Tag Archives: spiritual gifts

Comparing the Resurrection and the Miraculous Gifts

Posted on March 24, 2010 by | 11 comments

by Scott

I was thinking through some things today, as I tend to do that a lot. Well, let me start off my saying that I’ve been writing about and considering the gifts of the Spirit on a more regular basis since we launched our new blog, To Be Continued.

With regards to the gifts, there are two basic views: 1) Continuationism, which says all gifts of the Spirit have continued post-first century and 2) Cessationism, which more recently prescribes to the view that all gifts of the Spirit are to continue, but some of those gifts (mainly the ‘sign gifts’ such as prophecy, tongues, healings and miracles) are not normative since we now have the faithful testimony of the first apostles recorded in our New Testament Scripture.

No doubt each group has varying beliefs and both groups are continually reforming their views in an attempt to be faithful to Scripture. But that is a decent, general overview. And it should be clear, at least now, that I am a continuationist.

Now the thoughts that I want to share in this article are by no means deep or theological. Rather I have a simple, practical notion that came to me about the gifts. It came about this way:

Easter is approaching. So I’m thinking about the death and resurrection of Jesus, considering some things for our Easter gathering at Cornerstone. I remembered how the Scripture says that Jesus appeared to over 500 people (see 1 Corinthians 15:3-11).

Can you imagine the difficulty in those days of sharing this testimony that Jesus had risen from the grave? For us, it’s second nature, as they say. It’s part and parcel to our faith. Oh, yes, it’s the truth. But you might just find a lot of people saying, ‘Oh yeah, I know that already,’ which could lead to an unhealthy point in our faith. Not always, but it could.

But, for those first Christians, it was still something new. I mean, even those first apostles and close friends of Jesus struggled with Jesus’ resurrection. Some struggled to believe (think Thomas),some were disillusioned (think of the two on the road to Emmaus) and even the others had lost hope for those few days………until they saw the resurrected Christ.

It was absolutely awesome to know that their Lord had risen and had been faithful to His word. He had been hinting at His resurrection, but His death seemed so final. Thus, there was an honest struggle in their soul.

But once they had seen the resurrected Christ, they knew. And Jesus not only appeared to the twelve, but he appeared to over 500 people. That’s a lot!

So, can you imagine these 500+ followers of Jesus telling others:

He’s risen! We’ve seen Him! We even touched Him!

What? No, it can’t be.

Yes, it’s true. We’ve seen Him. We have SEEN Him alive!

I’m sure something like this happened because, again, it also happened to some of Jesus’ closest followers in those days between the crucifixion and resurrection. There was doubt, questioning, soul-searching. But, by the Spirit of Jesus, people’s hearts and eyes were opened to the reality of the resurrection of the Son of God.

So, what’s my point with the resurrection.

Well, with regards to the gifts of the Spirit, mainly those mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, I sense the same reaction today. Not only with the world, but even with followers of Jesus.

Please know I am not trying to be derogatory, poke fun, or any other such thing. I’m just saying that this comparison between the reaction to the resurrection and the reaction to the gifts of the Spirit came to me today as I was pondering the resurrection.

This has happened in my own life. People who do not believe the gifts from 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 still exist today, or don’t think they are normative, sometimes ask for proof or real examples. So, I share about examples of prophecy and revelations I have had, or I share about healings that I have seen or that my ministry friends have been used in, but the reaction is quite the same.

Ah, that’s what you say. But I need to see it myself.

They don’t believe they can take my word on it.

Sometimes it makes me wish that these gifts were kind of accessible whenever I wanted them. But it’s not like that. I know it sounds like an excuse, but I really believe He is sovereign over His gifts, not I (i.e. 1 Corinthians 12:11).

So, when they don’t want to believe my own testimonies, I share about a couple of books to check out that record (faithfully) various miracles, healings, etc. They might check out the titles online, but most of the time I hear back that the books don’t look trustworthy or something similar.

I don’t know what to say other than, in the end, if God is as sovereign as I believe He is, then He and He alone can open the hearts of humanity to the work of His Spirit. No, the work of His Spirit is not limited to nine gifts from 1 Corinthians 12. By no means. But it is part of the Spirit’s activity, even today.

And so, I ponder the reactions of those first followers of Jesus to news of His resurrection and to those being reached with the gospel in those early years. I’m sure there was a struggle to really believe that some of these people had actually seen the resurrected Christ. But, they kept on proclaiming the truth.

Today, I look to give what I believe is solid biblical and theological evidence for the Spirit’s continuing work in things like miracles, healings, prophecy and tongues. I also look to share stories of how this has really and truly happened today in my life and the lives of others I know. But, people will still disagree, doubt or even outright deny it.

I’m not here to puff up continuationists as better than cessationists. We are all pursuing God as best we know how. We all love Jesus as best we know how. But I know what I have seen and I am convinced of what I have seen, just as those first disciples were convinced of what they had seen.

I can only ask that the Spirit continue to be active in the fulness of what He desires and wills. And I will leave Jesus to be the head of those whom He gave His life for.

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Posted in 1 Corinthians 12, continuationism, Gifts, Gifts of the Spirit, miracles

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What Continues?

Posted on March 23, 2010 by | 13 comments

by Marv

Continuationism is not a wholly satisfactory term.  In some ways I prefer Non-cessationism. However, this latter is a term of negation rather than affirmation, and as such communicates reaction to another view, i.e. it denies cessationism.  So it not only states what it is not rather than what it is, but it grants the initiative to the side it disagrees with, and to a degree lets that side establish the terms of the debate, which may not be helpful.  Continuationism is not totally free from these criticisms, since “continue” is an opposing response to “cease.” Yet, at least it is a positive, affirmative term, as it should be.

Moreover, the term, both terms, imply a complement that may or may not be clearly understood.  With cessationism, there is something that ceases. With continuationism, there is something that continues.  The “something” may not necessarily be the same in both cases.  It certainly does not have to be so for one side simply because the other side defines itself in particular terms.  This is one reason I have objected to the term “sign gifts.”  Some cessationists may hold that what they say has ceased is this category, “sign gifts.”  However, when I use the term continuationist, I am not thereby asserting that “sign gifts” continue, since I find that term problematic.

What then is it that continues?  This post is an attempt to provide an answer and to elaborate on that answer.  The views are my own, though I welcome reaction and input from others.  I see this as a starting place for establishing some definition.  So this statement will surely require refinement and expansion.

Continuationism, then, is the belief that between Christ’s first and second advent He continues His work of glorifying His Father, building His Church, and advancing His Kingdom through the ongoing, vital and dynamic interconnection He maintains with those who are in Him, accomplished through the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit through whom the individual members of His redeemed community are enabled to fulfill the good works prepared for them, such that in interrelation with all the others, the entire community, despite differences of time and place, constitute Christ’s bodily presence on earth during this age.

  1. This reality exists by the Father’s good pleasure, in the Son, and through the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God.
  2. Christ made it clear that the same works that He did in carrying out His mission on earth He expected to be performed through believers, empowered by the Holy Spirit as He had been, starting with Pentecost and continuing to the end of the age when He will return in glory.
  3. The completeness of Christ’s ongoing ministry is a function of the community of those who are in Him, who constitute His Body, while individually each member participates and contributes according to the part assigned to him or her, as the Holy Spirit directs and according to his or her measure of faith.
  4. Christ established a small group of people to establish and found this community, whom He designated His apostles, and each of these in himself seemed to function in completeness of ministry, while non-apostolic members are apportioned aspects of Christ’s ministry, characterized as “gifts.”
  5. Through the apostles and a few individuals closely related to them, the corpus of the New Testament was written through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, forming the completion of Canonical revelation, which together with the Old Testament constitutes the only inerrant and infallible rule of faith and practice for humankind and the Church in particular.
  6. Canonical revelation, that which God chose to inscripturate and establish as the only inerrant and infallible rule of faith and practice, is to be distinguished carefully from God’s other acts of revelation which in His wisdom He has chosen to do throughout history.  He has revealed Himself and continues to reveal Himself in ways both general and specific, whether in imagery, in proposition, perceptibly to the physical senses, or perceptible only to individual cognitive functions, such as memory, dream, or intuition.  This is far from saying that any and all perception or cognition ought to be treated as God’s revelation, whenever it may happen to appear to be such to a particular person.  The standard for evaluation of any purported revelation from God is, as for all other things, the Canonical revelation, the Scriptures, as stated above.
  7. All of God’s revelation and communication is wholly true and free from error.  Human perception, reasoning, and interpretation is fallible, to put it mildly.  Scripture is that which is specifically designated as inspired or God-breathed and so designated God’s very words and recognized by inference as inerrant.  Non-inscripturated prophecy has never been given this guarantee and so requires discernment by those to whom it is spoken, since it entails one or more human act between the Spirit’s act of revelation and the report of that revelation by a person.  In all cases an accurate and complete report of the revelation is expected and required, though never guaranteed as it is with Scripture.  In the Old Testament, the theocratic role of the prophet was matched with severe consequences for inaccurate representation.  The situation in the Church changes with the generalization (“democratization”) of revelation and prophecy inherent in the New Covenant.  Reports of revelation, prophecies, are to be weighed and evaluated within the community.
  8. The Holy Spirit’s work in this age, in Christ’s body has many aspects which together make up a unified whole.  Sanctification, illumination, and empowerment for ministry, along with others, are integral parts of the whole, according to the way God was well pleased to arrange the Body of Christ.  The vital ongoing connection in terms of empowered ministry is variously described as abiding in Christ and bearing fruit, effectual prayer of faith, doing the works of Jesus, spiritual gifts, signs, wonders, and mighty works, and other terms.  Some understanding of these matters may center on specific terms (“spiritual gifts” for example) or draw questionable distinctions (“sign gifts,” or between “gifts of healing(s)” and prayer for healing, for examples) which tend to obscure the holistic nature of the vital, dynamic interconnection with Christ.
  9. God has established this ongoing, vital and dynamic interconnection in His wisdom, in His good pleasure and for His purposes, including confirmation of the gospel message, though there are many others, including encouragement, comfort, conviction, and edification.
  10. The provision of this ongoing interconnection is God’s own intitiative and is wholly within His sovereign control.  How He chooses to manifest it at different times and in different places is His choice to make.  At the same time the recognition of and participation in it by the Church has also varied because of factors within man’s responsibility, such as awareness, understanding, and acceptance. However, none of this means that God has at any time Himself withdrawn His provision for it or no longer wishes it to continue. What indications there are in the Scriptures for its duration is that it is continuous from Pentecost through the Second Advent.

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Posted in about, continuationism, Holy Spirit, Power, revelation

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Chart On Modern-Day Continuationism

Posted on March 23, 2010 by | Leave a comment

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.]

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Experience, Faith, and the Word

Posted on March 19, 2010 by | 2 comments

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).

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Posted in continuationism, Gifts of the Spirit, Personal, Power, prophecy

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Cessationism and the Authority of Personal Assumption

Posted on March 16, 2010 by | 2 comments

By Marv

I’m not sure whether Daniel Wallace’s recent post on Parchment and Pen, Charismata and the Authority of Personal Experience, was intended to coincide with the annual celebration of the world’s most famous irrational number, π, but it did in fact appear on “Pi Day” (3/14/2010) and does seem to hit the theme of what he considers to be irrational. If it otherwise appeared to you, as it did to me, oddly out of date, this is because it is in fact a repost of an older article. On reading it, I estimated that the references sounded on the nature of fifteen years old. In fact, the Word version available on bible.org is dated 1997, though I suspect the original composition is a tad earlier.

The article calls for a response, I’m afraid, but before I begin, I want to make clear what profound regard and respect I hold for Dr. Wallace. He is not only—literally—the man who “wrote the book” on New Testament Greek, but he was my own teacher and, yes, a personal hero. The fact is that I found my way to both Parchment and Pen and Theologica through hunting down his online writings.

Yet I am going to be so bold as to disagree with some of what he writes, while agreeing with much of it. I have a few slightly-more-than-quibbles to get out of the way first. I find the opening references to “psychic hotlines” and UFOs unnecessarily disobliging. The phenomena under discussion, such as healing and prophecy, are after all such as he agrees genuinely occurred among the Church of the first century, not occulta from beyond the fringe.

Also it is misleading to refer to the continuationist perspective he has in view as “charismatic.” He explicitly aligns the people he refers to with the Vineyard movement, which is part of what is commonly called “Third Wave.” Since the second of the “waves” in question is the Charismatic Movement, there is a significant distinction there that he ignores.

More importantly, however, he allows himself to go beyond commentary on the facts and proposes to offer a psychological explanation for a change in belief, and even more importantly casts this change as an abandonment of basic evangelical principle. He states: “their final authority is no longer reasoning about the Scriptures; now it is personal experience.” I do not believe that he is justified in doing either, and that his conclusion is wrong in both instances.

One may wish to ask how Dr. Wallace, coming from an outsider’s perspective, can be as confident as he appears to be in regard to the psyche of others. May I suggest, from an insider’s perspective, that he has significantly misread the situation. My claim to an inside perspective is based on the fact that: (a) some the individuals he almost certainly has chiefly in mind were also my own teachers and I have some familiarity with them both before and after their “paradigm shift”; (b) I myself fall generally into the lines of the events he describes. As the song says: “apart from the names and a few other changes, the story’s the same one”; and (c) I have spent two decades in the Vineyard milieu, and so know something whereof I speak.

So I can attest that, so far from being swayed by mere experience, these people have made the decision: (1) to believe something that the Bible clearly teaches, specific works of the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ, and (2) to disbelieve something they find nowhere in the Bible, that particular aspects of the Spirit’s work ceased after the first (or second) generation of the Church. I am not quite sure how this constitutes substituting “personal experience” for the Scriptures as final authority. It is rather quite the opposite.

On the other hand, a typical cessationist charge is “Can you honestly tell me you’ve seen genuine New Testament quality miracles.” Now, which side is clinging to experience as authority?

What about experience, though? Yes, odd as it may seem, what we are told in the Bible does turn out to be true. Paul describes the effects of prophecy, for example, in terms of “upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.” (1 Cor. 14:3) and also having “the secrets of [one’s] heart…disclosed” (1 Cor. 14:25). I can attest to this effect, as I think anyone who has taken the Biblical teaching on prophecy as valid for today could. Yes, these are subjective matters for the most part, difficult to demonstrate to others. Dr. Wallace puts scare quotes around “prophet,” and dismisses such instances as cold reading.

What am I supposed to believe when apostolic, Scriptural authority teaches me to not to despise prophetic utterances (1 Thes. 5:20)? I know what cold reading is, and I know charlatans have used it to simulate genuine prophecy. However, I’ve also received prophecies the details of which rule out cold reading, and given prophecies which to the best of my ability to discern were in no way instances of cold reading. Still it isn’t the experience that tells me prophecy is a work of the Holy Spirit; it is the Bible.

It is also true that such “paradigm shifts” are often occasioned by personal crises. Dr. Wallace is quite correct that imbalance in Christian life, such as excessive focus on the intellectual aspects, is deleterious to joy in Christ. It is Dr. Wallace’s final paragraph that is at once the most laudable part of his essay, and the most lamentable. It is laudable for the truth of his statement: “the trilogy of authority can be seen this way: both personal experience and reason are vital means to accessing revelation. We are to embrace Christ, as revealed in the Word, with mind and heart.” What is lamentable, is that by making the statement he is implying that continuationists do not understand this.

In fact, Dr. Wallace is describing what may be the single greatest lesson I have learned in embracing continuationism. We have to do not primarily with knowledge or feeling, but with a blessed Person, who has given us His Word and has given us His Spirit, and sent us as He was sent, as is with us until the end of the age. It is in Him that we are to place our faith. I’ve been taught the very same truth by the very people Dr. Wallace suggest have missed it. So while Dr. Wallace’s prescription is on target, I believe his diagnosis is considerably wide of the mark.

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Posted in 1 Corinthians 14, cessationism, continuationism, prophecy

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