Just Wondering

[Adifferenttruth]

Is it right to think that less and less Christians are now getting genuine gifts from God? I see fakers in the Christian community often and people who proclaim to have the gift of prophecy or the gift of insight into dreams. I have often tested people who say these things and they get so worked up about it, claiming I'M the sinner for questioning God when really I'm just merely trying to ascertain whether or not they are for real or attention seekers trying to scam good people. For example, a person came to my church to speak, he had spoken at a few other churches and claimed to be able to interpret dreams. I decided to test him by telling him a false dream. If he was truly an interpreter of dreams, he would know it to be fake as God wouldn't give him insight on something false, He would somehow let him know that I was deceiving him. His interpretation was over the top and very disturbing and he got really angry when I told him that the dream wasn't real. Another time, someone claiming to be speaking in tongues was shouting out some sort of gibberish, and I use this word because in the bible it clearly states that if one speaks in tongues they don't know what they say but there will be one in the congregation who does. So I stood up and asked if anyone could interpret. No one could, this person got angry again and screamed at me not to question God. I wasn't questioning God, just their validity. I don't think God would have someone speak in tongues only to have nobody understand what was said.

[Justin Adams]

It is a very telling question.

I think the Lord winked at us for a very long time. Now the thin end of the wedge is coming to bear on the church. What He let us get by with in the past is becoming more in line with His Truth now.

Too many fakes and too much corruption. It looks like the sheep are being more 'separated' today than ever before. It is the Lord that works thru us and not us that can call the shots. Perhaps we forgot what reverence and respect really mean.

He has been so very tolerant of us. Perhaps now there is less 'wiggle room' for us to slide by on.

[brakelite]

7 minutes ago, Adifferenttruth said:

Is it right to think that less and less Christians are now getting genuine gifts from God? I see fakers in the Christian community often and people who proclaim to have the gift of prophecy or the gift of insight into dreams. I have often tested people who say these things and they get so worked up about it, claiming I'M the sinner for questioning God when really I'm just merely trying to ascertain whether or not they are for real or attention seekers trying to scam good people. For example, a person came to my church to speak, he had spoken at a few other churches and claimed to be able to interpret dreams. I decided to test him by telling him a false dream. If he was truly an interpreter of dreams, he would know it to be fake as God wouldn't give him insight on something false, He would somehow let him know that I was deceiving him. His interpretation was over the top and very disturbing and he got really angry when I told him that the dream wasn't real. Another time, someone claiming to be speaking in tongues was shouting out some sort of gibberish, and I use this word because in the bible it clearly states that if one speaks in tongues they don't know what they say but there will be one in the congregation who does. So I stood up and asked if anyone could interpret. No one could, this person got angry again and screamed at me not to question God. I wasn't questioning God, just their validity. I don't think God would have someone speak in tongues only to have nobody understand what was said.

I assume you are familiar with

Revelation 13:13  And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men...

This is the false prophet and what you are witnessing (and what we have all been experiencing for sometime) I believe is a foretaste of a false pentecostalism that is to arise in a much more marked way in the near future....the fire from heaven I believe is a false spirit masquerading as pentecost power in apostate churches.

 

[GandalfTheWise]

At various times in my life, I've hung around with pentecostals and charismatics.  I've seen plenty of abuses inside and plenty of unwarranted criticisms from outside.

The times I've seen various gifts used in a healthy manner is when they are a natural part of life in the body Christ and God touches people in a healthy way.  The times I've seen various "gifts" used in an unhealthy manner is when people try to draw attention to themselves or start to seek the gifts of God instead of God Himself.  Most of the abuses I have seen are related to immature believers being zealous and immature.   I've seen a few charlatans and have indeed pointed them out as needed.  But in general, most of the problems I've seen are related more to a lack of spiritual maturity and lack of spiritual common sense than anything else.  

Frankly, I think that anyone who attempts to share their spiritual "gifting" from a place of much zeal and little spiritual maturity will often show smugness, arrogance, belligerence, and in general will often be an annoying pest that people want to avoid.  They will frequently take opposition (caused primarily by their own immaturity and obnoxiousness) as people resisting God. I've seen this in all range of "gifts" ranging from "prophets" to "healers" to "teachers" to "evangelists" to various leaders.  The bottom line is that immature believers in their zeal to serve God will often think of themselves as God's appointed people and that to question them is to question God.  Their ministry will usually be a confusing mixture of some fruit (from actually using the gift) mixed with division and hurt (from lack of spiritual maturity).  How many posts on this site express a "I know God and the Bible better than you so if you disagree with what I posted, you are obviously deceived, a deceiver, or not even a Christian!!" type of attitude?  I do not reject gifts of teaching, or exhortation, or confrontation because of a few abuses.  I see this as usually coming from a standpoint of a lot of zeal and lack of spiritual maturity.  At some point, those people will spiritually mature, and will probably wish they could delete many of the things that they now post.  As they mature, they will start to see those gifts as something to be used with God's leading rather than as having a blanket license to try to use them whenever they feel like doing so (which usually means whenever they get mad about something).   In the same way, many people who've walked around as "prophets" or "healers" at some point become embarrassed that they were not following God's lead but assuming that they could force the gift to happen by trying to make it happen at all times and places.

In my opinion, it is foolish to reject any particular gift because some immature believer made a mess of it at some point.  Frankly, we'd have to reject practically every gift in the church if we applied this standard.  Most people outside pentecostal and charismatic circles rarely get to see these gifts being used in a healthy manner by mature believers.  This is because such gifts usually quietly emerge and touch people and do not draw much attention to themselves except in the form of testimonies after God has done something.  Attention is usually given to loud and exuberant failures or the exceptional miracles, not the quiet and effective and common movement of God's Spirit among His people.

Example:  one church I attended had prayer teams at the front of the sanctuary after the service.  One fellow and I usually worked as a team.  We had a man come up one day to ask for prayer for some physical ailments.  As I recall, it was a combination of something serious along with back and shoulder pain from a car accident.  As the other fellow was praying for him for the specific things he mentioned, the word "sleep" just kept popping strongly into my head.  I tossed on a quick prayer that God would help him sleep well as we ended.  He had not mentioned anything about sleep, but then commented that he hadn't been sleeping well for months.  The next week, he came up again to ask for prayer again.  The biggest change he had noticed after we had prayed for him the week before was that he started sleeping through the night again.  The bottom line was this, God wanted to bless one of His children to have a good night's sleep; and even more than that, He wanted His child to know that He was aware of everything that was going on and that it was all in His hands.  This is what most of the often disparaged "revelatory" and "healing" types of gifts usually look like in charismatic and pentecostal circles.  It is usually God doing simple things like this to touch people and let them know that He is there.  From what I could tell, this type of thing was commonly seen by people in the prayer teams.