The Holy Spirit, Spiritual Gifts, What We Believe, Part 12

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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See website for details. We're talking real healings. Blind men seeing. Not where they have like 90 % blindness and now they can see a little better.

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No. It would always be a complete and immediate healing. We do not see that. And yes, yes,

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I know, I know. There's the story of the guy in Africa. But you know what? There never is around that.

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I have a friend of mine that always say, you know what the problem is with the story of the guy in Africa? There was no video camera. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host,

01:28

Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the

01:34

Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:42

Well, welcome back to The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, joined by Pastor Jim Osman of Kootenay Community Church.

01:50

And we're here to help you, hopefully, in understanding a, well, not really something that should be a difficult topic, but it does seem to be a controversial one.

02:00

And that is the idea of spiritual gifts. Now, we're going through our series on what we believe from striving for eternity.

02:08

If you want to see what that is, just go to strivingforeternity .org. If that's too much to spell, let me give you a shortcut.

02:15

Just go to sfe .bible. That'll get you to the same place. But once you're there, go to About, and under the

02:22

About, click on what we believe. And we're in this section. We're finishing up this section on God. We're looking at the person of the

02:28

Holy Spirit. And what we're going to cover today is the issue of spiritual gifts. And there is much confusion in the realm when it comes to spiritual gifts— what they are, what they aren't, how they're used, whether you get them after salvation or at salvation, whether they could be taken away, which ones—do they all exist for today or not?

02:50

Lots of discussion, lots of confusion, and we're going to help to hopefully set the record straight?

02:57

Well, okay, if we don't at least do that, we'll give you what our view is at Striving for Eternity with what we believe about the issue of gifts.

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Before we do, though, Jim, I made a big mistake today. You know what I did? I spoke in tongues?

03:11

No, no. That would have been better, actually. No, I was really foolish. I decided to go for a two -hour run, and then right after running, sit down in my chair for two hours.

03:24

Oh. Yeah, so I went to get up, and I'm like— Are your legs cramping up a little bit? I went to stand up, and my legs said, yeah, we're not going to be working the way you think that we're going to be working.

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Yeah, so I did about a 12, 13 -mile run today, which felt great when I was doing it, but now that I'm sitting in the chair for a while, it's not feeling so great getting up.

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You might have to get up and go run for 45 minutes or something just to loosen up a bit. Oh, my. I made that mistake where I don't play golf at all, and for charity, we did this charity golf outing.

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And so I did, I forget what it was, like 200 rounds of golf, or 200 holes of golf.

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We're getting donations per hole that we did. And so my goal was 200. I think

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I did like 195 or something like that. And so we started off at 8 in the morning and went straight through until like 5 o 'clock, 6 o 'clock, and then they had a fundraising dinner.

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And being out all day using muscles that I've never used before, swinging that club, most of my time was actually spent in the woods.

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The guys were making fun of me because they gave us a dozen balls to start. And by lunchtime,

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I came back with four dozen balls. And they were like, how many were your balls? Multiplying, I said, no.

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Every time I hit it into the woods, I never find mine in the woods, but I find a lot of other ones in the woods. So I just pick up those and figure

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I'm going to need them because most of mine are going in the woods. I can't find them. By the end of the day, I ended up with several dozen balls, having started off with one.

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I think I ended up with like four dozen balls by the end. But we sit through this two, three hour dinner and I went to stand up and I put my hand on the table and my chair and went to stand up.

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And just my back and my body was just like, no, no, we seized up. We're not working that way.

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And I kind of wobbled to the car. It was really bad. That was the mistake

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I made today. But hopefully I don't need to get up during this podcast and I'll be able to recover from that.

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So before we get into today's topic, I want to just give a word for our sponsor because I want to be able to go through all the stuff that we have without interruption.

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This is put on by our sponsor, MyPillow. MyPillow helps us be able to do some of the work we do.

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They sponsor this program and my Apologetics Live program as well. And so they make great products.

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I'm not saying this because they're sponsoring us. I'm saying this because I actually asked them to sponsor us because I love their products.

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I absolutely have not found a single product from them that I do not enjoy. Now, Jim, in your area where it's really, really, really, really, really, really cold.

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No, it's not cold. We get a lot of snow, but it's not cold. Unlike here where it's just really, really cold. I'll tell you,

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I got their down comforter. And usually because we keep our house cold to try and save costs on bills.

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So we keep the house at night. It's like 62 degrees. And I know for some people, they're like, yeah, that's what I normally keep it at.

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Well, that's cold for me. But I have that blanket and man, that's warm. I mean, it keeps me really warm.

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And I wear my light, my pillow pajamas. I usually would wear sweats at night. And I've had to actually not go to the heavy sweats because the comforter is so warm.

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It really does help us out a lot. They have really helped us quite a bit. We have really taken a loss with COVID.

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Some of you guys know with the year of COVID 2020, we had a loss of 60 % of our donations.

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And that was because most of our donations come when we go and travel and speak, and we weren't doing that. And that hasn't picked up.

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It's picking up, but nowhere near as much as we had prior in 2019. So all of our internationals canceled and things like that.

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So we really do count on sponsors like MyPillow or your help. If you want to go to strivingfortraining .org

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slash support, that's a great place to go. Now, I do want to say before we get into this, if you, as you're listening, if you find value in this podcast,

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I want to encourage you to share it with others that will, especially if you have people that you think will really gain from this and learn from some of the discussion that we're going to have.

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Because like I said in the opening, there is a lot of confusion in this area.

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And we're going to cover a lot of different things. And there's going to be two different realms. We're going to have those who agree with us and those that don't.

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And for those of you who may not agree with what you hear, I want to encourage you, just give us a fair listen and hear us out.

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Hear us to the end so that you at least understand what it is we believe.

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You may disagree with it. And we understand that, right? We're going to be disagreeing with you if you disagree with us.

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But I would want to hear you out and hear your argument. And if you disagree with us, or even if you agree and you're encouraged by us, would you let us know?

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Send us an email at info at strivingforeternity .org. That's info at strivingforeternity .org.

08:58

And with that, let's get into this. And this is the doctrinal statement of Striving Fraternity. It can be found at strivingfraternity .org.

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Just go to the About section and What We Believe. Jim, would you mind, under the area that we have on God, the doctrine of God, reading those last two paragraphs of the

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Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit administers the spiritual gifts to the church. The Holy Spirit glorifies neither himself nor his gifts by ostentatious displays.

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But he does glorify Christ by implementing his work of redeeming the lost and building up believers in the holiest faith.

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John 16, 13 to 14, Acts 1, 8, 1 Corinthians 12, 4, through 11 and 2

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Corinthians 3, 18. God, the Holy Spirit is sovereign in the bestowing of all his gifts for the perfecting of the saints today, speaking in tongues and the working of sign miracles in the beginning days of the church were for the purpose of pointing to and authenticating the apostles as revealers of divine truth and were never intended to be charismatic of the lives, oh, sorry, characteristic of the lives of believers.

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I read charismatic in there, obviously, because of the subject matter. 1 Corinthians 12, 4 through 11, 13, 8 through 10, and 2

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Corinthians 12, 12 in Ephesians 4, 7 through 12 in Hebrews 2, 1 through 4. Yes, it's just interesting how, in our day,

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I mean, what you just did there, it really does explain the issue that so much of this has been influenced and kind of,

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I'm going to say a word that may upset some people, corrupted by the charismatic movement. The issue that we see is that this is so much a focus on gifts within the charismatic church that it's really made this a case where now we end up seeing that the

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Holy Spirit is almost synonymous with charismatic gifts.

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And this is why I believe there's been such a distinction, a problem in Christianity, in studying the personal

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Holy Spirit. We addressed this in the last episode, that there's so much that isn't going on in the discussion of the

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Holy Spirit because we're not seeing that this whole thing where people are, should be at least, looking at what the

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Scripture says about the personal Holy Spirit. So much of it is being influenced by a movement that started in 1905 that wasn't normative in history.

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And so when we look at the spiritual gifts that people focus on today in the charismatic church or charismatic movement, we have to realize that those things were not normative for 1900 years, outside of the cult and the occult.

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I mean, in Mormonism, speaking in tongues and things like that were considered normal.

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And so it wasn't until 1905 in Azusa Street that at a prayer meeting, a woman came to the conference, actually, a woman reading the

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Scripture said, well, why don't we speak in tongues today? And they started praying to receive the gift of tongues and so on and moved on to where they...

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Now, I will say this, and Justin Peters, in the new Clouds Without Waters DVD that he's working on,

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I know he addresses this in Clouds Without Water 3 that's gonna be coming out sometime soon. And what he addresses that early on in the charismatic movement beginning in 1905, they understood that it was languages.

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It was human languages. And he even tells the story of one woman who believed she had the gift of speaking

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Chinese and writing Chinese. And she went over to China to be a missionary because she thought she could write and read

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Chinese. And we have some of her writing in Chinese. Justin actually had sent that to my wife, who, for folks who don't know, my wife was born in Hong Kong.

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She was born speaking and writing Chinese. And so Justin had asked her, could you tell me, is this

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Chinese? And she said, no. And he actually wanted to see her reaction when he put it up.

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So we did a video call and she's like, yeah, no, that's just scribble. And so he's like, can you write

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Chinese for me? So she wrote out for him something that described what she just saw and says, this is not

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Chinese in Chinese. And so he puts that up because you could clearly see the distinction between those. But so much of this is a focus on gifts like that.

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And so what we're gonna do in this episode is we're going to go through what we believe at Striving for Eternity about spiritual gifts and the

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Holy Spirit's giving of those gifts and what they are. But we're also gonna spend a lot of time explaining what we don't believe.

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And any doctrinal statement is going to say what we believe, but what that also does is clarify what we do not believe.

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And so we here would not believe that all the gifts of the first century continue to today, all right?

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And let me do one other thing as a way of means of introduction. Let me define some terminology.

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When I teach on gifts, as I just did preaching through not too long ago, a couple of weeks ago in my church, we're going through first Peter and I went in and looked at the spiritual gifts.

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And as we do that, I like to define a difference between a talent and a gift.

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Now, when we talk about spiritual gifts, it's a talent that you have. It's a skill set.

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A talent is a skill that you have. A spiritual gift is a skill that you have.

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The only differentiation that I'm gonna make is that a talent is something you're born with.

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So you've had it prior to salvation, where a spiritual gift is something you get at salvation.

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I cannot really support that biblically that I don't know of any verse, I take it from inference, that gifts are given at salvation.

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Okay, I don't know any passage that clearly defines that. And so that would be nice if there was because many charismatics will say that we can get gifts after salvation.

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And I see the work of the Holy Spirit as we looked at last episode, so much of it that he's doing when he regenerates us.

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And when we're baptized into one body and the gifts are for the purpose of that body, then

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I infer that we're going to get those gifts at salvation. Okay, now,

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I mean, you might even have a verse that you could think of that works better, but... Well, I'm just thinking if we understand gifts as being the manifestation of the

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Spirit for the common good, then obviously that's not going to take place in somebody's life before salvation.

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So I don't know of any, I'm trying to think of any Christian sect or, and I can't think of any

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Christian sect or denomination that would teach that we have spiritual gifts from the moment of our birth that are then just made manifest after our salvation.

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I don't think that that would be the case. If a spiritual gift is the manifestation of the Spirit for the good of the church, for the edification of the church, then

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I don't know why it would be not theoretically possible that the Spirit of God could give a gift or accentuate an ability in a person after salvation at some point.

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But I can't think of a single passage scripture that says every gift you've ever received ever in your life as a believer is going to be given a salvation, but I can't think of a single passage scripture that might suggest that you can get gifts after you're saved.

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But see, I was probably saved six or seven years before I ever exercised the gift of teaching.

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So the question is, did I receive the gift of teaching at the moment of my salvation? Or did

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I receive that gift at the moment that the Spirit of God wanted to use that in my life? I had no inclination at all that I would ever be a teacher.

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I had no desire to really ever be a teacher until I started to do that. I was required to do it at Bible college.

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So I'm just looking at my own experience. If I'm to judge by my own experience, then I would have a hard time saying that I had evidence of or knowledge of the gift of teaching at the moment of my salvation.

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But that's the thing with a gift, is we may not see a talent. We learn from a young age that we're good at certain things.

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And the way I always explain this is I have a talent of being organized to a fault. My wife has had to help me get rid of some of my

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OCD tendencies, but I always tell the story of when kids would go out on the playground and they'd have these things called lunchboxes.

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And for those of you who grew up in the last 30 years, you probably don't know what a lunchbox is, but we used to bring our own lunch to school.

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We didn't have the government providing lunch for us. And so the kids would go out to play after lunch and recess and everyone would dump their lunchboxes on the floor and go run and play.

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And it drove me nuts. I would spend the entire recess organizing the lunchboxes by size order.

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Or alphabetically. Well, it wasn't alphabetically, but it was size. And my wife, when we got married, she basically said, look, you got one of two choices.

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You could do your own laundry or you can let me put your clothes the way I think they should go. Because I had all my clothes organized, you know, long sleeve by short sleeve.

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Then it would go by style of shirt, color of shirt. And I am just very organized that way.

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I had a guy that was helping me move out of my first house and he went up to in my attic. He's like, even your attic is organized.

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I like things organized. That is a talent. It's something I've had all my life.

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But when I got - Or a defect. Or a defect in my case. It could be a little bit OCD with it.

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Yes. The effect of the fall of all your life. But I never wanted to teach until after I got saved.

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Now, I didn't express like you, I didn't exercise it till later. But I do remember sitting and going like, you know, watching my teacher in school and being like, maybe it'd be neat to do something like that.

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And it was something that once I started exercising it, prior to salvation, I was not good at communicating difficult things to people where they understood them.

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After salvation, I was. And so even though I didn't exercise it in a Bible study, in preaching or Sunday school or something like that,

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I believe that gift was there and it came out or was more revealed through the exercise of it.

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And so I believe that we get the gifts because the gifts are for the purpose of the church and he baptizes us into the church.

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So I think he gives us what we need at that time. What we do see, and the only passages we could look to is in Acts, when you see that the first in Jerusalem, they get the gift of speaking in tongues.

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When is it? It's tied to the baptism of the Holy Spirit. What is the argument that Peter makes when he goes to a

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Gentile's house and he says that they receive the Holy Spirit? They immediately got the same gift.

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And so the argument Peter makes, and again, this is inference because this is just, this is what we see in one case.

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Is that the truth for all cases? But at least in that case, Peter's argument is because we see the gifts being practiced, that means they got the

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Holy Spirit. And so when we also, in definitions, let me define terms between signed gifts and non -signed gifts.

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It's just a way of defining them as there are certain gifts that were purposeful for pointing to the vindication of those that would write scripture.

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And so what you see there is that those gifts point to something. It's a sign to something.

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Once the thing comes, then you don't need the sign anymore. Now, Jim, I'm not sure your position on this.

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So you have to let me know if you agree or disagree, but we're going to get into this later. But I would argue that once the canon was closed, in other words, if you don't know what the canon is, back to our previous episodes, we talked on the scriptures, but it's basically the 66 books of the

21:09

Bible, the measure of them. I believe once that was completed, there was no more need for these gifts and that brought about the end of them.

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The only scripture, and we'll spend some time in the scripture, but the only scripture passage I could turn to for that is going to be 1

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Corinthians chapter 13, 8 and following, with what is the perfect in there. Jim, when you look at that, what is the perfect?

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What is it that you hold the perfect to be? I would say the same thing as you. I believe it's completed canon.

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MacArthur would say that that's a reference to the eternal state. And I think that that's Justin's perspective as well.

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In fact, he was just asked that at this conference that we did with him this last weekend at our church in the

21:47

Q &A, and I asked him that question, what is the perfect referred to? And he said that he thinks it's going to heaven, being perfected, being in the eternal state.

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And I referred to that as a mild heresy. I told him, I said, we can both agree to be a cessationist and hold to the same conclusion, even though we get there two different ways.

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And let me encourage you, and I'll put some links in the show notes for this, but there's two articles that I've written on strivingforeternity .org

22:15

on tongues. And if you view them, basically there's going to be, basically what we're looking at there is two articles that we have that are going to explain, one is the biblical use of tongues, and then the other is what is the perfect.

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It's going to address that. And in that article, I spent some time saying that there are, you can make a case for the fact that there are views that I think you could hold to.

22:45

I think it is possible to hold to either the eternal state as MacArthur or our death being that we then are glorified.

22:54

As Justin's view, I don't think they're right. I disagree with him, but I think those are probably the only legitimate ones other than saying that it's the completion of the canon.

23:05

Okay. But I think that that's going to be something that becomes important as we look through this. So, when we look at the signs, we're talking about these gifts are going to be signed gifts and non -signed gifts.

23:18

And we're going to do that just because that way you end up seeing the distinction of those that the charismatics would hold to today that I'm going to say ceased.

23:29

Now, like I said, if you believe that gifts have not ceased, please do not tune us out.

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Please give a listen, hear us out, hear the arguments. And if you disagree, I'll tell you what, contact us, let us know.

23:42

If you disagree, let me encourage you to at least go to strivingfraternity .org, do a search on tongues.

23:49

You'll find the biblical view on tongues. It goes through 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14 in context.

23:56

Then have tongues ceased. Look at those two articles, read them, and then let's engage.

24:02

And if you, I'll even put this out. If you disagree with my view in either of those papers and you would like to voice your opinion,

24:10

I'd be happy to have you on my Apologetics Live show, where it's a two -hour discussion show, and we can have a full discussion on it.

24:18

And I will let you express your views and express where you think I'm wrong. And I will express where I think

24:25

I'm right and I think you're wrong, but that's okay. We'll still go to heaven if we both believe in Christ. So I'm not saying that someone's not a believer in this realm, okay?

24:35

So these are some things we want to get out of the way before we get started with this, because there's so much confusion and controversy that's,

24:44

I think, unnecessary when it comes to this. So let's look at what the doctrinal statement does say. The Holy Spirit administers spiritual gifts to the church.

24:52

Now that right there should not be controversial. I certainly hope it isn't, but some might argue when he gives it.

25:00

But it is that the Holy Spirit does give believers gifts that are meant to be used within the church.

25:06

And I distinguish that from a talent, okay? Now, when we have these gifts, they're for the purpose of the church, for building up the body.

25:14

So therefore, that's where it should be used. And as I said in the last episode, not for parachurch ministries.

25:20

Your spiritual gifts should be used in your church first, parachurch ministries second. But one of the things

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I think that we have to realize is that the Spirit gives those gifts, and every one of us are different.

25:32

And if you read through 1 Corinthians 12, read that entire chapter, and what do you see?

25:38

That every one of us have different gifts, and we're going to be used differently. He's going to use the illustration of our human body.

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If I'm not the hand, can I be upset because I'm not the head? Or the foot, say, well, I'm not part of the body because I'm not the eye.

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Every part of our human body has a different function, but it all works together.

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And that's the purpose of a spiritual gift. That's why I say 100 % of the church should be serving 100 % of the time.

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It shouldn't be an 80 -20 rule that 20 % of people do 80 % of the work. No, all the work should be done by everybody because we all have been given different gifts by the

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Holy Spirit to serve that body of believers that we're in. God put us there to serve them.

26:19

Therefore, that's who we serve. We need to be serving the body. That's the purpose of these gifts.

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Now, what happens if we're not using those gifts in the body? Well, what happens to you if your eyes stop working?

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Well, your body doesn't function as well. It's hurt. Other parts of the body have to pick up more to compensate.

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If you're not using your spiritual gifts in the church, then other members of the church have to use their spiritual gifts to try to compensate for your loss.

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You ever think about that, believer? If your church isn't doing well, it might be because you and I are not using our gifts in the body the way we're supposed to.

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Well, then let's get on that and start serving our local body. But this first sentence, I think, doesn't have so much of the controversy.

27:04

It is the Holy Spirit who gives these gifts. The Holy Spirit glorifies neither

27:10

Himself nor His gifts by the display of them. Let me be really clear with this.

27:17

Jim, we were talking earlier, I think even in last episode, where we talked about experiences, right?

27:24

And this is really the big thing that we see. Like you were saying, do you judge your gift by your experience?

27:29

Did I have it? Did I rate your experience? We have experiences. And one of the things that we end up seeing is that sometimes the confusion is delineating between what the

27:40

Bible says and what we experience. And what we see in a lot of the behavior is people that just in a very outward way want to display, look at me, look at the gifts that I have.

27:54

Okay, look, I speak in tongues. Oh, you speak in tongues? Well, I get a word from the Lord. Oh, you get a word from the

27:59

Lord? I can heal. Now, if you've been in charismatic circles as I have, you've seen that behavior.

28:06

It's like a one -upsmanship a lot of times. And it gets more and more chaotic and crazy where you get barking like dogs and holy vomiting, holy laughter.

28:15

It's a circus of ridiculous. And there's only one area

28:20

I could see where Scripture would say something about that. And it's with the Pharisees that wanted their giving to be seen.

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So what did they do? Let's toot a horn. So everyone sees, look, I'm giving. Everyone see this, I'm giving. I'm going to put lots of coins in.

28:31

So you'll hear the clanging, right? God condemns that such behavior. Yeah, and that happens in charismatic circles because of the nature of their claims.

28:43

They have got to constantly be pushing the envelope. And so one person comes out and says they have a vision of heaven.

28:49

And the other person comes out and says heaven came down to them. Another person comes out and says, well, no, I actually went to heaven. And the next person has to go to heaven once a month.

28:56

And the next person, I go there every day. I go there four times a day. I go there and have dinner four times, five times a day.

29:01

And everybody has to keep pushing the envelope to show how spiritual they are. Because the measure of their spirituality, the measure of their walk with God is the degree to which the way in which they have these supernatural and spectacular experiences.

29:16

So if you really want to show yourself to be spiritual, then you've got to have the right spiritual gift, the right spiritual experience.

29:21

And so everyone is always trying to one up the next one and get a little edge on them because you've got to be hip.

29:27

You've got to be current. You've got to be relevant in the charismatic movement. So everybody has to always be pushing the envelope with these experiences and coming up with the latest and the greatest and the most supernatural and expressions of their giftedness and their experiences.

29:41

Because if you don't, you'll soon be left behind and then nobody's going to give to your ministry. Left behind in a different way than the book series.

29:46

But, you know, this is the thing. Let me agree with the charismatics in something.

29:53

I remember, I think it was Charismatic Magazine that wrote an article against fundamentalist churches that would use the worship music produced by charismatics.

30:03

Now, in case you're wondering, about 85 % of all worship music is created by charismatics for charismatics.

30:10

And so you have these non -charismatic churches singing songs that are all geared toward experience.

30:15

And Charismatic Magazine had it right. They're like, look, we're consistent. We're writing songs all about experience for a worship service that we have that's all focused on the experience.

30:26

And you fundamentalists who disagree with our experience worship, and then you sing the songs that are written for that very purpose.

30:35

And you know what? They were right. It really is. And there is a difference between what we experience and what's theologically true.

30:42

And we can't let our experience, no matter how ostentatious it is, to let that be the thing that it's like, well, look, look at this gift.

30:52

Everyone look at me. There is nowhere in Scripture where God says we should have the focus on self.

30:59

Now, some will turn—1 Corinthians 12, 13, 14—when it speaks about tongues, there is this part where people will say, but look, you know, this edifies myself.

31:09

And so what they take that to mean is, well, I should be having these gifts. I could speak in tongues, and I can do this to edify self.

31:16

And so what people will do is say, well, this is my prayer language. This edifies myself. But when you look at that in context, and you look in the context of the entire

31:24

Bible, the Bible always condemns the edification of self. And it's sarcastic.

31:30

It's sarcastic in that passage. Paul is criticizing them and saying, you're just edifying yourself. And Charismatics today said, oh, that's right.

31:37

Yeah, we're edifying ourself. It wasn't a compliment. No, it was condemning. My thing, when I was involved in the

31:43

Charismatic Church, I was at a Bible study, and two people—I wasn't even sitting—it wasn't really part of the conversation.

31:50

I was just sitting at the table. They were at the other end of the table talking, and one person said, do you believe all the gifts continue for today?

31:56

And this other person said, no, I believe that certain gifts cease, like tongues and healings. And I had never heard that before, because when

32:03

I became a Christian, the only thing I knew was the Charismatic movement and Word of Faith movement. And I went, what?

32:09

And I remember going home, and I sat down, reading 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14, and one sitting in context, just reading it straight through, without the preconceived ideas that I had been told about gifts.

32:22

And all of a sudden, I realized most of what Paul is doing there is condemning the very behavior that people do today, right?

32:28

They want to be seen. They want everyone to notice what gifts they have. They want everyone focused on one gift, and it's an outward gift that can't be proven.

32:35

I mean, can you prove if someone speaks in tongues? Well, not if you're going to say it's some angelic language. We'll get to that. But what really is it?

32:43

You know, if you're just doing a gibberish, it's like, well, yeah, I got that gift. You know, a lot of this becomes something that you can't prove.

32:49

Now, when we're in the Word of Faith movement, where they believe they have prophecies, it's kind of strange that they say that they're only about—and this is them saying it—that they're only about 80 -85 % accurate.

33:00

Well, then that's not a prophecy from Scripture, because you have to be 100 % accurate, right? Otherwise, that's the sign it's not of God.

33:07

You can't be 80 -85 % accurate. And so let's just get this out, and Justin Peters has a great video on this where he goes through all the prophets of today claiming that Trump was going to be president a second term.

33:22

Not just a second term, second consecutive term. There wasn't a single one of these

33:28

Word of Faith prophets, New Apostolic Reformation prophets, that got that right. All of them got that wrong.

33:34

All of them should be stoned if we're under the Old Testament. But if you listened to last week's episode, you know we're not.

33:40

Things are different in the Church. And so we don't stone them, but we would realize they're not a prophet from God. So it shouldn't be—the gifts are not given to glorify the

33:50

Holy Spirit, nor the gift itself. Okay? It is for the purpose of glorifying

33:58

Christ in implementing his work of redeeming the lost and building up the believers in the faith.

34:07

Okay? That's the goal of it. It is for the Church. And so as I read that last part of that sentence in our doctrinal statement, this puts those extreme.

34:15

This is what we'd have against so much of what goes on in the Charismatic Church. Now, let me differentiate, because you can have churches like Calvary Chapels.

34:24

You don't see—in most Calvary Chapels, you're not going to see them speaking in tongues and doing all the crazy nonsense, although many of them will still believe that those gifts continue.

34:33

They just don't use it in Church, and there I would see a different problem. You're not going to see them trying to glorify self and doing the one -upsmanship, but if they believe that those spiritual gifts continue, then they should be using it in Church, because that's what it's meant for.

34:48

That's the purpose of it. And so when they're not doing that, I think then the body would be hurt if those gifts were meant for that.

34:56

And what we're going to see is that the churches that are doing that, they're mostly doing it for glorification of self, and that's condemned in Scripture.

35:06

Let's read the next paragraph and get into some of these that we are going to see. So, God the

35:11

Holy Spirit is sovereign in bestowing of all his gifts for the perfecting of the saints today.

35:18

So, right there, what we're saying is, as I've said throughout, what the purpose of gifts are for. It's for the perfecting of us, our sanctification, and it's the sanctification of each other.

35:28

So, we're being sanctified as we help use our gifts for other people in the

35:33

Church. That helps to sanctify us as well, and it also helps to sanctify them.

35:38

But where's the focus of the gift? It's always on others, never on self. And so we say here, speaking in tongues and the working of sign miracles in the beginning days of the

35:50

Church were for the purpose of pointing to the authenticity of the apostles as revealers of divine truth and were never intended to be the characteristic of the lives of believers.

36:05

So, now what we're saying is these specific gifts that we're talking about that we say cease. Now, there's a lot of gifts in Scripture.

36:11

There's the gift of administration, the gift of giving. By the way, gift of giving is not just money, it's also your time, your resources.

36:17

The gift of mercy, gift of exhortation, the gift of helps or service, working behind the scenes, the gift of teaching.

36:25

There's all these different gifts we see, and there's some that are sign gifts, and we're mentioning things like tongues and working of miracles.

36:32

Now, I will say this. There's only one passage that says that certain gifts will cease, and that is 1

36:37

Corinthians chapter 13, verse 8. Okay, so it says, love never fails, but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away.

36:49

If there is a gift of tongues, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will be done away with. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.

37:00

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child.

37:05

When I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

37:14

Now in part, but then I will know as just as I'm fully known. But now faith, hope, and love abide in these three, but the greatest of these is love.

37:23

So, in that passage, I'm going to give a high level overview, and if you search the

37:29

Christian podcast community, I've actually done some separate episodes where I focus in and go through all this, and they'll be available in the papers that I link in the show notes.

37:38

What I believe is, as you look at this, the context of all this is revelation. So, that's first thing.

37:44

It is speaking about gifts, and the gifts that are in part are being used for revelation.

37:50

So, gifts of prophecy, right? It says they'll be done away. Now, there's an interesting thing here is the prophecy will be done away, the knowledge will be done away.

37:59

That's different wording in the Greek than the tongues, which will cease. The tongues cease on their own, and so what

38:05

I think you have here is prophecy and knowledge, which would be used in the writing of Scripture. Once the

38:10

Scripture is written, they cease because something causes them to stop, and so the way it is in the

38:17

Greek that something will cause that to stop, where the tongues kind of cease on their own. Well, that would make sense.

38:23

If someone has the gift of languages, and they can speak a different language, they have that gift until they die.

38:29

When God stops giving those gifts, those things die out. Now, there is one thing that some people will say.

38:36

They will look at 1 Corinthians 1, verse 7, and in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 7, it says,

38:50

So, the word gift there is karamismatos, which is where we get charismatic from, and so the argument here is that the

38:58

Church won't be lacking any of the charismatic gifts until the Lord returns.

39:04

The issue with that, when you look at that, is the question has to be asked, what does the word lack mean?

39:10

The lack means there's a need. You're lacking something that's necessary, but if there's no need for something, then there's no lack for it.

39:19

So, there is no lacking of the gifts of Revelation. Why? Because we have the completed canon.

39:25

There's no need for it. We have everything we need. Without a lack there, that's not the gifts that we're lacking.

39:32

So, it doesn't mean that all gifts continue. It means that the gifts that continue are ones that we have a need for in the

39:38

Church. Now, I hope that right off the bat is helpful. So, I'm going to say that when we look at the perfect, the word perfect is teleos in Greek.

39:48

It is the term that means something that's complete or mature or perfect. It's like a jigsaw puzzle.

39:54

Until you put that last piece in, it's not perfect. It doesn't mean someone who's perfect. Now, some things that stumble people is the phrase perfect.

40:03

It's translated as perfect, and people will look at that and say, well, it must mean something that is perfect, only perfect, so it can only be

40:09

Christ. That's not the way the word is used everywhere else. It's the idea of something that's partial to completion, which, if you end up looking throughout the context here, that's the exact context.

40:20

We know in part, we prophesy in part. But when the perfect comes, partial is done away.

40:26

What does that mean? It comes to maturity, completion. And then what do you have? You have three illustrations.

40:32

A child who knows in part to an adult that knows to put away childish things.

40:38

Someone who knows who's complete. You're looking in a mirror dimly versus looking face -to -face. Now, people look at the face -to -face, and they take this literal and say, oh, it has to be when we see

40:47

Christ face -to -face. That's only because the mirrors we have today are not the mirrors that they had in the first century.

40:53

And in the first century, mirrors, you looked at dimly. It'd be like taking a spoon and looking, polishing it up, and that's a polished metal as compared to looking face -to -face.

41:03

It's the idea of something that you can vaguely see versus seeing completely. Again, it's an illustration of partial to completion.

41:10

Knowing in part versus fully knowing. It doesn't mean when we get to be within heaven and see Christ that we fully know something.

41:17

These are illustrations of the point. And if we see that, then it fits the context very well.

41:22

When the canon is completed, all these gifts that are for the purpose of the canon, they go away.

41:28

Why? Because the completion is here. The things that were partial are no longer needed because it's now complete.

41:34

And so I would say once the canon was completed, we no longer needed these gifts, and these gifts stopped.

41:40

Some of the other gifts that aren't mentioned would be things like the gift of healing. Though it's not mentioned, I would say it's not mentioned because it is not a gift that is for the purpose of Scripture, of revelation.

41:52

It was a gift to vindicate those that wrote Scripture or those that proclaimed Scripture in a period of people didn't know that Scripture was being rewritten.

42:02

One thing that I'll say is there's three times in history that we have miracles sort of normative.

42:09

And there's something unique about those three times. It was after a period of silence. You have Moses, first time where Scripture is being written, and all of a sudden you have miracles he's doing, a period of silence.

42:19

Then you have Elijah and Elisha come on the scene. They're doing miracles because the Scripture after a period of silence is being written.

42:25

Then silence. And then all of a sudden Jesus comes on the scene, and the authors of the New Testament are going to write, and there's miracles.

42:32

Why? Because it vindicates the writing of new Scripture. Your thoughts, Jim? Yeah, you made an important distinction there.

42:39

Earlier you said that there's no need for revelatory gifts because we have revelation completed.

42:45

Then you mentioned the gift of healing, and it could be argued that, well, we still need healing today, and so therefore the gift of healing should continue today.

42:52

But that would be the weak link in the argument of the gifts are there to fill a necessity.

42:59

We would say that the gift of healing, the necessity that is being filled there, is the authenticating work of that is what the gift of healing does.

43:07

It doesn't just provide physical healing, but that that gift of healing actually serves the purpose of authenticating the messenger itself.

43:15

So that is one of the needs that the gift of healing provides. Correct, and that's an important distinction because people that say, well, we have the gift of healing today, my answer is always the same.

43:24

Why is there a hospital that's not empty by you? Because if you have that gift of healing, you can go to the hospital and heal everybody.

43:32

So either you don't love your neighbor—a verse we've heard a lot lately—either you don't love your neighbor or you don't have that gift.

43:42

So one of the things that we end up seeing with this is when we look at the gifts, the gifts serve a purpose.

43:48

Now, the non -signed gifts serve the purpose of the Church, of edifying and building up the Church. The signed gifts had a purpose of either pointing to or vindicating the scriptures, the new writing of scripture.

44:02

How can you prove somebody, when you say, thus says the Lord, how can you prove thus says the

44:08

Lord? When it's something new being written down and being said. They have miracles that accompany it.

44:14

Now, people say, well, we have people that need to say it today. No, we don't, because we have all we need in the scripture.

44:20

Yeah, and Jesus himself made that connection between the works that he did and the words that he spoke in John chapter 5.

44:26

He said, if you don't believe me, believe the works that I do. They bear witness of me. So Jesus was claiming to speak for God.

44:32

He was claiming to be God and to be the vehicle of divine revelation. And in claiming to speak for God, Jesus pointed to the works as the evidence that he did speak for God.

44:41

So therefore, when the apostles did the miraculous works, it was evidence of the fact that they spoke for Jesus.

44:47

They were instruments, vehicles of divine revelation, because the signs of the apostles were wrought by them.

44:53

And therefore, they had authority as vehicles of divine revelation. You know, one of the things, so we can look biblically as we have, but, you know,

45:00

Jim, there's another aspect to bring out. And I brought this up earlier as historically, you know, after the first century, you do not see gifts such as tongues being normative in Christian circles until 1905.

45:12

Now, you're going to see pockets where there's some people that claimed they had the gift of tongues, but it wasn't universally accepted.

45:20

It was pockets of people. And so— Most of them, cults. Most of them, cults or religious sects, quasi -religious sects.

45:27

Well, I'm saying within Christian circles, but you're right. I mean, you have the occult has always believed in that practice.

45:33

You know— Montanists in the early church. Yeah. I mean, you have Mormons, you know, you have one of the things that Justin usually does in his seminars, he will actually bring out in the

45:43

Clouds Without Water seminar that Justin Peters does, he will often talk about these different things.

45:49

Speaking in tongues, the shaking, and all these different things and say, what group am I speaking about?

45:54

And people always say charismatics. And he'll say, no, Kudalini Hindus. Yeah.

46:00

Because they've been doing it for years, right? And so my question becomes, if tongues is the sign that someone's baptized with the

46:09

Holy Spirit, how can the Mormons be doing it? How could the Kudalinis be doing it? How could the occult be doing it?

46:16

And it's the same gibberish language that they all have. When in the first century, what you saw was the languages, and they were named.

46:23

I mean, go read Acts, Acts chapter 2. We have the name of the exact languages. Now, many people will say, but you don't understand,

46:30

I speak in an angelic language. Now, I do love, I admit, one of the things that in Justin's seminar,

46:36

I love when he does this. His humor comes out where he plays the clips of, I forget who it is,

46:42

Copeland or one of these guys that says, well, the reason that we speak in tongues is so that Satan won't know what we're saying.

46:49

So God gives us a language. When they speak this gibberish language, you know who's the only one that doesn't understand?

46:55

It's themselves, right? I mean, but I love how Justin does it. Justin goes, let me get this straight. Satan is what?

47:02

An angel. So you're saying that you're going to speak in an angelic language so an angel doesn't know it.

47:07

Like, does that make sense? But the reference to an angelic language is in 1

47:13

Corinthians chapter 13, verse 1. And so let's do a little digging of interpretation and look at something called context for a bit and see what we see.

47:24

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love,

47:30

I have become a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. So the focus of this is love. And that's the whole focus of chapter 12, that we should be showing love.

47:39

Now, love, what love does is not say, hey, look at my gifts. Look at me, look at me, look at me. Love is caring about others.

47:46

And the whole thing of 1 Corinthians chapter 12 is all focused on that love is the primary gift.

47:53

We shouldn't be looking at having more gifts than others or things like that. So he's trying to focus in on love and this whole chapter known as the love chapter, right?

48:02

Because love is the more important gift. And he's trying to say, if I speak of the tongues of or the languages of men and of angels, but have not love, what's the contrast?

48:12

It's the speaking of tongues versus love. If you don't have the love, then you're just making noise. That's his emphasis there.

48:19

But people say, but see, this says that angels have a language and I speak the angelic language. I always find it funny that everybody speaks an angelic language.

48:26

I've not met a single charismatic that I have met. I always ask them, what language do you speak?

48:32

It's always angelic. Was this meant to be literal? Was the tongues of angels, the language of angels meant to be literal?

48:40

No, it's sarcasm. Why wait a minute, Andrew? How could you say such a thing like that? Because I read verse two.

48:48

If this is meant to be literal, then so is verse two. What does verse two say?

48:53

If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so to remove mountains, but have not love,

49:05

I'm nothing. Now, Jim, let me ask you, if you knew all mysteries and all knowledge and have all faith, what would we call you?

49:15

Perfect. Well, what being has all knowledge? God. Omniscient God.

49:21

You'd call me God. Exactly. So there's only one being, right, that is all -knowing.

49:28

So if this is to be taken literally, then they must also say that those who have the gift of prophecy are also omniscient and know all mysteries, all knowledge, and have all faith, which

49:39

I do kind of wonder because if they have that all, there's a guy, Todd White, who claims he has the power to heal others, but he went in the hospital for heart surgery recently, and they put a stint in, and he was having to explain that.

49:51

Why didn't he? Physician, heal thyself! You have all faith! Right? No. We realize in verse two that there's a comparison being made here, the comparison of prophecy to love, just like tongues to love.

50:04

Why? Because these were the two gifts being abused in the first century in Corinth, just like they're abused in the

50:10

Charismatic Church today, where people claim they have these gifts, and you can't— you know, how do you really prove it out?

50:17

It's, well, it's from the Lord. It's from the Lord. I speak the language of angels. Well, okay, do you prophesy with all mystery, have all knowledge, and all faith?

50:25

No, that's sarcasm. He's exaggerating to the extreme. If you speak of the tongues of men, even you speak the tongues of angels, you know the languages even of angels, but you have not love, then you're nothing.

50:40

So he's going above and beyond. It's not just that you speak the man -made languages, man -known languages.

50:45

You speak the languages even of angels, but you don't have love. You're nothing. If you have prophecy, you have that gift of prophecy to know the unknown, to the point you know all, you have all mysteries.

50:57

You know all knowledge. You have all faith. So you can move mountains, but have not love.

51:03

You're nothing. The whole comparison is it's an exaggeration. You don't just prophesy, you have omniscience.

51:10

If you have omniscience, but you have not love, you're nothing. So the focus here is not that there is an angelic language.

51:16

The focus here is on the fact that he's exaggerating to make his point.

51:22

Not just that people have the gift of tongues and prophecy, but if you have it beyond anyone else, but you have not love, you're nothing, you're useless.

51:32

What's the emphasis? The emphasis is the love. The whole emphasis here is on love, not the tongues and not the prophecy.

51:42

And this is the problem that I do see within charismatic circles, because they overemphasize on the gifts of tongues and prophecy, and some on healing.

51:50

Now, I think the reason that many don't focus on the healing as much is because healing can be proven, and we're not talking about Todd White's leg length anything.

51:57

Go watch American Gospel and you'll see that's just a trick. You know, we're talking real healings. Blind men seeing, not where they have like 90 % blindness and now they can see a little better.

52:07

No, it would always be a complete and immediate healing. And that's, we do not see that. And yes, yes,

52:13

I know, I know. There's the story of the guy in Africa, but you know what there never is around that?

52:19

I have a friend of mine that always say, you know what the problem is with the story of the guy in Africa? There was no video camera. That's what's missing.

52:27

And they're ubiquitous. Yeah. The easiest thing in the world to get a video recording of something like that. Yeah. And so we're saying this to say that, yes,

52:34

I believe certain gifts, certain signed gifts have ceased. And we at Striving Fraternity believe that.

52:40

Are we saying that people that believe that gifts continue are not brothers in Christ? No. Some of my best friends believe in, that the

52:47

Arismac gifts continue. They're not the wackadoos. You know, they believe they could continue. They just, they don't practice them, but they don't see that God explicitly said that they would stop and they think that they've continued.

53:00

That's a position. Yeah. One part of that goes with that is they will also say, you know,

53:06

I believe that these gifts can be given. I believe that they're still functional and operational. I just have never personally seen that gift function in its biblical way.

53:14

And I think one of the strongest arguments, I think that's actually an argument for the cessationist position, because I would say, well, what other gift would you say that about?

53:21

Would you say that you think the gift of administration, the gift of teaching, the gift of preaching, the gift of exhortation and encouragement, the gift of faith, the gift of giving, that all these other gifts are also still operative today, but you've never actually seen them in any church you've been into?

53:35

So the person who says, I think the gift of tongues is still operative today. I've just have never seen the gift of tongues used. If you can't, would you say that would get any other gift?

53:42

And if not, then maybe that's evidence that that gift is not operating today, because you wouldn't say that you've never seen any other of the other gifts still operating in church.

53:50

Where would we expect to see those gifts? In the church. In the local church. And, you know, what some have said, like some that say, the gifts could continue today, even when they don't see it in their church, they say, well, but in the church universal, they're in the church universal.

54:06

So God gives them to where they're needed in the church universal. But God gives the gifts for the local church.

54:12

Why don't we see them being used? Interesting that there is nobody in any local church that you've been in, and you can't point to any local church where you think that these gifts are actually functioning legitimately.

54:22

Right? So it's like, I still believe they're given, they're just out there somewhere. I can't actually name anybody who uses it, right?

54:28

I can't actually, I don't actually have an example of ever happening correctly, but I still believe the gifts are given.

54:34

Well, I think that's actually an argument for cessationism. Well, I believe that there's aliens from other planets.

54:39

I just, I haven't seen them and I can't prove they exist. There's no evidence of them, but they could be out there.

54:45

Don't get upset when I make that argument, but that is the argument. It's an argument from silence. It's an argument from what we do not see.

54:52

But I do believe the scripture is clear. I believe, I'm saying that I believe that the scripture is clear.

54:57

Once the canon was complete, these gifts were not needed anymore. We can look at all the other gifts and multiply examples of people that we know that possess those gifts.

55:06

I can name dozens of people that I, in my church and in other churches, I can name dozens and dozens of people that I know personally, who have the gift of teaching, or the gift of encouragement, or the gift of helps.

55:18

It's easy for me to name those people. And yet people who believe that God still gives the gift of tongues, the gift of healing, the gift of interpretation, tongue to get to prophecy.

55:25

They would be hard pressed to find somebody that they could name that has those, except the charismatic force.

55:30

They can name hundreds of people that they think have those gifts. But we're talking about people who would be in our camp that would reject those extremes.

55:37

And yes, say, but they don't want to quite become a cessationist. Correct. And so then you'd have to say, but you don't say that about any other gift.

55:44

If those gifts are given because they're needed in the church, then how is it that my church doesn't need that gift? My church needs every other gift.

55:51

You know, Andrew's church needs every other gift, but it doesn't need that gift. So if my church doesn't need it,

55:57

Andrew's church doesn't need it, Justin's church doesn't need it, MacArthur's church doesn't need it, then aren't you just arguing that those gifts are no longer given?

56:04

Yeah, and the argument for this would be called open but cautious. And I think it was Piper that made that popular.

56:10

And that's the thing. They're open to the gifts continuing. They're just cautious about it. But they don't say it. Turns out

56:15

Piper wasn't all that cautious about Todd Bentley or any of the wackadoodles that use those gifts. He's not cautious at all.

56:21

Yeah, no, he's fully embracing them, unfortunately. So folks, like I said, if you agree or disagree, let us know, info at strivingforeternity .org.

56:30

Just send us an email. If you want to discuss it in length, if you say, hey, Andrew, I disagree. I read the papers have tongues ceased.

56:37

I've read the paper, the biblical view of tongues that are on Striving for Eternity's website. I disagree with them.

56:43

I want to discuss it with you. We'll schedule a time that you come on Thursday night to Apologetics Live, 8 to 10

56:48

Eastern Time, and we'll have a discussion. And you'll be given time to explain your view.

56:54

I'll be given time to explain my view and we'll interact about it. I'm not afraid to get into the discussion. I don't say

57:00

I'm perfect. There's areas I'll be wrong in my theology, but I'm going to look at the scriptures and say, what do

57:06

I believe the scriptures consistently teach? And that's how I come to these things. So the next episode we have in this series will deal with the topic of angels.

57:17

And angels are more than you might think because there's not a whole lot. We don't have as much in scripture on angels, but we get into lots of discussions.

57:24

Holy angels, fallen angels, what about Satan? So we'll be discussing those on the next episode in this series.

57:33

So I hope you tune in for that. So you know what, Jim? What's that?

57:38

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