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 »
A recent trend I’ve seen which greatly disturbs me — even angers me, at times — is a tendency for Christian believers to divide themselves from one other according to their pet doctrines. This is much like the old East-Indian parable of the blind men and the elephant: Five blind men heard an elephant had been brought into… 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 »
My step-brother George passed away on Wednesday, December 17, 2014. He was born just short of being exactly 3-years-to-the-day older than me, making him 64 at the time. George and I were not particularly close and had little in the way of common interests, though he helped Tess and me immensely by performing our home inspection before we… Read More »
Historically, one of the most destructive and divisive controversies within Protestantism has been between the followers of reformer John Calvin, a French theologian who lived from 1509-1564, and the adherents of Jacobus Arminius, a Dutch theologian who lived from 1560-1609. The name-calling and propagandizing against one another by these two groups has been damaging our unity of the… 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 »
