I Corinthians 1:7 shows that gifts continue

DHK wrote,

My BS Detector (Bad Sophistry Detector) is going off on this one. I asked a Greek professor about this and he was able to think of a passage or two in scripture where two words in a parallel grammatical categories to what you describe did not agree in gender. Plus, two words that refer to the same _concept_ can be expressed in different genders in languages that mark nouns for gender. So this whole line of reasoning is suspect.

The idea that Paul had a specific noun in mind, one that had to match the grammar of 'teleon' rather than a concept seems nonsensical to me. Your argument sounds to me like the type of reasoning about ancient Greek someone who spoke it would never make.

DHK wrote,

DHK, you overlook the fact that there are 'saints' mentioned throughout the book of Revelation. I have never seen one verse of scripture that says that the church will be raptured out before the Lord returns. God did not remove Israel from Egypt to pour out the plagues. Saying the church is not appointed unto wrath does not mean it will be raptured out.

How do the witnesses in Revelation prophecy if not by spiritual gifts?

This is a tangent, but you said the idea of Christ being incomplete was absurd. Hebrews said He was made perfect through suffering. Does not have to do with the issue at hand, but I thought I'd mention it.

 

I wrote,

I am familiar with the flow of the book of I Corinthians. It was one of the books I memorized in Teen Bible Quiz way back when.

There are thoughts and themes that go throughout epistles. It is obvious that Paul did not write his epistles with a Greek outline. Some people say his writing is more of a rabinnical style, and compare it to an onion with layers that get pealed off until he gets to the center. Paul does not just deal with one topic in one section. He will mention a topic while discussion another issue, and get back to it. In Romans, Paul mentions the issue of the Jews in chapter 2, and keeps on talking about Israel in later chapters like 9, 10, 11, and 15.

The Bible promises that Jesus will return, and it has been a little less than 2,000 years. Is that unbelievable to you as well? It is not suprising that God would wait that long to bring in that which is perfect, especially considering verses like I Corinthians 1:7.

"So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ:"

Ephesians 4 tells us that God gave us prophets until we all come into the unity of the faith unto the full measure of the stature of Christ.

We also see two witnesses prophesying in the book of Revelation and references to Babylon killing ___prophets___. If prophets are still around at the end, then it makes no sense to say that the perfect has already come.

Shifts gears? Nowhere in the epistle does Paul hint that people speak in tongues to get attention.

The Bible certainly does NOT call tongues carnal. In fact, it calls it a gift of the SPIRIT. The apostles spoke in tongues. There is no hint in the epistle that the problem in I Corinthians with tongues came about because the tongues speakers were seeking attention. They were childish in their understanding and did not consider that uninterpreted tongues did not edify other. But there is no indictment of their motivation for speaking in tongues-- that their motives or selfish or that they were attention seekers.

This is your own bias that you are eisegeting into the passage. Paul spoke in tongues 'more than ye all' when he wrote this epistle. So if Paul was describing speaking in tongues as childish, he was describing his current state.

Paul specifically refers to knowledge in connection with the perfect, not 'revelation' per se. See the following verse.

1 Corinthians 13:12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
^^^^^^
When the perfect comes, Paul would know fully as he is fully known.

MAJOR flaw with your reasoning here is that Paul was already looking into the glass when he wrote the epistle. One could look into the mirror of the word of God when it was in verbal form when James wrote his epistle, probably one of the first epistles written in the New Testament. So if you say looking into a glass is talking about the word of God you are actually supporting my argument that 'that which is perfect' is NOT the Bible in this particular passage.

Notice the contrast--now we see through a glass darkly, but THEN face to face.

So now, we have the Bible, which is like looking in the mirror you argue. So if the word is the mirror or glass here, you still have 'the perfect' coming at a later date, after the word.

If the quote in James is your 'biblical basis' for saying 'the perfect' is the scripture, that actually argues against your position.

Paul's application of the passage is that it is a sign for unbelievers. We have unbelievers, both Jew and Gentile, in the world today. There is no reason to think that Jews now would benefit less from signs. When Romans 11 was written, God had already 'concluded them all in unbelief' at that time, and the gifts were still in operation.

Tongues with interpretation had a function in regard to believers, though it was not to serve as a sign to us. If you argue that tongues ceased because they were no longer needed as a sign, tongues had other uses, so if they weren't needed as a sign, that does not mean tongues would cease. It is like saying knife's ceased when they stopped mass production of buggy whips after cars started to be manufactured. After all, you need a knife to cut off the end of the buggy whip handle when you are done with it, so since we don't have buggy whips, we don't have knives. The problem with this line of reasoning is that there are other uses for knives.

Your premise does not support your conclusion. Tongues and interpretation edified the church in Corinth even though speaker and congregation apparently did not know what was being said without the interpretation. What does this have to do with missionaries not needing to go to language schools? I don't see anything in the Bible that says that the gift of tongues was meant to replace speaking a language with the understanding. Paul contrasts praying in tongues with praying with his understanding.

I agree that tonges are real languages. The Bible contains no warnings one way or the other about speaking in gibberish. It makes sense that one could speak in gibberish without a demon being involved.

Also, it makes little sense to read tongues into the passage that says that if someone curses the Lord, that he is not speaking by the Spirit. Suppose you theorize that someone had actually cursed Christ in Corinth while pretending to be functioning in a gift--which is quite a leap that the passage does not support, but a theoretical possibility. Suppose this happened. If it had happened in tongues, no one would have understood, and Paul would have been referring to an occurence they did not even know about. There is no reason to think that people were cursing Christ in tongues in church.

It makes more sense to see Paul contrasting pagan spiritual manifestations with true Chrsitian ones. Do you think believers speaking by some spirit would have cursed Christ? Isn't it more likely that pagans did such things with their false gifts, and that the Christians were confessing that Jesus is Lord?

Could the Corinthians name the languages they spoke in? etc. The speaker needed a gift of interpretation to be able to interpret his own message in Corinth. no one understood him, so his message had to be intepreted. Does I Corinthians tell the Corinthians to worry about whether or not their tongues are real? No.

That is why I have been saying consistently that tongues had a role to play in edifying the church WHEN USED WITH THE GIFT OF INTERPRETATION. The gift of tongues plus the gift of interpretation edifies the church. Tongues alone does not, which is one of the main points of I Corinthians chapter 14.

DHK, you cannot even recognize the gift of teaching as being in operation. How could you recognize tongues. I believe it would benefit you to do a word study on the Greek words for 'grace' and 'spiritual gift(s)', charis, charisma, charismata....and then look up the uses of these words in the context of relevant passages. Look up the words in I Corinthians 12-14, Romans 12, Ephesians 4, I Peter 4, and other passages.

Your idea that all gifts ceased is a rather extreme view, one that most cessationists I have encountered do not believe.

1. Surely you are aware that this prophecy was given hundreds of years before Paul.

2. Nothing in either the Isaiah passage or Paul's passage say anything about this referring to Jews before 70 AD. You are making some kind of Preterist type argument without holding to Preterism-- strange.

3. 'Israel' is a people-group. Israel was Israel during the Babylonian captivity. They have not ceased to be Israel. Notice that the verse even says 'This people' not this 'Legally recognized state.

This is an extremely weak argument. The Jews Peter preached to were likely not the same unbelieving Jews Paul's audience would have encountered in Corinth years and years later.

There is nothing in eithr the Acts 2:14-16 or Acts 2:36 passages that indicate that these passages apply specifically to 'first century Jews.' In the first passage, Paul is speaking to a specific crowd of people, but the passage is 'profitable for doctrine' for us. You are eisegeting.

I Corinthians 14:26 does not say that tongues was only for a sign for the specific Jews who had crucified Christ. When Christ was about to be crucified, the crowd said, 'let his blood be on us and on our children.' It is likely that some of Peter's listeners in Acts 2 were not in the crowd that shouted this out to Pilate.

In the OT, God held the nation of Israel collectively responsible for sins, allowing other soldiers to die when Achan stole goods that were to be destroyed. God held the nation responsible. Generations later, God held the nation responsible for breaking covenant with the Gibeonites.

quote:

The 'mounting evidence' exists in the minds of people like yourselves, but it is not in the pages of scripture. Your 'evidence' is eisegesis, not whatthe Bible actually says.

You have not shown that apostleship has ceased. I have demonstrated that God did signs through non-apostles.

You have not shown where scripture calls all the I Corinthians 12 gift 'signs.' Just because it makes sense to you to call them signs does not mean scripture uses the term that way.

Maybe you should directly state your position. How do you formulate an argument from this for the cessation of the gifts? Connect the dots for me so I do not have to guess at your stance.

My position is this. Paul did the signs of the apostles. There are two ways I can see this can be interpreted.

1. One is the the signs of an apostle were the suffering, etc. he endured as described in the passage, and were accompanied by signs, wonder, and mighty deeds.

2. The other is that signs, wonders, and mighty deeds were the signs of an apostle. Scripture shows that God granted that non-apostles do signs at times. Stephen and Philip did signs. In Hebrews 2, they that heard the Lord did signs, but the passage does not say that this was restricted to the apostles.

And you have not demonstrated that I Corinthians 12 gifts are the same thing as an apostle.

If you are trying to argue that I Corinthians 12 are only for apostles, surely you realize that you are contradicting scripture. Paul himself wrote about regular believers receiving these gifts. So don't try to interpret the passage in a way that does not even make sense in the light of the rest of scripture.

It makes sense, if one holds to interpretation 2, above, to insist that if someone is an apostle, he will do signs, wonders, and mighty needs. It does not make sense to try to make the verse say that only apostles can/could do signs, because the passage does not _demand_ this interpretation, and this interpretation contradicts other scripture.

I challenged you earlier to show me scripture for this view. Show me the scripture that prioritizes the following purposes of spiritual gifts.

-edifying the church
-'authenticating' ('bearing witness' is the more scriptural way of saying this)
-sign to the Jews.

The Bible doesn't say all the gifts are signs to unbelievers. And it does not refer to I Corinthians gifts as 'signs' in reference to believers.

I wrote,
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Two problems here. The Bible does not teach that all spiritual gifts going on today are fraudulent. Do you teach your congregation? Is that fraudulent, or do you do it without any grace from the Spirit? Think about the implications of your argument for yourself.
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What I meant was this. You teach gifts have ceased and modern expressions of gifts are fraudulent. The Bible talks about a gift from teaching.

Since you teach, are you a fraud, or do you teach without any grace from the Spirit to aid your teaching?

And it is sad that you teach your congregation doctrine not based on scritpure like the following, "I teach my congregation that all the spiritual gifts have ceased and if any person claims to have them they are frauds. "

You basically admitted earlier that you don't have any scripture for the other gifts ceasing besides the ones mentioned in I Corinthians 13. You have not a shred of scripture for teaching that gifts as a whole have ceased, and yet you teach the idea has doctrine. Shame on you.

You do not know what 'charismata' means. Do a word study. The Holy Spirit empowering someone to teach, by the grace of God--that sure sounds like what happens when the Biblical gift of teachign functions.

Notice that there are charismata in Romans 12.

It cannot be demonstrated from scripture.

The Bible does not support this idea.