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Tongues and Interpretation of Tongues

Now I want you all to speak in tongues (I Cor 14:5) . . . one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret (I Cor 14:13) I suppose I have saved the most difficult of the gifts for last – speaking in tongues and interpretation of tongues.  I choose to take them together because Paul says that within the church body they need to be practiced together.  In a church service, they are different steps in the same process.  One brings a message from God; the other enables the people to understand it.  Now if we…

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Miracles and Healing

. . . to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles . . . (I Cor 12:9-10) Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? (Gal 3:5) I want to talk about the spiritual gifts of miracles and healing together because I believe that healings are miracles.  The two gifts are related even if they are not identical.  The New Testament speaks of God giving to the church various people who have been given special spiritual…

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Introduction to Healing

 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. (I Cor 15:53) I have begun to discuss some preliminary matters related to the charismatic gifts. I now intend to delve into a discussion of individual charismatic gifts. The first two will be healing and miracles, and I will take them together. But before I discuss healing specifically, I want to give Biblical background on healing in general. I hope this background will help you avoid some common misunderstandings of Biblical healing. The Christian faith certainly involves spiritual matters.  One cannot deal with…

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An Interpretive Help for Understanding the Charismatic Gifts

In my last blog I talked about the legitimacy of the charismatic gifts as well as some false doctrines surrounding those gifts.  Here I want to focus on the Biblical interpretation that brings about many of those false doctrines.  Generally speaking,  when people believe a false doctrine about charismatic gifts, they do so on the basis of how they view the relationship between the Acts narratives and Paul’s explanations in I Corinthians.  In my experience, people who say that tongues are required for salvation, for the filling of the Spirit, or for a higher level of spirituality all believe that…

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The Charismatic Gifts

We are in the middle of a series on spiritual gifts. I have now discussed the major noncharismatic gifts the Bible mentions. But before I discuss the charismatic gifts individually, I want to talk about my approach to them generally. Since in Scripture, tongues gets most of the press, it will get most of the press here as well, but I do intend this discussion to apply more broadly than just to tongues. When I was a young believer, I attended a charismatic church for a time.  I did not myself speak in tongues, so one day two men, concerned…

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