Charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail, whether there be tongues, they shall cease, whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 1 Corinthians 13:8
Some 40 years ago, some people peeking into what they expected to be the future, began to describe a society in which nobody would carry any money in their pocketbooks. It was hard to imagine back then, because people had been using cash to make purchases of all kinds for centuries. It was difficult to imagine even the technology that would enable a merchant to transfer money from my account into his. It turns out the prophets of debit were right. Pretty much everybody uses debit cards these days, except Americans (they actually still write cheques), and very few of us carry any more than a few dollars in our pockets. We don’t need to, because as the prophets correctly guessed, cash simply isn’t needed anymore. Those prophets were preparing us for just this situation. In much the same way, the Apostle Paul was preparing the Corinthian believers for a time when the sign gifts of early Christianity would disappear. Change was coming, and they needed to be preparing themselves for it.
If we were to be transported back in time to 50 years ago, and find ourselves at the cash register of a store, probably the first thing we would notice would be the lack of an Interac sign. If we were to be transported all the way back to an Assembly meeting in Corinth in the Apostle Paul’s time, we would also notice a few things different. We would find some of the men standing and instead of reading from the Bible – which they didn’t have – they would be explaining something that they had received directly from the Lord. Other men might speak in a different language while somebody else interpreted (and no, it would be nothing like the gibberish of today’s charismatic groups’ meetings). These things would be different from today’s Assembly practices, but Paul is telling them that these things are being done away with. Change is on its way, because these things won’t be needed anymore. Scripture in its completed form was being finalized, and the sign gifts would be as unnecessary as cash in a modern Canadian store.
Probably many of the ways in which Assemblies conduct their meetings have changed in the last couple of hundred years. That’s to be expected. Styles, transportation, the very language that we speak, have all undergone many changes. While we need to recognize that the time for sign gifts is long past, there is one thing that remains among the Lord’s people. Paul tells us that the need for love would never wane or disappear.
Are we taken up today with how meetings are conducted, how people speak, how teaching is presented? Better we should learn to exercise our love for one another, and allow God to change the other things as He will. -Jim MacIntosh