Don, you are a better man than I. But I heard it said,... it feels so good when I stop".
Good job on this thread. I, for one, would love to be able to articulate as well as you have.
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Something I noticed about pentacostals
- Thread starter Chemnitz
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Good job on this thread. I, for one, would love to be able to articulate as well as you have.
DHK, it's evident that he has not read your post. So let me say something on behalf of Brian. Never would he say such a thing. You should know by now that he would "never" blashpheme against the Holy Ghost. Know what I mean?
Read Luke 11:11-13! I'm sure that God gave Brian "EXACTLY" what he asked for while praying.
MEE
1Cor.12:3 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.
Many were calling Jesus accursed by another spirit, by speaking in another tongue, in a language they did not know. They were calling Jesus accursed! These were these tongue-speaking Corinthians. This is what Paul is rebuking here in this verse. What evidence do you have that you are not speaking by the power of another spirit, not the Holy Spirit?
DHK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the first place the Corinthian Church was not speaking in tongues and calling Jesus accursed. you have misinterpeted the scripture.
It does not imply in anyway that The Church was speaking in tongues by some spirit other than the SPIRIT of God! I don't know where you get that. It's just anything to put down what the doctrine of the Oneness believes. If you all can't do it one way some will stoop so low as to call the Spirit of God of the devil. Shame Shame!
When a person if praying and worshipping the Lord, why would the Lord let Satan step in and take over? My God is not that way! He went through a lot, with His death, to let the evil one take over that which he so desperatly loves.
I agree there was sin still going on in that church, but Paul was trying his best to strengthen the church as all churches have to be corrected at times. That is why God gave us His Word and Pastors.
Just keep in mind that the church at Corinth was not speaking in tongues by the spirit of the devil. You will not agree, but then what else is new?
As I said before, 1 Cor. 12:3 never mentions demons or anything implying that these were having any dealings with evil spirits. Paul is saying that you have to have the Spirit of God to know who "He" is and not "They," as in three persons.
Mee
Many were calling Jesus accursed by another spirit, by speaking in another tongue, in a language they did not know. They were calling Jesus accursed! These were these tongue-speaking Corinthians. This is what Paul is rebuking here in this verse. What evidence do you have that you are not speaking by the power of another spirit, not the Holy Spirit?
DHK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the first place the Corinthian Church was not speaking in tongues and calling Jesus accursed. you have misinterpeted the scripture.
It does not imply in anyway that The Church was speaking in tongues by some spirit other than the SPIRIT of God! I don't know where you get that. It's just anything to put down what the doctrine of the Oneness believes. If you all can't do it one way some will stoop so low as to call the Spirit of God of the devil. Shame Shame!
When a person if praying and worshipping the Lord, why would the Lord let Satan step in and take over? My God is not that way! He went through a lot, with His death, to let the evil one take over that which he so desperatly loves.
I agree there was sin still going on in that church, but Paul was trying his best to strengthen the church as all churches have to be corrected at times. That is why God gave us His Word and Pastors.
As I said before, 1 Cor. 12:3 never mentions demons or anything implying that these were having any dealings with evil spirits. Paul is saying that you have to have the Spirit of God to know who "He" is and not "They," as in three persons.
Mee
Well, now, do you believe your father has body, soul, and spirit but he is one man ?
If you believe he only has a soul, then who is that thing you touch and kiss and hug fondly, assuming you love your dad ?
The same question if you think he only has a spirit and not a soul and body, and the same question applies if you think he only has a body and no soul and no spirit.
Now, if you believe man is a triune being in one, wouldn't it be strange if you came home to visit one day and asked one of your siblings the whereabouts of dad and he/she said "Oh, dad is in the shed. They are bringing out some tools to mow the backyard with. Weeds are all grown, you know." And you ask, "They ? Who's with dad."
And get the answer, "nobody. They's alone by himself".
The Corinthian church was one corrupt church. The problem wasn't that they lacked spiritual gifts: 1 Corinthians 1:7, Paul said, "You are not lacking in any gift." It was how they fouled them up. So a major segment of that first letter, 1 Corinthians 12:13-14, directs itself at this terrible, terrible misuse of spiritual gifts. The Corinthians, like the Charismatics today, had tended to equate the Holy Spirits work with ecstatic involuntary frenetic and mysterious activity. And if it was inexplicable from the human level, they would say it was the Holy Spirit, even to the point that some people were cursing Jesus and they were saying it was the Holy Spirit because the phenomena seemed so bizarre. The wilder and the more agitated the person was, the more godly and spiritual he was supposed to be. They got to the point where in order for them to say it is the spirit, it had to be bizarre. Then there was the desire to be seen and the desire to appear as being spiritual. People were exploiting and perverting the gift of tongues particularly, and counterfeiting it with ecstatic babble that came out of their past paganism. They were confusing the work of the Holy Spirit with mystical practices they had known from their former pagan religion.
You see for over a thousand years that part of the world had been dominated with the mystery religions. The pagan mystery religions. They can be traced all the way back to Babylon. But they cultivated, all of them had this in common, they cultivated a magical, sensual, communion with deity. The assumption in the mystery religions and their cultic kind of form of worship, was that you get yourself in some kind of state, a mindless kind of state, a transcendent kind of state, an irrational, not logical, not reasonable kind of mystical state, and when you get into that you will then commune with the deity. You can do it through drunkenness and so they got drunk in the pagan religions. You can do it through the passion of sexual involvement, and so there were priestesses who acted as temple prostitutes, and you could come in and throw yourself into an orgy. And in the euphoria of that orgy, and in the stupor of being drunk, in the stupor of that whole event, supposedly you were to commune with deity.
Paul has that in mind, certainly in Ephesians 5, when he says, "Do not be drunk with wine, in which is excess, but be filled with the Spirit." If you really want to connect with God, be filled with the Spirit, don't be drunk. They would do almost anything to get into a semiconscious, hallucinatory, hypnotic, or orgiastic spell, because they believed that somehow that got them in touch with deity. This is not very far different than going back into the 60's in the drug culture, and the things Timothy Leary tried to say about how you transcend this world and touch the divine, and what the Eastern Mystics were saying, as they were advocating the same kind of stuff. Whether from literal intoxication, or some kind of emotional hysteria, or exhilaration, worshipers falling into some kind of euphoria assumed they were then in union with the deity.
According to S. Angus, once professor of New Testament and Historical Theology at Saint Andrews College at Sidney, the ecstasy experience by the mystery religion worshiper, brought him into
A mystic ineffable condition, in which the normal functions of personality were in abeyance, and the moral strivings which formed character, virtually ceased or were relaxed, while the emotional and the intuitive were accentuated.
In other words, the worshiper would get into a state where his mind would go into neutral and his emotions would take over. The intellect and the conscious would give way to passion, sentiment, and emotion. This was ecstasy. Angus further said,
Ecstasy might be induced by vigil and fasting, tense religious expectancy, whirling dances, physical stimuli, the contemplation of the sacred objects, the effect of stirring music, inhalation of fumes, revivalistic contagion, hallucinations, suggestions and all other means belonging to the apparatus of the mysteries. One ancient writer speaks of men going out of themselves to be wholly established in the divine.
It is exactly what happened in Corinth and it is still going on today. As the mystery worshiper experienced such ecstasy, he believed he was lifted above the level of his ordinary experience into an abnormal sense of consciousness and therein he could really see God. And according to Angus again, he says, "Ecstasy could range anywhere from nonmoral delirium to that consciousness of oneness with the invisible, and the dissolution of painful individuality which marks the mystics of all ages." The person literally became irrational, unreasonable, out of touch with reality. I don't think it is too far afield to say that there are testimonies by Pentecostal Charismatic believers that seem to me to sound very much like this. They explain their various states of euphoria as engaging in communion with the Holy Spirit, but is it that? Certainly not by Biblical definition. Is it only an emotional high? Is it only some kind of psychological self-induced hypnosis? Is it only falling under the spell of the power of suggestion? Or is it demonic? In any case it is not Biblical. It certainly isn't, "Come now let us reason together, says the Lord." It certainly is not, "Let everything be done decently and in order."
The problem Paul dealt with in Corinth is the same problem he deals with through his letters in the charismatic movement today. The problem is this: "How do you tell the real from the counterfeit?" And the only answer I have to you, Beloved, is to take it to the Word of God--and if it isn't there, it isn't real. That's the only place we can go. You certainly can't believe experience. Why? Because "Many will say, 'Lord, Lord,'" and they will prophesy in His name, and they will cast out demons in His name, and they will do miracles, at least what appear to be miracles, in His name. But He will say "Depart from me, I never knew you. Who are you? You workers of iniquity." We need to warn the true believers in the Charismatic movement that Satan is having a field day counterfeiting, because you're not checking with the Word, and because you are not using the mind that God has given you to understand His truth. Christ is being dishonored.
Remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:2, he said to the Corinthians, "You are being led astray, just like you used to be. You used to be led astray to dumb idols, led astray like a prisoner. You were just led astray to your false gods. Now, that you have become a believer, you can't let that happen. You can't just throw yourself open and be carried away by demons in the ecstasies of these events." The truly spiritual person is not someone who sweeps away into trances, ecstasies, emotional frenzies, who falls over in a dead faint. The true spiritual person isn't somebody who goes into a glory cloud for 15 minutes, can't speak English, comes back and doesn't know he has been gone. When a person is out of control, it is never the Holy Spirit! The fruit of the Spirit is self-control (Galatians 5). No where in Scripture do we see the real gifts of the Spirit operating when somebody is out of control, or when somebody is under a supernatural seizure.
John MacArthur, "Charismatic Chaos"
http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/CHAOS7.HTM
You see for over a thousand years that part of the world had been dominated with the mystery religions. The pagan mystery religions. They can be traced all the way back to Babylon. But they cultivated, all of them had this in common, they cultivated a magical, sensual, communion with deity. The assumption in the mystery religions and their cultic kind of form of worship, was that you get yourself in some kind of state, a mindless kind of state, a transcendent kind of state, an irrational, not logical, not reasonable kind of mystical state, and when you get into that you will then commune with the deity. You can do it through drunkenness and so they got drunk in the pagan religions. You can do it through the passion of sexual involvement, and so there were priestesses who acted as temple prostitutes, and you could come in and throw yourself into an orgy. And in the euphoria of that orgy, and in the stupor of being drunk, in the stupor of that whole event, supposedly you were to commune with deity.
Paul has that in mind, certainly in Ephesians 5, when he says, "Do not be drunk with wine, in which is excess, but be filled with the Spirit." If you really want to connect with God, be filled with the Spirit, don't be drunk. They would do almost anything to get into a semiconscious, hallucinatory, hypnotic, or orgiastic spell, because they believed that somehow that got them in touch with deity. This is not very far different than going back into the 60's in the drug culture, and the things Timothy Leary tried to say about how you transcend this world and touch the divine, and what the Eastern Mystics were saying, as they were advocating the same kind of stuff. Whether from literal intoxication, or some kind of emotional hysteria, or exhilaration, worshipers falling into some kind of euphoria assumed they were then in union with the deity.
According to S. Angus, once professor of New Testament and Historical Theology at Saint Andrews College at Sidney, the ecstasy experience by the mystery religion worshiper, brought him into
A mystic ineffable condition, in which the normal functions of personality were in abeyance, and the moral strivings which formed character, virtually ceased or were relaxed, while the emotional and the intuitive were accentuated.
In other words, the worshiper would get into a state where his mind would go into neutral and his emotions would take over. The intellect and the conscious would give way to passion, sentiment, and emotion. This was ecstasy. Angus further said,
Ecstasy might be induced by vigil and fasting, tense religious expectancy, whirling dances, physical stimuli, the contemplation of the sacred objects, the effect of stirring music, inhalation of fumes, revivalistic contagion, hallucinations, suggestions and all other means belonging to the apparatus of the mysteries. One ancient writer speaks of men going out of themselves to be wholly established in the divine.
It is exactly what happened in Corinth and it is still going on today. As the mystery worshiper experienced such ecstasy, he believed he was lifted above the level of his ordinary experience into an abnormal sense of consciousness and therein he could really see God. And according to Angus again, he says, "Ecstasy could range anywhere from nonmoral delirium to that consciousness of oneness with the invisible, and the dissolution of painful individuality which marks the mystics of all ages." The person literally became irrational, unreasonable, out of touch with reality. I don't think it is too far afield to say that there are testimonies by Pentecostal Charismatic believers that seem to me to sound very much like this. They explain their various states of euphoria as engaging in communion with the Holy Spirit, but is it that? Certainly not by Biblical definition. Is it only an emotional high? Is it only some kind of psychological self-induced hypnosis? Is it only falling under the spell of the power of suggestion? Or is it demonic? In any case it is not Biblical. It certainly isn't, "Come now let us reason together, says the Lord." It certainly is not, "Let everything be done decently and in order."
The problem Paul dealt with in Corinth is the same problem he deals with through his letters in the charismatic movement today. The problem is this: "How do you tell the real from the counterfeit?" And the only answer I have to you, Beloved, is to take it to the Word of God--and if it isn't there, it isn't real. That's the only place we can go. You certainly can't believe experience. Why? Because "Many will say, 'Lord, Lord,'" and they will prophesy in His name, and they will cast out demons in His name, and they will do miracles, at least what appear to be miracles, in His name. But He will say "Depart from me, I never knew you. Who are you? You workers of iniquity." We need to warn the true believers in the Charismatic movement that Satan is having a field day counterfeiting, because you're not checking with the Word, and because you are not using the mind that God has given you to understand His truth. Christ is being dishonored.
Remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:2, he said to the Corinthians, "You are being led astray, just like you used to be. You used to be led astray to dumb idols, led astray like a prisoner. You were just led astray to your false gods. Now, that you have become a believer, you can't let that happen. You can't just throw yourself open and be carried away by demons in the ecstasies of these events." The truly spiritual person is not someone who sweeps away into trances, ecstasies, emotional frenzies, who falls over in a dead faint. The true spiritual person isn't somebody who goes into a glory cloud for 15 minutes, can't speak English, comes back and doesn't know he has been gone. When a person is out of control, it is never the Holy Spirit! The fruit of the Spirit is self-control (Galatians 5). No where in Scripture do we see the real gifts of the Spirit operating when somebody is out of control, or when somebody is under a supernatural seizure.
John MacArthur, "Charismatic Chaos"
http://www.biblebb.com/files/MAC/CHAOS7.HTM
Well DHK, you can't show me where it says that it is of the devil, scripturally, then or now.
Also, neither can John MacArthur. I've never read such nonsense. You can read anything.
Out of curiousty, what do you think MacArthur would say about the scriptures below? Same Spirit then as it is now. God doesn't change with His people.
ll Cor. 12:2&4
2) I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth
such an one caught up to the third heaven. 4)How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.
Do you think that he would say the the one caught up was in the 'spirit world' or in the 'Spirit world?'
MEE
Don't know your scripture very well, do you?
Job 1:12 And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.
(yep, God allowed it to happen; but what did Job think of it?)
Job 1:21 (Job speaking) And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
Job 2:10 (Job speaking) But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.
Job sure thought it was God doing it to him. His three friends thought so, too....
Why would the Lord let Satan take over? Why did the Lord let Satan do those things to Job, and allow Job and his friends to blame God for it?
[ May 26, 2002, 05:56 PM: Message edited by: Don ]
I'd say he was in heaven (Revelation 2:7)</font>[/QUOTE]Correct Don!.....but would MacArthur say that he was in a trance or under the spell of the devil? My guess would be that he would put him in some sort of 'spirit world' after reading his research, which I might say wasn't very impressive.
MEE
I want you to understand MEE, that no man speaking by the Holy Spirit, can call Jesus Christ accursed. What does the verse mean? I gave you the meaning and gave you a link where you could get much more information on the same subject. You deny that the verse means that they were speaking in tongues by another spirit, but you fail to say what it does mean.
Consider a few things about the Corinthian Church. Paul said that they came behind in no gift. They had them all.
1Cor.1:7 "So that ye come behind in no gift;"
But this supposed "Holy Spirit-filled church was the most carnal church described in the New Testament, and some of its activities would be criminal offences under our law, other beliefs were so heretical they would be automatic grounds for excommunication.
1. The church was marked by its contention and divisiveness.
2. It was marked by fornication and incest (and they were proud and unrepentant about it).
3. It was marked by taking each other to court.
4. It was marked by with those who had marital problems.
5. It was marked by false teachers who taught against the authority of Paul.
6. It was marked by drunkenness and gluttonny taking place at the time of the Lord's Supper.
7. It was marked by the abuse of the gifts of the Spirit.
8. It was marked by some who denied the very resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Here is what Paul says about the church:
3:1 And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.
2 I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.
3 For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?
Three times he uses the word carnal. They were a carnal church, and he could not speak unto them as unto spiritual.
Were some of the members of this church also involved in demon-worship? Absolutely. I will back this up with Scripture in my next post if necessary.
DHK