The Contender

 I once heard a young lady say that she had been taught how to speak in tongues but was embarrassed by the sound of her "tongues." Our small group leader asked her to speak her "new language," and she hesitatingly did. It was a one syllable sound repeated over and over again. It was "dadadadadadadada," said very quickly. The leader and others told her it was the gift of tongues. And everyone went home convinced that this young lady had the genuine gift of tongues. Dear reader, that was not the Biblical gift of tongues no matter how one might spin it. It was gibberish foisted upon a novice by deceived people who thought (sincerely) that everyone is supposed to speak in tongues. A cursory reading of 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 would have told them otherwise.  And that is an excellent segue into my next point, people caught up in the Charismatic Movement as well as those in the Pentecostal Movement and the Word of Faith Movement are given to taking Scripture out

 Do you claim to "speak in tongues?" Do you claim to be an apostle, you know, just like the apostles hand-picked by Jesus were who met the requirements of that office? (See Acts 1) Do you claim to be a prophet who regularly hears directly from God? Do you have the gift of healing? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you are in the company of millions.  The problem is you have more than likely been deceived into believing that you have any of those gifts or the others mentioned in the apostle Paul's letter to the saints in Corinth. However, the spiritual gifts listed in First Corinthians 12 are legitimate gifts. And, in spite of what many leading pastors of our day and many of our leading theologians might proffer, the Bible does not teach or even hint that the "sign gifts" have ceased. And in spite of the fact that you do not truly have the gifts you have been told you have, if you are born of the Spirit, you do in fact have one of the gifts (or

 Somewhere along the way, the faith once delivered to the saints, over 2000 years ago, has gotten so extremely perverted that is it has become difficult if not impossible to discern. The battle for the soul of the church and the truth of the gospel has been non-stop since day one. The apostles Paul and Peter and John and Jude, as well as the Lord Jesus Himself, engaged the enemies of the church and truth and all but one of them paid for it with their lives. These men of God found the hill to die on and it was and still is, the hill of the gospel. Jumping ahead to the 20th and the 21st centuries and skipping over the battles fought by the churches founding fathers who did battle with the heretics of their day, we find the true church, made up of those who solely by the grace of God, are born of the Spirit, born again, those who know their Scriptures, surrounded by an enemy that vastly outnumbers her. And the enemy is clever and creative and so acquainted with its deceived followers that