The Highway Forums General Discussion ExCharisma Thoughts on Charasmatic calvinists?

As there are some , such as Dr Grudem/DA Carson, who would argue for at least prophecy still remaining for church today?

The problem with "prophesy", in particular, it presents an insurmountable problem in regard to verbal plenary inspiration. IF someone claims, "God told me that such and such is going to happen, etc." and it doesn't come to pass exactly as allegedly told, then Deut 18:20-22 is applicable. The claim to prophesy in the name of God after the Canon was closed is to deny a closed Canon and assert that God continues to communicate to private individuals with divine truth. And divine truth MUST be infallible and it must also be obeyed. ALL that God has desired to communicate to man and what is required of man in this life is contained FULLY in Scripture and Scripture alone.

I fully agree with you, and also think those 2 brothers know that we would claim they are violating the scriptures with extra biblical revealtion, so forced to see it not as sense of a prophet, more like in the sense of gining insight/widom from God, so watered down the term!

Thoughts? I would argue they are very inconsistent. It is an incorrect position. It is surprising to me that any could have said position....
HOWEVER....many of us, myself included, have positions OTHERS would consider inconsistent. This i NOT a post to say 'anything goes'...far from it! But when we notice what we deem an inconsistency...we should explore it further, to ensure it IS so.

If you study Acts you will find that only the Apostles had the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, which included the Charismatic gifts. Called the signs of an Apostle. They alone spoke in tongues along with those they laid their hands on. Peter was present at the gentile outpouring linking him to that event.

The first clue that today's gifts are fraudulent comes from Paul when he says understanding what is said edifies. He then says those who speak in tongues edify themselves. This can only mean they understood what they were saying. None of today's "tongue speakers" know what they are saying.

The two are incompatible. "Prophetic utterances" are not divinely inspired messages from God, since all such supernatural revelation ceased after the Apostles died (Hebrews 1:1-2). And the way "gifts" are practiced in the contemporary Charismatic and Pentecostal churches is vastly different from the examples of them found in the book of Acts and in the Epistles. For example, when is the last time you saw an unbeliever interpret a message given in tongues at these churches? Yet Paul is explicit about the purpose of tongues - a sign to unbelievers. Most especially, a sign to unbelieving Jews portending the close of the Mosaic covenant and the commencement of the New Covenant.

Robin

I know this is an older entry, but I would like to comment anyway.

I agree with you on these things.

However I would like to comment on something you said.
The point about an unbeliever is correct; but there is another aspect I would like to touch upon.

When I was in a Pentecostal Church, lots of times there was an interpretation. However, they are very subjective and hard to know for the average person hearing if the interpretation was legitimate. I talked to one Christian lady years ago, who told me that when she was a teenager, loved to learn how to swear in as many languages as she could learn.
Years later, she was invited by a Pentecostal friend to one of her services.

During that service, someone started speaking in tongues, followed by an interpretation by someone else. People started applauding; but she was absolutely in shock. She told me that the interpretation had nothing to do with the tongues. In fact the tongues were a bunch of swear words.
Needless to say, she never returned.

Tom

I can relate! Some of the "interpretations" I heard in church during my years in charismania were absolutely absurd, let alone unbiblical. Hearers are to judge utterances based on their compatibility and agreement with God's revealed word in the Scriptures. That goes for sermons and Sunday School lessons as well as any "interpretation," "prophecy," or "word of knowledge or wisdom."

That inconsistency was one of the main reasons I began to seriously question the whole practice of "revelation gifts" in my Charismatic church. Including a Charismatic Presbyterian church (EPC) where a friend of mine was minister of music and the pastor a self-confessed "mystic."

I'm fairly convinced that the "tongues" in Scripture are actual human languages, and that the ones we see in the charismatic movement today are either gibberish, or demonic.

I have had Charismatic friends whom I do believe to be genuinely regenerate. I don't think this is necessarily a salvation issue unless one elevates "tongues" or any other form of "special, personal revelation" to a plane comparable to (much less equal to or higher than) Scripture. But many Charismatics, like many other Evangelicals, are semi-Pelagian, and I do think this is a salvation issue; the person who thinks he or she is responsible for their own salvation still has self as his or her "God," and not God as He really and truly Is.

IMO, inconsistency can be OK on matters of less than salvific importance.

But not with regard to the Gospel, and, hopefully, not on other core teachings of Scripture either.

Examples of both:

* Depending on whether you see the New Covenant as a continuation of the Old, or a superior replacement to the Old, you will logically come to different conclusions about ecclesiology, eschatology, and infant vs. believer's baptism. But you can still hold to all the core tenets of the historical, Biblical, Reformed Christian faith either way.

* Semi-Pelagianism, continuationism, evolution, the LGBTQP movement, and Marxism are all direct attacks against biblical teaching, and at least indirectly against the Gospel, and I question whether a saved, Spirit-filled person can believe in any of these. The kind of "blessed inconsistency" described by Sproul may well be the only hope for the proponents of these kinds of things. Most pertinently to this discussion: continuationism says that God continues to speak today, outside of His Word; that is a fundamental repudiation of the authority, sufficiency, finality, and pre-eminence of Scripture. Even among those who are otherwise Calvinistic in their soteriology, there are those who fail to see this. Such people IMO have one foot in the door of Christianity, and the other in the world of paganism. It is impossible for me to tell in the general case which foot they are truly trusting in.

When I see people at least *trying* to edify God, my presumption is that they do so because of the indwelling Holy Spirit, which means they are Christians, even if not necessarily mature or well-taught ones.

But when they only lift up themselves, not God and not their neighbor? Then I worry.