I am coming more under the impression that the reason why cessationists stay that way is not just because they have a comfort zone but because, they have unanswered questions about the sufficiency of Scripture and divine healing, which prevent them from becoming Bible totin’ charismatics.
I’m certainly no apologist, but probably the best thing I can recommend to anybody is to get the audio book of Dr. Jack Deere’s Why I Am Still Surprised by the Power of the Spirit. That would answer most of the questions from any Reformed or Baptist person about the charismatic view on the sufficiency of Scripture and divine healing. It seems that these two things are really the issue: the main concerns or unanswered questions that cessationists have, questions that are put in so many different ways, that it can be kind of dizzying as to why they don’t just become Bible thumping charismatics like me. But maybe if we could just break the questions down into two major categories, the questions about the sufficiency of Scripture and divine healing, then we can finally get to encouraging cessationists to become Bible-centered, Christ-centered, Gospel preaching charismatics, into Spirit-filled Pentecostals, so that the full range of the gifts of the Spirit are able to flow in that person’s life. There are other very comprehensive charismatic anthology books that have been put together by charismatic theologians and Bible scholars. The first is The Kingdom and the Power edited by Gary Greig and the other is Strangers to Fire edited by Robert Graves. I haven’t read either of these books, only glanced at them a couple of times. But these would probably be really good at answering charismatic intellectual questions. The Gift of Prophecy by Dr. Wayne Grudem would also be helpful. That one’s published by Crossway.
1. THE SUFFICIENCY OF SCRIPTURE FOR SALVATION. The first issue is the sufficiency of Scripture. The cessationist view of the Bible came from the Westminster Confession ch. 1, in which the Puritan theologians put together a statement of faith about Scripture, and gave it a cessationist interpretation. This happened in 1646. Samuel Rutherford was there at the Westminster Assembly when they were doing this, but he disagreed because he was a charismatic Covenanter from Scotland. The next year he published his careful charismatic views, and his anti-NAR position, in A Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist. There were many New Apostolic Reformation types in the 1600s: and he called them all out. This book was like a combo of the biblical charismatic Jack Deere and the anti-NAR Holly Pivec. Unlike the Westminster Confession, most of the Reformed confessions only spoke of Scripture as being sufficient for salvation. In other words, the Bible has everything necessary for salvation within it, in order to teach us about repentance and faith in the cross and salvation from Hell. That’s how statements on Scripture were formulated in the articles of the confessions of the 1500s. They basically all agreed in saying that Scripture is sufficient, or all that is necessary to teach about salvation, or the Gospel. In other words, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is sufficiently explained in the Bible, and we don’t need to go outside of Scripture to understand what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is. It’s all right there in the Bible and especially Romans. So there’s no need for apocryphal, gnostic books, or anything like that. The Bible contains a sufficient amount of writings for how to be saved from Hell. The Bible, the New Testament is plenty full of soul saving Gospel truth. It’s sufficient for salvation. It’s plenty good enough to tell us what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is in order to get people’s souls saved from Hell. How many times can I say it!
And so that’s how the reformers in the 1500s, usually expressed their faith in Scripture in the creeds and confessions of the past, in the statements of faith in the past…the Bible was viewed as containing everything necessary or sufficient for salvation. There was no anti-charismatic cessationism thrown into it. But when the Westminster Confession came around in 1646, and the Scripture statement was copy-and-pasted into the 1689 Baptist Confession…a cessationist view of Scripture is what you got. Cessationism really came in through English Puritanism in the 1600s. Protestants were much more open to charismatic experiences in the 1500s. But with these two confessions, the statements on Scripture were framed in such a way that cessationism, or English deism, came out as a result in the way it was articulated. The whole concern was to keep Puritan families from being deceived by the Quakers, Ranters, and Familists…some of whom were so New Age and so much like Burning Man, that they danced nude in a circle holding hands! They were pseudo-spiritual perverts and clergy sexual abusers. Demonic dreams had misguided them into sexual sin. Cessationism was a safeguard against these charismatic nudists and others with weird and blatantly heretical beliefs. The Quakers were a charismatic church that had exalted spiritual experiences above the Bible. And so the Puritans were reacting to that and basically saying, “Just to be safe, so that people won’t be deceived by the malice of Satan, why don’t we say that all dreams and visions have passed away, and that everything God wants to say to his people, has all been compacted into the Bible.” But the Word of God itself doesn’t say that! It says in Acts 2:17 that baptisms in the Holy Spirit, dreams, visions, and prophecies are supposed to continue all the way up until the last days. Hebrews 1:1-2 says that true faith in Jesus Christ is of the same spirit and power as that of the Old Testament prophets. Such prophetic utterances will continue through faith in the Son of God. But the Puritans forced us into an either/or choice between prophetic modes of speech versus faith in the red letters of Christ in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John! “Listen, if miracles finished with the New Testament, prayer finished!” Leonard Ravenhill said. “You show me where God the Holy Ghost abrogated giving gifts unto men? You can’t show me. A professor told you. Who told him? Not God, the devil told him. It’s an amazing thing, you can be in a church and commit adultery, you shouldn’t do but if you do that or some other thing, they’ll let you stay as a pastor. You get filled with the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues, they’ll kick you out” (Revival Forum ’89).
2. DIVINE HEALING. When speaking about prayer in James 4:2, among his many thoughts, one of the things he says is, “You do not have because you do not ask,” and then in the next chapter over, when speaking about praying for divine healing and even nature miracles, he says, “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit” (James 5:13-18, NKJV). The brother of Jesus Christ wrote all of that; and he’s not talking about Jesus doing miracles because he was the Son of God, like cessationists often do, to try and make miracles look like an unattainable feat for all of us. James is talking about everyday Christians like you and me, getting sick, going to church, and asking for the pastoral staff to lay hands on you and pray for your divine healing, and maybe even for that hurricane, tornado, or thunderstorm to stop. Jesus believed the apostles could’ve done it, that’s why he said they had little faith when he rebuked the storm (Mark 4:39-41). Try it out next time a storm happens! I mean, what would it hurt to raise your hands and command, pray, or ask the thunderstorm to stop twenty five times or so in Jesus’ name? Nobody’s looking! Why don’t you just go ahead and do it. And if the prayers are answered, journal it down! You’ll grow because of it. I would advise you to stop listening to the “idle babblings” of the G3 cessationist philosophers (2 Tim. 2:16), who are not real theologians, only philosophers, with their man-made miracle time periods that they have superimposed into the Bible. Ignore these faithless men! Feel sorry for them and go on in your faith with Jesus. WWJD! What would Jesus do? If he were here, be honest, he’d probably tell you, “Hey! Be brave! It’s me. Don’t be afraid. Come out here on the water with me!” (see Matthew 14:27-29).
What about modern examples? Honestly, do you really want me to go there? You know what would happen if I did. They would just get shot down by Justin Peters. Because every guy who tries to pray for miracles is just a charlatan who kicks grandmas in the face with his biker boot, right? Or seriously reveres a vision of Jesus playing a saxophone, and then goes to talk about this great experience on Sid Roth’s It’s Supernatural! Why not refer to miracle experiences from the lives of saints who’ve built up a strong reputation over the centuries? Read Thomas Boys’ The Suppressed Evidence, p. 202, about the time when Martin Luther laid his hands on a fatally sick Philip Melanchthon and saved his life by divine healing, or The Supernatural Occurrences of John Wesley, ch. 3 for early Methodist journal entries about divine healing; or try reading about the case of insanity that was healed in The Supernatural Occurrences of Charles G. Finney, p. 61. Let’s not forget about all the healings that Augustine said happened in his own church, long after he’d written about being a cessationist (see The City of God 22.8-10). I’d think that even the most deistic, naturalistic reductionist, in the habit of process-of-elimination miracle rejection, with plenty of entertaining charlatan exposé type videos, might have a harder time brushing away those time-tested miracle testimonies from these men of God. And I think that God should get the glory for the mighty acts that he has performed on behalf of Christians in the past.
WesleyGospel Ministries 