(Image by SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent) via Flickr)

Here’s a good article by Don Finto: “Gifting and Character” 

Here’s the ‘money’ quote from the middle of the article:

“Character and gifting are different. This is why we can sometimes see extremely gifted-of-God men and women who fail morally.

Remember the mightily gifted Samson whose character never matched the gifting. Do not forget David, the murderer-adulterer. Was David anointed? Yes. Gifted? Yes. Did he fall? Yes. Was he restored? Yes. Were there consequences of his failure? Yes. Yet God later described him as "a man after my own heart (Acts 13:20)."”

Response: We have seen a lot of gifted major ministers failing and falling in the last couple of years within Pentecostal and Charismatic circles. I won’t bother to name any since I am sure anyone reading this article probably thought of a couple of them immediately.

‘Gifting’ is so emphasized and such a major part of the Charismatic and Pentecostal moves of God that it seems to almost over-ride character at times. Then the problems come.

We have seen just in recent years alone how certain major charismatic leaders and healers have been protected and their failures hidden from view by those in awe of their extraordinary gifting. Then comes the ‘train wreck’ and everyone who knew better comes out of the woodwork.

You would think that we would learn from the past but it doesn’t seem to work that way for some reason. For example, just after WWII there were a whole slew of major healing ministries that went from town to town in America and did some incredible miracles. They were gifted in a major way but there was no accountability and character was a major problem.

Nearly everyone of those incredible ministries ended up failing and/or teaching weird or false doctrines. It was a major setback for the American church and kept healing and spiritual gifts out of the mainstream for nearly 15 years.

In the same time frame God rose up Billy Graham, a man of extraordinary character. There were a dozen or so ministers from the same time period that were far more gifted than Billy but he excelled in character, was faithful, and God honored him and we all honor him today after a whole generation of incredibly fruitful ministry.

The point is –character matters.

We need both gifting and character for the American church to rise up and become the culture changing agent that it is called to be in bringing on a new era of revival and awakening.            *Top

1. Man ‘Praying in Tongues’ Finds Missing Florida Girl

2. -Court Awards Woman Injured while ‘Slain in the Spirit’

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J. Lee Grady writes about how Pastor Medad Birungi brought change and revival to St. Kakumba Chapel in Uganda, an Anglican Church:  “The Radical New Look of African Anglicanism”

One quote from Pastor Birungi:

"Personally I feel called to revive the Anglican Church, so I cannot leave it,I want people to know that miracles still exist. The church is not dead."

A great testimony of how the Lord is transforming the Church in Africa.             *Top

"A professional musician who played the Las Vegas circuit for 5 years, John later signed with the Righteous Brothers. When John was gripped by God in 1963, he was a “beer-guzzling, drug abusing pop musician, who was converted at the age of 29 while chain-smoking his way through a Quaker-led Bible Study.”

He soon became a voracious Bible reader and after weeks of reading about life changing miracles in the Bible and attending boring church services, John asked a lay leader:"

“When do we get to do the stuff?  You know, the stuff here in the Bible; the stuff Jesus did, like healing the sick, raising the dead, healing the blind – stuff like that?”

He was told that they didn’t do that anymore – only what they did in their weekly services. John replied, “You mean I gave up drugs for that?”

Response: "Doin’ the stuff" became the marching orders at the beginning of the Vineyard movement.

Another famous Wimber quote: "Everyone gets to play"–which meant that all the members participated in "doin’ the stuff" not just the pastors and preachers. Those two quotes became part of the guiding foundation of the Vineyard Movement in the early years.

Also, here is a link I found on Commonplace blog to a post about Keith Olbermann on MSNBC making fun of tongues, praying to God, and Palin.

Response: Whether you support Gov.Palin’s candidacy or not, this is way over the top. These are just a couple of examples, there is a lot more out there!  Here’s a link to a post of mine on my Movie-TV review site with a video of Matt Damon criticizing Palin for believing in the creation–this one is just fun! Matt the ‘spy guy’ says that he’s afraid of Sarah.         *Top

“…guidance, revelation, and so forth from God through impressions, dreams, visions, prophetic words, words of knowledge and wisdom. …

We shut that down because of charismatic excesses, because of abuses, we fear teaching people how to use it. We think it’s all going to be Benny Hinn or something like that.”

Comments: As you can well imagine, his address sparked considerable controversy and response from those who were there and hundreds of comments on the Internet. Read Ted Olsen’s article and all the comments that followed. Quite interesting.

What is really shocking, this comes from a major professor from Biola University’s Talbot Seminary. A school which started out and remains squarely in the dispensational camp. Many of its ‘big guns’ in the past have been especially critical of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements.

I have read a number of articles and books by J. P. Moreland in the past and have always found his works to be particularly good in the area of apologetics. We should not look for him to become a Charismatic or a Pentecostal anytime soon, but neither is he a card carrying cessasionalist. He seems to be far more open to the ‘gifts’ than I had ever supposed.

J.P Moreland is a very careful Biblical apologist and philosopher. What’s important here, while his address was about how evangelicals treat the Bible, it is tantamount to admitting that there is really no Biblical basis for the cessasionalist tendencies that have dominated so much of the American evangelical community. *Top

The study also found that 66% of non-SBC Protestant senior pastors believe in the gift while only 33% said they didn’t.

Comments:

There is a far greater openness to the gift of tongues than what I believed was even possible; particularly among the Southern Baptists which have usually been characterized as being in the ‘cessationist’ camp.

If a similar poll was taken in 1906, I wonder how it would have compared to this one. I believe that it would have shown that opinions and practices have changed drastically in 100 years since Azusa Street. The gift of tongues is no longer an oddity practiced by poor and ignorant folks living on the other side of the tracks and worshiping in a barn. *Top

1. The Holy Spirit: Read my article comparing the views and different identity of the Holy Spirit within the two religions -posted on my Apologetica blog.

2. Spiritual Gifts According to Islam:

There are no spiritual gifts in Islam. All signs and miracles are done directly by Allah: “Signs are only with Allah” -Sura 6:109-110. No man can perform healing or miracles. The only miracle that Muhammad did was to deliver the Koran–The Koran is the greatest miracle of all in Islam.
They believe that Jesus may have been involved in doing some healing and miracles but that Allah was the real source and the NT exaggerated the truth. There is a prevailing doubt that the Apostles or followers of Jesus were able to do likewise. All of the miracles of the prophets before Muhammad are somewhat questioned because they view the Biblical record as being distorted.

According to Maulana Muhammad ‘Ali (an Islamic scholar) in his work on The Religion of Islam (pg 181-188), the greatest miracle of Muhammad and within Islam is the Koran. He says that the Koran is the ‘standing miracle’ of Muhammad demonstrated by the Arab people combining together and rising up and transforming individuals, families, society, and whole nations in one generation. The Koran being the one and greatest miracle of Islam.

Angels and Jinn seem to be the source of mystery in Islam. The angels are intermediaries who help Allah and bring revelation to men. The Jinn in Islam are created spirit beings who test and lead humanity astray. Many in Islam believe that the Jinn are the source of healing and miracles in Christianity. While most Islamic scholars deny that the Jinn have any such power.

Conclusion:

The enemy has huge strongholds in Islam against the Word of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Bible. For hundreds of years missionaries have been frustrated in preaching and reaching Muslims.

Finally, there is a break through in Africa and 6 million Muslims are now coming to Christ. What is the difference? Power encounters, healing, miracles, signs and wonders. Millions are coming to Christ through the demonstration of greater spiritual power and authority. Praise God, and thank you Holy Spirit.

References:

“The Religion of Islam”, by Maulana Muhammad Ali (Dublin, Ohio:The Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha’At Islam, 1990, 617 pgs.)

“The Qur’an” English Translation, by M.H. Shakir (Elmhurst,NY: Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an, Inc., 15th edition, 2005)

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I’m a middle-aged professor of theology at a well-known Christian university. I’ve written award-winning books. My name is on Christianity Today’s masthead. For years I’ve taught that God still speaks, but I couldn’t testify to it personally. I can only do so now anonymously, for reasons I hope will be clear.

A year after hearing God’s voice, I still can’t talk or even think about my conversation with God without being overcome with emotion. That’s one reason I know it was real; I’m not a person who shows emotion easily. Plus, I’m a skeptic about things supernatural. Not that I don’t believe they can happen; I just doubt most miracle stories except the ones in the Bible. I’ve even been known to criticize publicly what I consider to be overly experiential forms of Christianity. I suppose that makes this story especially ironic.

Here’s the link and the title: “My Conversation with God“. It is well worth the five minutes or so it takes to read it. warning: Kleenex might be needed. I had to hunt some up half way into it. Read my comments following:

Comments: Stuff like this happens every day in Charismatic/Pentecostal circles. However, when the Spiritual gifts start breaking out in the life of an regular Evangelical -admittedly non-Charismatic- theology professor who continues to be self-conscious about it, can real Revival be that far behind? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Actually I am doing both right now.

I really believe that the Lord is going to be moving in new and unique ways among all Christians, particularly among leaders and Pastors. Watch for healing and Spiritual gifts to informally break out in churches and places where they have never been recognized before. This is like a small first wave. Look for more to come later.

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“We noticed a number of changes that occurred functionally in the brain,” comments Principal Investigator Andrew Newberg, MD, Associate Professor of Radiology, Psychiatry, and Religious Studies, and Director for the Center for Spirituality and the Mind, at Penn. Our finding of decreased activity in the frontal lobes during the practice of speaking in tongues is fascinating because these subjects truly believe that the spirit of God is moving through them and controlling them to speak. Our brain imaging research shows us that these subjects are not in control of the usual language centers during this activity, which is consistent with their description of a lack of intentional control while speaking in tongues.”

Newberg went on to explain, “These findings could be interpreted as the subject’s sense of self being taken over by something else. We, scientifically, assume it’s being taken over by another part of the brain, but we couldn’t see, in this imaging study, where this took place. We believe this is the first scientific imaging study evaluating changes in cerebral activity — looking at what actually happens to the brain — when someone is speaking in tongues. This study also showed a number of other changes in the brain, including those areas involved in emotions and establishing our sense of self.”

Well it least I found it interesting. It doesn’t really affect our Biblical or Spiritual understanding of the gift of Tongues.

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