1 John MacArthur “The Gift of Tongues” http://www.gty.org/resources/
Wallace Henley
Thank you for the quick response. I appreciate your ministry and your preaching. I always enjoy listening to your sermons. I am an “Old School” Baptist from Mississippi myself and I know that you also view the fringe movement of the charismatic movement to be abhorrent. My only concern is that if we do not address the issue now, which a debate could demonstrate, what will happen when they (those that are advancing the charismatic chaos) demand to dominate the worship and theology of the church? It is only a small step from raising one’s hands to cutting backflips off the pew.
Anyway, thank you for the consideration and if you change your mind please let me know.
I appreciate your indulgence and your dialogue with me. My intent in conversing with you is one of mutual learning and encouragement as two ministers of the gospel. I didn’t know if you wanted to bother with looking at my attachment or not, but when I teach on the Person and Work of the Spirit, these are the notes I normally use and handout to students, which includes what I believe to be at least a plausible view on the ministry of spiritual gifts (I essentially hold Ryrie’s position, if that helps shorten the explanation some).
By the way, I remembered that you mentioned William Lau in your article I read and I looked at a few videos of his conferences today. I will admit that until you mentioned him, I had no idea who he was. I don’t know if you take his same positions regarding the continuation of “healings” and casting out demons, as he defines it, based upon the pattern in the Gospels and Acts but wow. He makes some very interesting theological propositions in his seminars.To be honest with you I found it quite disturbing.
My observation is that he exports theological events (healings to be precise) from specific Gospel narrative accounts that were given by Jesus to his Jewish disciples to authenticate the a specific messianic message to the nation of Israel, validating his claims to be their Messiah. Lau then imports the methodology of that recorded event on the contemporary church and expects the contemporary Christian to do likewise. I am afraid that his assessment of the text is not only misleading, it is mistaken.
This type of teaching violates the most basic hermeneutic principles, primarily that the Bible was written for my benefit but the texts it was not written to me directly. That is, I am not to extrapolate from a “will of command,” given by Jesus to a specific person or group, within a specific context for the purposes of validating Jesus’ ministry to a Jewish nation, and then take that to mean that “mountain-moving” faith (which Jesus used as a focal point in a hyperbolic statement to his disciples before entering Jerusalem and experiencing national rejection) is all one needs to duplicate a super natural feat in this current dispensation.
I realize of course that I could be wrong in my observations and analysis of Lau’s propositions, as well as my assessment of the transitional nature of the Gospels and Acts regarding healings and miracles. But if such is the case, then Lau’s propositions, given his presupposition that all one needs is faith in order to perform apostolic miracles, are easily proven correct and the cessationists view can easily be proven as being the incorrect view. Lau can end the 2,000 year old spiritual gift debate once and for all. Given the right conditions of “faith” however he defines it, all one has to do is go down to the cancer ward at Methodist hospital and heal everyone in the wing, instantaneously of their cancer. After all, Jesus healed people that demonstrated “no faith” at all in his ability to heal them or in his person-hood as the Messiah (Lk.17:11-19 and the 9 lepers who exercised no faith in their healing). Moreover, he virtually vanquished all diseases in and around the Galilean area during his northern ministry. Healing a few hundred people in a cancer ward would be virtually insignificant in proving Lau’s proposition by comparison truly validating his “Elijah challenge.”
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Dec 10 (1 day ago)
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