Michlaude Discipleship Project

Pride in Tradition at the Expense of Scripture

Appendix: Reference Notes (4 of 5)

Replacement Theology

  1. Romans 11:1 asks: "God has not rejected His people, has He?" Paul answers: "Absolutely not." If Replacement Theology is correct, what is Paul's three-chapter argument in Romans 9–11 about — and does your reading require the argument to mean something other than what it plainly says?
  2. If God transferred His covenant promises from Israel to the church because Israel failed to keep the covenant, what secures the covenant promises to the church — and does your answer require God's faithfulness to depend on the recipient's performance?
  3. Replacement Theology requires significant interpretive work to derive from the texts that are used to support it. When you hold it as settled, are you holding the Text as settled — or the interpretation?

The Sinner's Prayer as the Mechanism of Conversion

  1. John 17:3 defines eternal life as knowing the Father and the Son — not as reciting a formula. Romans 8:16 describes the Spirit bearing witness that you are a child of God — an ongoing internal testimony. Where in the New Testament is a specific verbal formula named as the mechanism by which the Spirit regenerates?
  2. If a person genuinely turns toward Christ without praying the specific words of the Sinner's Prayer — as the thief on the cross did, as Zacchaeus did — are they regenerate? If yes, what does the formula accomplish that the turning itself does not?
  3. When you invite someone to pray the Sinner's Prayer and they do, what assurance do you have that the Spirit's work preceded the prayer rather than that the prayer preceded the Spirit's work — and which order does the New Testament describe?

The Orthodoxy Test for Hell

  1. John Stott expressed careful, studied uncertainty about conditional immortality — not a denial of judgment, but an honest acknowledgment that the textual question is genuinely difficult. The response in some communities was to question whether he was a Christian. Which of those two responses is more consistent with the poverty of spirit this document calls for?
  2. Matthew 10:28 says to fear the one who can "destroy both soul and body in hell." If "destroy" means "cause to suffer forever," how does the word destroy function elsewhere in Scripture — and did you arrive at that reading before or after the tradition told you what the verse required?
  3. Romans 10:9 defines what saving confession requires: confess Jesus as Lord, believe God raised Him. Is the precise nature of hell's punishment listed there — and if it is not, by what authority has the tradition made it a test of salvation?

Tongues as Initial Physical Evidence of Spirit Baptism

  1. 1 Corinthians 12:30 asks: "Not all speak in tongues, do they?" The question expects the answer no. If tongues is the necessary initial evidence of Spirit baptism, what does Paul mean by this question — and who resolved the tension between Paul and the 1901 classroom in Topeka, Kansas?
  2. Charles Fox Parham concluded from a student Bible study in 1901 that tongues was the initial evidence. That conclusion is not in the New Testament. When you require it of believers seeking the Spirit's fullness, which standard are you applying?
  3. If a believer in your community is marked by love, joy, peace, faithfulness, and evident fruitfulness but has not spoken in tongues, what does your tradition require you to conclude about them? Does the fruit or the initial evidence take precedence — and which of those does Jesus name as the measure in Matthew 7:16–20?

Second Blessing as Distinct Post-Conversion Experience

  1. Romans 8:9 says "if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him." If the Spirit is received at conversion, what does the second blessing framework require the convert to be in the interval between conversion and the second blessing?
  2. The two-stage architecture is a 19th century Holiness movement framework. What is the New Testament verse that requires the Spirit's fullness to arrive in a second, distinct, dateable event subsequent to regeneration?
  3. When you describe your experience of the second blessing, you are describing something real that happened in your walk with God. The question is not whether the experience happened. The question is whether the theological architecture the tradition built around it is what Scripture describes — or whether a genuine encounter with God has been fitted into a framework that encounter did not require.

The Ongoing Apostolic Office

  1. Ephesians 2:20 says the church is "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets." A foundation is laid once. The building rises on it. If the apostolic office is ongoing, what does the word foundation mean in Paul's sentence — and who has the authority to change what it means?
  2. The apostles whose authority the NAR claims to restore gave us the canon of Scripture. When a living apostle claims authority beyond what that canon contains, which authority takes precedence — and does your answer apply to the NAR's own apostles?
  3. If the fruits of restored apostolic authority include failed prophecies, financial scandal, and spiritual abuse — which Deuteronomy 18:21–22 assigns a specific meaning — what does the oldest prophetic test say about the tradition's foundational claims?

The Prosperity Gospel

  1. Paul's résumé in 2 Corinthians 11:24–27 includes five beatings of thirty-nine lashes, three beatings with a rod, stoning, three shipwrecks, hunger, thirst, and exposure to cold. If the prosperity formula is correct, was Paul failing to claim his inheritance — or was the formula wrong?
  2. 3 John 2 — "I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health" — is a personal greeting in a personal letter. What textual move converts a personal greeting into a doctrinal promise applicable to all believers across all circumstances — and who made that move?
  3. When the promised blessing does not arrive for a faithful and obedient person in your community, what does the tradition offer them — a formula for more faith, a question about their obedience, or a framework for suffering well? Which of those three is Paul's answer in 2 Corinthians 4?

Directional Personal Prophecy as Scripture-Equivalent

  1. 1 Corinthians 14:29 says "let two or three prophets speak, and the others evaluate what is said." When a directional prophetic word is received as private, final, and unchallengeable, which part of Paul's instruction has been set aside — and by what authority?
  2. Deuteronomy 18:21–22 gives the oldest test: if what the prophet says does not come to pass, the prophet was not speaking from God. How many of the directional prophetic words given in your community have been tested by this standard — and what happened to the ones that failed?
  3. If a prophetic word directs a person to leave their spouse, change their career, or cut off family relationships, and that word was never submitted to the communal discernment Scripture requires, what is the difference between that word and the person's own desires dressed in prophetic language?