Antioch, HOW do we make sure that doesn’t happen to us? – HOW do YOU make sure you’re not the next mediocre Christian whose life revolves around something other than the gospel? – HOW do we make sure we don’t just become another distracted church that sidelines the gospel (in exchange for 100 other good-but-lesser things)?
Beloved, If WE won’t pray for the lost and unreached, WHO will?! – It’s not God’s job to pray for them; He has enlisted US and given US the privilege of participating in His great salvation plan!
I would therefore entreat the people of God to be very cautious how they give heed to [seeking experience]. I have seen them fail in very many instances. I know by experience that impressions being made with great power, and upon the minds of true, yea eminent,—saints even in the midst of extraordinary exercises of grace, and sweet communion with God, and attended with texts of Scripture strongly impressed on the mind—are no sure signs of their being revelations from heaven.
Now, elsewhere in Paul’s writings, his greatest emphasis is on ALL that women CAN do in ministry. – And we mustn’t allow prohibitions like this to blind us to the full biblical view of the diverse, multi-faceted roles of women in the church. –
Ecclesiastes 6
1 Corinthians 14:26
More and more Baptists and reformed evangelicals testify of their tongues & prophecies, or at least their openness to it. It’s becoming trendy to be ‘reformed & charismatic’, or as I call them, ‘Calvismatics’. (And indeed, many of these are dear brothers in Christ from whom we can learn much.)
1 Cor. is all about confronting worldliness with the life-changing power of the gospel. – See, the church had become like the world.
There was too much of Corinth in the church, and too little of the true Church in Corinth.+ Realise that there was nothing uniquely Christian about ecstatic speech and strange utterances: Many of the pagan Greco-Roman religions, including those active at Corinth, also had bizarre tongues. – Just as recent studies have shown was common in Zulu tradition as well, and in other traditional cultures.
Mark 12