The Next Reformation? 9.5 Thesis Posted on 'Church Door'!

The Prophecy Reformation Institute ^ | 2001 | John Noe

[CCWoody]

Would you drop to your knees and sell everything you have and forsake the Synagogue who might even kill you for it? People you never met and don't know suddenly speak 16 languages and that would begin the early church? That would "confound" "marvel" and "astound" at least three thousand? Next you will say that believing that alone was itself a miracle. You are being disingenuous.

I am like the man who discovered a "Glorious Treasure" in the field. (Matthew 13:44) When I was confounded with the reality that unless I had Christ I was a certain dead man and moreover, I was a certain eternal dead man I took the only option available: "Save me and have mercy upon me!" When the glory of the Living God was revealed in me I could not stand. Regeneration - knowing that Christ is solidly and perfectly reliable to save to the uttermost. Though I die, I shall live. (John 12:25) Conversion - knowing that Christ is Eternally desirable above all things. (Psalm 63)

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?

Sorry, vmatt, but you are describing exactly why some people never experience a true conversion to eternal life. Like the rich man whose delight was in his earthly treasure, they never experience a true conversion because they are locked into the joys of this life. True conversion involves a willingness to forsake everything for the joy of possessing Christ.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Okay, I think I've discussed "holy gibbering" at sufficient length, let me crack open II Peter per your request...

[CCWoody]

Okay, I think I've discussed "holy gibbering" at sufficient length, let me crack open II Peter per your request...

I'll read it tonight!

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

I am like the man who discovered a "Glorious Treasure" in the field. (Matthew 13:44) When I was confounded with the reality that unless I had Christ I was a certain dead man and moreover, I was a certain eternal dead man I took the only option available: "Save me and have mercy upon me!" When the glory of the Living God was revealed in me I could not stand. Regeneration - knowing that Christ is solidly and perfectly reliable to save to the uttermost. Though I die, I shall live. (John 12:25) Conversion - knowing that Christ is Eternally desirable above all things. (Psalm 63) My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? Sorry, vmatt, but you are describing exactly why some people never experience a true conversion to eternal life. Like the rich man whose delight was in his earthly treasure, they never experience a true conversion because they are locked into the joys of this life. True conversion involves a willingness to forsake everything for the joy of possessing Christ.

Yes.

Important point you make here.

It is not even the miraculous Power over Tongues itself which is the "main event" of Acts 2... Tongues was just God's miraculous way of facilitating the main event, which was (and is) the presentation of the Gospel itself.

It is the Gospel itself which Man finds alternatively Astounding or Offensive... and it was their response to the Gospel, good or ill, which informed the opinions of the sojourners as to whether the Power over Foreign Tongues was truly a miracle of God, or a drunken carnival event to be derided (and ignored as quickly as possible).

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Have you folks figured out why I said in #164 that 2 Peter 3:1-15 poses problems for the premill? (This is actually less sticky than the tongues issue, by the way!)

Yeah, I see it. Very good point.

[Mighty Pen]

Actually, I have to disagree with you there. God did restore the kingdom to Israel in the first century. He just didn't do it in the way that the Jews were expecting him to. They expected an earthly kingdom, but Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world." (John 18:36) The kingdom which was to be restored to Israel was a spiritual kingdom. A remnant of the nation was to be included in that restoration. Indeed it was restored, for if you look at the early church, you find such Jewish Christians as John, Peter, Paul, James, and others. They were among the first leaders in Christ's church---his holy kingdom.

Romans 9:6-13 states very clearly that the new Kingdom of Israel is not made up of those who are the physical descendants of Abraham, nor does it involve the political entity that we know today as Israel. Rather, verse 8-9 says, "In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring. For this was how the promise was stated: 'At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.'" Galatians 3:26-29 says, "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."

It's clear from these passages that the restored kingdom was and is not for those who can trace their bloodline back to Abraham, but for those who through grace, faith, and obedience have put on Christ. :)

[vmatt]

Sorry, vmatt, but you are describing exactly why some people never experience a true conversion to eternal life. Like the rich man whose delight was in his earthly treasure, they never experience a true conversion because they are locked into the joys of this life. True conversion involves a willingness to forsake everything for the joy of possessing Christ.

Good thoughts all but I have no idea what you're talking about.

[vmatt]

Mormons "witness" all the time that they have "received the Gift of the Holy Spirit" by a "burning in their breasts".

Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed?

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed?

Nope. I didn't hafta wait.

I received the Holy Ghost when I believed -- in order to believe at all!!

Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. (1 Corinthians 12:3)

He hasn't left me since.

[vmatt]

Nope. I didn't hafta wait.

So just what was that falling all over the place in Acts?

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Read strictly as a blow-by-blow chronology, II Peter 3: 1-15 is a strong endorsement of amillenialism, and Peter leaves little wiggle-room, it seems.

It's not very PostMillenial, the latter days are AntiChristian in the extreme.

It's not very PreMillenial, as the earth melts away. Unless you believe that the "day of God" comes at the end of the Millenial Kingdom... in which case, it would not be coming as a "thief in the night" (i.e., the Millenial Church would know full well that the Thousand Years was nearly finished. "Well, Bob, look at all the heretics starting to raise their fists against the Risen King. Hey, I guess it really is the 998th year of Our Lord's bodily reign!! Okay, then, just two more years to go, then it's Gog-and-Magog time and after that, New Jerusalem shall descend. No worries, then; pass the beer.")

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

So just what was that falling all over the place in Acts?

Diversities of Gifts.

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant. Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led. Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.

Just as there are today.

Of course, God works when and where he sees fit.

Lotsa miracles during the Moses-and-Joshua days of the Church. Then relatively few, by comparison; a few here and there in Judges, but not many international bodies of water getting split up the middle. Then a burst of miracles during the Elijah-and-Elisha days of the Church; then another hiatus. Prophecy and Illumination given to Daniel, but not so much Fire from Heaven (just some fire-proofing). Big burst of miraculous outpouring during the Jesus-and-Apostles days of the Church, then another more "quiet" period... some Prophecy and lots of Illumination during the Reformation, but not too many bodily resurrections.

And no "holy babbling" anywhere in the whole line of Church history.

God ain't a slot machine, dispensing Gifts of Holy Gibbering and Sanctified Epilepsy at our demand. He gives those Gifts He deems fit for the Church in His appointed times, in His appointed places.

[vmatt]

And no "holy babbling" anywhere in the whole line of Church history. God ain't a slot machine, dispensing Gifts of Holy Gibbering and Sanctified Epilepsy at our demand. He gives those Gifts He deems fit for the Church in His appointed times, in His appointed places.

Good words all. You know, it seems almost surreal from where I sit, many words that say very little in light of what I am witness to. That for two thousand years and right under the nose of organized Christianity God has slowly and patiently selected certain individuals as myself whom I don't even know and filled them with the Holy Ghost evidenced with tongues, assuming I'm not the only one. You would think this would be encouraged, honored and excepted instead it is attacked and ridiculed, the actual workings of God.

[CCWoody]

Have you folks figured out why I said in #164 that 2 Peter 3:1-15 poses problems for the premill? (This is actually less sticky than the tongues issue, by the way!)

I see how this will hurt the full Preterist, but how does this "put to the sword" the premill?

John 5:25 - the first resurrection in Rev 20 which stated the 1000 years?

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Good words all. You know, it seems almost surreal from where I sit, many words that say very little in light of what I am witness to. That for two thousand years and right under the nose of organized Christianity God has slowly and patiently selected certain individuals as myself whom I don't even know and filled them with the Holy Ghost evidenced with tongues, assuming I'm not the only one. You would think this would be encouraged, honored and excepted instead it is attacked and ridiculed, the actual workings of God.

Nope.

The Gift of Tongues must conform to the Biblical example to be considered a gift of God.

If it is Power over Foreign Tongues, it conforms to the Biblical Example.
If it is glossalic Gibbering, it is a Satanic Deception.

Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the LORD, that use their tongues, and say, He saith. Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the LORD, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and by their lightness; yet I sent them not, nor commanded them: therefore they shall not profit this people at all, saith the LORD. (Jeremiah 23: 31-32)

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

My read on II Peter 3 is posted in #251.

Feel free to respond with your best counter-arguments, as I am not likely to be a dependable advocate of the Pre-Mill view at the moment. Engelsma's stuff on Amill has made an impression on me of late....

[George W. Bush]

I've made the same arguments you make here for many years on modern "tongues". But mine are poor by comparison to your thorough treatment.

As far as vmatt's notion that the evangelists of Pentecost spoke and were heard in the various languages, then it wouldn't really be the gift of "tongues" in the speaker but the gift of "ears" in the hearers. However, there are actual physical implications here.

Since sound is no more than air vibrations emitted by the speaker and perceived by the hearer, then for vmatt's notions to be true, it would seem that God would have to be simply creating a miracle in midair and altering sound waves in the air after leaving the speaker's mouth and before they reached the hearer's ears which makes nonsense of the idea that God's gift of tongues to evangelists was meaningful. Either that, or He would be creating a miracle in the hearer's ears or brains for them to perceive the sound waves in their own tongue which would again make nonsense of "tongues" having any role in Pentecost. And yet the "tongues" folk are essentially saying that their strongest scriptural justification for tongues and the event best described in scripture has nothing to do with the speaker's tongue at all!

I'm not an engineering type so maybe Woody would like to comment on this stuff. My own limited knowledge of sound transmission tells me that the idea that they spoke in their native tongue and were heard in other tongues is ludicrous. There are issues of secondary sound transmission in human speech and hearing that would apply as well.

And this is before vmatt solves the problem of the "foreign movie effect" of his explanation of Pentecost. As anyone who is familiar with foreign films has observed, no matter how closely they try to match words spoken in one language into another language, there are inevitable problems. This happens even between languages that are related like English and the Romance languages. So if an evangelist at Pentecost spoke a word in his own language that had five lip movements but the corresponding language in which he was heard had that word as three lip movements, then apparently the crowd at Pentecost were the first ones to ever see a really bad lip-syncing job! Like what we see in some cheap foreign film.

No matter how you slice it, the gift of tongues at Pentecost can only make sense if God's Spirit was working in the speaker, not in the hearers.

The question I've always had about Pentecost is how the crowd was grouped and how the evangelists were distributed among them. (I assume that there wasn't a podium at which each of the 120 spoke in turn as we might in modern times.) How was the crowd grouped? Was the crowd already mostly sorted into compatible language groups and 3-5 evangelists went to each and started preaching to the group each speaker in turn and with the amazed listeners then calling their friends of the same language but not immediately present to come hear the local hick speak in their language? This last one is how I've pictured it. And I think that what amazed the listeners was that they spoke those languages with current venacular, not a trace of foreign accent, not an indication that the fishermen were anything other but another guy from their own hometown. In short, their "tongues" were those of native speakers.

I wonder also if the conversion of the foreigners was God's only intent in the use of tongues at Pentecost. I also think that He used it to prove to those early key disciples His power and glory, to give them one of many experiences of His power through them to work His will, to make them fishers of men, the kind of courage required for most of them to ultimately lay down their own lives as martyrs in testimony of Christ and to build His church. If you were one of the 120, perhaps your faith was flagging a bit, perhaps you hadn't seen the Ascension personally, perhaps you were a relatively new convert when Jesus was crucified. What effect would it have to speak and have the words understood in a foreign language and then to see three thousand foreigners fall to their knees, claim Christ and be baptized in His name? I can only think of doc's comment on the Criswell thread the other day, where he talked about the passion Criswell had when he echoed Spurgeon: "THERE'S NO STOPPING THIS GOD!"

But we can't really know that from the Gospel's account. We won't know it in this life at least. But it was possibly even more amazing than the simple and direct Gospel account. It must have been, I think.

You know, sometimes it's strange how educational FR really is about what some groups actually believe. It's astonishing when you look at a description of some event in the Gospel and see how some group will explain it. This reminds me of the "crystal ball" that the Arminians think God used to create Bible prophecy but then threw away so that His foreknowledge would not hamper man's free will. It's almost like some weird fetishism. And like any fetishism, the explanations offered to justify it are essentially irrationl to anyone else.

[CCWoody]

Actually, upon further reflection, I do see how the same verse which hurts full Preterism also hurts premill. BTW, does historic premill have the Second coming of Christ before the 1000 years?

I'm so confused now....

[George W. Bush]

That for two thousand years and right under the nose of organized Christianity God has slowly and patiently selected certain individuals as myself whom I don't even know and filled them with the Holy Ghost evidenced with tongues, assuming I'm not the only one.

Can you establish a historical trail of people speaking in tongues for 2000 years? The organization of such groups started in 1900 as I recall.

It's a modern practice from what I've read. Which are the historic churches or groups who spoke in tongues?

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

He would be creating a miracle in the hearer's ears or brains for them to perceive the sound waves in their own tongue which would again make nonsense of "tongues" having any role in Pentecost. And yet the "tongues" folk are essentially saying that their strongest scriptural justification for tongues and the event best described in scripture has nothing to do with the speaker's tongue at all!

Yeah, I'd alluded to that ("tongues" vs. "ears"), but not so specifically.

...So if an evangelist at Pentecost spoke a word in his own language that had five lip movements but the corresponding language in which he was heard had that word as three lip movements, then apparently the crowd at Pentecost were the first ones to ever see a really bad lip-syncing job! Like what we see in some cheap foreign film.

(ROTFL)... hoo, boy. Funny stuff. And I agree.

But that said...

I think that what amazed the listeners was that they spoke those languages with current venacular, not a trace of foreign accent, not an indication that the fishermen were anything other but another guy from their own hometown. In short, their "tongues" were those of native speakers.

I agree with this statement even more strongly. As I said above, I don't endorse the idea of an "ears miracle" when Luke is plainly talking about a "tongues miracle", but to me, the main point is that Tongues is a Miracle of real communication, not unintelligible gibbering.

Once we have discounted the idea of sanctified gibbering as being simply UnScriptural, we're just arguing about the operational mechanics of the Miraculous Communication.

I wonder also if the conversion of the foreigners was God's only intent in the use of tongues at Pentecost. I also think that He used it to prove to those early key disciples His power and glory, to give them one of many experiences of His power through them to work His will, to make them fishers of men, the kind of courage required for most of them to ultimately lay down their own lives as martyrs in testimony of Christ and to build His church.

Actually, as long as it is recognized as just a sensible inference and not explicit Scripture, I agree with this as well. Matter of fact, while Tongues is used in Acts 2 primarily to advance the Gospel, it is used primarily to confirm the Gospel in Acts 10.

Anyway, nuff said.