Paul James

Paul's instruction is to test all things and hold fast to that which is good. A good prophecy will point to Jesus who is all in all. A prophecy that points to me or anyone else other than Jesus is not good and therefore should be rejected as divination and not true prophecy. The Scripture says that it is the testimony of Jesus that is the spirit of prophecy. True prophecy that points to Jesus is in the spirit of the Bible, in that the whole Bible points to Jesus. He showed that to the two disciples at Emmaeus.

True prophecy should always be valued by us, because it exhorts, comforts, and builds us up in our most holy faith in Christ.

There are two categories: Either a prophet or a loss! Prophetic or pathetic!

I have never met a Pentecostal or Charismatic who believes in an open canon. All the ones I know and have ever known believe in a closed canon - that God has said all He has to say in the written Scriptures, and anyone who claims to have a "revelation" has to show that God has already said it somewhere in the Scriptures. Interestingly, John Calvin says that prophecy is the remarkable ability, God-given, to interpret Scripture to give special encouragement, exhortation, and comfort to other believers. Someone else said that revelatory prophecy is nothing more than an updating of what God has already said in Scripture, but specifically applied to a particular personal or corporate issue. These, to me, are more valid than someone coming out of left field with verbal garbage that has not relation to written Scripture at all. By the way, I heard that the Anglican church has canons. They must be the "big guns" of that church!

The issue is not the signs and wonders in themselves, but who is being glorified. The Scripture says that the Holy Spirit will always glorify Christ in what He does, including the signs and wonders. But if the signs and wonders draw people away from Christ to someone else, then we can safely assume that the signs and wonders do not originate with the Holy Spirit, but are activated by another spirit. We see a lot of this with the "big-name" ministries who claim signs and wonders in their services. Sick and disabled people flock to these services in their thousands in the hope of being healed, with the belief that if they are in the presence of the great evangelist (Benny Hinn is an example), they will be healed. What they are doing in effect is to replace Jesus with Benny Hinn. Jesus doesn't need a "big-name" healing evangelist to heal people, but He will use anyone who is bold and courageous enough to go in harm's way to preach the Gospel to the unsaved and needs the power of the Holy Spirit to back up his preaching. That's what happened during the ministries of Peter and Paul. Neither of these men used their own names to speak the word of faith to sick people and see the healed. They invoked the name of Jesus, because they knew that only He could achieve the desired outcome. Also, they used that Name only when they knew that the Holy Spirit was directing them, otherwise they would have been using the Name in vain. In effect, healing evangelists like Benny Hinn and people like him are not claiming healing in the name of Jesus. They are effectively doing it in their own name, and when they do use the name of Jesus it is nothing more than an incantation, taking His name in vain. If we take the false prophets of the Old Testament as our example, we will see that they used their dreams and imaginations to encourage people to sin and follow the idols of the pagans around them, or if the people were already following idols, they prophesied that God would bless them anyway and bring them peace, but the true prophets of God clearly informed the people that they were being unfaithful to God and to forsake their idols with their associated sins, and return to the one, true living God. As the true prophets of God were rejected, persecuted and killed, so we see in our day, those who stand up for Christ and His finished work on the Cross, are ridiculed, accused of having demons and thrown out of mega-church conferences conducted by the false ultra-charismatic "big-name" ministries of today. True signs and wonders will always support the Gospel of Christ, and be the means of showing the unsaved that Jesus is really alive today and that they should embrace Him as Saviour. False signs and wonders will always support a religious movement, a "big-name" personality or ministry and will draw people to that ministry instead of Christ. The clue to falsehood is people saying, "If I can only get to [insert the big-name healing evangelist here]'s meeting, I know I'll be healed". Why do multitudes of people flock to Lourdes? Is it so that Jesus will heal them? No. It is in the hope that the Virgin Mary will heal them, or even just the waters themselves.

Paul had to deal with believers in the Thessalonian church who were teaching that the resurrection had already come. So, already, even while Paul was still active in his ministry to the churches, there were professing Christian believers teaching all sorts of nonsense. These days, Cessationism, based on the definition of just one solitary word in 1 Corinthians 13 is a modern example of such nonsense.

Most reliable commentators state that tongues and prophecy will cease and vanish away when the church is resurrected and united with Christ in glory. The point of the passage is that love is permanent while Spiritual gifts are temporary. Paul is saying that love is the foundation for all service to and for God. Without it there is nothing. He says in verse 1 of 1 Corinthians 13 that even if he is the most eloquent speaker in heaven and earth, if he doesn't have the foundation of love, he is just a useless noise. He is alluding to the Corinthians being right up there with their spiritual gifts, but coming in behind with love. Use the spiritual gifts by all means, but ensure that they are used on the basis of loving God and the brothers and sisters in Christ.

In other words you can't find anywhere where God has given a word to say when tongues and prophecy are going to cease. And yet you have maintained that God's Word definitely says that tongues is not for today. But now it seems that having faced that there are no words from God on the issue, other than 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 which fully support the spiritual gifts are available for the church (including tongues), you are now accepting that tongues can be used in churches as long as there are interpreters. So, if that is so, have you the courage to stand up in your church and say that they should not forbid the speaking out of tongues along with interpretation if the Holy Spirit moved people that way? You are correct when you say that private tongues are private between the believer and God, and therefore way out of range of any criticism or inference that the tongues being spoken in private is any other than a language that God fully understands. I can fully understand that you or your church would not want to have the type of tongues observed through video clips taken from Bethel, Hillsong, Kenny Copeland meetings, or other environments where tongues is spoken publicly in an uncontrolled and uninterpreted manner. Tongues (or any other manifestation) plus no self-control equals falsehood, because self-control is an essential attribute of the leading of the Holy Spirit.

The issue is that God has not said at any time that tongues and prophecy will cease before the second coming of Christ. Cessationist doctrine is not Bible-based at all. It is a man-made doctrine based on the definition of a single word in 1 Corinthians 13:10, and to hide the fact that the church lost the gifts through apostacy and paganism, and because much of the modern church is riddled with it still, along with heresy in some ultra-Charismatic groups, it is no wonder that good people turn away from what they see as falsehood in these heresy-riddled groups.

Quoting 1 Corinthians 13:10 in context, verse 8 through verse 12, we get the true sense of what Paul is saying. Verses 8, 9, 11, and 12 speak about our state after we have left this world and we are having face to face fellowship with Christ. Yet cessationists extract verse 10 and make it say something totally different that has nothing to do with the context. If we are saying that the perfect which is to come is the completed canon of New Testament Scripture, then we need to go right back and analyse the whole passage on that basis. Verse 8 says that tongues, prophecy and knowledge shall cease and vanish away. But it doesn't say when in that verse. Verse 9 says we currently have partial knowledge and give partial prophecy. The inference is that because we now have the completed canon of Scripture, we have full and total knowledge about everything. Verse 11 says that we were once children, but when we grew up we put away childish things. If the canon of Scripture is the perfect, then we are now fully grown up mature Christian believers. Verse 12 says that now we have the canon of Scripture, we no longer see the things of God as in an imperfect mirror (the type of polished metal that existed in Paul's time), but we see Christ face to face and know Him as He knows us. So, on the basis of this, how does a cessationist who makes 1 Corinthians 13:10 the basis of his doctrine? For him all tongues, prophecy and knowledge has passed away. Therefore he never prays in tongues, never prophesies, and has no knowledge. And yet, he is saying at the same time that he no longer as partial knowledge, but full knowledge about everything to do with the things of God. One has to wonder how a person who believes that knowledge no longer exists, yet views himself as having full and total knowledge. He also views himself as a totally complete, fully formed, mature person, and having total knowledge along with it, doesn't need to be taught anything further concerning the things of God. In other words, he sees himself as above teaching, because he knows everything now. He is also in a position where his fellowship with Christ is now face to face and he now knows Christ as Christ knows him. In essence then, the cessationist is the super Christian who stands head and shoulders over everyone else in the common herd. Do you think there is something wrong with this picture?

The problem for cessationists is that they build their doctrine on 1 Corinthians 13:10 and define "perfect" as the perfect canon of Holy Scripture. That phrase is the only mention in the whole of the New Testament of the spiritual gifts ceasing, yet most reliable commentators interpret the verse as referring to the time when this imperfect world will pass away and the perfect New Jerusalem will appear. There is nothing in this world that is perfect because it is all blighted by sin. Even the canon of Scripture is not perfect, because it is a part of this imperfect world. This is not to say that the Word of God is not perfect, because the Scripture says that it is. But the written Scriptures contain everything that God has said to us, either for our education or for our direct instruction. But John says that the true Word of God is Christ Himself, and when He comes again, He will bring perfection with Him, but not until then. The problem is that cessationists don't want to acknowledge the modern use of the gift of tongues, because it is the ultimate in faith - to pray to a God we can't see in a language we have never learned. It doesn't go along with religious reasoning, and therefore, those with the religious spirit reject it, and use just one phrase of Scripture to try and prove it.

Seeing that 1 Corinthians 13:10 cannot prove that God's Word says that tongues and prophecy will not cease until Christ comes again and establishes His kingdom. Where else does God's Word say that tongues and prophecy will cease at the end of the Apostolic Age?

I told you that I would be prodding you - all in the interests of fair debate. I get my understanding of Scripture by just reading what is there. I look forward to having you explain how that people, including those in my own church were speaking what you call "gibberish" which was understood as praising God in a rural Ghanaian village dialect, and the New Zealand Maori language. And from another testimony of someone who spoke in tongues, and a person from a foreign country cried out, "That person told me all my sins!" Another person was speaking "gibberish" in an English church, and a Welsh native remarked how the person was praising God in perfect Welsh without an accent, and the speaker said, "All I was doing was praying in tongues" (gibberish as you call it). And the testimony of a Cantonese woman sitting in an evangelistic meeting, heard a non-Chinese person say in perfect Cantonese, "You need to go forward and receive Christ." Yet, the non-Chinese person was merely praying in "gibberish" as you call it. As I said before, you have one of two choices - admit that modern tongues is not "gibberish" as you suppose; or that all these people and those who were present during these events are lying. By the way, I wasn't being snarky at all. Just giving some facts about language comprehension. After all, I do have an M.A. in English, and a Diploma in English as a Second Language, so I know something about it. I don't need to pray for a voice in my head to tell me what I can quite easily comprehend from the actual text of 1 Corinthians 14. Actually, I did pray about it once, and the answer that came to me was< "I wrote a whole chapter on it, so all you have to do is just believe what it says, pay special attention to verse 2." Also, the Holy Spirit brought back to mind the actual events that happened to my close friend and me in our own church that the "gibberish" we spoke was praising God in actual understandable language. That was the icing on the cake for me and proved conclusively that what we were praying in tongues was true and right. No doubt about it. And it was while I was an elder in a non-Charismatic Presbyterian church at the time. This means that for the 40 years since I left the Charismatic movement, no one can say that I have been carried along by waves of ultra-Charismatic fervour, and yet I pray in tongues all the time and know that I am having great fellowship with God in the process.

You are welcome. If I am prodding you a bit I assure you that it is good natured and with total respect.

I just go on what Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 14. Verse 2 talks about personal prayer to God, not collective prayer in church. He is quite clear that when he speaks in tongues more than them all, it is obviously not in the church setting, but in his private devotions when he is alone with God. If Paul says that he would rather say things that are clearly understood when he is in church, then to say that he doesn't use tongues in private prayer is just plain silly. Where else would he pray to God outside of church? Also, he is supportive of all the Corinthians speaking in tongues; but where? It would be totally ridiculous to say that he would limit them to speaking in tongues just in church accompanied by an interpreter. He recommends just two or three use the ministry gift of tongues in church, not all of them. So if he is encouraging them all to speak in tongues, where would he be saying they should do it if not in church? Of course the only reasonable answer is - in their private devotions away from the church meeting. You know, some people leave their brains hanging on the door knob when they read the Bible sometimes. I think that anti-tongues is so ingrained in you, that you can read what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14, yet not accept what he actually says, and your overarching belief causes you to read things that Paul never wrote, and that logical comprehension of the chapter is ignored in favour of some wacky interpretation that says that Paul didn't really mean it when he clearly said that speaking in tongues without interpretation is for private devotions and not for public worship. It seems that there is one set of comprehension rules for ordinary folk, and quite another set for the type of religious folk who want the Bible to say what they want it to say. I taught elementary school comprehension for 10 years, and I am sure that the 10 year olds in my classes would have said quite clearly that Paul would have meant that when he spoke in tongues more than all of the Corinthians, he would have used it in private prayer. But then ordinary 10 year olds in an elementary school class are not so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly use.

All the time society is paganised and established order is turned upside down by the BLM movement, increase of Islam, school shootings, church buildings turned into furniture warehouses, banning prayer in schools, yet allowing the teaching of islam, and politicians declaring that "we are no longer a Christian society". That is the fruit of our modern-day chin-music based preaching of a gospel that is nothing like what the Apostles preached.

In the early church, the signs and wonders followed the preaching of the Gospel to prove that Jesus is alive and the Gospel is true. The outcome was that the Roman Empire was turned upside down and became Christianized. These days, the Gospel is being preached rarely in our Christian "clubs", and when it is preached all that is offered is words without the signs and wonders, and so less than 1 percent of those who hear the Gospel come to Christ, and instead of our communities become Christianized, they become more neo-pagan. Rejecting the signs and wonders as integral to the preaching of the Gospel is like taking the tools away from the mechanic and still expecting him to fix our motor vehicles. By their fruits we shall know them. The fruit of the early Church preaching of the Gospel was the Christianizing of society. The fruit coming out of our Christian "temples" and "clubs" is the paganizing of our society.

When I received Christ as Saviour in an AOG church in 1966, all I saw was a group of 400 people enjoying church, singing hymns with all their hearts, hearing preachers preach as if they were passionate and meant every word, and seeing numbers of people receiving Christ each Sunday night. Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Hillsong and Bethel were still over the horizon. I saw none of the compulsive, uncontrolled manifestations that have appeared in the last 40 years. I left the movement in the late 1970s, but kept in touch with friends in the movement. The Charismatic movement of the last 40 years is nothing like what I signed on for in 1966. What was viewed as the lunatic fringe in the 1960s and 1970s, evolved into the mainstream from the 1980s on. In the Pentecostal movement before the mid 1980s, the power of the Holy Spirit was in the region of healing and casting out of demons. We were told that just because one had a contrary mother-in-law it didn't mean that she was possessed with a demon! But from the 1980s onward, theories came out that every mental health issue was a demon, and that people were starting to see a demon under every bush. When the Prosperity and guaranteed healing movements, fronted by Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn, appeared, the emphasis changed into God giving people a better life in this world. Then we had Bethel with its "you are gods" doctrine, and gold dust from the ceiling, hypnotic suggestion with people falling backwards, shaking, jerking, and other uncontrolled behaviour. To be honest, if I was introduced to a church like that when I was first invited to a church, I would have run a mile! Even in the church I was invited to, I decided that if I heard one American voice, I would be out of there pronto! Instead, the guy who conducted the choruses at the beginning of the service had a broad Scottish accent, and that made me decide that this might be a good church after all, and not some church like the Mormon. I found that most of the Pentecostals I fellowshipped were solid, down to earth people. The pastor who trained me in the ministry of the Spirit was a retired dairy farmer. He was a man of prayer and of the Word, and he trained me the same way. He would not have had a bar of stuff like Bethel or Hillsong, and he would have viewed Kenneth Copeland as a total heretic. He had no time for the Oneness dribblers, and he told me that if I even fellowshipped with them, I could leave his church! People in other Pentecostals didn't like him because of his strictness, but he got results, and during his ministry to the indigenous Maori people, there were some notable healings under his ministry. In fact, he told the Lord that he didn't want to go and preach unless the Lord went with him to heal the sick, and God honoured him. Whenever someone started some unusual manifestations during any services or conferences he conducted, he would stop them, and if they couldn't stop, he would cast a demon out of them, and that stopped their crazy manifestation in its tracks! This coincided with my study of English Puritan writing - William Bridge, William Gurnall, Joseph Alleine, as well as John Calvin. They were known for their absolute strictness in terms of true conversion to Christ and holiness of living. My pastor's defining document outside of the Bible was Bishop Ryle's "Holiness". He believed that without holiness, the person had no qualifications for ministry in the Holy Spirit. So, I am what John MacArthur terms a "Reformed Charismatic". I hold to the Westminster Confession of Faith, coupled with the continuation of the spiritual gifts in the churches. I believe that the real power of God is in the preaching of the true Gospel of Christ - that He died on the cross for us and rose again to give us the promise that one day we will rise again the same way. I believe that the signs and wonders, ie: healing and casting out of demons, always accompany the preaching of the Gospel to the unsaved, and not for the self-indulgence of professing Christians. Therefore most of what modern "faith" healers in their large conferences say is the power of God is fake healings that don't happen, falling down backward under the "power" which is really from hypnotic suggestion (and we know where that comes from and it is not the Holy Spirit), and the deception that the shaking, jerking, rolling around the floor, uncontrolled babbling in tongues and hysterical laughter along with gold dust (glitter from the ventilation system) are the power of the Holy Spirit when these things are nothing of the sort!

Are all pastors, are all teachers, are all church elders, treasurers, property convenors, door greeters, evangelists? Do all have the ministry gifts of healing, miracles, interpretation of tongues, prophecy, discerning of Spirits, Word of Knowledge and Wisdom? If one is going to single out just one ministry gift that not everyone has, why not include them all? One not having a particular ministry doesn't mean that the ministry gift doesn't exist in today's churches. (this is not directed at you by the way. It is just for everyone's information). If someone is going to use the logic that because not all have the gift of tongues, no one has the gift, which the anti-tongues scribblers maintain, then they need to say that because not all are pastors, then the pastoral ministry no longer exists in the church, which is pretty ridiculous. The anti-tongues contingent are great at taking random verses out of context to prove their point, but really, all they achieve is to make themselves look ridiculous and incompetent at basic exegesis and hermeneutics.

The trouble is that the false manifestation of tongues has developed from the lunatic fringe of 40 years ago to the mainstream today. This has muddied the waters so much that many don't know what to believe about it and so keep clear of it, and consider that the chances of receiving a counterfeit outweighs the value to seeking God for the real gift.

No problem at all, because Paul has given pretty clear guidelines about how and when to pray in tongues. It is all there clearly written. It is just that there is a prejudice against the modern use of tongues because of the widespread public misuse of it in ultra-Charismatic conferences presided over by Bethel, Hillsong, the false prosperity and "faith" healing preachers. Jesus said that when we pray we should not do it on street corners (in public) as a display before men. That is what we are seeing in Youtube videos of meetings where here is widespread speaking in tongues with the overt display of spiritual worship. People will say, "What wonderful people they are who love God so much!" Jesus said that is all the reward they will get. Paul says that there is a gift of tongues in which a person prays to God, mysteries in the Spirit. The problem is, that 2000 years later, we can't ask the original early church Christians how they went about using the gift, and we don't have a "user manual" to guide us these days. All anyone can do is to seek the Lord and find out from Him whether the gift is appropriate for them, and then find out from the Lord how He wants them to receive and exercise it. What a person does in their private prayer time is of no business of anyone else. The fact is that the person who prays in tongues cannot prove beyond doubt that he is speaking a real language that God understands and appreciates. Conversely, someone prejudiced against praying in tongues cannot prove conclusively that he doesn't. Therefore, if I pray in tongues privately to the Lord, no one can tell me that I am not communicating with Him, because they don't know, and secondly, they have no business commenting on my private prayer life, in the same way that no one would have any business commenting on my private sex life with my wife. In either case, it would be highly inappropriate and intrusive commenting on things private and personal to myself. So, if you choose not to believe that New Testament tongues is not for Christians today, that is your privilege and you are free to teach that until hell freezes over, as long as you are not offended by those who choose to debate with you about it.

I totally agree. We stand on God's Word. But not on false doctrines that are not found in God's Word. If it ain't in the Bible, then it ain't true.

Those whose names are written in the Book of Lire are sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. The indwelling Holy Spirit is the actual seal of God. SDA teaching is that the seal of God is the observance of the Saturday Sabbath, but that is a speculation, and ignores the Scripture that says that the genuinely converted are sealed with the indwelling Holy Spirit. The mark of the beast is the indication of who people are really loyal to. When the Papal system reunites the churches and the political systems and becomes the whole world order, then those who subscribe to it will indicate the mark of the beast. The beast is the papal system. It first appeared as pagan Rome, and when Constantine merged the pagan with the Christian and then handed over power to the Pope, the beast re-emerged as the Holy Roman Empire. All the evidence of this is found in the prophecy of Daniel when you follow his prophecies through and compare them with history.

Read the Bible. If you want to hear God's voice out loud, read it out loud. God has said all He is going to say in the Biblical record. It's all there if you want to search for it. If you ignore His Bible, then you won't be hearing His voice any other way.

It is because He wants you to exercise faith in the promises in His Word rather than trusting your emotions. The presence of God is perceived through faith and not through feelings. You can have the strongest religious feelings in the world, but without faith it is impossible to please God.