Month: January 2007

A question came up concerning “if the gifts of the Holy Spirit (including prophecy) were still available, then why shouldn’t we seek out ‘new’ revelations about and from God?”

This has often been used as an argument by those who want to say that healing and the gifts of the Holy Spirit are all passed away and not available to the church today. They say that once the Bible was completed, then we didn’t need gifts like prophecy, etc.

The thing is, it says nowhere in the Bible anything about the gifts stopping or any criteria for them being superseded any time before Jesus returns.

However, it does say in Revelation something about the completeness of scripture:

Rev 22:18-19 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

This makes the Bible the basis for testing all doctrine. We should carefully examine all of our doctrines, traditions, beliefs, and interpretations to make sure they square with the full counsel of God’s Word.

The Holy Spirit is here to lead us into all truth. However, God does not contradict Himself. The Holy Spirit will not give someone a revelation, prophecy, or instruction that goes counter to scripture or preaches “another gospel”.

The manifestations and gifts of the Holy Spirit have not faded away or stopped with the death of the last Apostle. They are still available to all who take God at His Word and believe.

Prophecy is basically just a message from God. The role of prophecy today is not to reveal “new truths”. But prophecy can help us to see things in God’s Word that we might have missed or misunderstood before. We just must be sure to study and show ourselves approved before accepting any “new” doctrines.

Sola scriptura (“by Scripture alone”) is the assertion that the Bible as God’s written word is self-authenticating, clear (perspicuous) to the rational reader, its own interpreter (“Scripture interprets Scripture”), and sufficient of itself to be the only source of Christian doctrine.

Scripture has one interpretation, but can have many applications.

This nation has been blessed in order that it may be a blessing.

We have have been blessed with such freedom and the ability to participate in our government. In reviewing the history of societies, nations, kingdoms, and empires, this form of government is extremely rare — and the instances where it has existed in the past, it was relatively short lived.

Even most so-called democracies in today’s world are really more socialistic than democratic.

There has been a lot of buzz lately about whether or not Christians are too involved in politics — and even whether or not Christians should be involved in politics at all.

A rather convenient coincidence that it became a widespread discussion during the year leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections. Looking back, it is apparent that a coordinated campaign was launched with the goal to disenfranchise the Christian conservative vote in order to win more liberal seats in congress.

The response is that Christians are no where near involved enough in the legislative process of this country.

The balance to that is, for all the time we spend on political involvement, we should have already spent more than double that building up our faith, sharing the Gospel, and demonstrating love for one another.

I’m not talking about legislating morality or creating laws to force everyone to believe the same as we do. Many activities we should be involved include:

1) Ensure that our freedoms are not eroded away
2) Hold government and criminals accountable for behavior
3) Debate of moral issues to raise awareness
4) Defend those abused by power

The real purpose of our engagement with society is to wake people up to their sin by being salt and light, and then sharing the gospel of Jesus with them.