Spiritual Gifts of Tongues, Prophecy & Knowlege-When & Why the Biblical Gifts...

Today, we're going to talk about spiritual gifts. For the first few minutes, we'll talk about just the spiritual gifts in general, and then we'll focus in on the gifts of tongues, prophecy, and knowledge, and talk about why they've ceased, why they're no longer in operation today.

This is the table that you have in your handout. It's oversized. There was just so much information that we couldn't print it on a regular 8.5 by 11. So, it's a little bigger, makes it easier to read, but also there's a lot of room, especially on the bottom, for you to make notes. Not only today, but this is a tool for you to use in your own study and also as you share God's Word with other people.

So, hopefully that will be helpful. And what we'll do is we'll walk through the different sections or columns of this table, just to kind of orientate you with it. First we'll look at the left section here. On the left, the 19 spiritual gifts are listed, okay? And they're divided up into two sections.

Apostolic Era Gifts and Church Age Gifts. The 10 Apostolic Era gifts are the gifts that were active from the beginning of the Church, in Acts chapter 2, until the death of the last Apostle, which was John, around 96 AD. And we will talk more about the duration of those gifts as we go along here. Then the last nine gifts are the Church Age gifts, Basically they're gifts that are in operation from the beginning of the Church Age through today and through until the time of the Rapture when Christ comes to take us out of here.

Notice that there are four main passages where spiritual gifts are talked about in the Bible. You'll find actually quite a few other verses that talk about spiritual gifts and mention one, two, or maybe three of them. But these are the passages that actually have lists of spiritual gifts. And they're also all by the Apostle Paul in some of his epistles. A couple other things to mention before we move on. The spiritual gifts were given by the Holy Spirit according to His will.

In other words, you and I don't ask for a specific spiritual gift. or another member of the body of Christ isn't the one that dispenses the gifts, but the Holy Spirit that has given the gifts to the body. Another thing to mention is that in the Word of God we don't find any spiritual gift tests. There are quite a few tests circulated around churches today, but there aren't any tests in the Word of God. to help a person determine what spiritual gift they have. Instead, what you see in the Scriptures is that as saints, individual members of the body of Christ, are operating in dependence upon the Lord, their gifts will be manifest, will be clear to everybody. The next column has a description of the different spiritual gifts, and we won't take the time to read through all these.

I'll just pick the gift of Apostles, right here, and the gift of Teachers. We'll just read through those, and we'll have to move on. The description of the gift of Apostleship is that the Apostles were eyewitnesses to the resurrected Christ, and they spoke authoritatively. a description of the gift of teaching is that the teacher explains the truth and application of the Scriptures.

And next on the table, we have both the result of the spiritual gift and various examples. And these examples, these are not exhaustive examples. In other words, you can, as you study the Word, you'll find quite a few other examples where the various spiritual gifts are illustrated. And so you can add those to the chart as you study.

A result, for example, a result of the gift of apostleship is that churches are established, New Testament Scripture was authored or backed or sponsored. A result of the gift of teaching is that the saints understand better the Word of God. and we won't go into the examples.

We just don't have time. Okay. As you can see, there's some different notes down on the bottom, and we'll briefly talk about the qualifications of an apostle. You know, several churches today claim that they have apostles that teaches their church, but what does the Word of God give us for qualifications for an Apostle. The first one is that the Apostle receives his gift in office by the sovereign decision of God. And you see this in the way Paul opens several of his epistles. He describes himself as Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the will of God.

Secondly, an Apostle had to have been an eyewitness of the resurrected Lord. Thirdly, in order to be a genuine, bona fide apostle, you had to have power to perform signs, wonders, and miracles. And they actually had to occur. A lot of people claim today to have this ability, but yet they don't actually... their miracles and their healings don't actually take place.

Fourthly, an apostle had to have success in evangelism. an Apostle had a special capacity to suffer patiently and that's seen in 2 Corinthians chapters 11 and 12 in chapter 11 Paul lists all the different sufferings that he went through and then in 12.12 he's giving proof that he was an Apostle and one of the things he lists is that he persevered and this gift along with the first 10 gifts listed. This gift in particular ended with the death of the last apostle in around 96 AD. Okay.

Now, this little sub-note that we'll talk about now is linked up to the gift of tongues and the gift of interpretation of tongues. And the gift of tongues in the early church was the ability to speak in an unknown language. It was an actual language, it wasn't just babble or chatter, it was an actual language that the speaker did not understand. And then the interpretation of tongues was obviously just the interpreting of the message that was spoken in this unknown language. Yes. Okay. The King James Version uses the word tongue, but actually at the time that the King James Version was written, The word tongue was used synonymously with language, an actual language. So these were actually languages.

When the Bible talks about a gift of tongues, it was the ability to speak in an unknown language that the speaker didn't understand, but other people may have understood it or may not have understood it. How's that? The thing to mention about tongues and the interpretation of tongues, as the note says, it's pretty hard to read, but we'll talk about it more, is that these two gifts cease they ceased to be in operation with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. How do we know that?

Well, what we find as we study the Old Testament and the New Testament is that tongues, to the nation of Israel, were a sign of coming judgment. So, throughout Israel's history, when they would hear someone speaking in an unknown language, they knew, according to God's Word that He had given them, that judgment was coming.

And we're going to look at a couple examples of this. The first one you see is Moses. And turn with me, if you like, to Deuteronomy 28-49. Here, Moses is basically, through the Holy Spirit, spelling out Israel's future. And what He tells them in verse 49 is that, "...the Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand." So there we see a nation coming in who have a language that the Israelites don't understand, and in God telling them this, He's telling them that they're going to be judged.

Okay? several hundred years later, the prophet Isaiah is speaking to the Northern Kingdom, and he tells them something very similar to what Moses said. And if you like, we'll read Isaiah 28, verses 11 and 12. Verse 11, here Isaiah says, Indeed, God, Jehovah, will speak to this people, Israel, through stammering lips, and a foreign tongue. And Isaiah, this prophecy was fulfilled in 721 BC when Sennacherib and the Assyrians came in and conquered the Northern Kingdom. Just over a hundred years later, Jeremiah talks to Judah in the Southern Kingdom and tells them basically the same thing.

And over in Jeremiah 5.15 Jeremiah says, actually the Lord through Jeremiah says, Behold, I am bringing a nation against you from afar, O house of Israel, declares the Lord. It is an enduring nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language you do not know, nor can you understand what they say. And then in 606 BC, the Babylonians came in and conquered the southern kingdom. So, what this is showing is that to the nation of Israel, when they heard a people speaking in a language that they didn't understand, they knew God was about to judge them, as a nation.

Something similar to this actually happened way back at the Tower of Babel, in Genesis chapter 11. Through Noah, God commanded everybody to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth, but what did they do? They stayed together in one place and tried to build a tower to reach into the heavens, to reach God. So God judged them. How did He judge them?

He confused their languages. So there, even before the nation of Israel was formed, you have unknown languages associated with God's judgment. Now we come up to the first century AD, and lo and behold, we have the gift of tongues given to the church, and the result of the gift of tongues is that unknown languages are spoken. And the nation of Israel definitely heard these unknown languages. So, if you were a Jew, and you were hearing these Christians speaking in unknown languages, and if you knew your old scriptures, your Jewish scriptures, you would understand that judgment's coming, right?

Now, the Apostle Paul helps us out in 1 Corinthians 14-21. You know, Paul wrote this epistle to the Corinthians because they were a very carnal church in Corinth. They were abusing spiritual gifts, among other things. So Paul writes to them and tells them the purpose for the gift of tongues. And this was one of the spiritual gifts that they weren't using properly.

So, in 1 Corinthians 14-21, Paul quotes Isaiah 28, 11. He quotes Isaiah 28, 11. He says, in the law it is written, and then quoting Isaiah 28, he says, by men of strange tongues and by the lips of strangers I will speak to this people and even so they will not listen to me, says the Lord. Then in verse 22, Paul tells them the purpose for tongues. So then, tongues are for a sign. not to those who believe, but to unbelievers.

Specifically, the unbelieving Jews. And then, in 70 AD, judgment came to the nation of Israel when the Roman general Titus conquered Jerusalem. And the next slide will actually zoom in on the first century. Okay, there's a lot to cover, but it's pretty fun.

Now, in Mark 16, verse 17, Jesus tells the apostles, the disciples, that they will speak in tongues. And then in Acts 2, at the birth of the Church, they did speak in tongues. Acts 2, Acts 10, and Acts 19, are the three instances in Scripture where we know people spoke in tongues. That's it. Three. Now, I will say that I'm sure they did speak in tongues on more than three occasions, but in the Word of God we only have three. Acts 2, Acts 10, Acts 19. Each instance was separated by about ten years.

In Acts 2, the Jews spoke in tongues in their own land in Jerusalem. In Acts 10, Peter goes to Cornelius' house, in Caesarea Philippi, and Cornelius and his household were Gentiles. And after Peter tells them the Gospel, they believe the truth, they're baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ, and they speak in tongues. So here we have an instance of tongues in Gentile land. In Acts 19, the Apostle Paul travels to Ephesus and he meets up with some Old Testament believers, some Jews who had heard about John the Baptist's baptism of repentance and John the Baptist's message. So when Paul shares with them the gospel, they believe and they too speak in tongues.

So here we have an instance of Jews speaking in tongues in a Gentile land, in the Gentile land. And actually, there's all kinds of things we could talk about. We could take, you know, three more weeks and look at each one of these occurrences where people spoke in tongues, but we don't have time.

It's interesting, though, one comment that in Acts chapter 11, right after Peter leaves Cornelius' house, he goes to Jerusalem, it seems, And the Jewish believers at Jerusalem right away say, alright Peter, tell us why you went to the Gentiles and ate with them. Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them? Because the Jews did not associate with the Gentiles. So Peter goes on to tell them that after he gave them the Gospel message, that the Holy Spirit came on them, the Gentiles, just as he did on us, the Jews, at the beginning, at Acts chapter 2.

So it's interesting that Peter couldn't say, the Holy Spirit came on them in the way they spoke in tongues, just as we've been doing every day since then. Peter had to refer back to an event ten years earlier at Pentecost. So I think that's significant. To show that tongues did occur, but it wasn't widespread.

And according to Paul, the reason that the Holy Spirit gave the gift of tongues to the local church was to warn the Jewish nation that judgment was coming. Now, in 1 Corinthians 12-14, which we'll talk about a little later, Paul's writing to the church at Corinth, giving them instructions concerning spiritual gifts, and he talks about tongues frequently there, because they were abusing the gift.

Then in AD 70, Titus came in, and destroying Jerusalem. After 70 AD, once again, we don't have scriptures that start talking about tongues anymore. Now, what we're going to do next is look at the early Church Fathers' writings. What did the early Church Fathers have to say about tongues? And do their writings show us that people continue to speak in tongues after 70 AD.

Here's an artist's depiction of Titus' victory over Jerusalem. We'll talk about Clement and Ignatius. They both wrote letters to various churches about the time of the death of the Apostle John. We'll talk about Montanus, and then we'll skip ahead a couple hundred years and see what Augustine and John Chrysostom have to say about the gift of tongues and spiritual gifts in some of their commentaries.

So, the first one is Clement of Rome. Clement, from Rome, wrote an epistle to Corinth. You know, the very that Paul wrote to when Paul spoke a lot about the gift of tongues and other gifts. And it's remarkable that Clement doesn't mention the gift in his letter to the Corinthians.

Clement does mention the Corinthians' problem of disobedience to authority, but the problem that the Corinthians had with tongues was solved, most likely because the gift wasn't used anymore. Ignatius, writing about the same time, he wrote to the Church at Ephesus. And remember, Ephesus is where the disciples of John the Baptist spoke in tongues, when they believed and they were made members of the Body of Christ, the Church. But Ignatius, when he writes to the Church at Ephesus, doesn't say anything concerning tongues.

This map shows the Roman Empire, and shows... here's Clement writing to the Corinthians. I believe this is Ignatius writing to Ephesus. And this isn't a complete list of all the Church Fathers. Basically, for a period of a couple hundred years, spread throughout the entire Roman Empire, we have writings of the early Church Fathers. And they're silent on the issue of speaking in tongues. Except... Montanus. Montanus, you've heard his name before in the church history classes, he was a self-proclaimed prophet living in Asia Minor. He had two prophetesses, Maximilla and Priscilla, who left their husbands to follow Montanus.

And next week, when we talk about the history of Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Movement, Vern will talk some more about Montanus. So, Montanus and his group spoke in tongues and prophesied. One of their prophecies said that Christ would return not to Israel, like the Scriptures say, but to Asia Minor.

So, somehow they received some special revelation from God, which changed the Word of God. So, appropriately, Montanus was labeled a heretic. Polycarp stated that Montanus was a heretic. as well as Papias also stated that Montanus was a heretic. Okay, so a couple hundred years later, Augustine, when he's writing his book Homilies on John, makes this comment.

In the earliest times, the Holy Spirit fell upon them that believed, and they spake with tongues, which they had not learned, as the Spirit gave them utterance. These were signs adapted to the time, for it was fitting that there be this sign of the Holy Spirit in all tongues, to show that the Gospel of God was to run through all tongues or languages over the whole earth. That was done for a sign, and it passed away." So he makes a point to say that tongues had a purpose, they fulfilled their purpose, and they're no longer in operation today.

And, of course, he wrote that in the 4th or 5th century. John Chrysostom, writing from the Eastern side of the Roman Empire, about the same time, in this quotation he's talking about the spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 13. And he writes, this whole place is very obscure, 1 Corinthians 12-14. The obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation. being such as then used to occur, but now no longer take place." Pretty significant comment by a fellow in the 4th or 5th century.

You guys have any comments before we move on? What we're going to do now is focus in on this passage, 1 Corinthians 13, 8-13, and and see what it has to say about tongues, prophecy, and knowledge, those gifts. Any comments before we move on, though? Well, let's move on.

Okay, so 1 Corinthians 13 is, of course, part of chapters 12, 13, and 14 of 1 Corinthians where Paul is talking about spiritual gifts. In these chapters, Paul addresses the fulfillment, the ceasing, or end of faith, hope, tongues, prophecy, and knowledge. What we're going to do as we study through the passages is pay close attention to the verbs Paul uses, the voice of those verbs, and the different nouns. Let's go ahead and read verses 8 to 13 here before we look at it.

Paul says, Love never fails, but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away. If there are tongues, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child, When I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known.

But now faith, hope, love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love." So the first observation to make is that in this passage, Paul begins and ends with love. With love as the focal point. In verse 8, we see that love never fails. The Greek word for fails, which is pipto, doesn't mean... doesn't mean failure in the sense of success versus failure, but rather, love never falls off in respect to time. In other words, there will never be a period of time where love is not in operation. Love never falls off in respect to time. And then in verse 13, faith, hope and love abide or remain right now.

In 56 AD, when Paul wrote the letter to the Corinthians, these three remain. and remain today, too, in 2003. That's where he was writing from. Okay. Now, that is, when Paul was writing, these three remain, love, faith, and hope, but there's a day coming when, from other New Testament Scriptures, we see that faith and hope will fall off. Okay?

Love, we know from verse 8, never falls off in respect to time. And right now, even today, when Paul was writing, and even today, maybe we make it right here, even today where we are, faith and hope remain. That is, faith and hope have a function and purpose today for you and I. But, faith and hope will one day fall off. Faith needs its end one day. And hope will be fulfilled. It's been said this way, faith will be lost in sight, hope will be lost in reality.

Let me give you a couple examples. In relation to faith, you and I, 2 Corinthians 5-7 says we walk by faith, not by sight, right? We exercise faith in the fact that, according to Romans 6-6, our old man or sin nature was crucified. Despite your experience, or my experience, we believe that positionally or judicially God crucified the thing on the cross.

Well, there's a day coming when we're not going to have to reckon the old man to be dead anymore, because if our faith will be made sight, the old man will no longer be part of us one day. Hope, likewise, one day will be fulfilled. Hope is confident expectation.

And remember last week in Philippians 3.20, Vern talked about eagerly awaiting for the Lord Jesus to come back at the Rapture. Well, obviously, after He comes back, we won't be hoping for that event anymore. So, those are just two examples. Faith and hope will fall off at the Rapture.

Now, we'll briefly talk about the gifts of prophecy and knowledge. Prophecy and knowledge are both said to be done away with. Gifts of prophecy, they will be done away. If there is knowledge, it will be done away. The verb used is kadargeo, which means to put out of operation, to make idle. Notice, the tense is future, the mood is passive, that is, that the gift of tongues I'm sorry, not the gift of tongues. We'll talk about tongues in a moment.

The gift of prophecy and the gift of knowledge will be done away with in the future by the action of something outside those two gifts. And in verse 10, we know that it's referring to the perfect. But when the perfect comes, then these two gifts will be done away with. And we'll talk more about the perfect as we go along.

Another observation is that both prophecy and knowledge is said to be in part. Ekmeros. Meros. Right here. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. And the same words are found again here. And then in verse 10, but when the perfect comes, the in part gifts will be put out of operation. Kadargeo. And the perfect, in verse 10, is talking about the New Testament Scriptures.

So, when the canon is complete, then the gift of prophecy and the gift of knowledge will not have a function anymore. Because the definition of a gift of prophecy is just speaking the Word of God. New revelation coming to the local church. God has given all of the revelation to the local church, that gift is no longer necessary.

Knowledge is something similar. It's direct revelation from God concerning spiritual truth. Or it can refer to knowledge of people and circumstances. But it includes special revelation from God to one of the members of the body of Christ concerning unrevealed truth. Down in verse 12, Paul says, "...for now we see in a mirror dimly." Now, that is, in 56 AD, when Paul wrote this letter to the Corinthians, "...now we see in a mirror dimly."

The word mirror is esoption. Mirrors in those days were made out of polished metal. The metal easily tarnished. So the phrase, seen in a mirror dimly, was well understood by the Corinthians. And we'll mention it again in a moment, but Corinth was actually famous for its manufacture of these mirrors. One more comment about the mirrors. Because the mirrors, made out of polished metal, would tarnish so quickly, because of atmospheric conditions, right? the mirror had attached to it a sponge with pumice stone powder on it so they could frequently polish their mirror, so they could see themselves clearly.

The word mirror, esoptron, which we just saw down in verse 12, is used three times in the New Testament, and in all three times it refers to the Word of God. Here in James 1, 22-24, it's most clear, "...but prove yourselves doers of the Word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the Word, and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror, For once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was." And as I said, three times in Scripture, esoptron is used for mirror.

Here in James, in our 1 Corinthians 13 passage, and then in 2 Corinthians 3.18, where Paul talks about beholding, as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord. And we understand that to be referring to the Word of God. And, of course, Paul uses the word mere in both of his epistles to the Corinthians.

We talked about that already. Okay. In verse 11, Paul says, when I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child, When I became a man, I did away with childish things." The verb, did away, is again, katargel. The Church, having been born about 25 years before Paul's writing, was correct in exhibiting these gifts of prophecy and knowledge. But, the maturing of the Church, which included the Church's growing away from Jewish roots, because remember, at Pentecost, those were Jews, right? So the maturing of the Church, which included growing away from Jewish roots, the completion of the New Testament, and the foundation of the Apostles, meant that these gifts, prophecy and knowledge, would be done away with. They would be put out of operation. They wouldn't be needed anymore, because we would have the Canon, the Word of God, in its entirety.

Alright, now we'll get to tongues, again. And we have the statement, if there are tongues, they will cease. Whether tongues, they will cease. I'm sorry, it's not cat or ghetto this time, it's powwow. A different verb, meaning to cease or to stop. And what's really interesting here is that the voice is in the middle. It's the middle voice. which means that tongues of their own doing would stop.

And as we talked about earlier, what was the purpose of tongues? They served as a warning to the unbelievers. Specifically, they warned the unbelieving Jewish nation that judgment was coming. So, once their warning had served its purpose, they stopped. They stopped warning. Also, we notice that tongues are not said to be in part. Prophecy and knowledge were said to be in part because they were referring to all of the revelation of God, but tongues are not said to be in part. Tongues had a different purpose. Okay, this is a neat diagram which kind of brings together love, faith, hope, prophecy and knowledge and tongues in respect to time. So, for review, we see that love never falls off, correct? According to the verbs that Paul used, there will never be a period in time where love will cease to exist. Love will never fall off.

As we mentioned, faith and hope will be fulfilled at the rapture. They will fall off at the rapture. The gifts of prophecy and knowledge were done away with by the completion of the New Testament, around the time of the death of the Apostle John. After he completed Revelation, that was it. And then, as we just talked about tongues, they cease of their own doing, by the 70 A.D. judgment of which tongues was a sign or warning." Okay. Lastly, what we're going to do is look at just two more passages. Go ahead, Gil. Let's see here.

Prophecy and knowledge was passive. So by an action outside of them, they would be done away with. And then verse 10 talked about when the perfect comes. So that was when the perfect comes, prophecy and knowledge are put out of operation, no longer necessary. Faith and hope aren't specifically talked about in 1 Corinthians 13. It's from other New Testament passages that we see that at one point they will no longer be necessary.

In Ephesians 2, Paul says, So then you, the Ephesians, the members of the body of Christ, are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone."

And what we see Paul doing is using the illustration of a building in relation to the church. See, Christ Jesus is himself the cornerstone of the building. The apostles and prophets were part of that foundation. After you've laid the foundation, what do you do? You build on the structure itself. So, what this verse and Ephesians 3 and Ephesians 4 tell us, when they talk about New Testament apostles and prophets, is that they were around when the foundation of the church was being laid. But now that the foundation of the church has been laid, those gifts are no longer used today, are no longer needed.

Another passage that helps us out in our subject today is Hebrews 2, 3-4. Here the writer says, How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, after it was at the first spoken through the Lord? It was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles, and by gift of the Holy Spirit according to His own will. So here we see that at the first, the Gospel, the salvation message was spoken through the Lord and confirmed, past tense, confirmed to us by those who heard. Those who heard is referring to the Apostles, both by their signs, their wonders, by various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will. So, as I mentioned right at the beginning, the apostolic eregias are no longer needed today because of this, because they have served their purpose in relation to the formation, the foundation of the local church. All right. What questions do you have or comments? Nancy? Yeah. Okay. Let's see here.

So, for the tape listeners, the question is, how does the cessation of the the gift of discerning of spirits relate to 1 John, where it talks about the need to test the spirits to see whether they're from God. 1 John 4, 1 and 2. And I would say, just kind of contemporaneously, that because they did have apostles and prophets, valid apostles and prophets during that early church period up until the death of John, that there was needed a special special members among the body of Christ to have the ability to go around just checking the doctrines of the various apostles and prophets to make sure that these guys were telling the church the truth. Right.

You guys want to add anything? So, the New Testament itself, in that one passage, is fulfilling what Scripture is doing, giving into the measure of eternity. Cool. Alright, any other comments, Crystal? Love, okay. Okay, so love is present, active, indicative. Crystal's making the point that love, in 1 Corinthians 13, 8, the PIPTO, right? The falling off PIPTO is present, active, indicative. And actually, in studying that, by context you can tell that that's something called a gnomic present, which means that... my understanding of the definition is that what I said, in any period, there will never be a period where this falling off occurs of love. I don't know if that's right. You can add anything here.

That's what we talked about as a hot topic, like Roger was saying earlier, among the church, the church today at large, a lot of churches obviously don't view the Word of God the way we do, you know? And I'll make a comment that I think the main reason why people don't interpret the Word of God literally, or that they don't make the Word of God their basis for authority and truth, is because they elevate their own experience above the Word of God. And it's exactly what happens, and it's shocking. And it wasn't until a month or two ago where I decided in study to read some of the writings of some of the charismatic or Pentecostal authors, and they make those exact statements. They actually come out and say that we elevate experience above doctrine. So, if you do that, you're subjective and you've erased a solid basis of authority.

When did that movement begin? Well, Vern will take the whole class next time to talk about it, but roughly, from my understanding, it grew out of the Wesleyan movement in the 1700s. It kind of grew out of that in the latter half of the 19th century, around 1875. a group of folks started to state that, okay, in order to prove that we have received this baptism of the Spirit, we need to speak in tongues. But, I'll let Vern go into the history next week, but I think it was around that era, around that date.

Like Montanus and those fellows? Yeah. various instances throughout church history where things like that occurred. But as we saw with Montanus, you know, he was labeled a heretic, and so people shouldn't go back to him as a good proof. You're going to go into that? Okay. The question is, is there any power which would cause people to speak in tongues? And Vern will talk about that. But I think that I've heard that it can either be a psychological source or a demonic source. Not that believers could be possessed, but we'll let Vern get into that.

I didn't study that too well. Hey Jack, next class. Good question though. Any other comments or questions? Got through it in good time. Learned anything, Dad? Alright. Today we looked mostly at the Scriptures and what they had to say about spiritual gifts and tongues, prophecy, knowledge. Next week Vernal will dig into the history again of Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Movement. Let's close in prayer. Lord, we thank you again for your grace and the life you've given us and your son and for letting us study your word. And we are trusting you to teach us and equip us and conform us into Christ's image. In Jesus' name, amen.