Spiritual Gifts
September 20, 2007
Here is the Article from Asbury Seminary Professor Robert Tuttle that I drew the John Wesley quote from in the PowerPoint // John Wesley and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Also, here is another article you might find interesting stating the United Methodist Churches position on spiritual gifts. And lastly, here is a link to the spiritual gifts inventory on the United Methodist Churches website.
You are an awesome class and I look forward to Wednesdays with you.
September 20, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Pastor
I am intently interested in your excellent provision of material and its basis of fact, rooted in the teaching of John Wesley, himself.
I am convinced it will be of enormous blessing and value to any seeker of spiritual truth. You are to be highly commended for its presentation!
THANK YOU for this spiritual insight….
September 21, 2007 at 1:40 am
Class was awesome. Verse 22 in 1 Cor 14 caught my eye last night, and I really focused in on it. But tonight, in re-reading it and verse 23 I’m puzzled. As I read them, the verses seem contradictory. If I may paraphrase, verse 22 says that tongues is a sign for unbelievers and prophesy is for believers. As I read this verse last night, I interpretted it to mean that tongues would be more convincing to unbelievers than believers while prophesy would have greater “merit” to believers than unbelievers. However, after reading verse 23, it seems to say just the opposite. I realize it is unwise to isolate any verse(s) and scrutinize it(them) in this manner, and I’m not at all sure of the relevance of such a question/distinction….but it’s buggin’ me!
September 21, 2007 at 3:14 am
Connie . . .
Did you REALLY have to go there!? This is one of a few verses in the scripture that leaves me absolutely perplexed, and I have yet to find a satisfying interpretation. So this is one of those verses that is still on my shelf of “waiting for insight and clarity”. Therefore, my response is going to be clumsy and groping.
I have heard someone try to make the point that Paul is talking about two different kinds of tongues // in vs. 22 he is talking about the supernatural gift of speaking a known tongue (ie, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, etc). // in vs. 23 he is talking about praying a heavenly language that only God knows. The problem is, neither the original language, nor the context warrants this interpretation. But it would make a lot more sense if it did.
Others have arrived at the conclusion (and this is where I am at currently) that this is an early scribal error. In other words, at some point very early in the writing (Paul may not have written all of his letters, he may have dictated some due to poor eyesight) a mistake was made by someone copying this letter, and in vs. 22 tongues and prophesy are accidentally reversed in order. If this were the case then vs. 22-23 would restate and flow with the rest of Paul’s train of thought in ch. 14.
So there you have it. Again, I am not satisfied at all with either of these scenarios, but that is unfortunately the best I’ve got for now. If anyone else out there would like to chime in on this subject it would be greatly appreciated.
Dan?????
September 25, 2007 at 3:03 pm
At times we make difficult a simplicity before us. Paul has just quoted God’s admonition through Isaiah, regarding His use of ‘non-understood tongues’ in effort to get His people’s attention because they would not pay attention to their own ‘tongue’. So, just maybe Paul simply means that one speaking publicly in an ‘unknown tongue’ will most likely center the attention of an ‘unbeliever’, while ‘believers’ present think nothing unusual about the occurrence. Yet, Paul wastes no time warning a crowd of ‘unknown tongue talkers’ against all speaking at once, thus confusing an unbeliever as to whom he should listen or hear. Which also quickly brings another necessity of ‘tongue speaking’ to be ‘interpreted’ so as to be beneficial to the entire body of both ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers’ understanding. Otherwise, there is little or no benefit to be gained. This overt public display of ‘tongues’ is not to be confused with one’s privately speaking in ‘tongues’ to himself, many times referred to as a ‘prayer language’, not intended for the congregation at large. Confused?!?! Many are and might likely need not be…..
September 26, 2007 at 3:52 am
Aah-hah….thank you, Dan, for the additional insight.