Dale Partridge - Real Christianity #132： A Biblical View of Spiritual Gifts

00:00:00.000 Welcome to this episode of Real Christianity, my name is Dale Partridge, where each week

00:00:12.560 I offer 15 to 20-minute answers to tough theological and pastoral questions.

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00:00:40.160 Okay, everyone, it's undeniable that we are living in a hyper-emotional era.

00:00:48.440 And as many of you know, this has spread into the church.

00:00:52.700 And for the past decade, and maybe more, everything is about experience and music and ambiance and entertainment.

00:01:01.240 And even more, the focus has shifted from the biblical text to modern prophecy and spiritual experiences and healings and miracles.

00:01:11.720 And some churches even have their own prophets and healers and apostles.

00:01:16.320 and they preach that others can have access to these spiritual supernatural gifts if they just

00:01:24.320 have enough faith. There are some churches that even offer schools for supernatural ministry,

00:01:30.040 something that you can actually learn, implying that it's basically not a gift, but a skill

00:01:36.420 that you have access to as a believer. Unfortunately, many Christians fall prey 0.68

00:01:43.660 to these unbiblical ideas because they lack a theology of spiritual gifts.

00:01:51.040 Today, I'm going to be breaking down part of this discussion.

00:01:55.980 We're not going to go for a full deep dive on the theology of spiritual gifts,

00:01:59.880 but I will be discussing the difference between continuationism and cessationism

00:02:04.860 and why I have sided with the latter.

00:02:08.000 But before we dive in, I just want to make two quick announcements

00:02:10.920 before we get into this episode.

00:02:13.660 Number one, I'm planning to take a semi-sabbatical for the next three months starting in March.

00:02:21.120 So our team has made special arrangements for the podcast.

00:02:25.540 So for the first five Wednesdays of March 2021, we will be airing five interviews that I recorded with five incredible theologians.

00:02:36.380 We have Dr. Steve Lawson talking about expository preaching, Dr. James White I spoke with about

00:02:43.660 apologetics, Doug Wilson, we talked about the biblical family, Dr. Tom Askell from Founders

00:02:51.260 Ministry, we talked about boldness in ministry, and Dr. Dustin Benj, we are talking about church

00:02:57.980 history. And so it's going to be an incredible series. It's called the Theologian Series,

00:03:02.820 And we have several more interviews coming out later in the year.

00:03:07.860 For the month of April and part of May, we're going to be re-airing our top seven most popular episodes out of the, I don't know, by that time, maybe 140 total episodes.

00:03:20.380 And then I'm going to return with a new season of Real Christianity with a focus on some more verse-by-verse exposition of really popular biblical passages.

00:03:32.820 And it doesn't mean that I'll stop the topical issues, but I'm going to spend a little bit more time tackling some important passages of Scripture and breaking them down expositionally for you.

00:03:46.020 So that's announcement number one.

00:03:48.640 Announcement number two is Reformation Seminary.

00:03:52.380 I want to talk about that.

00:03:54.140 Thousands of Christians have planted house churches in the past several months due to COVID

00:04:00.140 and some of the government regulations, especially in states like New York and California and Oregon, Washington.

00:04:07.280 And unfortunately, the vast majority of these churches are more like Bible studies and not biblical house churches.

00:04:16.520 Furthermore, you know, many of them are not led by biblically qualified and theologically trained

00:04:22.980 pastors. They're mostly led by maybe someone who's, you know, spiritually mature and was just

00:04:29.360 willing to say, hey, let's just do this together. Let's just start meeting together as families or

00:04:33.860 as individuals here on Sunday instead. But we have to remember that Jesus did not send out the

00:04:40.720 disciples until they had three years of training. And so our ministry, we saw a weakness in the

00:04:48.840 current seminary system. And, you know, first, you know, many of the seminaries that are out there

00:04:55.660 were very clinical, and they kind of turned theology into a science instead of a reverent

00:05:01.780 and glorious study of God's Word. Second, most seminary programs were far too long,

00:05:09.240 and too expensive for the average pastor, especially someone that maybe has a family,

00:05:16.320 kids, a full-time job. So let me give you kind of a parallel example. In the medical field,

00:05:23.160 there's EMTs, nurses, nurse practitioners, doctors, surgeons, brain surgeons.

00:05:30.080 And you have all of these people that are across this spectrum. In the seminary world,

00:05:37.800 You basically have EMTs, which is like the mature Christian at the church who's a lay person and has read the entire Bible and maybe led some Bible studies.

00:05:49.480 And then the very next step on the continuum or on the spectrum is, you know, someone that's got, you know, four or five years of seminary, you know, 10,000 hours and $80,000 to go through it.

00:06:03.180 And they're a scholar.

00:06:04.820 And so there's this kind of huge spectrum and there's not much in the middle.

00:06:09.580 And, you know, in the medical world, you know, the nurses and the nurse practitioners are

00:06:13.600 actually the ones that do the majority of the work.

00:06:16.560 And so we really wanted to design our seminary program after a one-year program that really

00:06:22.980 kind of fits in that nurse practitioner space where it's, you're not untrained, but you're

00:06:28.900 not also a scholar.

00:06:30.560 You don't necessarily need, I mean, I've spent many years in seminary.

00:06:34.260 and training. And not everyone needs, you know, several years of Hebrew and Greek training.

00:06:42.200 It's good. And I love having that training, but not everybody needs that. And so our program was

00:06:49.360 specifically designed to really train up biblically qualified men to plant and pastor a biblical

00:06:55.240 house church in one year. And we cover core gospel theology, biblical interpretation,

00:07:01.020 biblical and systematic theology, preaching training, biblical counseling, pastoral development,

00:07:06.420 family discipleship, church structure, missiology, and church membership. We also deal directly with

00:07:13.540 issues that are specific to the house church expression of church or the house church community.

00:07:19.540 We talk about gender roles in a house church and children in the house church. What do you do with

00:07:24.060 them? How does that work? How does giving work? How do you multiply when your church gets too big?

00:07:28.320 How do you invite guests? What does worship look like? And several other issues.

00:07:34.380 And so if you're interested in rolling or you know somebody that is interested in rolling,

00:07:38.820 we are having our second group of men who are starting in June, 2021. So we have a group of

00:07:47.340 about 20 guys that have gone through for our first group. And our second group is starting up in June.

00:07:52.060 And we already have it maybe 25% full.

00:07:57.840 And so we'd love to have you guys apply.

00:08:00.760 The program's very affordable.

00:08:03.340 It's taught by myself and several other qualified professors, seminary graduates, PhDs, and seasoned pastors.

00:08:13.160 And you can apply at reformationseminary.com.

00:08:16.420 Again, space is limited, but you can just go to reformationseminary.com and just apply there.

00:08:22.060 and we'll set up a time to get together and talk with you okay today's question comes from alana

00:08:29.260 in naples florida she asks i was raised in a pentecostal church but now attend a non-denominational

00:08:37.820 fellowship in my hometown however our pastor has been talking more and more about modern

00:08:43.820 prophecy and times casting out spirits by the authority by our authority as christians healing

00:08:49.900 by having enough faith, and many other hyper-spiritual and almost mystic practices.

00:08:55.920 The more I read the scriptures and the more I read about church history, the more I wonder

00:09:00.520 if what we're doing is actually biblical. For example, when I look at the past 2,000 years

00:09:08.180 of church history, there is very little, if any, of these practices recorded. So, Pastor Dale,

00:09:13.440 my question is this. Are these supernatural spiritual gifts still available and active in

00:09:20.320 the church, or are they only something that was around during the inauguration of the church?

00:09:27.100 In other words, I know there are two theological positions on miraculous spiritual gifts,

00:09:33.520 those who say they are still here and those who say they have seized. Dale, can you please inform

00:09:39.500 me where you stand on this issue? Okay, good question, Alana. Thank you for that, and I think

00:09:46.580 this will be a very helpful discussion. I think this is an especially important matter for our

00:09:53.460 current generation. We need to know what the Bible says about spiritual gifts so that we can

00:10:01.500 separate and identify what is genuine and biblical from what is false and mystical or

00:10:09.820 emotional.

00:10:11.420 And I'll be basing actually my response today to this question off of an article that I

00:10:16.940 wrote, and it's available for you to read at relearn.org, and it's titled, What Does

00:10:22.700 a Cessationist Believe?

00:10:24.360 It's a shorter article.

00:10:25.500 Today's podcast will actually be a little bit longer and more in depth, but it's available

00:10:29.280 for you there if you'd like to read it.

00:10:30.980 I'll include it in the show notes of this episode.

00:10:34.860 Okay, so as Alana stated in her question, there are two groups in the church.

00:10:40.480 The first is called continuationists.

00:10:43.200 These are people who, Christians, who believe that the possessive miraculous gifts of the New Testament are continuing on today.

00:10:55.620 That these miraculous gifts can be possessed by individuals and they're still happening now.

00:11:00.660 And this group has a wide range of people in it from radical Pentecostal movements and churches maybe like Bethel and Prosperity Gospel, you know, folks on that side, all the way to a more conservative continuationism held by people like maybe John Piper, Wayne Grudem, and Sam Storms.

00:11:23.120 The second is called the cessationist, right?

00:11:28.060 So it's based off the word seizing.

00:11:29.940 So they believe these gifts seized, so they're called the cessationists.

00:11:35.480 The cessationists believe that the possessive miraculous gifts of the New Testament

00:11:41.760 have seized at the death of the apostles and the completion of the Bible.

00:11:47.920 And this view is, I believe, is the general reformed position and is held by people like

00:11:55.960 John MacArthur, Votie Bauckham, R.C. Sproul, Charles Spurgeon, and many more.

00:12:01.600 Now, while like a liberal continuationist and a classic cessationist, they would likely

00:12:08.100 struggle to have fellowship with one another, I will say a conservative continuationist

00:12:13.400 like a Piper and a classic cessationist like MacArthur, they would not struggle to have

00:12:19.900 fellowship with one another. So there's kind of a spectrum that we're talking about here,

00:12:24.640 and I'm going to talk about mostly the extreme spectrum because I think that they are pretty

00:12:31.780 loud and proud in the church today, especially on social media. So personally, I am a cessationist,

00:12:39.120 and I'd like to briefly explain what a cessationist believes and why, because I think a lot of people

00:12:44.440 have a false, incorrect definition. They think that cessationists believe that there's no

00:12:50.840 spiritual gifts. That is not the case. And I remember when I first encountered the cessationist

00:12:56.800 view in a video by Dr. Tom Schreiner. I'll actually link that in the show notes as well.

00:13:04.080 And the video is very helpful.

00:13:05.420 I recall the difficulty I encountered in finding a succinct explanation of what a cessationist

00:13:11.840 really believes.

00:13:12.700 Everything out there was these articles and videos that were like hours long, robust theological

00:13:18.220 defenses for the position and not just a practical explanation.

00:13:22.020 So to begin, I just want to be practical, and I want to offer you some background on

00:13:27.680 spiritual gifts.

00:13:28.940 There are arguably seven spiritual gift lists in the New Testament, and these lists make up

00:13:36.780 approximately 20 spiritual gifts or gifted offices like apostles, pastors, teachers, etc.

00:13:43.100 Now, theologically speaking, these 20 gifts are broken down into two classifications of spiritual

00:13:52.100 gifts. And the first is the temporary miraculous gifts, and the second one is the permanent

00:14:00.240 ministering gifts. So those are the two camps that a cessationist would put these 20 gifts,

00:14:06.560 those two classifications. So we'll talk about this. Basically, 11 permanent ministering gifts,

00:14:14.200 and there's nine temporary miraculous gifts. And so let's start with the temporary miraculous

00:14:20.800 gifts. So I believe the possession of the revelatory and miraculous gifts of the Spirit

00:14:29.380 seized at the death of the apostles and the completion of the scriptures. Now, when I say

00:14:34.280 revelatory, I mean people who possess the spiritual gift to speak divine revelation

00:14:40.600 on behalf of God, basically apostolic authority writing God's words down.

00:14:47.340 Now, when I say, yeah, I should actually say, you know, I believe these revelatory and miraculous gifts associated with the apostles and prophets were given specifically for three reasons.

00:15:02.020 Number one was the production of the canon of Scripture, the completed Bible.

00:15:07.540 Number two was the establishing of the church or the authority of the church.

00:15:13.320 And number three is the authentication of their message to a fallen world.

00:15:20.480 In fact, some theologians have actually called these temporary gifts confirmatory gifts,

00:15:27.500 as basically their central purpose in the scripture was to confirm,

00:15:32.820 to validate God's messengers who were called to establish the new covenant era.

00:15:38.620 They didn't have the scriptures at this point,

00:15:40.200 So they had signs and wonders coming to confirm the message that they did carry by verbal action.

00:15:50.380 So we actually see this testified in the scriptures, Acts 22, Peter says, when he's preaching at Pentecost, he says,

00:15:59.000 men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with

00:16:05.160 mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst. So God attested

00:16:11.900 about Christ through mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him. Hebrews 2,

00:16:21.540 three through four says, it was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us,

00:16:27.680 the apostles, by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various

00:16:35.160 miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. 2 Corinthians 2.12,

00:16:41.960 the signs of a true apostle were performed among you with the utmost patience, with signs and

00:16:47.880 wonders and mighty works. Acts 19.11, and God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul.

00:16:56.980 Now, signs and wonders were not only, you know, the mark of an apostle.

00:17:04.940 That wasn't the only mark, I should say.

00:17:07.600 Acts 1, 21 through 22 actually presents further qualifications that include, you know, being an eyewitness account to the resurrected Lord.

00:17:18.200 These are further qualifications of this gifted office, spiritual office of apostleship.

00:17:26.080 And I say this because I don't believe there are or have ever been any God-ordained apostles since the death of the 12 apostles.

00:17:39.620 And we'll get back in a second to talking about the validation message that this was a purpose for validating.

00:17:44.860 But I just want to talk about, you know, God used these certain individuals, specifically the apostles we're talking about now, who they are.

00:17:52.140 There's many people out there in the world that are claiming that they're apostles, and

00:17:55.640 I want to kind of refute that for a second.

00:17:58.200 So I don't believe that there are any God-ordained apostles.

00:18:02.200 And additionally, as a cessationist, I don't believe there are or have ever been any God-ordained

00:18:09.140 prophets.

00:18:09.780 So we'll talk about that as well, kind of revealing God's will to his people since the

00:18:14.540 closing of the apostolic era.

00:18:17.180 Ephesians 2.2 says a really important statement.

00:18:20.780 It says, So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, verse 20, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.

00:18:38.960 Okay, the Bible says that the apostles and the prophets are the foundation of the New Testament church.

00:18:46.540 and I don't know how many foundations your house has, but mine has one. We don't lay

00:18:52.920 foundations, build upon them, and then lay additional foundations. That's what the Mormon 1.00

00:18:58.140 church has done and the Jehovah's Witnesses have done. They've laid another foundation on top of

00:19:05.260 the already existing foundation, and it's heresy, and it needs to be rejected. So I also want to

00:19:13.420 talk about. I don't believe that there are anyone, individuals in the church today who possess

00:19:21.100 miraculous gifts for the ministry, including, which we just talked about, the apostleship

00:19:27.840 or prophecy, and with a capital P, meaning infallible words from God. Healing, when I say

00:19:35.600 healing, I mean, I don't think they possess the gift of immediate healing of, you know, like the

00:19:40.080 biblical example, blindness, leprosy, paralysis, right? I don't believe that people possess

00:19:46.020 the ability to perform wonders, raising people from the dead, feeding thousands with little,

00:19:50.320 changing water into wine. Speaking in phonetic tongues, meaning the possession of an ability to

00:19:56.840 basically speak the gospel in real foreign languages to the speaker for the proclamation

00:20:02.480 of the gospel or interpreting phonetic tongues, discerning of spirits, right? Identifying and

00:20:10.380 casting out certain types of demons. And even I don't believe that people possess the ability to

00:20:16.560 have words of supernatural wisdom or knowledge, meaning that they're knowing the thoughts of

00:20:20.940 others or of the future. Now, I'm not saying that God can't heal someone through your prayers

00:20:29.460 or that God can't give a Christian, by the way of the Holy Spirit,

00:20:32.880 a supernatural insight about a particular situation.

00:20:36.020 No, what I am saying is that I think these miracles can still happen,

00:20:40.360 but I'm convinced that they are not possessed gifts

00:20:44.740 as you would see them in the apostolic era in the New Testament.

00:20:49.260 And the other thing is they're not normative.

00:20:53.080 In other words, they are miraculous,

00:20:55.200 which by definition means that they are extremely rare.

00:21:00.780 They're not possessed.

00:21:01.820 And when they do happen, they are rare.

00:21:05.340 So they're not normative to our Christian experience,

00:21:07.720 where again, that's slightly different

00:21:09.740 from the New Testament.

00:21:10.560 That time and that era when those gifts were possessed,

00:21:13.780 they weren't that rare.

00:21:15.300 They were happening regularly.

00:21:16.680 There was a season of the church

00:21:18.160 that was just firing off miracles left and right.

00:21:22.040 People were walking by Peter's shadow and getting healed.

00:21:25.040 So that's a unique time.

00:21:28.600 So another point I want to make in regard to people who, again, claim they possess the gift of, say, healing.

00:21:36.660 There's a major difference between the biblical examples of healing.

00:21:40.680 And again, this is like the immediate restoration of physically visible issues like lifelong blindness, muteness, deafness, leprosy, withered body parts, paralysis, epilepsy, right?

00:21:51.360 And there's a big difference between those biblical examples of immediate, visible healing and these modern, quote, healers who are healing people's lower back pain and, you know, taking their knee pain away and their headaches are gone and they're making a leg a half inch longer.

00:22:16.220 I mean, there's a big difference there, okay?

00:22:19.120 The first group is an undeniable miracles and was used by Jesus and the apostles, again,

00:22:26.100 specifically to validate the gospel message that they were from God, while the second

00:22:32.520 group is, you know, inconclusive miracles and almost always used to glorify the person

00:22:40.420 that's performing the act.

00:22:42.220 So again, we've talked about the miraculous and the revelatory gifts,

00:22:46.640 which were possessed by Christ and the apostles and a handful of other individuals in the apostolic era.

00:22:51.680 Now let's briefly talk about the ministering gifts, right?

00:22:54.980 These are the ongoing permanent ministering gifts, which, again, were given to believers for all time,

00:23:00.840 for the edification of the body, for the purpose of the ministry.

00:23:05.320 And so the permanent ministering gifts, these are, the Bible lists 11 of them,

00:23:10.460 And these, again, are non-miraculous or non-revelatory spiritual gifts.

00:23:16.440 And these are possessive gifts.

00:23:18.820 It means that you actually have one of them.

00:23:22.180 And there's an argument and discussion if you have multiple,

00:23:25.300 but you at least have one of them if you're a believer.

00:23:30.180 And they include, the first I'm going to say is prophecy,

00:23:33.980 and I'm going to explain what I mean by that,

00:23:35.540 because I just said that prophecy doesn't go on,

00:23:37.580 and why am I saying that it does?

00:23:38.800 So, I talked about before, capital P, prophecy.

00:23:42.400 I'm going to talk now about lowercase p, prophecy.

00:23:44.900 Now, according to the New Testament, the definition of prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14, 3 states,

00:23:51.580 but one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and exhortation and consolation.

00:23:58.360 That's a very different definition of prophecy than the foretelling of future that's coming from the prophet's mouth that is authoritative and we are called to obey.

00:24:19.480 So the lowercase p prophecy, which we have now, is not a foretelling of the future according to God's perfect revelation, but is actually a foretelling of God's truth according to Scripture.

00:24:33.140 And so that's, you know, the Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah or Ezekiel or Isaiah, or even maybe say John the Baptist, right, is, you know, the last Old Testament prophet, first New Testament preacher kind of thing.

00:24:50.020 John the Baptist, I mean, these are infallible words of what's coming from the Lord.

00:24:55.520 That's a very different capital P prophecy than the New Testament prophecy,

00:24:59.300 which is, again, more like a forth telling of truth according to God's word,

00:25:05.740 which, again, another word for that is just preaching, biblical preaching.

00:25:10.440 So that's the first of the 11.

00:25:13.320 Number two is a teaching gift.

00:25:15.760 It means that you have not just an ability to teach, but you have a desire to do it.

00:25:20.240 Number three is faith.

00:25:22.840 You have an increased faith beyond just believing in Christ,

00:25:26.920 but just an ability to endure and believe and trust in the Lord in a deep way

00:25:33.600 that's encouraging to the body.

00:25:36.260 Evangelism, you know, if anybody knows Ray Comfort,

00:25:39.840 man, that guy's got the gift of evangelism.

00:25:41.540 You can't, the guy can't go into a coffee shop

00:25:43.220 without preaching the gospel to 10 people.

00:25:46.020 Number five is discernment, right?

00:25:48.300 Having discernment of, you know, wisdom and understanding what's right and wrong.

00:25:54.160 And mercy is number six.

00:25:56.760 Just a heart for people, a heart for helping and loving and serving.

00:26:02.400 These people, a lot of them are on the mission field.

00:26:04.840 A lot of them are doing, you know, gospel-centered humanitarian-like acts.

00:26:10.660 Number seven, exhortation.

00:26:13.220 Number eight, giving.

00:26:14.340 Number nine, shepherding, which is a pastoral office.

00:26:18.100 Number 10 is administration, is organization, you know, helping put things together.

00:26:23.260 Number 11 is helps.

00:26:25.240 And this is, again, just that servanthood heart.

00:26:28.900 And so these are spiritual gifts, again, endowed by the Holy Spirit to Christians according to the will of God.

00:26:34.920 1 Peter 4.10 says,

00:26:36.540 as each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards

00:26:44.020 of the manifold grace of God. So that was where I got that passage or that idea of, you know,

00:26:48.380 you have at least one gift. So I believe that these possessive ministering gifts are continuing

00:26:57.500 on today and furthering the edification of the body according to the truth of scripture.

00:27:03.800 And I believe this because if you travel across the world and you visit, say, 100 churches in 50 different countries, you're going to see an abundance of these ministering gifts.

00:27:14.800 But what you won't see is the type of miraculous gifts seen in the scriptures being possessed by individuals.

00:27:21.900 You're not going to see New Testament-like possession of gifts where there's just miracles happening all over the place.

00:27:28.440 you know, if you did, you would also see the same crowds that are flocking to see these people for

00:27:35.480 healing as they did with Jesus. Okay, but you don't see that. That's not true to our Christian

00:27:42.440 experience. Furthermore, if you believe that the miraculous gifts are still possessive gifts, 0.94

00:27:51.560 and you believe, as the scripture says, that God gives these Christian spiritual gifts for the 0.76

00:27:57.980 edification of the body, then you must admit that God, by this kind of low manifestation of

00:28:05.300 miraculous gifts, is, you know, purposefully withholding his blessing and spiritual nourishment

00:28:12.240 for his church, which again is obviously a blasphemous notion. And the only sound conclusion

00:28:20.400 for the vastly absent nature of these miraculous gifts is that they have seized

00:28:27.720 and that any and all miracles since have been produced by God in isolated circumstances according to his will.

00:28:39.280 But they're not normative. They're not possessive.

00:28:41.880 It was for a time to validate the message before the doctrines of the words of God were inscripturated

00:28:49.160 and put in to an authoritative base for the church.

00:28:54.580 I mean, that's just what they were there for.

00:28:56.360 Now, to be clear, I believe that God still heals people, and I believe that the Lord

00:29:03.760 may, in a particular circumstance of evangelism, permit the isolated experience of phonetic

00:29:09.300 tongues or even a prophetic word of knowledge in the spiritual conversion of his children.

00:29:15.720 I'm not going to put God in a box.

00:29:17.200 God can do what he wants to do.

00:29:18.300 But again, I believe these isolated and miraculous experiences are not possessive gifts by any

00:29:24.500 individual or believer, but are facilitated sovereign actions of God through his people

00:29:31.360 for his glory, according to his will.

00:29:33.820 So now let me just briefly touch on prophecy and tongues, because I think that these are

00:29:39.640 greatly misunderstood in the church today.

00:29:42.940 And I think it's important to have at least a foundation of theological discussion.

00:29:47.520 And speaking of prophecy, capital P, and tongues, I believe that what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13.8, he says,

00:29:56.140 As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will seize. As for knowledge, it will pass away.

00:30:03.640 In speaking first to prophecy, I believe what the modern charismatic movement has deemed as genuine, infallible, capital P prophecy,

00:30:18.500 is actually nothing more than valid or invalid spiritual promptings, discerning or foolish

00:30:29.360 predictions, spirit-led or emotional-led illumination, or sound or maybe heretical

00:30:38.560 preaching, okay? In other words, I think that what many people call prophecy is nothing more

00:30:46.780 than a spiritual prompting or a wise prediction, and they just don't have a theological understanding

00:30:52.440 of spiritual gifts, and they just call it that because that's what they've heard.

00:30:57.260 Now, they may be legitimate spiritual promptings or wise predictions, but they might also be

00:31:05.020 invalid, emotional, and foolish things as well. And so, as you can see, you know, this type of

00:31:11.260 of, you know, interpretive nightmare that comes with people who say they, you know, have a word

00:31:18.380 from the Lord. If they just said, hey, you know, hey, brother or sister, I felt the Holy Spirit

00:31:23.680 prompt me to encourage you with some scripture, then we'd have no problems. If they, you know,

00:31:28.240 called their futuristic prophecies, if they just called them simple, hey, predictions,

00:31:33.640 then again, we'd have no problems. But that's simply not the case. So now we've talked about

00:31:39.480 prophecy, but I want to talk a little bit about tongues. I believe the biblical definition of

00:31:44.680 this gift was both for preaching the gospel in real phonetic foreign language that a person

00:31:55.460 didn't know or study. And I also believe it's for, you know, a miraculous sign to unbelievers

00:32:03.440 that are validating the gospel message.

00:32:07.520 The theologian John Napier from the 1500s,

00:32:11.600 he actually talks about this.

00:32:13.000 He says,

00:32:13.580 In any discussion of tongues,

00:32:16.340 it is important to note that they were not just spiritual gifts.

00:32:20.660 They were also designated as a sign gift

00:32:24.180 and part of a cluster of gifts named by Jesus in Mark 16.

00:32:29.580 These sign gifts were given to individuals

00:32:32.500 to authenticate the message of the gospel. The early Christians had no New Testament in the

00:32:38.520 early years following the ascension of Christ. As the gospel went out to the Jew and Gentile alike,

00:32:45.000 it needed the witness of the signs to undergird its authority until the written scriptures

00:32:50.000 established that authority base. And again, this is written in the 1500s about this theological

00:32:57.440 perspective of the cessation of the miraculous gifts. John MacArthur explains tongues a little

00:33:04.220 bit more when he says in one of his books, and I quote, according to 1 Corinthians 14,

00:33:11.240 5 through 17, and 27 through 28, the foreign language, that is tongues, requires translation

00:33:18.820 so that those in the congregation who did not know the language could be edified. While many

00:33:26.140 Charismatics claim to have the gift of tongues, generally an untranslatable, non-phonetic,

00:33:33.120 extra-biblical, angelic tongue, it is clear that no one today possesses a definition of tongues

00:33:41.240 like those defined in Scripture or demonstrated by the early church in the apostolic era.

00:33:47.020 End quote. So, really, you know, to conclude, I believe that modern Charismatics have either

00:33:55.280 A, fabricated false giftings and spiritual experiences, or what is probably more likely, B, they've confused, overestimated, or incorrectly designated the ordinary ministerial gifts of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer.

00:34:14.720 They've confused them or overestimated or incorrectly designated them with the miraculous and revelatory gifts that have seized.

00:34:22.580 And I believe that this kind of spiritual over-credentialization of people in the church calling themselves prophets and apostles and healers has created a great deal of confusion in the church over spiritual giftedness and has actually generated ambiguity on the boundaries of scriptural authority and spiritual authority in the church.

00:34:47.460 And by that I mean, I believe that those who are continuationists not only are making a statement on the nature of the charismatic status, but they're also indirectly attacking the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture.

00:35:04.700 And that is that the proponents of continuationism, again, mostly I'm speaking to the hyper-charismatic and Pentecostal movements, but by their actions implied directly or indirectly that God's word and the preaching of the gospel are not adequate or sufficient.

00:35:24.060 and that the church needs these additional divine, you know, divine information and miraculous signs

00:35:33.000 and wonders to further validate God's mission in the world. And I think that's wrong. You know,

00:35:40.040 Romans 10, 17 says, so faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. Hebrews

00:35:45.520 4, 12 says, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword,

00:35:50.500 piercing to the division of soul and spirit and the joints of marrow,

00:35:53.600 and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

00:35:56.720 Okay, people, in the Old Testament,

00:35:59.200 God used signs and wonders to validate his messengers.

00:36:04.540 Okay, in the apostolic era, he did the same thing.

00:36:07.940 Okay, but after the scriptures were revealed by these God-ordained individuals,

00:36:12.700 the Holy Spirit continued his miraculous work on making dead hearts come alive

00:36:19.520 And he did that through the Word of God, through the preaching of the Word of God.

00:36:24.800 And the miraculous signs to authenticate the gospel message were no longer needed.

00:36:32.500 Okay, now as John 3.8 says, the Spirit is here now, and he brings life to whomever he wills.

00:36:41.040 And so, yes, believe that God can do miracles and that believe that God can work signs and wonders according to his will.

00:36:52.820 But anyone who claims that they are an apostle, they're a prophet or a healer, or anyone who said, hey, I have a word from the Lord for you.

00:37:02.740 Be very, very weary of that and sit down with them.

00:37:08.300 And in a spirit of gentleness and love and help, sit down with them and show them how their actions stand in opposition to the scriptures.

00:37:21.500 And again, make room for miracles in your theology, even as a cessationist.

00:37:30.280 These things do happen.

00:37:32.760 But again, this possession, this hyper-spiritual movement that's very congruent with our emotional

00:37:41.000 era, we need to be cautious about that, and we need to be careful, and we need to understand

00:37:47.040 a biblical theological understanding of spiritual gifts.

00:37:53.020 So as always, guys, I'm going to leave you with several resources that'll help further

00:37:58.720 this discussion for you because, you know, 20 minute podcast, this one's probably a little bit

00:38:03.340 longer, but 20 minute podcasts are never going to offer you the depth you need to fully grasp some

00:38:09.980 of the topics that we hit on the show. So you're going to have to, at some point, put on your big

00:38:15.640 boy or big girl pants and go get some of these resources and take a deeper dive so that you can

00:38:21.080 actually comprehend the depths of these topics and defend them and stand for them and be convicted

00:38:26.980 over something in terms of you're not just wishy-washy. You're not in the middle. You're

00:38:30.540 not just ignorant. We are in the information age. We are flooded with constant bombarding 0.99

00:38:38.540 of different perspectives in the church. We need to have our theological status

00:38:44.220 concrete, anchored in the Word of God. And so pick up some of these resources. Watch some of

00:38:51.300 these things. Take a deeper dive on some of these issues. These are going to be available for you.

00:38:57.880 This is episode number 132. You just go to relearn.org, go to podcast, and you can find that

00:39:01.940 there. If you even type for spiritual gifts, it'll probably pop this episode up.

00:39:05.560 The first resource I'm going to give you is an hour-long sermon by Tom Pennington, who's the

00:39:13.460 Dean of Master's Seminary in Dallas, the distance location there. He has a sermon called A Case

00:39:20.640 for cessationism. It's really thorough, great piece of information for a one-hour segment.

00:39:30.280 There's a video, a short video that I mentioned earlier, Tom Schreiner and the gift of our

00:39:36.620 modern-day prophecy. It's just a short interview. John MacArthur did a four-minute video on cessation

00:39:42.800 of spiritual gifts. I link that for you as well. I have two books that I think you should check out.

00:39:48.200 One is Spiritual Gifts, What They Are and Why They Matter by Tom Schreiner.

00:39:53.120 He does a very good job of explaining this and creating a theological defense for cessationism

00:39:59.720 while not being rude to a continuationist perspective, especially those that are on the conservative spectrum.

00:40:09.520 But he does absolutely defend with an incredible amount of scriptural support his position there.

00:40:17.360 Another book that would have a similar endorsement from me is Strange Fire.

00:40:25.300 This is by Dr. MacArthur, and the subtitle is The Danger of Offending the Holy Spirit with Counterfeit Worship.

00:40:33.220 It's a really important book, I think, to read in this time, in this age,

00:40:36.780 And being aware of the vast variety of spiritual interpretations on, or I should say interpretations on spiritual gifts and how we get back to scripture and looking at what the Bible says and what is valid and what is invalid.

00:40:55.840 So those are all there available for you, links for you on the website or on the episode post page for the show.

00:41:05.220 So last things, guys, if you have not left a review yet, we are so close to passing 6,000

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00:41:59.940 We are there constantly producing daily content that would be helpful and edifying for your

00:42:05.820 journey.

00:42:06.640 Also, you can follow me at Dale Partridge on Twitter, putting out content on a pretty

00:42:11.640 regular basis as well.

00:42:13.800 On that note, thank you guys for being with me and spending this last 20 to 30 minutes

00:42:19.380 listening to this topic of spiritual gifts.

00:42:22.460 I will see you guys next week on Real Christianity.

00:42:25.820 thank you for listening to this episode of real christianity if you're a regular listener to this

00:42:32.940 show would you prayerfully consider making a donation to support our ministry efforts

00:42:36.740 simply visit relearn.org forward slash donate again that's relearn.org forward slash donate

00:42:43.460 and for those looking to explore the idea of joining or planting a church in your home

00:42:47.600 you can download our free pdf ebook titled the basics of biblical house church by visiting

00:42:52.740 relearn.org forward slash house. Lastly, do you have a theological question you would like

00:42:57.960 answered on the show? Submit your question at relearn.org forward slash question. Thanks for

00:43:03.500 joining us on this episode of Real Christianity. We will see you next Wednesday.

Dale Partridge - February 10, 2021

Real Christianity #132： A Biblical View of Spiritual Gifts

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