She used the P word!

    On my last post, I used the word "prophesy" (I'm sure when you saw the title of this post you probably thought I meant the word was PREGNANT... not yet... hold tight and that'll be here by May 3). I just want to expand on this thought for a minute.

     I do believe in limited modern-day prophesy being one spiritual gift from God. What I mean by "limited" is that I do not believe in wide-cast prophesy like what we see in the old testament, but I do believe that as believers, we can say things to each other that are not from ourselves but from the Holy Spirit and those things will eventually come to pass.
     Going off of that- How do I know if what someone tells me is true or if they're full of malarkey? I recently found a scripture that is much better at being direct than I am:

1 John 4: 1-2

"Dear friends, don't believe every spirit. Test the spirits to see if they 

are from God because many false prophets have gone into the world. 

This is how you know if a spirit comes from God: every spirit that 

confesses that Jesus Christ has come as a human is from God, and every spirit 

that doesn't confess Jesus is not from God."

      Its pretty easy: if the person who is telling me something is a Christ-follower, then I trust their words. Otherwise, they're full of mess.

       I had a friend ask me once why I don't believe in the book of Mormon. He said that Mormons confess Christ as their savior, so why would I not be Mormon and believe Joseph Smith? 

       Kind of the same thing as above, I don't believe that wide-cast prophesies after the initial apostles are necessary or true. 

        In the old testament, God used prophets to communicate with His people because not everyone was able to speak with God and hear His word. They had a certain set of priests who were able to give sacrifices to God and were able to enter in to the Holy space to speak with God. 

        When Jesus came, died, was resurrected, and then was taken up to Heaven, He sent down the Holy Spirit. Once the Holy Spirit came to dwell within us, the need for wide-spread prophesy faded because now every person had the ability to speak with God directly. Once you get that the Holy Spirit is God and is also in you, if you are a believer, it will totally change your world. To know that you have a direct line with your Creator, it gives you the ability to believe and be faithful in ways that those on the outside simply don't understand (more on this later).

         Anyways, I just felt like there might be some confusion on that and I wanted to clear that up so that anybody that is reading doesn't get stuck. I grew up Baptist, so any spiritual gifts were largely discounted and never talked about. But now, I believe that they are absolutely part of the blessings that God pours out on us as a reminder of His sovereignty and goodness.