NEW LEAVEN

Experience is usually Key – but I might bet that Dr Storms met or knows someone whom he would consider a friend and credible scholar who was able to talk with him on these things and see that not all Pentecostals or Charismatics are babbling idots.

ps, Doug Oss was my preaching professor in Seminary.

but that is just my speculation….

I think Brian is right. Experience is usually the key.

What do you mean its dubious?

Bryan L

TC:
No I don’t believe every account.

I don’t know about the Youtube clip. I don’t know the person so it I don’t feel properly informed to say whether it is legit or not. I’m naturally a skeptic but at the same time religious/spiritual experiences are hard to judge. You never really know what someone else is or isn’t experiencing.

Bryan L

TC, the comment you mention is no longer my last comment! You probably meant to refer to this one. In what is now my last comment I admit that I can’t be sure about the Youtube video. But I have heard enough people speaking in tongues including cases where their genuineness has been attested by people I trust for their spiritual discernment that I can be sure that some are genuine, and suggest that others like the Youtube video are either genuine or very clever acting.

For another story of a scholarly cessationist who was convinced by experience that the gifts are for today, see Surprised by the Voice of God by Dr Jack Deere, which I discussed on my blog here, and in some other posts linked to there.

TC:
I already saw the Youtube clip. I meant I don’t know what to think of it and whether the tongues were legit.

Bryan L

TC, have you read this?

While experience would often change the mind of a cessationist, like Jack Deere, I also think it’s a LACK of experience that leads someone to be a cessationist in the first place. Any reading I have done of Augustine, etc., have come to conclusions because they did NOT see those gifts. Lack of proof became their proof. Then, mix in some whacky experience with some “faith healer” who more show than substance, and you get a very good cessationist argument.

Dan makes a good point too.

TC, if you read the cessationist summary which Richard links to, you should also read Deere’s refutation of this position.

TC, regarding 1 Cor. 1:7, “Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

St. Paul is writing to the Corinthian Christians pointing out that they were not inferior in gifts to any of the churches of the time. So Calvin comments:

He means, therefore, that the Corinthians abound in all the gifts of God, so as not to be in want of anything, as if he had said, “The Lord has not merely honored you with the light of the gospel, but has eminently endowed you with all those graces that may be of service to the saints for helping them forward in the way of salvation”…The participle waiting I understand in this sense, “In the meantime while you are waiting.” Thus the meaning will be, “So that ye are in want of no gift in the meantime while you are waiting for the day of perfected revelation, by which Christ our wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:30) will be fully manifested.”

I also think the comments of Saint Chrysostom are quite perceptive:

In any case, although the praises be not very close to the truth, still however they are inserted by way of precaution, (οἰκονομικῶς) preparing the way beforehand for his discourse. For whoever at the very outset speaks things unpleasant, excludes his words from a hearing among the weaker: since if the hearers be his equals in degree they feel angry; if vastly inferior they will be vexed. To avoid this, he begins with what seem to be praises. I say, seem; for not even did this praise belong to them, but to the grace of God. For that they had remission of sins, and were justified, this was of the Gift from above. Wherefore also he dwells upon these points, which shew the loving-kindness of God, in order that he may the more fully purge out their malady.