Miracles, Healings, and Tongues

Selected Scriptures

     Now we've been studying these gifts and the principles upon which these gifts operate.  And we found out that it's very important that all believers minister their gifts for the building of the body.  And if the body is built, then the witness is effective because the building of the body brings unity and unity brings single testimony to the world.

     Specifically, we began to enumerate the spiritual gifts.  We found in 1 Corinthians 12 a list of them and also in Romans 12 a list.  We put the list together and we came up first of all with what we chose to call the permanent edifying gifts.

     These gifts were given for the building of believers.  They are to be ministered among the believers and they build believers up individually and thus they build the body up as a total.  But there were also some other gifts that were not designed for edifying the body.  They were designed to confirm the word to unbelievers.  These gifts did not have a design in connection with the church itself, but with unbelievers.  They were to confirm the word.

     For example, three preachers came to town and all three preached different messages and you were living in the time of the New Testament era, whom would you believe?  Well, you would be likely to believe the one who performed the miracles.  And even as Nicodemus said to Jesus, "We know that you're a teacher come from God because nobody could do what you do except," what?  God be with him.  It was obvious that Jesus was from God because there were miracles confirming His testimony.

     He claimed it and then He said, "If you cannot believe what I say, believe me for the very," what?  "Works sake."  A confirmation of the claims of Christ was miracles.  Miracles were never ends in themselves.  They were always signs pointing to His claims.

     Now when the church continued, the early church, the apostolic era, these gifts were given to confirm the word of the apostles and the prophets.  This is clear in Scripture.  They were given certain miracle gifts.  They were not for the church.  They were not for believers.  They were for unbelievers to confirm to them that the message preached by the apostles and prophets was in fact from God.

     Now there are four of these gifts listed in the New Testament, miracles, feeling, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues, or better languages and the translation of languages.  That's the exact Greek rendering.  Now they have no continuing role in the body we believe from Scriptures, we shall see, but existed for the apostolic era, designed to confirm the Word before the New Testament canon was completed and specifically while God was still directly doing signs in the face of Israel.  We'll get into that.

     Now let me suggest their nature from several passages.  Mark 16.  And we just want to look at these passages.  While you're looking up Mark 16, let me say this.  I trust and pray that you will hear what I say this morning as it is given.  I believe and I have many dear and precious friends who are involved in movements that believe these gifts are for the day.

     I have preached in their churches.  I have fellowshipped with them as believers in Jesus Christ.  And at all points we agree to disagree when we run into each other at this point, and I desire not to ride my hobbyhorse.  I trust and pray to God that I'm not that deductive, but to be objective with Scripture.

     I am open to anything that the Spirit of God will teach me.  I pray that.  I pray that God will keep my tongue from saying anything that is not of Him, at the same time knowing that it's an awful tough thing for Him to get past my blind spots.  But nevertheless, what I say I say in love, and yet I say with a boldness that can only be mine from study of the word of God and I trust you'll hear it in that way.  It is no reflection upon the salvation and the genuineness of many people who are involved.

     All right.  Mark 16:14.  All we're trying to do is bring it all to the light of Scripture.  Mark 16:14.  "Afterward He appeared unto the eleven as they sat eating and abraded them with their unbelief and hardness of heart because they believe not those who had seen Him after He had risen."  You remember the testimony came to the disciples that Jesus was risen and they weren't too sure about that.

     "He said unto them," verse 15, "Go ye into all the world.  Preach the gospel to every creature, he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.  He that believeth not shall be damned.  And these signs shall follow those who believe."  Now He says to the eleven that attending your message to confirm the faith of those who believe will be certain signs.  "In My name you shall cast out demons."  And here He, I believe, is talking directly about the eleven.  "They shall cast out demons.  They shall speak with new tongues.  They shall take up serpents.  They shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them."  That is, they can take poison with no effect.

     "They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover."  Now here is an interesting thing.  Here is a Scripture that suggests to us that these who were to go out and proclaim the message would have attended miracles.  And really all of the four gifts that we talk about are here.  The gift of miracles, for example, would certainly be the ability to take up serpents and drink any deadly thing and not be hurt.  That is a miracle.  The gift of healing is indicated here.  It says that they will be able to lay hands on the sick and they will recover.  And tongues is indicated here as it says they will speak with new languages.

     All of those gifts then are represented here as our Lord promises to the eleven that they shall be confirmed by these gifts and by these miracles.  Now if today we are to assume that anyone still has all of this that is meant for them, then we must find ourselves agreeing with the Appalachian snake handlers and with those who would perhaps from the church of the firstborn, as it's called, drink poison and so forth and so on.  It doesn't work like they want it to work very often.

     But nevertheless, if we take part, we must take all because it says, "These signs shall follow those who believe."  If it's a permanent thing, then we're stuck with the whole thing.  2 Corinthians 12:12.  We continue just to look at some passages to set a frame of reference.  2 Corinthians 12:12.  Paul's talking about his apostleship here.  And he's verifying the fact that he was an apostle by saying this.  "Truly," now watch it, a definite article.  "These signs of an apostle were wrought among you in paces - signs, wonders, and mighty deeds."  Definite article.  Not some signs, the signs.  A definite identification of certain signs given to apostles.  The signs of an apostle.

     The apostles had certain signs granted to them.  Now what were they?  Well, apparently they were granted back in Mark 16.  Now for a further word, I want you to notice Hebrews 2.  Now remember, the book of Hebrews was written to just who it says, Hebrews to Jews, which becomes very important.  Verse 3 of chapter 2.  "How should we escape what we neglect great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord?"  Of course, they didn't hear it from Him.  "But it was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him."

     Now the Lord confirmed, which means made believable or made finally true, that which was affirmed or stated was confirmed, made believable.  How?  Verse 4.  "God, bearing them witness with signs, wonders, diverse miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit."  Now these certain gifts of the Holy Spirit were to confirm the word in the hearing of these Jews.  That's exactly what the passage says.  "These words were confirmed to us."  The preaching was done.  The confirmation came through the deeds done by the gifts of the spirit given to the apostles.

     So we conclude then that certain spiritual gifts called gifts of the Holy Spirit were the signs of an apostle and that they had therefore their significance in the apostolic ministry, which was a foundational ministry.  And in the early church when there were myriad voices giving all kinds of messages, God confirmed the truth by these special gifts granted to apostles to confirm in the hearing of those who heard.

     Warfield - Benjamin Warfield.  Perhaps not superseded by any, as a Biblical scholar in his own right, and that in itself is not an accreditation, only a statement of fact, said this.  "These miracle gifts were part of the credentials of the apostles as the authoritative agents of God in founding the church.  Their function thus confined them to distinctively the apostolic church and they necessarily passed away with it."

     If we believe that Ephesians 2:20 says the apostles and the prophets were the foundation, then the signs of an apostle went when the apostles went.  And if the signs of the apostles were the confirming gifts of the Holy Spirit, then we can tie the whole thing together and we can see then that as the apostles passed from the scene, so did the gifts of the Spirit given to them as confirming signs pass from the scene with them.

     Now certain passages in Acts specifically assign and associate these gifts to the apostles.  And just to pull out maybe one here in Acts 14:3 just to give you an idea, it just says this.  "A long time therefore abode they, Paul and Barnabus in Iconium, abode they there speaking boldly in the Lord and gave testimony under the word of His grace and granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands."  Here's an example of how God used these gifts.  They would preach and their preaching would be confirmed as divine because they did miracles.

     Now I don't believe that the church today needs this kind of confirmation.  The church today does not need confirmation.  I can tell you right now if three people come into town and all three have a different message, I can tell you immediately who's from God and the standard is not who does miracles.  What's the standard?  The Bible.  Because here is that standard that God has granted to confirm anybody's message. 

     Paul even said in 1 Corinthians 14 to the prophets, he said, "When you prophesy, be sure that your prophesy ties into the doctrine that I taught you."  And so we must be careful then to realize that the verifier today of any man's message or of any man's experience or of anything spiritual is the word of God.  It is the final test and is the final authority and rule of faith and practice. 

     So we cannot assume then that these verifying or confirming gifts any longer are needed to confirm the Word.  The Word is established.  To say that we need miracle signs today, particularly of all places in our society in America and in churches where the Word is in everybody's hands, is to overlook or deny the finality and the authority of Scripture.  I'm reminded of Luke 16:31, you know, where it says, "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither would they believe that one rose from the dead."

     When you have the Scripture, that suffices.  That's the point.  Even by the time Paul wrote Ephesians, he says, "There will be evangelists and teaching shepherds."  And he says, "They will build the body."  But he makes no mention at all of any of these miraculous gifts.  And then when you read Paul's letters to Timothy and Titus, you find that the tool is the Word of God.  He continually says, "Teat sound acra."  Teat sound acra. 

     Now if in fact these confirming gifts do exist today, as some say they do, if they do exist today, then they would accompany great Bible teachers or they would accompany people who are giving out the gospel in lands where there was no Bible to confirm their message.  But they would not accompany groups of Christians who have in their hands the Scripture.  That has absolutely no significance at all.  It's nothing to do with the Biblical gift. 

     The great historic Bible teachers agree that these gifts do not belong to them.  And if you go back in history and trace the men who have committed unto us the great works of theology, they were not involved in this.  These gifts were for apostolic times then as a foundation ministry.

     Now let's look at the gifts.  We can only do a cursory look at them.  First of all, the gift of miracles.  1 Corinthians 12:10.  In listing the gifts, he talks about miracles, the working of miracles.  Now you say, "McArthur are you telling me that miracles have ceased?"  No.  I don't think miracles have ceased.  I know they're going on all over the place.  I've seen miracles constantly.  God is a God of miracles.  You say, "Well, and let me - give me a definition of a miracle."  A miracle is no big thing.  Everybody gets all, you know, the unbeliever gets all upset about a miracle.  It's nothing.  It's nothing.

     Let me show you what I mean.  We live in a little natural world.  Let's call it a pond, okay?  Our little pond.  And we say, "Everything in our little pond is just the way it ought to be."  Well, a miracle is no different than God, if He exists, sticking His finger in the pond and making a ripple.  I mean, if there's a God up there, then a miracle is no big thing.  It's just like throwing a rock in the pond and the ripples go on.  Pretty soon the pond calms down and goes back to normal.  Read C.S. Lewis' book on miracles.  He covers the whole subject very aptly.

     A miracle is God just sticking His finger in the pond and making a ripple.  And if there is a God and He made the pond, He can stick His finger in it anytime He wants.  So a miracle is nothing to get upset about.  In fact, miracles prove God exists.  That's why the general rationalists crucified their souls when they eliminated all the miracles from the Bible.  They came up with humanistic philosophy.  No.  God does do miracles.  And miracles go on all the time.  Miracles are healing.

     I even believe that God could give to a missionary somewhere the ability to speak a language he didn't know.  That's a miracle.  I don't think that's the Biblical gift of tongues.  That was an apostolic gift.  But I think God can do miracles with people's mouths as much as He can do with any other part of their body.  God still does miracles.  We see Him do them all the time.  The greatest miracle He does is the miracle of the new birth.  I mean I'm a miracle.  You have to be powerful to change me.  You know, like the little boy says, "He's not even finished yet, you know."

     Our Lord, when He was on Earth, did many miracles.  And He always did them to attest to His truth.  But God today may do some miracles so that you can give your testimony and someone could say, "Well, a God that can do that must be real."  That may be true.  But no longer to substantiate written revelation, which is a closed system.  So I'm not saying that miracles have ceased.  I'm only saying that miracles are different today and that the gift of miracles has ceased because it was apostolic.

     You can study this history of miracles and you'll find there were four great periods of miracles in the Bible.  And that the other periods in the Bible, they just don't even exist.  The period of Moses, a time of miracles.  The period of Elijah and Elisha, again.  Then a great long period of time with no miracles.  And then all of the sudden during the life of Christ and the apostolic era.  Miracles had a limited purpose and a limited time always.  And people just don't continually do miracles.

     The gift of miracles, today, we believe has ceased with the ceasing of the apostolic era.  To be able to drink poison, to be able to walk around and perform all kinds of wonders and signs and mighty deeds is something that belonged to that era.  There is nothing in all of Paul's writings to Timothy about being an evangelist and a pastor to Titus there is nothing at all about miracles.  There is no indication of the doing of miracles as even an emphasis in Paul's own life.  After he went to Philippi for a period of two years at least, it says nothing about miracles.

     There never was any record of miracles in Antioch, in Corinth, in Thessonichid, Jerby, Beread, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  Very limited.  Very temporary.  I was driving to Hume Lake and I passed a big tent out on the vacant lot and the sign outside said, "Miracle services.  Miracles Monday through Friday."  Miracles Monday through Friday.  Assembly line miracles. 

     We believe that the word of God to us says nothing about the gift of miracles for this age, but that those are the gifts of the apostles.  They have been temporary in any age, and with the completion of the New Testament Scripture, the authentication of any messenger is not his ability to do miracles, but his ability to teach the Word accurately.  Adherence to the Word is now the attestation of any man.  And we could say more about it, but let's go on.

     Healing.  What about healing?  This is certainly a miraculous gift and it's a basic indication in 1 Corinthians 12, as it's listed there as the ability to heal to another.  It says, "Healing," verse 9, "Now you say that then God doesn't heal the sick."  Of course not.  God heals the sick.  He restores the sick.  But there are no people today walking around who at will heal everybody in response to a gift as in the apostolic era.

     Today God heals by His sovereign will and in response to prayer.  You can find even if you go into the book of James.  And maybe you ought to look at chapter 5 for just a moment with me.  And James incidentally was written before 1 Corinthians.  It says in the book of James, verse 13, "Is any among you afflicted?  Let him pray."  Verse 14.  "Is any sick among you?  Let him cough for the elders of the church.  Let them pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.  The prayer of faith will save the sick."  That's what it says.  God shall raise him up.

     Even in James, which may be the first book in the New Testament in terms of chronology, maybe the oldest.  Even in the book of James, when anybody was sick, it doesn't say, "Go get the one who has the gift of healing."  It says, "Pray for him."  God never intended the gift of healing to have any real particular relationship with the church at all.  This was a sign to confirm the Word to unbelievers.  And you can study Jesus Christ and you will find that those He healed were unbelievers.

     He was involved in confirming His claims in the minds of unbelievers.  When the church got sick, they prayed for each other and God answered prayer.  I believe the gift of healing enabled one who was an apostle or a prophet as a proclaimer of the Word to be confirmed in the minds of unbelievers by miracles.  And I say again, if the gift of healing existed today, it would not belong to so-called healers.  It would belong to Bible teachers.  It would belong to people who were out proclaiming the Gospel as a confirmation that it was true, not to a certain segment of people, revivalists or whatever we call them.

     Even in the later years of the apostle's ministry this thing began to wane.  It's interesting isn't it that Paul, when Timothy was sick, said to him, "I know how to get yourself fixed up.  Take a little wine for your stomach's sake."  Now if there was the gift of healing around, somebody could have taken care of it a lot easier than that.  And I've often thought too, it was interesting in 2 Timothy 4 that Paul says, "I left Profinius at my latest sick."

     Now if Paul had the gift of miracles at that time and the gift of healing, he could well have healed Profinius.  But there never seems to be any instance in the New Testament where this gift is ever exercised toward a believer.  And yet in all this healing that's going on today, so much of this is just all these people who have historically been in the church getting in these long lines to get healed.  That doesn't follow the Biblical pattern.

     I was interested this week, and certainly wouldn't classify all of them in this category, but the testimony of this Marjo Gortner.  I don't know if you heard about it, but he finally told all.  He was the one who at four years old was supposed to have the gift of healing and his parents put him on the stage as it were, and he began a ministry of healing and went on and on.

     It was an interesting thing that I was with my dad last week and we were sitting there talking about this.  He said, "You know I ought to go see that movie.  They just made a movie about it because they called me on the phone when they were making that movie," my dad said.  "And they asked me if they could use