And so, this brings us to the second category of supernatural manifestations that can occur in the church, which as we mentioned, are those signs that are only manifested as the Spirit wills. The reason the second category of signs are only manifested as the Spirit wills, is because they are reliant on the gifts of the Spirit being made manifest through the saints and cannot be manifested by faith alone. It is entirely normative for the gifts of the Spirit to be manifested in the church, and the New Testament is full of evidence attesting to this fact. And so, believers should expect to see the gifts made manifest among them and should encourage each other to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There are nine gifts of the Spirit listed in scripture; i.e. the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, gifts of healings, the working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, different kinds of tongues and the interpretation of tongues (1 Corinthians 2:8-10). There are also different ministry gifts that the Lord has set in His church, the five main ones being the apostle, the prophet, the evangelist the pastor and the teacher. Each ministry gift also operates in various spiritual gifts, which form part of the offices that they are called to stand in. We will not discuss either the ministry gifts or spiritual gifts in any detail in this series, for it is not written to teach on the gifts of the Spirit, but rather on the different manifestations that can accompany the demonstration of those gifts, so that the saints can be more discerning as to which manifestations are from God and which are not.
Michael E.B. Maher
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