Relationship Of Spiritual Gifts To The Bible-3

February 25  Relationship Of Spiritual Gifts To The Bible-3

 


Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 1Thess. 5:19-21.

How easy it is to despise anyone who claims to have the gift of prophecy. After all, we have the Bible. Then again, a lot of crazy and questionable people have made such claims down through history. In the light of such facts it is only natural to doubt if not to despise.

But then there's the Bible's own counsel on the topic: "Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good"(1Thess. 5:19-21, ESV).

Despising outright those who claim the gift of prophecy is not an option for New Testament Christians. To the contrary, Scripture requires them to "test" such claimants.

The Bible, fortunately, not only tells us to evaluate them, it also suggests someways of how to do it. One appears in the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus commands us to "beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. . .Every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit"(Matt. 7:15-17, RSV).

Applied to a prophetic claimant, one needs to evaluate the results of the principles they advocate and whether their own lives reflect New Testament Christianity.

Another test occurs in 1John 4. It tells us to "test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God; every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God"(verses 1-3, RSV).

We must ask ourselves. What's a prophetic claimant's witness to Jesus?

Isaiah 8:20 presents a third test: Do such a person's teachings agree with the Bible?

Those are all important criteria, but even more important is whether their teachings point to themselves and their own word or to Jesus and the Bible.

Those early Adventists found themselves forced to their Bible as they sought to evaluate the claims of young Ellen Harmon/White and others in the late 1840s. And it wasn't always easy to make their desicions.

It still isn't easy. But that is not the point. We have a command.

Help us today, Father, to become zealous students of Your Word, so that we might be better evaluators of all things spiritual.

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