Half the Gospel?

We see Pentecostal churches many places which identify themselves as  full-gospel churches. The implication is that others are not, and they offer something else which orthodoxy does not. Let's take a look at the full gospel:

Romans 15:29 And I am sure that, when I come unto you, I shall come in the fulness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ.

Romans 15:19 Through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. 

These two places are the only scriptural references to the full-gospel.  In both places, Paul was speaking specifically to a Roman audience. Pentecostals take their full-gospel from Romans 15:19. For them, what is the full gospel?

The term Full Gospel is often used as a synonym for Pentecostalism and Charismatic Christianity, evangelicalism movements originating in the 19th century. They saw their teachings on baptism with the Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts, and divine healing as a return to the doctrines and power of the Apostolic Age. Because of this many early Pentecostals and Charismatics call their movement the Apostolic Faith or the Full Gospel. (Wikipedia; "Full gospel").

Essentially "full gospel" means that Pentecostals have something that non-Pentecostals do  not have - Baptism with the Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts, and divine healing. Because their faith is the same as the apostles - Paul in this case, the full-gospel, to them, is the Apostolic Faith. Orthodoxy is that there were signs and miracles in the apostolic age but they were for the growth of the new Church.

The Jews required signs. That is their nature.

1 Corinthians 1:22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: 

Jews and Greeks were skeptical. Jews needed miracles to believe, and Greeks needed the evidence coming from logic. If Paul preached the full-gospel, then he preached both signs and logic. We do find Paul using logic to convince the Stoics and Epicureans in Acts 17.

Skeptics are by definition doubters. The Jews needed signs because they were doubters, and the Greeks needed logic because they too doubted. Without doubt, signs and logic are not needed! Pentecostals place much emphasis on signs but logic is of no significance to them.  However, the Greeks required logic just as profoundly as the Jews required miracles. As such, the full-gospel would include teaching by the use of the tool of logic. Indeed when Paul argued with the Athenians, he used only logic!

Many traditional Christian denominations believe in divine healing. It has nothing to do with the power of the preacher, though, since healing is of God. When Paul laid on hands, it was faith in God which healed. Paul's hand motions are not what healed but the working of the Holy Spirit.

Pentecostals focus mostly on one gift rather than them all. We cannot deny that in apostolic times diverse people heard the message in their own language. The phrase unknown tongue is not in the original Greek. It is assumed from context, and even at that, it is as likely a poor assumption as a good one since we are to add nothing to scripture. The text reads glossa - or tongue. implying a language. Indeed, the addition of unknown when it is not there, has caused much dissension among Christians. (Personally, I believe that the original language was encrypted at the tower of Babel, and decrypted at Pentecost. The "miracle" that made that understanding possible is accord, whereas at Babel they were in discord with God).

The full gospel, then, amounts to speaking in a language that all could understand. That would be the language of angels (1 Cor 13:1). Doubters needed the gift of tongues, but just as Paul's new birth was unlike any other, because tongues existed in the early church doesn't mean that they were forever. Indeed, if they are of the Holy Spirit, then people need not be taught to speak in tongues! Many full gospel churches do that very thing. It would seem that modern era tongues are the language of men, not of angels.

There is one gospel - that is the full gospel. Anything else is not the whole truth revealed to mankind. Let's look at the one gospel:

Ephesians 4:4 There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; 5 One Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

There is no part gospel or half gospel. The truth us the full gospel, and if churches are teaching Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; it is the full gospel they preach!

Mark 16:16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. 17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; 18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

"These signs shall follow them that believe."  Then there is a list of signs. They followed belief, not anything subsequent to belief! There is not a second work of grace but the same grace for all. That grace is one faith, and there is one-baptism - that of the Holy Spirit. Christians aren't partially baptized, then finished off, they get what they are getting when they are born-again!

Speaking in tongues ceased early in the second century, not to be revived until the 1905 period. Even with that, the speech is an unknown tongue, even though the unknown part is not scriptural. If the gift of speaking in tongues is of the Holy Spirit, and it is, then it must be done as the people are of one accord as they were in Acts 2. Certainly, in these times, Christians are not in one accord especially over speaking unknown words.