Nine gifts of the Holy Spirit
In Corinthians 12, Saint Paul lists nine gifts of the Holy Spirit.
1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant....
4 Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
5 And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.
6 And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.
7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.
8 For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit;
9 To another faith by the same Spirit; to another ... gifts of healing by the same Spirit;
10 To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues:
11 But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.[1]
I believe that the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit are complementary and that they come upon the seeker gradually. They’re like nine potted plants; they grow and blossom together. And they grow and increase in you as you become closer and closer to God, closer to the Holy Spirit, closer to Jesus and all the saints robed in white whom we acknowledge as the ascended masters. So as your light increases throughout your body, throughout your chakras, so these gifts are growing. As your spirituality increases, as you define what is important in your life, the gifts increase in you.
When you truly have the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit dwells in you bodily, it is an indication that you have attained oneness with your own Holy Christ Self and the I AM Presence.
The word of wisdom
The first gift of the Holy Spirit is the word of wisdom (sophia in the Greek).
Why is that so? Because without wisdom you will not appreciate the remaining eight and because Jesus faithfully taught the path of Buddha. And it is wisdom you must have so that you will not find ignorance growing at the roots of your soul. Clement of Alexandria defines wisdom as “the knowledge of things human and divine and their causes.” Aristotle describes it as “striving after the best ends and using the best means.”[2]
According to Bible commentator William Barclay, wisdom is “nothing less than the knowledge of God himself.” Wisdom comes, he says, “not so much from thought and the mind as from communion with God.”[3] Ellen White, in her commentary on this gift, makes the point that those who are graced with the word of wisdom are not only wise but are able to convey their wisdom to others.[4] My sense of wisdom is that it is the understanding of the things of the Spirit. Wisdom cannot come from the human mind but only from the Higher Mind. It’s an exciting and astounding moment to experience instantaneous wisdom that does not come from any outer source.
As I have meditated on wisdom and on the Higher Mind, I have gained wisdom and actually observed that wisdom bypass my brain. It came directly from a higher source into my heart. My heart was the vessel and understanding of that wisdom. It’s a wonderful thing to realize that. Think of all the handicapped people who have some impairment that has to do with the central nervous system or the brain. And they can commune with God as clearly through the Christ Mind, their own Higher Self. You should keep a record of those moments when you gain that insight into wisdom, when you suddenly know something that you could not possibly have known without your Holy Christ Self impressing it upon you.
The word of knowledge
The second gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of the word of knowledge.
Wisdom to me is practical. It is of the Spirit. It is of the Universal Mind. The word of knowledge is the knowledge of the things of this world that you have to know in order to fulfill your reason for being, your profession, your calling in life, and so that you have abundant access to the situations of our time that you can draw upon. If you are ministering to life or if you are someone who is a preacher or just a disciple of Jesus, to be able to compare the teachings of scripture to the politics of the day that we see parading before us is very important, making the scriptures relevant through knowledge.
The Greek word for knowledge is gnosis. It is a practical wisdom that knows the right thing to do in any situation. It is the practical application of divine wisdom. White says the gift of the word of knowledge is the ability to understand spiritual truth and communicate it to others in an orderly, practical manner.[5] Eighteenth-century commentator Matthew Henry interprets the gift of the word of knowledge as “a skill and readiness to give advice and counsel in perplexed cases.”[6]
The Maha Chohan says that the difference between the gift of the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge is this: When you have wisdom, you understand the things of the Spirit and the mysteries of God. When you have knowledge, you understand the things of this world.
The great prophets and avatars have all had tremendous knowledge in the fields of learning. Think of the prophets in Israel. They knew everything that was going on. They knew the politics of their time, the intrigue. They knew what the kings were doing, good and bad. They were very current on the scene, and therefore when they received the messages from God through his archangels, they were speaking right to the issues of their time. So don’t think that you can be ignorant and be successful in spreading the joy and the teachings of Jesus. These prophets and avatars did not shun knowledge; they mastered it. They became it. They embodied it.
Faith
The third gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of faith.
Barclay defines the gift of faith as “the power to realize the spiritual” and as the power “which turns vision into deeds.”[7]
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews writes:
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen....
Without faith it is impossible to please [God]. For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.[8]
Faith in the law of God engenders courage. Do you have the courage to speak the Word as Jesus Christ did? Do you have the courage to rebuke those who do not acknowledge the Law of the Father? That courage begins with faith and trust. When you have faith and trust, you have an intense link to Almighty God through the indwelling Christ and through your mighty I AM Presence.
Healing
The fourth gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of healing.
Commentator Adam Clarke defines this gift as “the power which at particular times the apostles received from the Holy Spirit to cure diseases.”[9] John Short in The Interpreter’s Bible says, “In the Gospels it is made quite plain that the salvation which the Master proclaimed involved the well-being of the whole man—body, soul, and spirit.... His message was for the whole of the human personality, for its physical as well as spiritual aspects.”[10] White observes that those with the gift of healing “possessed divine knowledge and direction in their work and healed only those whom God directed them to heal. They thus possessed certain knowledge of the outcome.”[11]
The healing of the physical body is the least important facet of the gift of healing. The goal is to heal the soul so that the soul can heal and cleanse her own temple. Healing is a result of harmony. There is no such thing as a healer who has agitated feelings, anger, pent-up emotions and energies.
Whereas some teach that God intends everybody to be healed, others teach as I have just mentioned. They are selective in who they pray for and call forth healings for. We always submit the calls and prayers we make for healing as being subject to the will of God because we cannot know the will of God and so that we ask if so-and-so might be healed and ask God to heal that person according to the will of God.
Why would it not be the will of God for everybody to be healed? Because people have their infirmities to learn lessons in life. They bear burdens to balance karma. And so if you take from them all of their infirmities and their burdens, then you also take from them the opportunity to balance their karma, and as Paul said, thereby to obtain a better resurrection.
Many people suffer a terminal illnesses aware of that teaching from Paul, that you endure pain, you endure the burdens of the world, you take upon and into your body the burdens of world karma by way of balancing your own personal karma. And then when you pass on and you are resurrected, you have a better resurrection because you now have a lighter load because you allowed yourself to go through some burden for the sake of sacrifice and humanity.
Working of miracles
The fifth gift of the Holy Spirit is the working of miracles.
This gift has been translated from the Greek as “the demonstration of mighty powers.” I am sure that as science progresses, we come to the realization that things that are called miracles can sometimes be explained scientifically. But you cannot explain all miracles away because they are miracles. They are exceptions to the law rather than the fulfillment of the law. Commentators apply it to dramatic, unusual healings and exorcisms. They see the gifts of faith and healing and the working of miracles as interrelated.[12]
The true purpose of miracles is to restore wholeness to the body and to achieve union with the Higher Self so that one can live a life perfected in joy as an instrument of God’s love. You can become so great an instrument for the Holy Spirit that when people contact your aura they receive healing and upliftment.
The key to working miracles is the violet flame. It’s the most efficacious use of the sacred fire because the violet flame brings about transmutation when you give those violet-flame decrees. And so the miracle of the violet flame is that you are done with a certain situation or problem because you have invoked the violet flame and you have cleared the record of burden in your body by the use of the violet flame. So once the violet flame—the action of the Holy Spirit, of transmutation—transmutes a certain level of your karma, you will be healed. You will simply no longer have the problem because it has been transmuted and you have balanced that element of karma that you were intended to balance.
So when you diligently give the violet flame, not only will you have the perpetual joy of Jesus, but you will see his miracles happening all around you. Our auras must be dripping with the violet flame so that wherever we go, Saint Germain can use us as his instruments to hurl his miracle pouch into the cause and core of negative conditions.
Prophecy
The sixth gift is the gift of prophecy.
Biblical commentaries often make the distinction that prophecy is not so much “foretelling” as it is the “forth-telling” of truth.[13] They define the gift of prophecy as the ability to “tell,” to make known, the will of God and to give insight into God’s purposes.[14] Barclay says:
The prophet is a man who lives so close to God that he knows God’s mind and heart and will and intention, and so can make them known to men. Because of that, the prophet’s function is twofold. He brings rebuke and warning, telling men that their way of action is not in accordance with the will of God. He brings advice and guidance, seeking to direct men into the ways God wishes them to go.[15]
Prophecy is the vision of the future vouchsafed to an individual by Almighty God. It is a warning of what could come to pass if we the people do nothing. The gift of prophecy is absolute attunement with the Holy Spirit. God strikes a great chord on the organ and the prophet sounds the note. From his Universal Mind, God delivers the Word and the prophet hears, answers, obeys and delivers the Word to God’s people. The people do not have to be warned if they themselves can see what is coming upon them. So the prophet always warns them, “But if you do not repent of your ways, then thus and such will befall you. This karma will descend.”
Discerning of spirits
The seventh gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of the discerning of spirits.
That is being able to know what spirits are about people and in people without having any foreknowledge of this. When you are able to discern the spirits, and if these spirits are negative spirits that are in and around people’s bodies, you can protect yourself, you can warn them, you can tell them that they are burdened by foul spirits who will do them no good. You can show them the way of decrees and invocation and Astrea’s circle and sword of blue flame.
There is divine and counterfeit inspiration. There are true and false prophets. The apostle John says, “Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God.”[16]
The gift of the discerning of spirits enables one to determine what is acting through another—whether it be the angelic hosts and the Light of God, or demons and fallen angels. Discerning of spirits can come only through the heart—a heart that is purified, a heart where the Christ-flame does burn.
If you want to receive the Holy Spirit, it is essential that you keep your aura absolutely free of spirits who are the impostors of the Holy Spirit. If you don’t keep your aura clean by using your Archangel Michael sword and doing your decrees to Archangel Michael and beloved Mighty Astrea daily, you cannot be certain whether you are interacting with the Holy Spirit or with masquerading spirits unless you have the gift of the discernment of spirits. The key is not to put your attention on your own human personality, exalting that personality as having the Holy Spirit. Instead, put your attention on the Holy Spirit so that the Holy Spirit can efface your personality.
Remember the advice of Jesus to Catherine of Siena:
Do you know, daughter, who you are and who I am? If you knew these two things, you would be blessed. You are that which is not. I am He who is. If you have this knowledge in your soul, the enemy can never deceive you. You will escape all his snares. You will never consent to anything contrary to my commandments. And without difficulty you will acquire every grace, every truth, every light.[17]
In one of the Gnostic gospels Jesus is talking to his disciples and the disciples are not pleased with the favoritism he is showing to Mary Magdalene. But he states that he has made her male. Now the feminist movement today does not like to hear about women being made male. The male is the yang of the Spirit. The Christ in you is male, both men and women, and the soul of you is yin. The soul is not yet perfected, has not attained her immortality and is mutable. And so certain of the disciples, whether they were male or female, were made male by Jesus. They were made the plus polarity or the yang force. So when our Christ Self is more real to us than our not-self and we are in that Christ Presence, we are masculine in the spiritual sense of the word, even if we are wearing a male or a female body.
So Jesus is telling Catherine to repeat the mantra, “O Lord Jesus, Thou the All, I the nothing.” The more you repeat that, the more you become infilled with the Christ until Jesus makes you male by bonding your soul to him and to the Inner Christ. Until you can see yourself as nothing, not identifying with any part of the ego, you cannot be certain that when you think you have received the Holy Spirit you have not actually received lower spirits.
The lower spirits are of the astral plane. They come preceding the Holy Spirit to tempt you and to fulfill your ambitions, your spiritual pride, your desire to speak in tongues and so forth. If you are attached to your desires, you will be vulnerable to the impostors of the Holy Spirit. If you want the gifts of the Spirit for reasons of pride and you want them more than you want the Holy Spirit, you are vulnerable. You must have desirelessness, which takes us full circle back to Gautama Buddha—desirelessness when approaching the gifts of the Spirit. The lower spirits can cause you great pain and grief if you allow yourself to be bewitched by them.
Divers kinds of tongues
The eighth gift is divers kinds of tongues.
The eighth gift of the Holy Spirit shows primarily two types of speaking in tongues. In the first type, the language spoken is a foreign language, unknown to the speaker but easily understood by one who speaks that language. Its purpose is to instruct people of different countries and to facilitate the spread of the Gospel. This type of speaking in tongues was demonstrated by the apostles at Pentecost.
In the second type, the language spoken is an unknown spiritual language not spoken by men and not understood unless there is someone present who has the gift of interpretation of tongues. This type of speaking in tongues was seen among the congregations Paul preached to in Corinth. It is done in a state of ecstasy and its purpose is to confirm the faith of new converts or to provide personal spiritual edification. The speaker addresses God rather than men, and the intent is more to praise God than to preach the Word.
In I Corinthians, Paul instructs that the gift of prophecy, which is intelligible to all, is preferable to the gift of speaking in unknown tongues, which is intelligible only to God unless an interpreter is present. Paul writes:
Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy.
For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries.
But he that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church.
I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying.[18]
The gift of divers kinds of tongues involves the mastery of speech, communication and the delivery of the Word. It ranges from the mastery of earth’s languages to proficiency in the tongues of angels. Most particularly, it is the ability to speak the language of the soul to each person you meet. It means that when you come into the aura of a person, the Holy Spirit empowers you to speak in the thought patterns and at the level of understanding and need of that person. Thereby, you can reach that one with a message that is relevant to his or her life.
The gift of tongues facilitates understanding between peoples and it figures in the art of diplomacy. It helps you to get along with your neighbor. It can involve the bridling of the tongue or the comforting of a child.
Those who are of impure motives and who inordinately desire and demand of the Holy Spirit the gift of speaking in tongues often receive instead the mutterings of fallen angels.
The spiritual tongues and their interpretation are of the angelic hosts. They are tongues which are currently being spoken in heaven by angels. We know that angels took embodiment on earth to be teachers, to be wayshowers and to protect everyone on the planet from the wiles of the fallen angels and the traps that are set before the children of God. So they speak these tongues in heaven, they spoke them when they were in heaven, and they still retain the record of these tongues when they asked God if they could embody to help to save his children. Embodied angels who retain the patterns of their heavenly tongues in their souls are often quickened by the Holy Spirit to speak in those tongues, so that the earth might be imbued with the higher vibration of “angelspeak.”
When this language is spoken by those who receive the gift, they are still angels but now they are in embodiment working out their karma and their salvation as sons and daughters of God, so then they can contribute this vibration in their churches, in their homes, and the vibration of heavenly tongues is therefore present in the earth.
Interpretation of tongues
The ninth gift of the Holy Spirit is the interpretation of tongues.
Commentators define the gift of interpretation of tongues as the ability to interpret the message of someone who is speaking in tongues. One of the comments I’d like to make on this is the gift of interpretation of tongues is the ability to relate the teachings of the ascended masters to the “nations”—meaning all levels of earth’s evolutions, including their karma and consciousness.
Each person that you would talk to about God requires a certain interpretation of the Path, a certain understanding, a certain tenderness, a certain love and a certain comfort. You have a very unique message to bring to people about God, and the Holy Spirit will move you to speak on things that are people’s greatest burdens. For some, the key is inspiration. Others require scientific explanations. As you deliver the Holy Spirit heart to heart, you have no concern for what you will say because the Holy Spirit gives you the words to speak.
So the interpretation of tongues is not merely standing up in a church and interpreting what someone else is saying in tongues. It is the ability to convert the soul by the Holy Spirit because you speak the language of that soul.
See also
Sources
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, July 2, 1994, “Lesson Four from the Holy Spirit: The Gifts of the Holy Spirit.”
- ↑ I Cor. 12:1, 4–12.
- ↑ William Barclay, Letters to the Corinthians, p. 121.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ellen G. White, Comments from the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 6, p. 771.
- ↑ White, vol. 6, p. 771.
- ↑ Bethany Parallel Commentary, p. 1026.
- ↑ Barclay, pp. 121–22.
- ↑ Heb. 11:1, 6.
- ↑ Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments with a Commentary and Critical Notes, commentary on 1 Cor. 9.
- ↑ George Arthur Buttrich et al., eds., The Interpreter’s Bible, 12 vols. (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1951–57), p.152–53.
- ↑ White, vol. 6, p. 771.
- ↑ Interpreter’s Bible, p. 153–54; Barclay, p. 123.
- ↑ Barclay, p. 123; G. Campbell Morgan, The Corinthian Letters of Paul: An Exposition on I and II Corinthians (Revell, 1946), p. 153.
- ↑ Morgan, p. 153; Interpreter’s Bible, p. 154.
- ↑ Barclay, pp. 123–24.
- ↑ I John 4:1.
- ↑ Igino Giordani, Saint Catherine of Siena—Doctor of the Church, trans. Thomas J. Tobin (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, St. Paul Editions, 1975), pp. 35, 36.
- ↑ 14:1–5.