Saul And The Charismatics...

http://billrandles.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/saul-and-the-charismatics/ ^ | 02-14-12 | Bill Randles

[Quix]

Your post made it sound like tongues etc.

was unique in all Christendom on such scores.

It’s not.

It’s just the easiest target to rant about.

[Quix]

Would you also agree that God has each of us at different levels of growth and understanding and that excoriating of belittling others who see differently makes you a respecter of person's who is making value judgements about others based on outward appearances instead of the heart as God sees?

And that individual believers answer to God and God alone for their walk with HIM, as in Romans 14? Or that the person being excoriated may not be READY to hear what they are being shredded for or have the maturity to handle that kind of unChristlike criticism properly?

Ohhhhhhhhh perhaps like the tongues speakers and other Pentecostals y'all's hostilities are so fiercely directed at?

What a classic double standard!

[Quix]

IF y'all cannot detect vigorous classic rock throwing in the bulk of the posts on this thread on y'all's side, then I'm aghast and the poor level of reality testing involved.

If y'all can't conceive that satan and his legions of demons are NOT involved in convincing folks that Holy Spirit took a vacation at the end of Revelation . . . then I have no idea what you think he and his fallen angels and demons do 24/7.

Sit around playing hearts?

When St Paul talks quite plainly in I Cor 14 about PRAYING IN TONGUES . . . that his intellect doesn't understand and God only understands . . . and y'all refuse to realize that denying Paul's statements on such scores as even being there where they plainly are . . . how else can an observant person label such a position than

UNBIBLICAL?

[presently no screen name]

You are a fine one to talk about foolishness, caww. Your post to me showed a lack of comprehension - and your silly comment about the hospitals, etc.

It was indeed laughable!! While you thought it was serious.

Thanks, Quix. Some think McArthur has the answers and not God’s Word. Yep, that’s laughable to me, also. McArthur may have the ‘letter’ but not the ‘Spirit of The Word’.

[Religion Moderator]

Do not make this thread "about" individual Freepers. That is also a form of "making it personal."

Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.

[presently no screen name]

I suggest you don’t respond to a certain poster - too thin skinned.

[presently no screen name]

OK. Best I ignore certain posters. Thanks.

[metmom]

Some of us look at afflictions and infirmities as the refiner’s fire.

There are lessons learned through affliction which I cannot imagine can be learned any other way.

The problem with the name it and claim it theology that everyone should be prosperous and healthy, simply does not fit with us learning to depend on God for everything.

Pentecostals for the most part see affliction as something to be delivered from, not something to overcome. Expecting health and wealth as our *right* is nothing more than entitlement mentality which has crept into and corrupted the church, the thinking being that since we are God’s children, we have the RIGHT to claim (demand) deliverance from anything unpleasant or uncomfortable.

Coming face to face with my own mortality when it really sank in to me what I was facing without divine intervention as this condition progressed and worsened was an experience almost as life changing as my salvation.

It had a way of resetting my priorities and stripping away the hold the world has on my heart and soul, as all the bobbles and trinkets which Satan dangles in front of us to distract us from our walk with God are shown to be the meaningless junk they are.

I see this entire journey with this condition bringing me to a place of being filled with the Spirit that was so life changing that I’d rather live with this condition if it helps keep me this focused on God than without it and drift from Him. There have actually been times where in this new walk with God and closeness of the Spirit that I don’t care if I ever get healed from this as long as I can remain in this level of fellowship with God.

I thought this condition was very limiting and I resented not being able to do stuff, but this past summer, I drove cross country with my daughter and overcame that. It would not beat me and hold me hostage because I am free in Christ. It will NOT stop me from living my life.

In this world we will have tribulation but Jesus has overcome the world. And I can overcome in the midst of affliction which I could not do if I were delivered from it.

I would still like to be healed from it but no longer petulantly demand it and will continue to let His grace be sufficient so that He is glorified by being strong in my weakness.

[grey_whiskers]

Also see John 9:2-3.

[presently no screen name]

Don’t you know - the ‘gift’ shop was closed way back then because of the Jews lack of interest./s

[Quix]

I’d thought my responses were pretty kosher.

Guess it’s harder to be strictly kosher and respond meaningfully than I’d thought. Sigh.

Thx for your exhortations.

[Quix]

I see this entire journey with this condition bringing me to a place of being filled with the Spirit that was so life changing that I’d rather live with this condition if it helps keep me this focused on God than without it and drift from Him. There have actually been times where in this new walk with God and closeness of the Spirit that I don’t care if I ever get healed from this as long as I can remain in this level of fellowship with God.

---

PRAISE THE LORD! YEA.

[Quix]

LOL.

Sigh.

[metmom]

You are a fine one to talk about foolishness, caww. Your post to me showed a lack of comprehension - and your silly comment about the hospitals, etc.

What's silly about it?

In the book of Acts, the signs and wonders were for validating the message to unbelievers or showing the apostles that salvation was for the Samaritans, Gentiles, or any other group the Jews had initially excluded.

So, what's the issue over people going into hospitals to do the healings of those who are on their deathbeds, where they can be verified medically? What better testimony of the power of God to unbelievers to bring them to Him?

Jesus said, freely you have received, freely give.

So the faith healers who live high on the hog on the donations of their followers are no different than the the pope for how he lives.

Freely receive = freely give = going about doing good just as Jesus did, not expecting any recompense or attention. Let them go to hospitals and prove their gifting.

[grey_whiskers]

Easier way to say it is just read 1 Corinthians 13.

[grey_whiskers]

That is where I see the MAJOR problem in the Pentecostal movement, the huge emphasis on tongues, the least of the gifts, and its misapplication and use.

It's not like anyone's simply repeating the mistakes of the church in Corinth or anything, is it?

[caww]

In reference to Mark 16:17-18,.....“these signs shall follow them that believe”?

These signs were ....’fulfilled by the apostles ....’and it was ....’to the Apostles’.... that the Lord gave special gifts.......(2 Cor. 12:12; Acts 2:43; 4:33; 5:12, 15; 19:12)

- The Apostles cast out devils...(Acts 2: 1-4)

- The Apostles spoke in new tongues, the languages of the hearer.... (Acts 2:1-4)

- The Apostles laid hands on the sick and they recovered....without fail!..... (Acts 3:6-8; 9:40-41; 28:7-9)

Further, the gift of tongues was ‘a sign to the nation Israel’ that God was doing a new thing by extending the gospel to ALL people and creating His church composed of both Jews and Gentiles..... (1 Cor. 14:20-22; Isa. 28:11-13)

- It was a temporary sign..... (1 Cor. 13:8)

- It ceased when the nation Israel rejected it and was judged...... (Isa. 28:13)........(Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 A.D. and the Jews were scattered to the nations. )

- No one can do the specific apostolic signs today, and I believe those who claim to do them do not do in the manner that we see recorded in the book of acts because:

..... No ones raising the dead like Peter did in Acts 9.
..... No one is healing after the fashion of Acts 3:6-8.
......There are no “healing services” or “signs and wonders crusades” in the book of Acts.
......There were no spirit slayings or spiritual drunkenness.
...... The apostles did not have signs of healing such as fire or vibrations or electricity in their hands.
.......Not once did the apostles attempt to heal someone and fail.

The miracles recorded in the book of Acts are simply not being reproduced in churches today as was done by the Apostles.

However, though the apostolic sign gifts ceased the Lord has continued to do miraclulous things throughout the church age:

- He has saved countless souls from the power of Satan.

- He has supernaturally answered countless prayers.

- He has supernaturally supplied countless needs.

- He has given supernatural strength and encouragement and wisdom to countless men and women in every conceivable situation and difficulty.

- He has healed countless people in answer to prayer in accordance with James 5.

- He has miraculously established countless churches in the devil’s own territory!.......... and many other things!

Though I’m fully convinced of where I stand I do believe we are seeing and will see more of counterfeiting all these gifts...just as it was written would be and is today...but it will esculate and many will be deceived by those who teach and preach it.

[metmom]

Thank you!!!

John 9:1-7 As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

6 Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud 7 and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.

In order for that man to have been born blind and lived that long in that state, it had to have been God's will.

We also need to remember the story of Lazarus. He was sick and not only not healed but died.

And the lame beggar who was laid at the Temple who Peter encountered and healed in the name of Jesus. Chances are, Jesus walked by that guy plenty of times on the way to the Temple. Timothy was sickly, Paul had his thorn in the FLESH and as often as I hear healing preachers try to explain away that it wasn't a PHYSICAL affliction, they still have to get around the *in the FLESH * part.

Romans 8:35-39 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 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.

Who needs that exhortation if we can just demand what is our right and get what we want all the time?

Reality is, reality does not line up with present day Pentecostal/charismatic theology. They all sounds like Jobs "friends" to me.

[metmom]

Yeah, you’re right.

It’s all about love, which seems to be seriously lacking today.

[metmom]

God DOES sometimes heal and sometimes he does NOT heal and regardless of whether I am healed in this life or I must wait for my glorified, perfect body in heaven, I have learned to trust in God's grace to see me through. It is God who heals me spiritually and that is the more important.

Preach it, sister.