In Acts 2, they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and all spoke with tongues. In Acts 10, the Spirit fell on them and some or all spoke with tongues. In Acts 19, the Spirit fell on them and some or all spoke with tongues.Ananias and Saphira lied about the amount of their offering and died. It happened twice. Ananias came in, lied, and died. Saphira lied about the amount of her offering and died.Is this absolute Biblical proof that anyone who lies about the amount they gave is going to die? If we apply the ‘example hermentutic’ that classical Pentecostal initial evidence doctrine rests on to being struck dead over lying about an offering, shouldn’t we believe that anyone who does this sort of thing will die, in every case?Doesn’t the Spirit have some freedom to choose whether to empower and individual to speak in tongues or to do something else? Can’t God choose whether to strike someone dead? Do we have the right to say that God will do things a certain way unless He has promised it?Peter spoke of the promise of the Spirit, not the promise of speaking in tongues. If there is a promise about how God will act, we can teach a doctrine based on that promise. If there is an example, we can learn from that, but we should not presume to limit how God acts to the way He acted under a specific scenario in the past________________
Here’s the difference. Nobody else is recorded as dying for having lied about their giving. However, several people for the next 20 years as recorded in Acts did speak in tongues when they received the Spirit. So I am not sure this is a good example to use in trying to refute IE.Understand that I sympathize with your frustration. Nobody will ever convince me that men like Whitfield, Wesley, Spurgeon and others weren’t baptized in the Holy Ghost, even though they didn’t speak with tongues. My stand is that during the Pentecostal revivals of the early 20th century, God was restoring tongues as a normative sign of Spirit infilling________________
The thing is, if God hasn’t promised to do something, who are we to promise that He will. God hasn’t promised to kill everyone who lies about how much they gave in the offering. Two who did such a thing died and that is recorded in the Bible. But God hasn’t promised it in the Bible.God hasn’t promised to give everyone who is filled with the Spirit the ability to speak in tongues, either. There are examples of people who were filled with the Spirit/baptized with the Spirit/on whom the Spirit came who spoke in tongues recorded in the Bible. But there is no promise of it.And Paul asks, ‘Not all speak with tongues, do they? So those who are convinced that all should will say he must be talking about some other type of tongue, not initial evidence________________
Building doctrine from narrative passages is a slippery slope. Aside from the book of Acts, the only mention of tongues was pointed at the overemphasis the Corinthians gave. Paul never seemed to use this as a litmus test for whether one had received the Holy Spirit. There are plenty of non-repetitive examples from the book of Acts. When was the last time you baptized someone, then vanished and reappeared in another city ? That would cut down on preachers having to buy private jets.
If it is something that God did not promise to everyone, as in tongues, I agree. But if it
Yep! Yep, Yep! That is Amen! ________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/
how supposed pentecostal people are so ignorant of pentecostal doctrine. I can only suppose that people like the OP are any or all of the following: 1) not pastors 2) got their degrees in theology from a degree mill 3) have never been baptized in the Holy Spirit with initial evidence of tongues and but still want to claim they are baptized in the Holy Spirit 4) are really just Baptists who troll a pentecostal forum or 5) don’t understand the difference between initial evidence and the public manifestation of the Gift of Tongues (see #2) 6) just looking for a fight.Never ceases to amaze me….
I have a book written by an Assembly of God ordained minister who is an elder and served as both as a missionary and chaplain for many years. In this book, he shares from his heart his doubts about the IE doctrine. He does not fit in any of the categories in your list.
Also,
I disagree vehemently with his assertion that tongues greater purpose has to do with unity in the Body of Christ. No wonder people are confused with nonsense like this floating around out there although I have never heard of the man and I have been a leader in the AG for 30 plus yrs. (Not all in leadership but around it)Tongues purpose in ie is to show a supernatural sign to the world and the individual that God has now empowered by the 3rd person of the Trinity (another problem you would have). These tongues form the basis of a prayer language by which that 3rd person prays thru you in the perfect will of God romans 8:26-27
This is why you should read the book. He discusses at length how he shared his views in writing each year when it came time to renew his credentials and how , after being scrutinized many times by his elders (both district and national) he was allowed to keep his credentials________________
Do you always critique things you’ve never read? Did you ever stop to think that if a man bothered to write such a book, he might have dealt with every argument you make here? And by-the-way, I don’t have a problem with the Holy Spirit being the third person of the Trinity. That’s a problem you have strapped
I’ve heard it all before and have written extensively refuting these arguments as have others more scholarly than I. My mind is made up, not closed as to what the truth is and it is not just my opinion. You have to do damage to scripture to come up with any other conclusion. As to the Holy Spirit being a person, the proof is incontrovertible. Acts 5:3-4
Yes the Holy Spirit is indeed a person. He is God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Matthew 28:19is not a teaching on the Godhead. Nor is the language you used to describe God found in the Bible anywhere. That should trouble you a little________________
I guess Link can defend himself, but I’ll have to say that what brotherjames said about him is ridiculous.
Amen________________
I must say amen also! Link is straight! ________________Some facts but mostly just my [email protected]/
I was thinking about a list of things regarding posters who don’t contribute much you1. Resort to ad hominem attacks.2. Don’t answer the objections in the OP.3. Read their own opinions into scripture.I have been on this forum for a long time, since it switched from that other website way back when in the early 2000’s or late 1990’s or whenever it was. I was raised in Full Gospel and Pentecostal churches growing up. My experience with Baptist churches was occasional visits to my grandmother’s missionary Baptist church when we went to NC to visit her and a few visits to other churches my dad’s relatives went to. I did fill in for a missionary Baptist pastor as interim minister for a month or so many years ago. I also attended an international church in Korea that was affiliated with a Baptist group, and I went to a non-denominational church in Indonesia that was not Baptist, but went through a Baptist denomination to get their paperwork done. I don’t call myself a Baptist and other people don’t call me a Baptist, except for this one guy on Facebook who calls people from A/G backgrounds ‘Bapticostals’ because he considers their view of sanctification to be Baptist rather than Holiness.I do not have a theology degree. I have a degree in Linguistics, an MBA and a PhD in Business Administration. All my degrees are from acredited US flagship state colleges. The two graduate degrees are AACSB accredited schools. But having a college degree or seminary degree doesn’t qualify a man to pastor a church or even teach or preach the word of God. Plenty of people with degrees from seminaries and Bible colleges aren’t qualified, and many who do not have degrees are not qualified. I spent more time in the A/G, but some time in COG congregations. (We moved a lot. I experienced being baptized with the Holy Spirit and sang and then spoke in tongues when it happened. I have never been a pastor of a church. I have been ordained in a local church where i used to live in the past and I do teach the Bible (‘preach’ as they call it these days).I used to believe the classical Pentecostal initial evidence doctrine. I found I couldn’t defend it with scripture. I shouldn’t promise that God will do something if He hasn’t promised it. I can see what God often did in the past and point that out, but why would I promise if He hasn’t?You wrote,