this he refers to the Holy Spirit Himself who is said to be given as a gift to believers.
6. The author of Hebrews at least uses “sign” and “gift” in the same verse, though he speaks of these in parallel, along with “wonders” and “miracles.” This verse is sometimes used as if “gifts” were here specifically those so-called “sign gifts,” but it is not what
“…while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.” (Heb. 2:4)
7. There is one other possible source of the concept “sign gifts,” the references in the longer ending of the gospel of Mark. These verses do not appear to be original, however, as early manuscripts omit them entirely. However, they do refer to what elsewhere are listed as “gifts” by the term “sign”:
And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs. (Mark. 16:17-18, 20)
I would venture to say that these verses are by far the strongest “Biblical” argument for a category called “sign gifts.” Perhaps the phrase originally came out of this passage, before there came to be a general consensus that they are not genuine. I’m not sure if cessationists would be better off with these verses than without them, but in any case the passage has doubtful authenticity and makes a poor basis for doctrine one way or the other.
So to summarize, the Scriptural case for a subset of spiritual gifts, identified as “sign gifts” is far from compelling. As a continuationist, I do not consent to define the debate in those terms. It lends a certain subtle circularity to the argument that yields a bit of ground to cessationism, because “sign gift” tends to suggest a narrow purpose and thus limited utility. If you are a cessationist, I suggest trying to make your case without resorting to this term. If you are a continuationist, you probably don’t use the term anyway, but if you do maybe you should reconsider.
Posted in Gifts, Gifts of the Spirit, sign gifts
Tagged gift of tongues, healing, miracles, prophecy, signs and wonders, spiritual gifts
Here is the second and final article from guest poster, Sam Storms, head of Enjoying God Ministries. The first article consisted of twelve bad reasons for being a cessationist. This post now concerns the positive (biblical and theological) perspective of being a continuationist. Both of these posts were originally posted at Sam’s ministry website here.
12 Good Reasons for Being a Continuationist
1. The first good reason for being a continuationist is the 12 bad reasons for being a cessationist.
2. A second good reason for being a continuationist is the consistent, indeed pervasive, and altogether positive presence throughout the NT of all spiritual gifts.
3. A third good reason for being a continuationist is the extensive NT evidence of the operation of so-called miraculous gifts among Christians who are not apostles. In other words, numerous non-apostolic men and women, young and old, across the breadth of the Roman Empire consistently exercised these gifts of the Spirit (and Stephen and Philip ministered in the power of signs and wonders).
4. A fourth good reason for being a continuationist is the explicit and oft-repeated purpose of the charismata: namely, the edification of the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:7; 14:3,26).
5. The fifth good reason for being a continuationist is the fundamental continuity or spiritually organic relationship between the church in Acts and the church in subsequent centuries.
6. Very much related to the fifth point, a sixth good reason for being a continuationist is because of what Peter (Luke) says in Acts 2 concerning the operation of so-called miraculous gifts as characteristic of the New Covenant age of the Church.
7. The seventh good reason for being a continuationist is 1 Corinthians 13:8-12.
8. The eighth good reason for being a continuationist is Ephesians 4:11-13.
9. A ninth good reason for being a continuationist is the description in Revelation 11 of the ministry of the Two Witnesses.
10. A tenth good reason for being a continuationist is because the Holy Spirit in Christ is the Holy Spirit in Christians. We are indwelt, anointed, filled, and empowered by the same Spirit as was Jesus. His ministry is (with certain obvious limitations) the model for our ministry (cf. Acts 10:38).
11. An eleventh reason to be a continuationist is the absence of any explicit or implicit notion that we should view spiritual gifts any differently than we do other NT practices and ministries that are portrayed as essential for the life and well-being of the Church.
12. The twelfth and final good reason for being a continuationist is the testimony throughout most of church history concerning the operation of the miraculous gifts of the Spirit.
[Although it is technically not a reason or argument for being a continuationist like the previous twelve, I cannot ignore personal experience. The fact is that I’ve seen all spiritual gifts in operation, tested and confirmed them, and experienced them first-hand on countless occasions. As stated, this is less a reason to become a continuationist and more a confirmation (although not an infallible one) of the validity of that decision. Experience, in isolation from the biblical text, proves little. But experience must be noted, especially if it illustrates or embodies what we see in the biblical text.]
Posted in cessationism, continuationism, Gifts of the Spirit, Sam Storms
Tagged cessationism, continuationism, Gifts of the Spirit, Sam Storms
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To Be Continued... 