The Church of Ephesus and Cessationism

First of all don't read too much into this premise.  I'm not arguing every Cessationist congregation is an Ephesus or that you need to be Cessationist to be an Ephesus.  And even though I'm a Continutationist making this observation, this potential relationship could be true even if Cessationism is true.  Ephesus has the third best review of the Seven Churches so it's by no means an inherently derogatory association, and the two with better reports are NOT praised for their Doctrines.

One of the main things Ephesus is praised for is exposing and rejecting False Apostles, and while in the immediate context I think this refers to the same "ravenous wolves" Paul warned the Ephesians about at Miletus in Acts 20:29, in terms of applying this to then future and now contemporary Church issues I feel it can tie into how I in-spite of being a Continuationsit on the Spiritual Gifts in general do believe the Office of Apostle was only for the first generation of The Church, that being one required being an Eye Witness to The Resurrection and that Paul defined himself as the last to become an Apostle.

So I get uncomfortable when people like the host of The Prophecy Club calls himself an Apostle, but I think this can also apply to the Catholic/Orthodox concept of Apostolic succession, and to the Temple Lot Mormons calling their leaders a Quorum of Apostles.  And any other Pentecostal or Charismatic leaders calling themselves an Apostle.

And I have other areas of disagreement with many of my fellow Continuationists, I have been considering rejecting the usual identification of Thyatira with the Catholic Church and instead seeing it's False Prophetess as embodying many of the excesses of the more problematic Charismatic tendencies.  

My reading of Corinthians on this issue is Paul taking the same Contiuationist position I do and needing to deal with both Proto-Cessationists and overly reckless Charismatics causing problems in the Corinthian Church.

The main criticism of Ephesus is that they lost their First Love.  I feel like rejecting the Spiritual Gifts is quite possibly the only way to truly do that.  But even if Cessationism is true, I think many Cessationsits especially the Baptists should consider that their reactionary response to what some Contiuationists are doing wrong can potentially lead to that.

The fact that Paul's Epistle to Ephesus is one that gets into Spiritual Warfare a lot could also be evidence that Congregation was slowly becoming one that neglected the Spirit.

In which case I also think it's also highly likely for Sardis churches to be Cessationists since they are spiritually dead.  They would be churches with Ephesus's vices but not it's virtues.

The Offices of Apostle and Prophet

The New Testament offices of Apostle and Prophet are not the same, they are distinct.

I am a Continuationist, the Spiritual Gifts are for today, one of those is Prophecy.

An Apostle is something more specific.  Chris White has a good video on Apostolic Succession directed at Catholic Doctrine.

Thing is other versions of that doctrine have been utilized by non Catholic denominations.  I already did a post once on the Baptist version of it some Baptists believe.

This post is partly about a problem I've noticed of some Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian Leaders calling themselves Apostle.  Paul defined himself as the Last Apostle (1 Corinthians 15:8-9), and made clear you had to be an eye witness to the Resurrection to be an Apostle in the verses leading up to that.  Acts 1 agrees that being an eye witness was a requirement for being an Apostle.

Critics of Continuationism sometimes assert that the Canon isn't closed if there is still Prophecy, and some Contuionationists seem to effectively teach that.  But prophecy has to be tested against Scripture, and I believe only Apostles could add to Scripture.  In order for something to be Scripture it had to be written by an Apostle or approved by one.

I've seen some Ceasationists use Apostle and Prophet as if they are the same.  But The New Testament clearly treats them as distinct.  There are some passages where you can cite that verse alone and say maybe they're being used as synonyms there.  And in a sense I think every Apostle was a Prophet.   But verses like 1 Corinthians 12:28 clearly define them as distinct.

I can't currently think of a Hebrew word that might equate to what Apostle means in the New Testament.  But in concept I can point to Numbers 12 which distinguishes between the authority of Moses and that of other Prophets.  Jesus was the Prophet like Moses and He gave His Mosaic authority to the Apostles.

Some of the people who want to reject Paul act like Paul's claim to Apostolic status makes him a 13th Apostle, or in some way the only one additional to the 12.  But that's clearly not what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, placing James the Half-Brother of Jesus and many others between the 12 and himself as the last.  Acts 14:14 says Paul and Barnabas were both Apostles.  In Romans 16 Paul identifies as an Apostle a woman seemingly not named anywhere else in Scripture named Junia (though there's a theory she's the same woman as Joanna in Luke's Gospel).

Peter calls Paul's writings Scripture at the end of 2 Peter.  People try to argue around this fact, but it's undeniable.

I bring this up because the Anti-Paul people often desire to limit the title of Apostle only to the 12 (with Matthias taking Judas's spot).  Yet they try to get around the full implication that that would remove canonical status from at least 2 of the Gospels.  And that they may have to throw out James and Jude too if you believe the tradition that they were written by Half-Brothers of Jesus not the James son of Alpheius and Jude "Not Iscariot" of the 12.  And they frequently use James in their attacks on Paul.

Ironically for all this James vs Paul theorizing nonsense, it is only Paul who tells us James the Brother of Jesus qualified as an Apostle. Without him, we'd have no direct Biblical basis for believing that James ever became a Believer at all.  The James of the Acts 15 council I believe was the surviving James of the 12, not Jesus' brother.

The Prophet Test of Deuteronomy

Most websites I find online talking about the Prophet Test of Deuteronomy in relation to Jonah, Jeremiah or Ezekiel, are doing so assuming the readers will not question the Prophetic Status of those three Prophets, and so we must interpret Deuteronomy in a way that is consistent with them being valid Prophets.  These sites being Continuationist Christians seeking to defend modern Pentecostal/Charismatic Prophets against attempts to use Deuteronomy to discredit them.

But I have become aware of a growing Torah only movement, or at least heavily Torah centric, that would rather reject Prophets of the TNAK as true Prophets then change their overly strict "Plain Reading" interpretation of Deuteronomy.  To them it's blasphemous to use Jeremiah 18 to interpret Deuteronomy 18, they would say Jeremiah 18 was Jeremiah making excuses for himself.

Jonah, Jeremiah (and possibly Ezekiel) are all upheld as Prophets by the New Testament.  So as a Christian I need to defend them as legit Prophets.

What Jeremiah says Yahuah said in Jeremiah 18 is absolutely consistent with The Torah, the Torah repeatedly teaches that God's Blessings and Curses are conditioned upon behavior.  In fact Deuteronomy's prophecy in chapters 29 and 30 is entirety couched as a hypothetical.

This website teaches plenty I disagree with, like on Ezekiel and Tyre which I'll get to later.  But it's an analysis on the Prophet test of Deuteronomy that I think is over all pretty helpful.
http://www.crivoice.org/prophetdeut18.html

What's deemed a capital offense is prophesying in the name of other gods, or saying it's okay to worship other gods. That is what it's most concerned with.  Deuteronomy 18:22 says.

"When a prophet speaketh in the name of Yahuah, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which Yahuah hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him."

It doesn't say this Prophet wasn't a true Believer, or even that he never was a true Prophet.  But he spoke presumptuously and for that reason you should no longer fear his words.  But it doesn't call for execution.  In English in the KJV it looks like this Prophet would also be guilty of Deuteronomy 18:20's offense, but clearly there is a difference.

Interestingly some offshoots of Mormonism like Temple Lot teach that Josephus Smith was a true Prophet at first, but eventually went bad and spoke presumptuously.  I think the very foundation of what Joseph Smith taught from the start had major inconsistencies with Scripture, but it's interesting to note that some Mormons look at things that way.

As a Continuationist Christian, I think it's important to note that 1 John 4:2-3 says "Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God".  There is no room for exceptions to either of those declarations.  Likewise 1 John 5:1 "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God".

Now, I disagree whole heartedly with the assertion that Ezekiel's Prophecy of Tyre failed.  Or that we need to expand it's time-frame to include Alexander to make it not a failure (I believe Isaiah 23's Prophecy about Tyre is specifically of Alexander's conquest, where Kittim/Greece is mentioned).

First of all, there is an accusation that Ezekiel 29:17-20 is some kind of admission that his Prophecy about Tyre failed.  This is not the case.  God is saying Nebuchadnezzar and his army performed a service for him by sieging Tyre, and so he's giving him Egypt to reward that service.  Strictly speaking we do not know whether that Siege was successful based on Ezekiel 29 alone.

Now some might infer that if sieging Tyre was successful they wouldn't need to capture another country to be paid for it.  A, plenty of successful sieges have failed to produce booty, like when Xerxes captured Athens.  B, I can counter that if no judgment was inflicted on Tyre, they performed no service to be paid for.

People are reading things into Ezekiel 26 that aren't there when they say Nebuchadnezzar had to capture the Island to fulfill the Prophecy.  What people ignore criticizing this Prophecy is the origin of the Island becoming the main city was the people fleeing there during this Siege, and that is what Ezekiel is describing.  The Mainland city is all Ezekiel is clearly saying will be destroyed.

And as far as saying the not being inhabited part is a failure because Tyre exists to this day.  That is false, there is a city in New Testament and modern times calling itself Tyre, but that doesn't make it Tyre, it was not built on the exact same location.  The mainland city Nebuchadnezzar destroyed is still a barren ruin right now.

Now one could say Alexander's actions have some relevance because of how he threw many of the ruins of the old city into the sea as he built his land bridge.  But that is a minor epilogue.

Now as far as questioning if Nebuchadnezzar ever captured Egypt.   I talked about that on my Prophecy blog.

But going back to the conditional commands.  As far as some people who might fear I'm weakening the Prophet Test's usefulness in opposing cults.  The conditional aspect is only an excuse if a nation wide change in behavior happens.

I'm a Continuationist, but most Pentacostals and Charismatics are wrong on what the Gift of Tongues is

Acts 2 clearly spells out for us what it is.  It involves people in the crowd hearing The Gospel preached in their native Tongue, even though that Tongue was not known to the ones preaching it.

Tongue is being used here as a synonym for language, the same word is used in contexts that are not supernatural at all.

Almost everyone has it in their heads now that somehow Paul in 1 Corinthians was talking about something completely different, some cryptic mystery language.  He was not.

The problem with them seeming incompatible is that what happened in Acts 2 may not be how we usually picture it.  I don't think each person listening was hearing everything in their own language regardless, like a Star Trek universal translator.  But rather different Disciples were given different specific Tongues to supernaturally speak with.  And that fits the imagery better, of each being given a single flaming Tongue.

And so I think the controversy at Corinth came from some believers showing off their Tongue in church, even though no one listening there could understand it.  And so Paul says if someone is going to speak in Tongues in church there should be an interpreter to translate it.  An unknown Tongue simply means no one there knows it, not that no Human anywhere knows it.

And that would be simply rude behavior even in a non supernatural context.  Like an American Otaku who's actually learned Japanese speaking it constantly at a small Anime convention where no one else there can understand it without subtitles.  It just makes him look like a pretentious show off.

1 Corinthians 13:1 however is what people cling to for their "Angelic Language" doctrine.  Paul is saying in this verse he has spoken in Tongues, plural, of both Men and Angels.  That verse does not at all prove the Supernatural Tongues are only the Angels.

I'm actually starting to wonder if Paul didn't actually know Greek, but he spoke in the Greek Tongue to stenographers who could write in it.  But perhaps this is even more true of Peter and John, and the brothers James and Jude, who's background doesn't make sense for them to know Greek at all, and that is constantly used against The Bible by skeptics.

I personally feel it's pretty obvious that the Angels speak Hebrew as their native Tongue.  The only two who are named have Hebrew names.  There is no mystery Angelic Language, that idea is where Occult concepts like John Dee's Enochian Language comes from, but even he knew he should logically start with Hebrew in constructing his made up Angelic language.  The Angels may very well speak a more pure and uncorrupted dialect, but it's most certainly Hebrew.

The many people out there thinking they're speaking an Angelic Language may just be misinformed.  They don't know what they're speaking.

Also the word "angel" is used of human messengers sometimes.

But do not forget that I am a Continuationist, this Supernatural ability is one I believe Christians can still use.  It may be less common now since in the modern world more people are naturally multilingual, and The Bible is available in every major language.  But in a situation where a Christian may need it, I believe The Holy Spirit can still provide it.