Subject: Age of Miracles - Past or Present |
Bible Note: The questions that I asked you to ask yourself are all personal for YOU. I can't answer those for YOU. For ME, if I were to honestly and humbly answer them for ME, I could only admit that I still only "know in part" even with the completed canon. I still look through a glass darkly. I still do not know even as also I am known. The full, complete knowledge has not come, for me, and so the "part" or partial or incomplete is what I am presently stuck with, and therefore it has not been done away yet. So, "that which is perfect" need not refer to Jesus (though He IS perfect), but merely the "perfect" or complete or nonpartial knowledge or realm when partial, incomplete supernatural endowments will no longer be necessary or operating. You don't suppose we are going to have any language barriers in heaven, do you? Or the need for an interpreter for believers to communicate with each other? Well, at that point, the gift of interpretation will obviously be done away. Or the gift of healings. Where there is no disease, there is no use for the gift of healings. When we have full, complete health in a new body, no healing will be needed. Until then, how can anyone think the gift of healings could not only be useful for our sick bodies but for confirmation of the preaching of the gospel, as in Philip's case in Acts 8:6-8. Now back to the question of the age of miracles. If it has past, and I'm not willing to admit that yet, it is NOT because "that which is perfect" has already come. If God is not presently operating in believers, through the supernatural gifts HE sovereignly and graciously gives them, and I repeat IF, it is not because they have been done away by the coming of the perfect. It may be because of sin or lack of faith or some other reason, but not the other. Phil |