Archives for “Charismata”
My speech and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
Some charismatics take these words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 2.4-5 to reinforce their emphasis on charismatic acts such as healing, prophecy, and the other “manifestation” gifts, particularly in the proclamation of the gospel. The implication is that mere Christian teaching is lacking in power and in fact amounts to a potential distraction unless backed up by miracles.
When we look at Acts, however, the picture we get of the Corinthian situation is somewhat different. In Corinth we see Paul laboring long and hard at teaching, with words, making arguments day after day to those in the synagogue: “Every sabbath he would argue in the synagogue and would try to convince Jews and Greeks” (18.4); “…Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ” (18.5). He is admonished by the Lord in a dream to do something very specific: ” ‘Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent…’ ” (18.9). In obedience and faith, Paul “…stayed there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them” (18.10). He was persecuted, as Gallio described, because of a mere “matter of questions about words and names and [Jewish] law” (18.15) — in short, matters of teaching.
- Christian responsibility according to St. Paul .!. A funny thing happened on my way through Paul’s epistles. I read through all of Paul’s letters over the last couple days, trying to take note of the commonalities...
- Campbell: what did Paul mean by “justified”? Here’s an excerpt from the first part of a review of a book I’ve been interested in since I first heard about it. It’s from the New Perspective school of...
Here’s a bit from an article written by Todd Bentley of Lakeland Revival fame:
By now you may be wondering what angels really look like. Well, I’ve had angels come as shimmering pillars of light with such brightness about their person that I couldn’t make out the details. I had another angel come to me looking like he was about 6′ 4″ tall with 24″ biceps. He was cut with rippling muscles and wore a golden sash about his waist. He had blond, shoulder-length hair and blue eyes-the hunk of hunks. We are talking better than Fabio, OK. Another time I had a similar-looking angel come to me-he was young and in his early twenties. I said, “God is that like me in the spirit?” He said, “No Son, it’s an angel” . . .
I once had an angelic visitation, I believe, in a Mac’s convenience store. I had told these guys in the store about Jesus once before-they were laughing, mocking, scoffing, drug addicts. One guy was an atheist. One of them, an atheist, standing with his buddies, began to scoff at me saying, “Look, it’s the guy who came in here last week telling me about Jesus. What do you guys think about Jesus?” They were all drunk, stoned or smoking cigarettes, wearing AC/DC or Motley Crew T-shirts: “We don’t believe in angels and God and all that crazy stuff and blah blah blah.” Nothing would have convinced these hardened skeptics besides the power of God.
Suddenly, I fell under the power in the convenience store and, on all fours, roared like a lion. Then the shop clerk ran with fear and dived behind the counter with the two dope heads right behind him. By now, the entire atmosphere had changed. Then the atheist gets up, points his finger at me, and says, “Is that your God?” At that moment, this dirty bum comes walking into the store with two bags of bottles or something, puts them up on the counter and says, “You guys, listen to what these guys are telling you. Everything these guys are telling you is true.” He gets his money and walks out of the store.
The first thing I thought when I looked at my friend was, “That was an angel.” He was thinking the same thing. My wife and her girlfriend were waiting in the car and watching what was going on in the store. When we got into the vehicle my wife said nobody went in the store and nobody came out. This particular angel, I’m convinced, came looking like a bum.
Bum? I wonder if he meant “Bam!” Anyway, it gets more interesting: