Have the gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased?

You can pray with your mind, or you can pray with your spirit. tell me, when you pray in the spirit, do you know what you are praying about?

What do you mean, "on blast"?

I have'nt any personal bias against you, that would be impossible, seeing I don't know you from Adam...

What I do have against you is this;

• You are trying to get us to stop praying in tongues when you don't have the slightest revelation of what it is you are doing...
• You have the appearance of standing on your soapbox,
  
  speaking from "experience", when you can't even follow along with our repeated attempts to explain tongues to you...
• You actually prevent new baby Christians from praising God in tongues. Over here, it's hard enough to do that at the same time as getting born-again. Notice, the Christians in the early church spoke in tongues, praising God, right after they received the Gospel...Just like the baby Christians you short-circuit...You get them saved, then you keep them from operating under the anointing of the Holy Spirit...What's up with that???

I love you, but I don't have to like what you are doing...The sad thing is, it's done in the name of religion.

^^^

I'm talking about you labeling John MacArthur a heretic...lol

A wise man once said, "Better to light one candle, than to curse the darkness."

I started to type a rebuttal, but it just isn't worth it.

God bless your life,
B

4sightsounds asked:
Have any of you even attempted to look into the background of Corinth?

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Yes, and that's why I said it has no relevance to any of what we are discussing.

4sightsounds asked:
...to say that the historical background is irrelevent because of their new position in Christ is just wrong. I don't know any other way to say it.

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Why? Because you think it does? You have not been able to show that there is a connection between pagan rituals and what Paul is discussing in chapter 14.

4sightsounds asked:
The Corinthian church was carnal and wordly, unable to digest meat, still sucking on milk. If they are worldly, I wonder what influences from the world effected their behavior?? Could it be their former religion? Nahhh....

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And Paul addresses the issues with them but again you have not shown that chapter 14 is talking about anything other than the proper use of the Spiritual Gifts.

4sightsounds asked:
You have my beliefs, based on my studies. Let's deal with my words and leave our personal biases for another thread or whatever.

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I agree people; let’s not degrade this thread to personal attacks. Let’s debate the issues and not the debaters.

4sightsounds said:

^^^

I'm talking about you labeling John MacArthur a heretic...lol

A wise man once said, "Better to light one candle, than to curse the darkness."

I started to type a rebuttal, but it just isn't worth it.

God bless your life,
B

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Well then, I guess you wouldn't be interested in this?

Look, thanks again for the link.

I have to say this, then you guys can continue to agree that "cessationists" have absolutely no merit for drawing the conclusions that they do. I'm quite OK with that.

I'm perplexed that I seem to be the only one that sees the pagan influences in Corinth, or if they are seen, that it has no bearing on how we read this letter to the Corinthian church. So, even if there is historical evidence of these practices making their way into the Corinthian assembly, it should not be considered as we try to place ourselves in the shoes of the Corinthian people? Hermeneutics doesn't matter? I thought I had placed sufficient information in front of us to at least take a look at it. 1st Cor 14 is not a separate letter from the rest of the book. Shoot, the footnotes in my study bible mentions ecstatic utterences. that's without even looking hard at all. I don't get it....seriously. But I no longer have a desire to discuss it. You guys say I'm ignoring your posts, while I'm saying that we can't speak to your statements until we close the historical and cultural gaps. Even if each of us held our peace long enough to do that much, we could maybe get somewhere. Maybe I would see where all of you are coming from. But I see no evidence of a concern to exegete the passages. We miss so much when we do that (that's another subject). At best, we can hope to stumble upon the truth of what God's Word says....but most of the time, we'll miss it. You can get a general context, but our instruction is not found in the general context. It's found in each word. That's how intricate it is. General context is subject to all kinds of obstruction (time, language, history, culture, geography, etc.) Some will say, that's ridiculous. Why consider all of these things? My answer? Because the Word of God can never mean today what it did not mean to the original recipients... ...and this is the root of much of the self-centered doctrine that permeates the church. This is not a soapbox, trust me. It grieves me to see the body function the way it does (yet another subject).


Andrew,

As for blaspheming the Holy Spirit, ....lol, I've been called worse. I'll stay out of your thread, but I won't agree with you for the sake of agreeing. I must say that I am curious though... What did you expect when you ask in an open forum to debate "cessation"?

Just my random interjection:

I've never seen a miraculous gift displayed... until I do, I will have some scepticism toward modern-day miraculous gifts.

4sightsounds said:
General context is subject to all kinds of obstruction (time, language, history, culture, geography, etc.)

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I agree with you 100%. Understanding the life and times of the Biblical people and places is very important indeed. Knowing about the culture sometimes sheds light on a difficult passage in scripture. What I am saying to you is that there is no reference to pagan rituals in the chapters we have been discussing. The chapter is clearly talking about the Spiritual Gifts and how one should conduct them in a church gathering. If you were able to show me otherwise then you would be justified in your indignation. The problem is you haven’t been able to do so at all.

Andrew said:

So you will build doctrines based on personal experiences. Blessed are those who do not see, yet believe.

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No, I do not base doctorine on my personal experiences. Blessed are those who do not see, yet believe in what? In Christ. It is not necessary for me to believe in certain people's miraculous gifts to be in Christ. The gifts were given to show Christ, not the other way around. I have heard about some real far fetched, "miracles" before. I heard of a church who raised a man from the dead in Africa. Should I believe this? That is why I say that I will be a skeptic until I have a reason to believe these claims.

Tawhano said:

I agree with you 100%. Understanding the life and times of the Biblical people and places is very important indeed. Knowing about the culture sometimes sheds light on a difficult passage in scripture. What I am saying to you is that there is no reference to pagan rituals in the chapters we have been discussing. The chapter is clearly talking about the Spiritual Gifts and how one should conduct them in a church gathering. If you were able to show me otherwise then you would be justified in your indignation. The problem is you haven’t been able to do so at all.

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Yeah, I know...

Ray Charles could see that Paul was referring to their paganism from Chapter 10 'til the end.

I'm sorry. I could not resist.

But seriously... what is Paul supposed to say to them? Is he supposed to just call them Pagans in the letter? Why on Earth would he use, out of all of the words in his vocabulary, "clanging brass and tinkling cymbals". Why would he bother to warn them against idol worship in chapter 10?

Against my better judgement, here's some links.

http://www.piney.com/MuBkgCor.html
http://www.higheredmin.org/Appendix.pdf
http://www.hwhouse.com/Current%20Articles%20Downloads/Theology/tonguesandmystery.htm
http://www.intelligentchristian.cwc.net/sexual_identity_in_corinth.htm

I know that these will be viewed as meaningless. I have not read most of them, but glanced at them....and they appear to be comprised of at least some of the same information that I've compiled that I'm too tired to type.

4sightsounds ,
Thanks for the links. I went and had a look at them and even read them. You were right I found them meaningless to our discussion. None of the articles convincingly connected historical events with Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Those that tried simply ignore the letter’s contents and pulled out a few words to make a connection that was not there.

4sightsounds said:
Why on Earth would he use, out of all of the words in his vocabulary, "clanging brass and tinkling cymbals". Why would he bother to warn them against idol worship in chapter 10?

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It is obvious from this statement that you have not read any of my posts and that I am wasting my time. I come here to debate in order to learn what others believe and why. If someone posts something I do not agree with I reply and explain why I disagree. You do not even extend this courtesy to me but simply ignore what I have to say and repeat your views. This is not debating. If you want to debate pagan rituals in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians then you must first make the connection. You have not and you ignored my posts explaining what those verses you think are the evidence for your belief mean and don’t bother to offer rebuttal about what I say. Until you do I guess there really is no point to continue with a one sided debate.