Church of God (Cleveland) attitudes toward prophecies
It may be hard to make generalizations, but it seems to me that while some folks in the COG (Cleveland) are open to prophecies of all sorts, but others seem skeptical of personal prophecies and prophecies about the future.
I also hear that in a lot of congregations, interpretations of tongues may occur, but someone standing up and just prophesying without a tongue preceding it is basically unheard of.
Do you think most COG preachers are too skeptical or too accepting of prophecies? What are COG attitudes toward personal prophecies (when one person has a prophecy for another individual)?
I have gone to a number of Pentecostal churches, and I never thought of COGs not having a lot of prophecies, but having interpretations of tongues until I read something about that from COG people. I remember going to A/G and Congregational Holiness (CH) churches and they had interpretations and prophecies in the meetings.
I have noticed something with A/G culture is that some of the people have some ‘rules’ about prophecies that I can’t find anywhere in the Bible. For example, if a prophecy is about an individual’s calling and it isn’t confirmation, some people think they aren’t supposed to accept the prophecy or are supposed to reject it outright. We have to be discerning and we are responsible to God for our decision making, but I don’t see the Spirit being limited in such a way in scripture. John the Baptist’s father gave a prophecy about him when he was just a baby.
Tongues need to be tested as well as prophetic messages as a number of Deliverance Ministers have found that demons were speaking through persons and began to curse God and Christ when the tongues were tested. In OT and church history it has also been found that there were far more false prophets than true prophets. The gracelets or gifts of the Holy Spirit should be encouraged but more teaching and testing is also needed.
good questions, Link! seems we have to sort out the emotionalism that is going on and that is difficult. We had a recent visit with a family from long ago and they had two young teenage girls who were getting ready for a mission trip with their church to Germany.
I was so struck by the presence of the Lord that I started prophecying over them and it wasn’t emotional rather casual. The family responded joyfully and it erupted in discussion with the family. We had prayer.
In my home church we had unique experiences with spiritual gifts. We were accustom to the traditional Pentecostal way of doing gifts. now over 45 years I have never been able to arouse a conversation about these events.
It’s like sex, it’s there but no one talks about it.
if I am prophecying it is always reliable and Biblical however if it is you then it is questionable.
I someone I really like is prophecying it is always reliable and good!!!
Prophecy was a semi regular thing at the CoG I went to.