Over my 50+ years of serving Jesus, I’ve met more than a few sincere Christ-loving folks resistant to the charismatic experience. I’ve also run across more than a few flaky tongue-talkers who also zealously love our Savior yet cannot seem to get their act together, whether doctrinally or character-wise. Most of the former I’ve encountered holding that position… Read More »
Introduction Despite the obvious Monty Pythonism in the title, we are not here to discuss very nice, not-too-tall shrubberies. “NIH” in the title of this article is the abbreviation for “Not Invented Here.” It’s a flavor of the groupthink form of cognitive bias. Those who suffer from groupthink in general display an inherent distrust of and/or hostility towards… Read More »
No true Christ-follower has problems with the Bible describing God’s miracles in the ancient past — we’re all in agreement the Word accurately portrays such events, so there is no controversy there at all. It’s only when you start talking about God performing miracles in the modern day where you will generally have two kinds of reactions. Those… Read More »
This is almost always the first question asked by laypersons and ministers alike when they are initially introduced to the doctrine of divine healing. Such laypersons are generally being confronted with the daunting challenge of developing their faith where they have had no previous teaching or revelation from God’s Word and the Holy Spirit on the topic. Ministers… Read More »
This a semi-comprehensive list of God’s promises concerning physical healing in both the Old and New Testaments as well as all the accounts in the Gospels and Acts where Jesus and the Apostles performed healings, cast out demons, and raised the dead back to life. I say “semi-comprehensive” because I did not include duplicate accounts of the same… Read More »
Along with tongues, divine healing, divine prosperity, the charismatic phenomenon of being “slain in the Spirit” completes the list of the most divisive concepts to separate the Body of Christ in the postmodern era. Frankly, there has been some colossally bad biblical scholarship on both side of this debate. So we’re going to take a shot at exploring… Read More »
There is a term I learned from a former pastor who used it whenever he was discussing phrases or statements made by well-meaning, but biblically ignorant church folk when challenged to believe something from the Word of God that is beyond their current level of faith. The term is “Religious Escape Clause.” The most prevalent example of such… Read More »
Back in the fourth article in this series, I presented the 9 gifts of the Spirit as listed in 1 Corinthians 12. In subsequent articles on this topic, we have discussed 3 of those gifts, the ones commonly referred to as the “utterance gifts:” Unknown tongues Interpretation of tongues Prophesy Now, after a lengthy hiatus, we will hit the remaining… Read More »
