Restitutio exists to restore authentic Christianity and live it out today. As a restorationist, it really does matter to me how the earliest Christians practiced their faith. A question I ask myself is if I jumped in a time machine and went back to the late first century and attended a house church meeting, would I fit in? Is what I believe about the bible what they believed? Is how I do Christianity how they did it? Or, to bring in today’s topic, would tongues, interpretation, prophecy, or other holy spirit activity be part of the service?
Today we are beginning a new series on the manifestations of the spirit. We’ll begin with John Truitt, a founder and leader of Alegiance to the King, a ministry with a thriving virtual fellowship and lots of teaching resources. He’s also a successful entrepreneur and the CEO of Kalleo Technologies an IT company based out of Paducah, Kentucky. He’s going to provide evidence for the view that the gifts of the spirit are available for all Christians today. Then, next week, we’ll have Greg Deuble from Australia share an opposing viewpoint. Lastly, we’ll listen in as these two discuss the subject more in depth.
This should be a rewarding time for all of us, whatever your current views of the spirit are. It will at least help us to understand the other side. And…who knows, you may change your mind on this subject.
—— Links ——
- Check out Truitt’s ministry: Allegiance to the King
- Watch past meetings of his virtual fellowship on YouTube
- You may also want to hear the interview we did with Sam Storms on this same subject
- More podcasts with John Truitt
- If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
- Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments
- Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library
This is what it ultimately comes down to: https://youtu.be/fq4FjMVsZP4
Yes. Tongues are awesome. I prayed for God to show me how to speak in tongues for two weeks. One night after church I stopped by the mall. I had no money as a poor college student. Dont know why I went there. A total stranger walked up to me and started a conversation. Turns out he spoke in tongues!!. He invited me back to his apartment where he and his wife led me into the manifestation of speaking in tongues. God is faithful.
Did you carefully weigh and examine them to see whether or not what they believed/taught regarding the Bible was right? 1 John 4.
And what are your current beliefs regarding the Father, His Son, the holy spirit, the Gospel, etc.?
Let’s not forget that many of the early so-called Church Fathers (CFs) did not claim to have the gifts because they believed that not every Christian was so gifted.
For example, we have this testimony from Hippolytus of Rome, writing in the 2nd century:
“It is not necessary that every one of the faithful should cast out demons, raise the dead, or speak with tongues.”
Ambrose, bishop of Milan, writing around the 4th century:
“The whole of the divine gifts cannot exist in each man.”
Other like Irenaeus warned against sych claimaints!
The greater the display with which they are said to perform miracles, the more carefully should we watch them, as having been endowed with a greater spirit of
wickedness.
Tertullian, writing about the same time, warned against gifts in general!
“He declared that many would come and ‘display great signs and wonders,’ so as to turn aside the very elect. Yet, despite that, Christ would not receive them. So He showed how rash it was to believe in signs and wonders, for they would be very easy to accomplish, even by false christs.”
Yet, other CFs had a fondness for the gift of predictive prophecy.
There were the so-called Montanists or New Prophecy Movement of the 2nd century who believed that they alone were spiritually gifted.
Yet, Irenaeus described them as “Wretched men indeed! Who wish to be pseudo-prophets…who set aside the gift of prophecy from the Church [holding] themselves aloof from the communion of the brethren.”
The Apollinarians, an early heretical group, said that their leader, Montanus “supposes he might at first act by the operation of God; but whether it were so, or by that of the devil transformed, it was in such a manner that nobody was able to discern, because both his life and doctrine were holy and blameless.”
The Church historian Eusebius described Montanus’ spiritual experience as a sudden “frenzy and ecstasy, he raved, and began to babble and utter strange things, prophesying in a manner contrary to the constant custom of the Church handed down by tradition from the beginning.”
Origen quotes a pagan writer called Celsus who described Montanist prophets with “incomprehensible, incoherent, and utterly obscure utterances, the meaning of which no intelligent person could discover;
For they are meaningless and nonsensical, and give a chance for any fool or sorcerer to take the words in whatever sense he likes.”
Then there was St. Gregory, bishop of New Caesarea a former student of Origen, who was dubbed “the wonderworker” (213-70).
Historian Jeff Oliver records that “Besides his normal regiment of prophesying, healing the sick, and casting out demons, Gregory reportedly moved mountains, dried up lakes, redirected rivers, and banished pagan gods.”
“Where shall I rank the great Gregory, and the words uttered by him?”
Asked Basil of Caesarea, one of the Cappadocian Fathers.
“Shall we not place among apostles and prophets a man who walked by the same Spirit as they?
By the superabundance of gifts, wrought in him by the Spirit in all power and in signs and in marvels, he was styled a second Moses by the very enemies of the church.”
I have received healing, my wife, my mother & father-inlaw…
My brother-inlaw is a pentecostal missionary and sees many miracles in Latin America. He says we see fewer miracles in America because people do not believe/ have faith in God’s word.
Some good thoughts discussed here, but I didn’t hear basic Bible truth (1 John 4:1-3, for example) as the TEST. Unless I missed something, I only heard that if things were done in a disorderly manner, then thy should be questioned, which I would agree with as a second point. And if those doing it in a disorderly manner we “in truth,” then they should be corrected as the Corinthians were.
Great points about the parable of talents and using the spirit that was given us in order to bear fruit for the Master. Unfortunately, many people, when they hear the words, “spiritual matters” or “filled with the spirit,” they equate it to speaking in tongues, which is only ONE of the gifts, and the LEAST of the gifts, and it is incorrectly used to measure spirituality.
I wrestle with the “genuine power of God” being manifested with “nonsense in actions and teaching,” unless His truth would be revealed as a result. The Father, the only true God, seems to care that people know who He is (which includes how many He is); and He especially desires that HIS people know this.
Perhaps we might consider that every claim that something is done “by God,” no matter how great it seems, might be a counterfeit of Satan to keep people in the dark about the only true God and His human Messiah, and the coming Kingdom hope, because, if they would love the truth, they would find salvation. (2 Thes. 2:10) The coming of the Anti-Christ will be a good example of this.
Last comment, Sean mentioned praying for someone to be healed and it didn’t happen. That kind of healing is different from the gift of healing when there is power used by the gifted person and healing is instantaneous.
Final question, or food for thought, why is the gift of languages so sought after in the churches, yet Sunday morning we don’t call for the healers and miracle workers to stand up and manifest their gifts. If God is manifesting His spirit in the church for the church’s benefit, wouldn’t you think it would be more beneficial to the church to heal all the diseased people sitting in the pews or perform a miracle that would encourage the people to quit sinning?
(And for the record, I do believe that God’s spirit is given to believers (followers of Jesus, the man and his message) and God can do miraculous things through His people. I just have not experienced those manifestations myself. The gifts are available, but the question is if they are being used.)
Hi Tracy, thank you for your thoughtful comments and questions.
I would agree that the Bible is the most important test. For example, when Paul commands “do not forbid to speak in tongues” I think that should be an end to any believing Christian discussion to whether or not speaking in tongues (with interpretation of tongues) should be allowed in the church meeting. It clearly should. However, we should be careful to make sure that we are not using our own interpretation of the scriptures as a test. Since it can be difficult to be sure whether our interpretation is truly correct we have to be careful with this test. I would say when the scripture is explicit on a subject then we can use it as a test. But if we are using scripture by way of implication (implicit vs explicit) we should be very careful.
In regards to your final question, I would insert prophesying in your question rather than healings and miracles. The scripture places emphasis on prophesying in the context of church above the other gifts of the spirit so I think we should too.
God Bless!
John