BabaGnoni:

When Hell freezes over, these requests might get some consideration and the evidence(s) become publicly known
This is like the classic "If you are the Son of God, jump off!" evidence request
It's also right on par with been asked to show off one's freestyle on Jimmy's Jump Off
The answer as usual is, no can do. No granting of "...show us evidence..." requests
Gombs, we don't do show-offs, and as PREVIOUSLY stated here or was it the Midas thread, we don't grant "show us evidence(s)" requests, don't brag or post miracles, we just do.

No. It's more along the lines of 2 Cor. 12:12

12 Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.

And I Cor. 4:19-20

19 But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power.

20 For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.

nlMediator:
No. It's more along the lines of 2 Cor. 12:12

12 Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.

And I Cor. 4:19-20

19 But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power.

20 For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.

I hear you, and still, as for me and my household, we don't strut or brag, we prefer the Nike slogan

nlMediator:


No. It's more along the lines of 2 Cor. 12:12

12 Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.

I particularly like the way the cessationist discuss this passage. You do not have to agree with them just as I do not agree with them in everything strictly and so cannot authoritatively call myself cessationist.

This passage confirms the fact that the likes of Paul, Peter, etc, were confirmed to be apostles, harbingers of a new message to the world. The signs pointed the world to them as heralders of God's message. The wonders shook people out of their comfort zone and commanded them to notice the apostles. And the miracles was God upsetting nature to announce himself.

In one of the presentations in this conference, the speaker spoke of the peculiar miracles in the time of Moses, Elijah and Jesus. He said outside these three periods, miracles were rare. So there were hardly any miracles in times of Abraham, Judges, Jeremiah and John the Baptist. No one could accuse these men of lacking miraculous powers bc it was not in God's plan for such. The same can be said of today. There is no new message so no need for miracles and when they do happen, we understand why it is rare. Including in the WoF camp even though many make up for it with fake miracles. Case in point: SirJohn healing school saga.

nlMediator:

And I Cor. 4:19-20

19 But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power.

20 For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.

That scripture was speaking of the power in preaching in context. It was not a reference to miracles. See the whole passage:

1 Corinthians 4:14 I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you. 4:15 For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. 4:16 Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me. 4:17 For this cause have I sent unto you Timotheus, who is my beloved son, and faithful in the Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ, as I teach every where in every church. 4:18 Now some are puffed up, as though I would not come to you. 4:19 But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know, not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power. 4:20 For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. 4:21 What will ye? shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and in the spirit of meekness?

So the reference is to not ordinary speech but in a speech that comes with the power.

Reading through MacArthur's Testing the Spirit I realized how much I had missed browsing through the text at first. If you still find the long text difficult to read, enjoy the summary below.

It has never been said like this before and the two reasons why millions are deceived in Africa especially Nigeria is because people love lies rather than the truth and many professed Christians don't read their bible.
In Nigeria where I come from, this problem is even worse compared to any part of Africa or probably because I have not worshiped in any congregation outside Nigeria. Only a few churches in Nigeria centered their teachings on getting its members to the promise land(image of Christ) through sanctification by the word and spirit.
I have experienced this deceitful pastors many churches in Nigeria and church I know them by their preaching.
Let me share one that happed to me when I first come to believe the gospel because I got converted by listening to a foreign preacher repeatedly over the internet on sermonadio.com. Then I decided to look for a local church which I can worship with in order to grow then I picked a particular one that has one of the largest auditorium in the country.
At first I didn't suspect his false teachings
but because I never lost touch with sermon audio preachers, I begin to notice something was wrong with his teachings. I noticed his teaching were more focused on prosperity, healing, longevity, catching witches etc. I noticed that this messages were repeated year in year out. Intact I can tell you that I have never heard a message on sanctification from this church. After I left this church after two years with them, the ones I attended after then mostly from invitations, their messages were I feel good messages.
The word of God says is my word not like hammer. When you listen to sound doctrine, it humbles you. False teachings gives you assurance that there is nothing to worry about and many here are deceived by them.

Summay of John MacArthur Testing the Spirit

1. The text of the message is taken from 1 John 4: 1-11
2. When verse1 says we should test the spirits, it meant we should test men. A similar command is found 1 Thess 5:21-22.
3. Satan is not behind sin; the flesh is. But satan is the author of all false religion.
4. 2 Cor 10:3 descibes true spiritual warfare for us. Spiritual warfare is not fighting demons in prayer, it is a battle for people's minds. The way they think. Ours is a war of the mind.
5. The world is imprisoned in false beliefs and the Christian duty iscto tear down these fortresses of the mind.
6. We do not feel a physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit but we see the results of his works in our lives: conversion, holiness, love for God and his people, love for truth, etc. The Christian life is not the perfection, it is a direction.
7. "What is He doing in us? I’ll just give you a quick list. He produces in us a desire for repentance, a hatred of sin. He produces in us a desire to seek salvation and forgiveness. He produces in us a belief in the gospel, a love for the Lord Jesus Christ, a desire to become a slave of the Lord Jesus Christ, acknowledging Him as Lord. He produces in us a delight in the Holy Scripture, a longing for obedience. He produces in us joy in trials and tribulations, love of other believers, desire for fellowship, understanding of the Bible, illumination of Scripture, inclination to prayer, holy affections, a desire for praise, a heart of thanksgiving, worship as a way of life, and increasing Christlikeness"
8. But there are other spirits. And their aim is to turn discernment into iniquity. To intimidate evangelicals into silence.
9. A true work of the Spirit exalts Jesus Christ. It is a Christological test. He was speaking of the Docetist then who denied Jesus came in the flesh.
10. "All the cults have an aberrant view of Christ.The Holy Spirit does not. The Holy Spirit has an accurate view of Christ, always truthfully presenting the glory of the Son. Any Holy Spirit-filled preacher will be Christ-dominated, Christ-dominated, and present Him in an accurate, and exalting, and truthful way."
11. "If the charismatic movement was being produced by the Holy Spirit, the glory of Christ would prevail everywhere. It would be Christ-dominated and everyone in the movement would be bowing the knee to the true Christ in belief of the true gospel. The people would be humble. They would be joyful. They would be sacrificial. They would be confessional. They would be declaring Jesus as Lord and themselves His slaves. They would be denying themselves, taking up their cross, and following Him wherever He led."
12. The Charismatics dimish the person of Christ by an emphasis on the Holy Spirit and counterfeit experiences.
13. "Show me a person obsessed with the Holy Spirit, and I’ll show you a person not filled with the Holy Spirit. Show me a person obsessed with the Lord Jesus Christ, never tiring of learning and loving Him, entranced by His magnificent glory, and seeking to obey Him and be like Him, and I’ll show you a Spirit-filled person. That’s what a Spirit-filled person looks like".
14. Much of the Charismatic movement is anti Christ. This can be seen in statements by Creflo Dollar and Kenneth Copeland.
15. "So wherever the devaluing of the gospel truth is visible, we know that’s not the work of the Holy Spirit. And let me be very blunt. Any movement that can fully embrace Roman Catholicism is not a movement authored by the Holy Spirit because that’s a false gospel." Catholic charismatics have little in distinction with pentecostals. They both exalt false worships and lately are worshipping together in supposed ecumenical movements.
16. "The prosperity gospel has no interest in the biblical gospel. It only offers financial prosperity, physical well-being to desperate, desperate people. It offers carnal comforts, earthly riches, worldly success to millions of people who literally give up the little that they have to buy it. It is the worst. It is the ugliest. To prey on the sick, and to prey on the poor, and become wealthy by lying to them. Is there anything more wretched than that?"
17. "Joel Osteen writes a book, Your Best Life Now. That’s it. That’s the message. The only way that’s true that your best life is now is if you’re going to hell, because if you’re going to heaven, this is not your best life."
18. Despite this talk of prosperity, 90% of pentecostals live in penury. This evidenced by those in living in Nigeria, South Africa, India and the Philippines were these movements thrive.
20. A true work of the Spirit will point people to the Bible. Not to experiences. Not to voices in the head. But to the Bible.
21. 'I want to close by reading 2 John 7, “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward. Anyone who goes too far and doesn’t abide in the teaching concerning Christ, - ” the truth about Christ “ - does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, - ” concerning Christ “ - has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, - ” this true doctrine, “ - do not receive him into your house, do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.” '

ladon1:

At first I didn't suspect his false teachings
but because I never lost touch with sermon audio preachers, I begin to notice something was wrong with his teachings. I noticed his teaching were more focused on prosperity, healing, longevity, catching witches etc. I noticed that this messages were repeated year in year out. Intact I can tell you that I have never heard a message on sanctification from this church. After I left this church after two years with them, the ones I attended after then mostly from invitations, their messages were I feel good messages.
The word of God says is my word not like hammer. When you listen to sound doctrine, it humbles you. False teachings gives you assurance that there is nothing to worry about and many here are deceived by them.

Very true.

They fear this sort of discovery so they and their disciples will fight tooth and nail to keep it. Some of their disciples on nl will say there is nothing wrong preaching that people will have well being, so they bring a false combination of holiness and prosperity. I wonder what sort of bible taught them thst.

Unfortunately Nigeria is beginning to be known for both its corruption and prosperity gospel. With the richest pastor in the world being David Oyedepo.

[b]This conference may have started out as as a war on charismatics. But I must agree with one brother who said that this is more of a war of Calvinists who are cessionist on evangelicals who are non Calvinist and some being charismatic.

The reviews I read of the conference suggest a theological arrogance and elitism that rest only with this Calvinistic camp. Those in the MacArthur Lawson camp have set themselves up as the guardians of gospel truth as interpreted through a Calvinistic filter.

MacArthur has already said that those in the charismatic movement are not Christians. Soon that criteria will be applied to those who do not hold to the Canons of Dort.

The troubling thing is the spirit that is coming out of this conference. This spirit reminds me of the attitude of the Reformers toward the Anabaptists. In the eyes of the Reformers who regarded themselves as the guardians of gospel truth. The Anabaptists were heretics because of their belief in believers baptism. Because if this the Anabaptists were persecuted and martyred.

If this same spirit is acted out then one can only imagine what the attitude of MacArthur Lawson will be toward those who not only are charismatic but non Calvinists. My question. Will history repeat itself?[/b]

http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=50601&forum=34

I second this 120%

And I 240% stand by this

A Pentecostal in (General) Support of the Strange Fire Conference

The issue of John MacArthur’s recent Strange Fire Conference (and forthcoming book) is all the rage in the Evangelical blogosphere right now. Truth be told, I’m impressed by the attention the whole thing is drawing. If you know anything about MacArthur you know he is a cessationist, and that he has promoted cessationism publicly for quite some time.

I gather the issue is not MacArthur’s cessationism, which is well-known. The issue is that MacArthur has thrown down the theological gauntlet. He’s not merely saying continuationism is wrong, he’s saying it’s wrong and dangerous. While I was not at the conference, reports I read had MacArthur likening Charismatics to Mormonism, saying that Evangelicals will challenge 14 million Mormons, but are silent in the face of half a billion Charismatics. This is inflammatory, perhaps even reckless, speech.

But as you may have gathered from the title, I’m not writing this post to point out MacArthur’s errors or where I disagree with him (though such disagreements do exist). That I’m writing in general support of Strange Fire implies I have particular differences with the conference and some of its themes. This post is about my support of the conference, not my differences with it.

You might be curious about how I, as a Pentecostal pastor, could possibly support any conference that fundamentally challenges the theological foundation of my movement and condemns many of its practices. My reasons are simple:

1. Any error John MacArthur espoused at the conference, and any recklessness he demonstrated, is far less than the errors and recklessness we see in much of the modern Charismatic movement.

http://questiontradition./2013/10/24/a-pentecostal-in-general-support-of-the-strange-fire-conference/

What laudable job you are doing here @winsomex. I believe anyone who is sincere to the faith will agree with most if not all the points you have raised on this thread thus far. These are foundational and fundamental biblical truth that must be understood before attempting to speak for or on behalf of God. The imperative risk that hovers when most of these things isn't known is where to draw the line and decipher biblical truth from made up ideologies by charlatans who charade their cynical agenda through mind science, mind numbing techniques, hypnosis, kundalini and other evil measures.

vooks:

http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=50601&forum=34
I second this 120%

First, I must thank you vooks for keeping this thread going. Your comments here has not made the thread a solo effort on my path.

But I must say that this quote you have provided has not said anything. It has simply generalised issues and "condemned" them in one fell sweep. The conference people have not done that. They have taken matters one after the other and treated them and those who will critique them should do the same or we must take them to be unserious. I am however not surprised since the writer read only reviews and not the conference presentations themselves.

One thing however they said here which is outrightly false is that MacArthur said Charismatics are not Christians. He made no such statement at the conference and where ever else he may have made it, the reference should be provided. His position is that there are Christians in this movement however little.

vooks:
And I 240% stand by this
A Pentecostal in (General) Support of the Strange Fire Conference
http://questiontradition./2013/10/24/a-pentecostal-in-general-support-of-the-strange-fire-conference/

"The most hurtful thing about that conference is not the broad generalizations, sweeping condemnations, or lack of distinctions. For me as a Pentecostal the most hurtful thing about the Strange Fire Conference is my knowledge that far too many of the criticisms are true."

The writer of this article is not far from the kingdom.

I think the reason abuse abound in Pentecostalism is because its foundational principles are false. I will like to see Pentecostals hold a conference xraying cessationist or Calvinist with the intent of finding abuses or errors.

WinsomeX:
Summay of John MacArthur Testing the Spirit

1. The text of the message is taken from 1 John 4: 1-11
2. When verse1 says we should test the spirits, it meant we should test men. A similar command is found 1 Thess 5:21-22.
3. Satan is not behind sin; the flesh is. But satan is the author of all false religion.
4. 2 Cor 10:3 descibes true spiritual warfare for us. Spiritual warfare is not fighting demons in prayer, it is a battle for people's minds. The way they think. Ours is a war of the mind.
5. The world is imprisoned in false beliefs and the Christian duty iscto tear down these fortresses of the mind.
6. We do not feel a physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit but we see the results of his works in our lives: conversion, holiness, love for God and his people, love for truth, etc. The Christian life is not the perfection, it is a direction.
7. "What is He doing in us? I’ll just give you a quick list. He produces in us a desire for repentance, a hatred of sin. He produces in us a desire to seek salvation and forgiveness. He produces in us a belief in the gospel, a love for the Lord Jesus Christ, a desire to become a slave of the Lord Jesus Christ, acknowledging Him as Lord. He produces in us a delight in the Holy Scripture, a longing for obedience. He produces in us joy in trials and tribulations, love of other believers, desire for fellowship, understanding of the Bible, illumination of Scripture, inclination to prayer, holy affections, a desire for praise, a heart of thanksgiving, worship as a way of life, and increasing Christlikeness"
8. But there are other spirits. And their aim is to turn discernment into iniquity. To intimidate evangelicals into silence.
9. A true work of the Spirit exalts Jesus Christ. It is a Christological test. He was speaking of the Docetist then who denied Jesus came in the flesh.
10. "All the cults have an aberrant view of Christ.The Holy Spirit does not. The Holy Spirit has an accurate view of Christ, always truthfully presenting the glory of the Son. Any Holy Spirit-filled preacher will be Christ-dominated, Christ-dominated, and present Him in an accurate, and exalting, and truthful way."
11. "If the charismatic movement was being produced by the Holy Spirit, the glory of Christ would prevail everywhere. It would be Christ-dominated and everyone in the movement would be bowing the knee to the true Christ in belief of the true gospel. The people would be humble. They would be joyful. They would be sacrificial. They would be confessional. They would be declaring Jesus as Lord and themselves His slaves. They would be denying themselves, taking up their cross, and following Him wherever He led."
12. The Charismatics dimish the person of Christ by an emphasis on the Holy Spirit and counterfeit experiences.
13. "Show me a person obsessed with the Holy Spirit, and I’ll show you a person not filled with the Holy Spirit. Show me a person obsessed with the Lord Jesus Christ, never tiring of learning and loving Him, entranced by His magnificent glory, and seeking to obey Him and be like Him, and I’ll show you a Spirit-filled person. That’s what a Spirit-filled person looks like".
14. Much of the Charismatic movement is anti Christ. This can be seen in statements by Creflo Dollar and Kenneth Copeland.
15. "So wherever the devaluing of the gospel truth is visible, we know that’s not the work of the Holy Spirit. And let me be very blunt. Any movement that can fully embrace Roman Catholicism is not a movement authored by the Holy Spirit because that’s a false gospel." Catholic charismatics have little in distinction with pentecostals. They both exalt false worships and lately are worshipping together in supposed ecumenical movements.
16. "The prosperity gospel has no interest in the biblical gospel. It only offers financial prosperity, physical well-being to desperate, desperate people. It offers carnal comforts, earthly riches, worldly success to millions of people who literally give up the little that they have to buy it. It is the worst. It is the ugliest. To prey on the sick, and to prey on the poor, and become wealthy by lying to them. Is there anything more wretched than that?"
17. "Joel Osteen writes a book, Your Best Life Now. That’s it. That’s the message. The only way that’s true that your best life is now is if you’re going to hell, because if you’re going to heaven, this is not your best life."
18. Despite this talk of prosperity, 90% of pentecostals live in penury. This evidenced by those in living in Nigeria, South Africa, India and the Philippines were these movements thrive.
20. A true work of the Spirit will point people to the Bible. Not to experiences. Not to voices in the head. But to the Bible.
21. 'I want to close by reading 2 John 7, “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward. Anyone who goes too far and doesn’t abide in the teaching concerning Christ, - ” the truth about Christ “ - does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, - ” concerning Christ “ - has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, - ” this true doctrine, “ - do not receive him into your house, do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.” '

My focus is on things I disagree with here. So, if anything is not addressed, it’s either because I agree or because I think it’s insignificant.

3. Satan is also behind sin. The flesh has its role. And satan has his. Jesus told Peter that satan had desired him just before His crucifixion. Satan got his way to the extent that he got Peter to sin by denying Jesus.

4. Spiritual warfare is both of the mind and outside the mind. Battling demons is part of spiritual warfare. Eph. 6 says that we wrestle against various levels of spirits, none of which is about the mind. These are entities. I’m beginning to see a pattern here: cessationism thrives on half-truths. If they find A is true, it does not occur to them that B may also be true.

6. The works of the Holy Spirit are not limited to the things listed: love, conversion, holiness. Jesus did His works on earth through the Holy Spirit and the effects include other things not listed, including casting out demons and healing the sick. Peter reminded us of that in Acts 10:38 that God anointed Jesus with the Holy Ghost and as a result He went about doing good and healing those oppressed of the devil. The pattern again!

11. The same can be said of cessasionists. There’s not one cessasionist on this thread or at the conference that radiates the glory of God better than other group of christians. If they did, they wouldn’t even need to announce it. We’ll know. And run to them. So, if this is the standard for judging falsity of belief and practice, cessationism is in the same boat of failure.

12. Untrue and ridiculous claim. Charismatics follow what Jesus said – that the Holy Spirit will replace Him on earth. Even the two chief cessationists on this forum already agree with that.

14. Ridiculous claim. I know enough of Creflo and Copeland to know that they exalt Jesus. It was Creflo that was first made the Scripture in 2 Cor. 5:14 that the love of Christ constrains register in my heart in a new way. That is, if you love the Anointed One and His anointing, that love will compel you not to sin.

15. Ignorance gone to seed. Charismatics have little in common with the Roman Catholic Church. You need not go far. Ask any Catholic on this forum or in your neighborhood and they’ll be among the biggest critics of Charismatics. As for Catholic Charismatics, they share with other charismatics the understanding of the Holy Spirit’s place as the Lord of the Church today that distributes charisms (gifts) for the benefit of the Church and humanity. Some Catholic Charismatic groups have been at loggerheads or kicked out of the Catholic Church because of doctrinal differences. I know from personal experience.

16. What is wretched and ugly is cessationism that offers little help to the sick and poor, which is not the model Jesus left us. Jesus wanted people to go to Heaven, but He also met their physical needs. That’s the model Charismatics believe they should follow. The cessasionists lacking the power to help anyone seek to hide their impotence under the banner of being Heavenly-focused, as though they were any more Heavenly-focused than Jesus and the early Christians that also understood that as long as we’re on earth, we have earthly needs. Of course, the Charismatics are not doing a perfect job and have not been able to help everyone. But it’s only warped thinking that would denigrate people for doing their best even if only a few get helped. Indeed, there are excesses and wrong practices among the Charismatics, but that is not an indictment of the whole movement. It simply means that imperfect human beings are doing imperfect things and should be corrected.

17. It is hard to have a decent conversation with people when they are woefully ignorant of or willfully misrepresent your position. The comment on Joel Osteen’s book is pure rubbish. Only a jaundiced mind would claim that “Your Best Life Now” is coterminous with “Your Best Life IS Now.” It reminds me of somebody who claimed a guy that called himself the Godfather was blasphemous because he’s referring to himself as God the Father! What Joel did in the book – and I’ve read it – is to tell you how you can have the best life while on earth. It does not suggest in anyway that life on earth is the end of all things or better than life in Heaven. It’s like a father telling his son who’s moving to the dormitory how he can make the best of it, especially using the father’s and other people’s experiences. For somebody to claim that the father is saying that the best life is in the dormitory or a repudiation of the life in his house is utter nonsense.

18. Despite claiming to deemphasize prosperity, many cessationists on this forum and at that conference live the good life and even aspire for more. Why not distribute all you have and be at the same level as the 90% in penury?

19. Oh, no 19?

20. Charismatics do not elevate experiences over the Word. Anybody that thinks they do knows next to nothing about the Charismatics. Charismatics simply believe that the experiences promised NT believers belong to them, like when Jesus said in Mark 16 that we shall speak with new tongues and when we lay hands on the sick, they shall recover.

21. Amen.

WinsomeX:


First, I must thank you vooks for keeping this thread going. Your comments here has not made the thread a solo effort on my path.

But I must say that this quote you have provided has not said anything. It has simply generalised issues and "condemned" them in one fell sweep. The conference people have not done that. They have taken matters one after the other and treated them and those who will critique them should do the same or we must take them to be unserious. I am however not surprised since the writer read only reviews and not the conference presentations themselves.

One thing however they said here which is outrightly false is that MacArthur said Charismatics are not Christians. He made no such statement at the conference and where ever else he may have made it, the reference should be provided. His position is that there are Christians in this movement however little.

So, Macarthur does not think Charismatics are non-christians but he wants evangelicals to treat Charismatics the way they treat Mormons? Are Mormons christians? Since they're not, isn't it obvious what he's trying to say?

.

;

nlMediator:

My focus is on things I disagree with here. So, if anything is not addressed, it’s either because I agree or because I think it’s insignificant.

Well, I am happy to learn you agree with something John said at least. Like I promised, this will only be one response. Hopefully you may respond to my post here and we could proceed to another summary.

3. Satan is also behind sin. The flesh has its role. And satan has his. Jesus told Peter that satan had desired him just before His crucifixion. Satan got his way to the extent that he got Peter to sin by denying Jesus. 4. Spiritual warfare is both of the mind and outside the mind. Battling demons is part of spiritual warfare. Eph. 6 says that we wrestle against various levels of spirits, none of which is about the mind. These are entities. I’m beginning to see a pattern here: cessationism thrives on half-truths. If they find A is true, it does not occur to them that B may also be true.

I agree with John here. Satan’s preoccupation is introducing false beliefs into the world and distorting the truthin men minds. That's why renewing our mind is a leading responsibility of all Christians; there is no scripture that says we should seek deliverance as part of our sanctification. I agree that the root of sin, the father of lies and the progenitor of all evil is satan but in the day to day walk of the Christian, the Christian flesh is his contention against sin not satan. The Christian however must beware of Satan’s deception, which is ultimately an assault on our thinking.

In the matter of Jesus, Peter and Satan one can dispute that it was not the issue of the flesh but of the mind. When the same Peter had understood Christ better, he didn't deny him anymore despite greater persecution.

6. The works of the Holy Spirit are not limited to the things listed: love, conversion, holiness. Jesus did His works on earth through the Holy Spirit and the effects include other things not listed, including casting out demons and healing the sick. Peter reminded us of that in Acts 10:38 that God anointed Jesus with the Holy Ghost and as a result He went about doing good and healing those oppressed of the devil. The pattern again!

This is one place we must agree to disagree. Jesus went about doing good and healing all. Christ healing ministry pointed to his peculiar mandate of being God's prophet. The healing pointed to his authenticating Jesus. After the message is authenticated, there is no need for it. God does heal today but at his own time, will and plan. There is no one who operates Christ or his apostles sort of healing ministry today. All those who claim such today have failed the slightest verification.

Christians should go about doing good. Goodness born from the fruit of the Spirit. If our efforts are blessed with the miraculous, we thank God. If not, we press on.

11. The same can be said of cessasionists. There’s not one cessasionist on this thread or at the conference that radiates the glory of God better than other group of christians. If they did, they wouldn’t even need to announce it. We’ll know. And run to them. So, if this is the standard for judging falsity of belief and practice, cessationism is in the same boat of failure.

He spoke of a Christ centred life and the glory that come from it. There is no evidence in scripture or real life that say a life radiating Christ centredness will attract people. What I suspect will happen is that it repel the carnal which most people are. MacArthur is right, the Pentecostal theology is essentially self centred and naturally cannot be Christ centred at the same time. Of course, again, we can disagree here too.

12. Untrue and ridiculous claim. Charismatics follow what Jesus said – that the Holy Spirit will replace Him on earth. Even the two chief cessationists on this forum already agree with that. 14. Ridiculous claim. I know enough of Creflo and Copeland to know that they exalt Jesus. It was Creflo that was first made the Scripture in 2 Cor. 5:14 that the love of Christ constrains register in my heart in a new way. That is, if you love the Anointed One and His anointing, that love will compel you not to sin.

Unfortunately, it is true that an emphasis on the Spirit detracts from the person of Christ. It's not a point I expect you to accept that easily since we have debated it before. The central figure of the Christian gospel is JESUS. It is in exalting him that God the Father and the Holy Spirit are truly honored. It is a truth of course that Unitarians and Pentecostals will find hard accepting.

15. Ignorance gone to seed. Charismatics have little in common with the Roman Catholic Church. You need not go far. Ask any Catholic on this forum or in your neighborhood and they’ll be among the biggest critics of Charismatics. As for Catholic Charismatics, they share with other charismatics the understanding of the Holy Spirit’s place as the Lord of the Church today that distributes charisms (gifts) for the benefit of the Church and humanity. Some Catholic Charismatic groups have been at loggerheads or kicked out of the Catholic Church because of doctrinal differences. I know from personal experience.

I think you should be the one to go find out the tremendous similarities btw catholic charismatics and pentecostals. While these Catholics still profess the errors in their creed. What association should light have with darkness? That a few of them are persecuted in their fold does not justify their errors.

16. What is wretched and ugly is cessationism that offers little help to the sick and poor, which is not the model Jesus left us. Jesus wanted people to go to Heaven, but He also met their physical needs. That’s the model Charismatics believe they should follow. The cessasionists lacking the power to help anyone seek to hide their impotence under the banner of being Heavenly-focused, as though they were any more Heavenly-focused than Jesus and the early Christians that also understood that as long as we’re on earth, we have earthly needs. Of course, the Charismatics are not doing a perfect job and have not been able to help everyone. But it’s only warped thinking that would denigrate people for doing their best even if only a few get helped. Indeed, there are excesses and wrong practices among the Charismatics, but that is not an indictment of the whole movement. It simply means that imperfect human beings are doing imperfect things and should be corrected.

Here we have the Prosperity Gospel in a nutshell. Sorry to be this blunt with you: the moment anyone succeeded in appending that word "prosperity" to the gospel these men claim to preach, it clearly has been shown that that gospel is another gospel. It is at best false, and at worst demonic.

17. It is hard to have a decent conversation with people when they are woefully ignorant of or willfully misrepresent your position. The comment on Joel Osteen’s book is pure rubbish. Only a jaundiced mind would claim that “Your Best Life Now” is coterminous with “Your Best Life IS Now.” It reminds me of somebody who claimed a guy that called himself the Godfather was blasphemous because he’s referring to himself as God the Father! What Joel did in the book – and I’ve read it – is to tell you how you can have the best life while on earth. It does not suggest in anyway that life on earth is the end of all things or better than life in Heaven. It’s like a father telling his son who’s moving to the dormitory how he can make the best of it, especially using the father’s and other people’s experiences. For somebody to claim that the father is saying that the best life is in the dormitory or a repudiation of the life in his house is utter nonsense.

Joel Osteen is a false prophet. That is even putting it mildly. That we have these sort of debates among Christians is the pervasive influence his teachings are having on Christians minds.

18. Despite claiming to deemphasize prosperity, many cessationists on this forum and at that conference live the good life and even aspire for more. Why not distribute all you have and be at the same level as the 90% in penury?

Now, we are getting to the poing. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a health and wealth gospel. In the gospel, the sin trouble was solved. So regardless of the Christian state, he may be poor or rich, sick or healthy; it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he has a living faith in Jesus, his finds grace in him to walk in holiness daily, and he has learnt to put his hope both in this life and the one to come in Christ. That's a Christian.

However, God who is ever wisd and faithful is rich in his blessings to us. So if certain minimum are reached, a Christian will prosper. They include hard work, faithfulness and faith in God. There is also the issue of the Christian country. I see that God has connected our individual prosperity to that of our nation. So a wealthy America is likely to have more prosperous Christians than a corrupt and backward Nigeria. This is the reason I am particularly concerned with replacing the present evil and clueless leadership of Nigeria with someone who might even be Muslim. Becausd in Nigeria prosperity, will we all prosper. The last factor is God. Regardless of whom, it pleases God to give wealth to people. Everyone trusted with much is expected to give much.

I am happy however that you acknowledge the prosperity of cessasionists here, who mostly are non tithers. It shows at least that they have found solution to the devourer trouble.

20. Charismatics do not elevate experiences over the Word. Anybody that thinks they do knows next to nothing about the Charismatics. Charismatics simply believe that the experiences promised NT believers belong to them, like when Jesus said in Mark 16 that we shall speak with new tongues and when we lay hands on the sick, they shall recover.

They do. A Pentecostal confims this here: http://questiontradition./2013/10/24/a-pentecostal-in-general-support-of-the-strange-fire-conference/:

We need to recapture our dedication to the sufficiency of Scripture and the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. We need to articulate our understanding of spiritual gifts in such a way as to not conflict with the sufficiency of Scripture. If the effect of our teaching is that people look to a subjective experience for guidance and assurance before they look to Scripture for those things then our teaching is dangerous and needs to be corrected.

[size=16pt]A CASE FOR CESSATIONISM by Tom Pennington[/size]

Well it is always a special privilege to be back here at Grace Church, it is our home church, it’s the church from which we feel we were sent out and our hearts are here, John. Thank you for your faithfulness, and we all stand on your shoulders and appreciate so much your defense of the truth. It was here that I learned that if you’re going to love the Lord, you have to hate all of those who would replace Him. And if you’re going to love His truth, you have to hate error.

Well it is my joy, this morning, to look at a biblical case for cessationism. When one person heard I was speaking this morning on cessationism, she actually said, “You mean from the union?” Now things have gotten bad and I do live in Texas, but there has…there’s been no talk of that yet.

This morning we are not going to deal with a political issue but with a biblical one, the question of cessationism. Clearly that label that we are stuck with was not created by someone who had any sense of style, it is from theologians because it is…it’s a negative label. It pictures what we don’t believe. It’s like starting a football team in the Philippians and calling it the Manila Folders, it just has a negative… But the real problem the label cessationism is not that it is negative, but that it has easily caricatured as believing that the Spirit has essentially ceased His work. As a result of that, we are unfairly accused of putting the Spirit in a box, even of embracing an unbiblical, outdated, enlightenment world view. But those are caricatures, those are distortions. In fact, we believe that the Holy Spirit has not only continued His work, but He is displaying in and through us the power of the resurrected Christ. Nothing…nothing eternal happens in an individual believer or in a local church apart from the work of the Holy Spirit.

You and I can produce temporal effects, but we have no capacity or power to effect eternal reward, eternal events, eternal building and edification into the life of the church or an individual. It’s a total misrepresentation of what we believe to say that we believe, as one man has, in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Scripture, as though the Scripture has replaced the position of the Spirit and the Trinity. It’s wrong to refer to us as others have as Bible deists.

So what is it that cessationists believe the Spirit has ceased. Let’s be very clear. We only believe He has ceased one function and that is He no longer gives believers today the miraculous spiritual gifts, gifts like speaking in tongues, prophecy and healing.

On the other hand, continuationists believe either that the miraculous gifts have continued unabated since Pentecost or other sects would say, no, they have waned through much of the church age but have now been restored. Although there are differences between the three branches of the Charismatic Movement, the Pentecostals, the Charismatics and the third wave, they are all inherently continuationists and they often use the same arguments in their writings and in their speaking to defend their shared continuationism. The chief arguments that they put forward for the defense of their view, the ones that you will hear most commonly are these.

First of all, they’ll say the New Testament nowhere directly states that the miraculous gifts will cease during the church age. But that argument cuts both ways because the New Testament doesn’t directly say they will continue either. They counter with the second argument. There are a couple of New Testament passages that imply that the miraculous gifts will continue until Christ returns. Their favorite example of that is 1 Corinthians 13:10, “When the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.” They argue that that means that only when Christ returns will the partial gifts of tongues and prophecy cease.

However, as you know, this is a very highly disputed passage and there are a number of possible interpretations. There are disagreements about how to interpret that passage on both sides of the issue. So they cannot legitimately support their theology and their practice from such a controversial passage. In fact, the truth is for most of church history, the very passage was used to defend cessationism.

Their third main argument for the continuation of the miraculous gifts is that the New Testament speaks only of the church age and therefore the gifts that began this age must continue throughout it. They say that we artificially divide the church age into the apostolic and the post-apostolic. But unless they believe that there are Apostles today at the same level as Peter and Paul, and most Charismatics do not, they also divide the church age and they relate at least apostleship solely to the apostolic era. They have become defacto cessationism…cessationists, I should say, at least in part.

But by far the most common argument that continuationists put forward for their view, and this is the one I’m sure you’ve heard, it is everywhere, and that is 500 million professing Christians who claim Charismatic experiences can’t all be wrong. But let’s think about that for a moment. Using that same argument, we should therefore accept all of the miracles of the Roman Catholic Church as well. After all, there are a billion of those, a billion who profess and advocate those miracles, and there’s far more history to them. The point is millions, 500 million, a billion professing Christians can be wrong.

Now those are the most common arguments for continuationism. I want us to consider the biblical case for cessationism. First of all, we need to make sure we’re talking about the same thing. We need to define it. Cessationism does not mean as our critics present it, that God no longer does anything miraculous. As a pastor, I get the joy of seeing the miraculous often because every time a spiritually dead sinner is brought to life, it is a miraculous work of divine grace. (Applause) The Apostle Paul says that the only way a blinded sinner can come to know the truth is if the God who said “Let there be light,” says, “Let there be light in that heart.” Every time someone is healed solely in answer to the prayers of God’s people in total contradiction to what the medical community has said, it’s a divine miracle, He has intervened.

So cessationism does not mean that God no longer does anything miraculous. Cessationism does not mean that the Spirit cannot if He were to choose give a miraculous ability to someone today. As God, He can do whatever He wants, whenever He wants. If He were to choose to do so, He could allow someone today to speak a language he never studied. It just wouldn’t be the New Testament gift because it wouldn’t be revelation from God as it was then.

So what do we mean by cessationism? We mean that the Spirit no longer sovereignly gives individual believers the miraculous spiritual gifts that are listed in the Scripture and that were present in the first century church. It is neither the Spirit’s plan, nor His normal pattern to distribute miraculous spiritual gifts to Christians and churches today as He did in the times of the Apostles. Those gifts ceased as normative with the apostles.

But, of course, the crucial question is why. Why do we believe that those miraculous gifts of the Spirit ceased when the rest of the functions of the Spirit continue? Ask the average cessationist and he will turn you to 1 Corinthians 13, and I personally believe a case can be made there. But cessationism does not rise or fall on 1 Corinthians 13. In our time together this morning, I want to lay out for you seven biblical arguments for cessationism. Each of these arguments deserves its own message. Honestly, a couple of them deserve a series of messages. But we’re going to cover all seven this morning. I know those from my church who are here will be shocked because when I started the Sermon on the Mount several years ago, there were bets among the high schoolers of what graduating class would be there when I finished..

So my goal this morning is not to fully develop these arguments, that’s impossible. Nor is my goal to answer every possible objection, although they can be answered as well. My desire, this morning, is to give you a thirty-thousand foot fly over of the biblical case for cessationism and hopefully to encourage you to further study.

The first biblical argument for cessationism is the unique role of miracles. Many evangelicals, and I think most Charismatics, think that miracles litter almost every page of biblical history. In reality there were only three primary periods in which God worked miracles through uniquely gifted men. In other words, there were only three primary periods when God gave human beings miracle working power.

The first was that of Moses and Joshua. That period lasted from the Exodus to about 1445 B.C. through the career of Joshua that ended in about 1380 B.C. In other words, that first period of miracles lasted about 65 years.

The second window when miracles were common was during the ministries of Elijah and Elisha, putting again the biblical chronology together, they ministered from about 860 B.C. until 795 B.C. Again a period of only about 65 years.

The third time of miracles was with Christ and His Apostles. Obviously it began with His ministry and lasted at the very longest until the death of the Apostle John, or about 70 years.

Continued:

Now throughout history, God has occasionally, biblical history, God occasionally intervened with direct miracles. But in thousands of years of human history, there were only about two hundred years in which God empowered men to work miracles. And even then miracles were not accomplished every day. Why was that? Because the primary purpose of miracles has always been to confirm the credentials of a divinely appointed messenger to establish the credibility of one who speaks for God, not one who teaches or explains the Word of God as I’m doing this morning, but one in whose mouth God has put His very words. This pattern began with the very first miracle worker, Moses.

I want you to turn with me to Exodus chapter 6…Exodus chapter 6 and we’ll begin reading in verse 28. Moses here recounts and expands what happened at his call. Exodus 6:28, “Now it came about on the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, that the Lord spoke to Moses saying, “I am Yahweh, speak to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, all that I speak to you. But Moses said before the Lord, “Behold, I am unskilled in speech, how then will Pharaoh listen to me?”

“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘See, I will make you as God to Pharaoh and your brother, Aaron, shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh.’”

You see what’s going on here, God is saying, “Okay, you don’t...you’re not believing that I can empower you? I can accomplish through you what I intend? Then I’m going to give you Aaron, you’re going to be like God to Aaron, he’s going to be like your prophet. You put your words in his mouth, the words I put in your mouth and then he will speak to Pharaoh.’”

Now turn back to chapter 4 because he expands a little bit on this here as well. Exodus chapter 4, notice verse 15. “You are to speak to him, that is to Aaron, and put the words in his mouth.” Remember, he’s the prophet. You put the words in his mouth and I, even I, will be with your mouth and his mouth and I will teach you what you are to do. Moreover, he shall speak for you to the people and he will be as a mouth for you and you will be as God to him.”

Now notice, in both of these passages that for Aaron to be Moses’ prophet, he could not speak for himself, he had to speak only the words of Moses who was in the place of God to him. That is what it meant to be a prophet. God’s own words put in your mouth. That’s why when God commissioned Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1, He says, “I have put My words in your mouth.”

But how were the people to know? How were the people to know if a man who claimed to be a prophet was in fact speaking God’s own words? Moses, the very first prophet, faced this dilemma. And he brings this up with God at the beginning of chapter 4. “Moses said, ‘What if they will not believe me or listen to what I say? For they may say the Lord hasn’t appeared to you. How do we know that you’re God’s prophet? That those are God’s words in your mouth?’ And the Lord said to him, ‘What is that in your hand?’”

You remember how the story unfolds, He says, “Throw it on the ground…that staff…and he threw it on the ground, it became a serpent, Moses fled from it. The Lord said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand and grasped it by its tail,’ so he stretched out his hand and caught it and it became a staff in his hand.” And here’s what God says. That they may believe that Yahweh, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has appeared to you. This is why I’m giving you the capacity to work miracles.”

He reiterates that with two other miracles in the verses that follow. And so, understand that God enabled Moses to perform miracles for one purpose only, and that was to validate Moses as God’s prophet, and Moses’ message as God’s own words. Moses was universally accepted as God’s prophet. And what he wrote became literally the word…or were the words of God and became to be accepted as the literal words of God.

Why was that? Because the power to work miracles validated his claims to speak for God. This continues to be the purpose of miracles throughout the Old Testament. Consider for example the Old Testament prophets. Moses wrote that God would raise up men like himself to speak for God, other prophets. Turn to Deuteronomy chapter 18, Deuteronomy 18, verse 15, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like Me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.” Now obviously the great prophet was ultimately this prophecy fulfilled the Messiah, but it is equally clear that Moses was describing an institution of prophecy that was already active in his day, according to Numbers 11:29, and would continue. And so here in Deuteronomy, Moses laid down three criteria for discerning a true prophet from a false prophet.

If you’ll notice in verses 21 and 22 of this chapter, he says that the true prophet’s predictions just always come true. That’s number one, criteria number one…the true prophet’s predictions must always come true. That’s how you know if he has in him the true words of God. In Deuteronomy 13 verses 1 to 5, God says that if he chose to authenticate a true prophet, He would do so by empowering him to work miracles, as He did with Moses. Also in Deuteronomy 13 He says that even if He works miracles, the third criteria that’s to be used is that the prophet’s message must always be in complete doctrinal agreement with previous revelation.

So Moses was a prophet, was given miracles to authenticate that he spoke God’s own words. The prophets that were to come and follow him, the same was to be true of them. So in the Old Testament, only prophets, only those who spoke authoritatively and infallibly for God performed miracles because miracles were their credentials. The most famous miracle outside the Pentateuch comes in the ministry of Elijah and in 1 Kings 18:36 as he is calling down fire on that altar there at Mount Carmel, listen to what He says in his prayer. “Elijah the prophet came near…this is 1 Kings 18:36…and said, ‘O Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, today let it be known that You are God in Israel and that I am Your servant and I have done all these things at Your Word’ God authenticate me.’”

When we come to the New Testament, we discover the same pattern unfolding. Our Lord, of course, was the ultimate fulfillment of the prophet that Moses had promised in Deuteronomy 18. He was the great prophet, the prophet with the greatest message and the greatest claims, and so it’s not surprising then that he performed more miracles than any miracle worker in human history. But just as it was with Moses, and the Old Testament prophets, the primary purpose of Jesus’ miracles was to confirm his credentials as God’s final and ultimate messenger who spoke infallibly for God.

John the Apostle makes this point central in his gospel. In fact, turn with me to John’s gospel and let me just show you a few examples. John chapter 5 verse 36, Jesus speaks, “But the testimony which I have is greater than the testimony of John for the works which the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I do testify about me that the Father has sent me.” Look at what I do, look at the healing, look at the miracles, those are God’s authentication of me as the ultimate and final messenger.

In chapter 6 and verse 14, “When the people saw this sign, that is the feeding of the five thousand which He had performed, what was it a sign to point to? This was their conclusion, this is truly the prophet who was to come into the world.” In chapter 7 verse 31, “But many of the crowd believed in Him and they were saying, ‘When the Messiah comes, He will not perform more signs than those which this man has, will He?”

In chapter 10 verse 24, “The Jews then gather around Him and were saying to Him, ‘How long will You keep us in suspense? If You’re the Messiah, tell us plainly.’ Jesus answered them, ‘I told you and you do not believe, the works that I do in My Father’s name, these testify of Me, but you do not believe because you are not in My sheep.’”

In verse 37 of that same chapter, “If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me. But if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me and I in the Father.”

You see, Jesus’ miracles were not primarily a tool for effective evangelism. In fact, miracles aren’t, He said, even if one rose from the dead, if they won’t hear Moses and the prophets, they will not believe. Jesus’ miracles were not even primarily about alleviating human suffering, although of course we see in His miracles the great heart of compassion that He had.

Continued:

The main reason the Spirit empowered Jesus to perform miracles was to confirm that He spoke the very words of God, that He was everything He claimed to be. On the day of Pentecost, a day of miracles, Peter reiterated that was the purpose of Jesus’ miracles.

Look at Acts chapter 2…Acts chapter 2 verse 22, Jesus the Nazarene was a man attested to you by Go with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know. That was the reason for His miracles.

Look at Acts chapter 2…Acts chapter 2 verse 22, Jesus the Nazarene was a man attested to you by Go with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know. That was the reason for His miracles.

Jesus not only performed miracles Himself, but He also gave that same power to the Apostles and their miracles served exactly the same purpose. Turn over to Acts chapter 14, Acts chapter 14 and notice verse 3. “Therefore, Paul and Barnabas spent a long time there in Iconium speaking boldly with reliance upon the Lord who was testifying to the Word of His grace, granting that signs and wonders be done by their hands.”

Hebrews chapter 2 verses 3 and 4 make this same point. The writer of Hebrews says, “The message of salvation was confirmed to us by those who heard, that is by the Apostles, God also testifying with them both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will.”

The miraculous gifts that accompanied the Apostles were intended to confirm that they were God’s genuine instruments of revelation, just as they had been with Moses, with the Old Testament prophets, Elijah and Elisha, and with Jesus Himself.

Now think about this for a moment. That is a very brief journey, far more could be shown and said about that issue. But since this pattern is consistent throughout the Scripture, it is reasonable to expect that with the death of the Apostles, with the end of God’s revelation, with the death of those who spoke God’s own words, the human capacity to work miracles would end as well…just as it had after Moses and Joshua for hundreds of years, and just as it had after Elijah and Elisha.

B.B. Warfield writes, “Miracles do not appear on the pages of Scripture vagrantly here and there and elsewhere and differently, without any assignable reason. They belong to revelation periods and appear only when God is speaking to His people through accredited messengers declaring His gracious purposes. Their abundant display in the apostolic church is the mark of the richness of the Apostolic age in Revelation. And when this Revelation period closed, the period of miracle working had passed by also as a mere matter of course.” Scripture leads us to expect the end of the miraculous gifts because of the unique role that miracles have always played, as the validation of someone who spoke God’s own words.

A second related argument to that is the end of the gift of Apostleship…the end of the gift of Apostleship. In two places in the New Testament, Paul refers to the Apostles as one of the gifts that Christ gave His church. The first, notice in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, in the middle of the section on spiritual gifts. First Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 28, “And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second, prophet, third, teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.” Paul is here demonstrating the diversity that the Spirit has created within the body, just as a physical body has a diversity of members, so the Spirit has uniquely gifted different parts of the body. Here he includes Apostles.

You see, although not all spiritual gifts are offices, all New Testament offices are gifts to Christ’s church. Christ makes this very plain and in Ephesians chapter 4, in Ephesians chapter 4 as He lays out how the church is to function, verse 7 of Ephesians 4, “But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore…it says…when He ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives, and He gave gifts to men.”

Then down in verse 11 He tells us what those gifts are. “He gave some as Apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists and some as pastor/teachers.” One of the gifts Christ gave His church was the apostles. But they were a temporary gift. Most Christians and most evangelical Charismatics agree there are no more Apostles like the Twelve, or like Paul. Why is that? Because an apostle, to be a true apostle, you had to meet three qualifications.

You had to be a witness of the resurrected Christ. In Acts chapter 1 as they’re sorting through after the suicide of Judas, they’re sorting through who’s going to take his place. In chapter 1 verse 22 of Acts, beginning with the baptism of John until the day that he was taken up from us, one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection. You had to be a witness of the life of Christ, and of His resurrection.

Secondly, to be an Apostle, you had to be personally appointed by Christ. In Acts chapter 1 verse 2, the Apostles are referred to as those whom He had chosen. And even at the end of chapter 1 of Acts, when they’re seeking to replace Judas, in their prayer they say to God, “Show which of those, or these two, You have chosen.”

Thirdly, to be an Apostle in the true sense, you had to be able to work miracles. In Matthew chapter 10 verses 1 and 2, Jesus summoned His Twelve disciples and He gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out, to heal every kind of disease, every kind of sickness, not lower back pain.

Now these are the Twelve Apostles. You come to 2 Corinthians chapter 12:12, chapter 12 verse 12, it says, “The signs of a true Apostle were performed among you with all perseverance by signs and wonders and miracles.” To be an Apostle, you had to be able to work miracles. Look at those three qualifications and you realize immediately that there is no one alive today who meets those three qualifications. So at least one New Testament gift, the gift of Apostleship has ceased. What that means is there is a significant difference in the work of the Spirit between the time of the Apostles and today because one of the most miraculous displays of the Spirit, the gift of Apostleship, disappeared with the Apostolic age.

It’s also significant, I think, that the gift of Apostleship ceased without a crystal-clear New Testament statement that it would. That means it is neither impossible nor is it unlikely that other significant changes happened with the passing of the Apostles as well. You see, once you agree that there are no Apostles today at the same level as Peter and Paul, then you have admitted that there was a major change in the gifting of the Spirit between the Apostolic and the post-apostolic age. In fact, the one New Testament gift most frequently connected to miracles, the gift of Apostleship, ceased.

The third argument for cessationism is the foundational nature of the New Testament Apostles and prophets…the foundational nature of the New Testament Apostles and prophets. You see, the New Testament identifies the Apostles and prophets as the foundation on which the church was built.

Turn with me to Ephesians chapter 2, one of the great joys of my life was spending three years with my congregation working through the book of Ephesians and here in chapter 2, Paul lays a foundational understanding of the church, this one new man that has been created in which Jews and Gentiles are brought together, peace has been made with each of us individually with God and between all of the differences that distinguished us before, but now we’re brought together in Christ. And at the end of this great chapter, he pictures the church with three great images. He says in verse 19 that we are like citizens in God’s Kingdom. Also there in verse 19, he says, “You are of God’s household, we’re members of God’s family.”

And then he gives a third picture in verse 20, “Having been built on the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.” He says, “Not only are you citizens in God’s Kingdom, not only are you members of God’s family, but you are like individual stones placed carefully and meticulously by God into a structure and that structure is a temple in which our God will be worshiped.”

But notice how he describes the structure in verse 20. The church having been built on the foundation of the Apostles and prophets. Now the reference to the Apostles is clear, and largely undisputed. But who were these prophets. Because of the far-reaching implications of this verse, some Charismatics have come up with novel interpretations of who these prophets are. Some Charismatics have argued that Paul meant that the church was built on the foundation of the Apostles and the Old Testament prophets. But in the contest here, it’s clear that Paul was referring to New Testament prophets. Notice just a few verses later in chapter 3 verse 5, he’s talking about this Musterion, this mystery that has been revealed to him of which he is a steward. And he says, “In other generations, it was not made known to the sons of men, Old Testament times as it has now been revealed to His holy Apostles and prophets.” He’s talking about New Testament prophets. Other Charismatics will take Ephesians 2:20 and they’ll reword it like this, “Having been built on the foundation of the Apostles which are the prophets.” In other words, the Apostles, it’s one and the same group. There’s a linguistic reason to reject that interpretation, but there’s also a contextual reason.

Again, the context makes it clear that the Apostles and prophets are two separate groups. Turn over to chapter 4 verse 11, and he says, “He gave some as Apostles and some as prophets,” two distinct groups. So then, let’s put it together. In Ephesians chapter 2 verse 20, Paul teaches that the revelation that came through the Apostles and through the New Testament prophets is the foundation of the church. And the church is built on that foundation. You know the image. Steve alluded to this as well. The image of the foundation of a building that has been finished. The foundation is finished. And now the superstructure is being erected on that already completed foundation. By the way, this is the same image Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 3 where he talks about the leaders of the Corinthian church are building, they’re adding their work to centuries of building as God continues His work. We do that today, but the foundation was laid by the Apostles and the prophets, the revelation that came through them. Once the revelation God gave to the Apostles, and the New Testament prophets was complete, the foundation was finished. Their work was completed. Their role was done. That’s clearly true of the Apostles, as we’ve already seen. They no longer exist. And now here in Ephesians 2, Paul says that the role of the prophets was also foundational and it is complete as well.

We should not expect any more Apostles. We should not expect any more prophets. We should not expect any more revelation. A fourth argument for cessationism is the nature of the miraculous gifts…the nature of the New Testament miraculous gifts.

Continued:

If the Spirit were still gifting believers today with the miraculous gifts, they would be the same gifts that we find in the New Testament. However, the Charismatic gifts claim today bear almost no resemblance to their New Testament counterparts. Consider, for example, the gift of tongues. According to Luke in Acts 2, the New Testament gift was the capacity as manifest at Pentecost to speak in a known human language. Listen to Acts 2, verses 7 and 8, “They were amazed and astonished saying, ‘Why are not all these who were speaking Galileans and how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born?’” Our own dialect, these were known languages, the languages to which they were born.

You come to the second occurrence that’s recorded in the book of Acts. In Acts 11:15 when Peter reports on the gift of tongues that was given to Cornelius and his household after his conversion, this is what Peter says in Acts 11:15. “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as He did upon us at the beginning.” It’s the same thing. Peter says it’s exactly what happened to us. So what happened in Cornelius’ household is exactly what happened at Pentecost, and what happened at Pentecost is clear.

When Luke reports of a third episode of tongue speaking in Acts 19, there is absolutely nothing in the context there to indicate that it was any different than what had already happened in Acts 2 and Acts 10. And think about what Luke knew. Luke when he wrote the book of Acts, he knew what Paul had written six or seven years earlier in 1 Corinthians 14. He knew what was actually happening at Corinth, and yet Luke still defines speaking in tongues as we hear them in our own language, or our own dialect. No mention of anything ecstatic. That was the New Testament, gift, speaking in a known language or a known dialect. Compare that with today’s tongues which are ecstatic speech. It’s not the same thing.

Also, the New Testament gift of tongues, including 1 Corinthians 14, was a public gift meant for at one level the edification of others. There had to be someone to interpret. Today’s tongues, on the other hand, are primarily a private prayer language.

So today’s speaking in tongues has almost nothing in common with the New Testament gift except the word “tongue.” Or consider the nature of the gift of prophecy. This too is different. The New Testament gift in today’s manifestation are two different things. Contrary to Charismatic doctrine, nowhere does the New Testament distinguish the Old Testament prophets from the New Testament prophets. Instead, the New Testament equates Old Testament prophecy with New Testament prophecy. There is no difference in the terms that re used…and let me just admonish you to do this, go through the book of Acts and notice every time the word “prophet” or “prophecy” appears, and you will see that the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament prophets, they are interspersed with not even a hint of difference between them. That means that just as the Old Testament prophets spoke direct infallible revelation from God, so did the New Testament prophets. Just like the Old Testament prophets, their words were to be evaluated against previous revelation, but once it was approved, as we saw in Acts 2, their prophecies were added to the teaching of the Apostles to form the foundation of the church. Ironically in Acts 21 verse 11, one of the favorite texts of Charismatics to defend the idea that New Testament prophecy is different from Old Testament prophecy, the prophet Agabus used exactly the Old Testament prophetic formula when he says, “This is what the Spirit says…” No difference.

So New Testament prophecy then is direct, infallible revelation. That is not what is called prophecy in the twenty-first century Charismatic Movement. The most capable defender of today’s Charismatic prophecies, Wayne Grudem, admits that prophecy as it is practiced in the Charismatic Movement should not be prefaced with “Thus says the Lord.” Instead, he suggests that prophecies in the Charismatic church today should begin with, quote: “I think this is what the Spirit might be saying.” That is not the New Testament gift of prophecy.

Consider another example, the gift of healing. In the New Testament when someone with the New Testament gift of healing used his gifts, the results were complete, immediate, permanent, undeniable, every kind of sickness, every kind of illness. The purported healings of today’s faith healers are the antithesis of those biblical miracles. They are incomplete. They are temporary, at best. And they are unverifiable.

So the displays that are today called the miraculous gifts are just not the same as the New Testament gifts. And it’s interesting, even many Charismatics agree with that. For example, on the issue of prophecy, Wayne Grudem wrote, “No responsible Charismatic believes that today’s prophecy is infallible and inerrant revelation from God.” Grudem went on to say, “There is almost uniform testimony from all sections of the Charismatic Movement that today’s prophecy is impure and will contain elements which are not to be obeyed or trusted.”

Now, we appreciate our brother but if that were the standard, if that happened in the Old Testament times, the prophet would be dead. Third Wave theologian Jack Deere admitted in his book Surprised By the Power of the Holy Spirit, that modern Charismatics do not claim to have apostolic quality gifts and miracle working abilities.

When Charismatics do claim that their miracles are on the same level as the New Testament gifts and there are those, such as the wild claims of limbs restored, or of resurrections, for example, they are almost always hearsay and if they’re not hearsay, they’ve not been verified. So the nature of the gifts practiced by today’s Charismatics is simply not the same as that of the New Testament gifts and that’s because they are not the New Testament gifts.

A fifth argument for cessationism is the testimony of church history. Now let’s start with New Testament church history. You see, the practice of the miraculous gifts declines even during the apostolic period. Pentecost and the events of Acts 2 happened within ten days of our Lord’s ascension, after ten days. The second mention of tongues in Acts 10:46 occurs sometime within the next fourteen years before the death of James in 44 A.D. The third mention in Acts 19:6 occurs early in Paul’s ministry at Ephesus. That’s in the early fifties A.D.

First Corinthians, the only book outside of Acts that speaks about tongues was written in 55 to 56 A.D. Now if you align the New Testament letters based when they were written, 1 Corinthians was only the fourth inspired letter that Paul wrote, following Galatians and 1 and 2 Thessalonians. Paul would write nine other canonical letters after 1 Corinthians to six different churches. There is never a mention of the gift of tongues again.

In the pastoral epistles in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, the books written near the end of Paul’s ministry as permanent directives for the post-apostolic ministry of the church, there is no mention of the miraculous gifts.

You see this come to its climax in the book of Hebrews. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 1, verse 1, “God after He spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, our Old Testament, in these last days,” an expression the Jews had for the times of the Messiah, “in these last days He has spoken to us in His Son.” God’s last word is His Son and those whom He appointed. That’s why when you come to chapter 2 verse 1, the writer of Hebrews says, “For this reason,” because of who this message comes from, “we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard.” And he goes on to argue that if the penalties for disobeying the first covenant ministered by angels was severe, how much more severe to disregard this new Covenant message by the Lord Himself? Far superior to angels.

Verse 3, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” Now let me remind you that this book, the book of Hebrews was written almost certainly just before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. That gives you a time frame. I want you to notice how the writer of Hebrews refers to the miraculous. He says it was first, that is the message of salvation, this final word from God, it was at first spoken through the Lord—there’s generation number one, the Lord Himself. Then there’s a second generation in this verse, “It was confirmed, that message was confirmed to us by those who heard.” There the Apostles. The writer of Hebrews is putting himself in a third generation, us. And he says of the second generation, the Apostles, “God also testifying with them…not with us…both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.” Already before…just before 70 A.D., the writer of Hebrews is saying that was then, this is now. That was something the Lord and the Apostles did and we witnessed.

So in the chronological flow of the inspired New Testament history of the church, you find that even before the Scripture was complete, the miraculous gifts had already begun their decline. The miracles that were intended to confirm the apostles and their message had already began to die out. That’s the reality of the New Testament historical record.

When we leave New Testament history, we discover that the testimony of the church after the New Testament era, was exactly the same, in both what was taught and practiced. It was that the miraculous gifts ceased with the Apostles. Here are just a couple of examples from different periods of church history. Here’s John Chrysostom, the great exegete in the 300’s. This whole place, speaking about 1 Corinthians 12 and the gifts there, is very obscure but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place. Augustine, writing in the late 300’s, early 400’s, said, “In the earliest times, the Holy Spirit fell upon them that believed and they spoke with tongues which they had not learned as the Spirit gave them utterance.” That thing was done for a sign and it passed away.

Concluded:

Fast forward to the Reformation, Martin Luther writes, “This visible outpouring of the Holy Spirit was necessary to the establishment of the early church as were also the miracles that accompanied the gift of the Holy Ghost. Once the church had been established and properly advertised by these miracles, the visible appearance of the Holy Ghost ceased.”

John Calvin, “The gift of healing, like the rest of the miracles which the Lord willed to be brought forth for a time, has vanished away in order to make the preaching of the gospel marvelous forever.”

Jonathan Edwards writes, “Of the extraordinary gifts, they were given in order to the founding and establishing of the church in the world, but since the canon of the Scriptures has been completed, and the Christian church fully founded and established, these extraordinary gifts have ceased. Charles Haden Spurgeon says, “Those earlier miraculous gifts have departed from us. B.B. Warfield writes, “These gifts were distinctly the authentication of the Apostles. They were part of the credentials of the Apostles as the authoritative agents of God in founding the church. Their function thus confined them to distinctively the apostolic church and they necessarily passed away with it. The miraculous working which is but the sign of God’s revealing power cannot be expected to continue and in point of fact, does not continue after the revelation of which it is the accompaniment had been completed.”

Now that’s just a sampling. You can find others in the appendix of Strange Fire when you get it tomorrow and other resources as well. Although it is true that there were scattered reports of the miraculous throughout church history, those miraculous gifts, there is the consistent testimony of the churches key leaders at the miraculous and revelatory spiritual gifts ended with the apostolic age.

Frankly, this raises a huge problem for our continuationist friends. As Sinclair Ferguson expressed it in his excellent book on the Holy Spirit, continuationism provides no convincing theological explanation for the disappearance of certain gifts during most of church history. There’s no way to explain it.

The sixth argument for cessationism is the sufficiency of Scripture. Now Dr. Lawson plans to address this point, so let me just mention it briefly. The canon of Scripture closed with the writings of the Apostles and their authorized companions. The New Testament teaches that the result of God’s completed revelation is an all-sufficient Scripture in many places. Second Timothy chapter 3 verse 16, “All Scripture is inspired by God, it’s profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate equipped for every good work.” There’s nothing left. The man of God needs no additional revelation from God, he has it all right here. (Applause) Jesus is not calling or equipping through a twenty-first century best seller, rather He is calling and teaching by His Spirit through a two to three-thousand year old best seller. The Spirit speaks only in and through the inspired Word.

In 1539, Luther commenting on Psalm 119 wrote this, “God wants to give you His Spirit only through the external Word.” Luther loved that expression, the external Word. God gave us a book, it’s not subjective, it’s outside of us, it’s in words and sentences and paragraphs that we can analyze and read and study. It’s external to us. We don’t have to wonder if that message in our mind is from God or not, we have a message from God. Luther also wrote, “Let the man who would hear God speak, read holy Scripture.”

There is a seventh and final argument for cessationism, it’s the New Testament rules laid down for the miraculous gifts. I want you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians…1 Corinthians chapter 14…1 Corinthians 14 where Paul lays out specific guidelines for how two of the miraculous biblical gifts were to be practiced in the church. First of all, in verses 27 and 28, speaking in tongues. Whenever the biblical New Testament gifts of tongues was to be practiced, there were specific rules that it had to follow. First of all, two or at the most three, were to speak in tongues in a given service. Look at verse 27, “If anyone speaks in a tongue, it should be by two or at the most three.” Secondly, they were to speak one at a time. Verse 27 goes on to say, “And each in turn.” There had to be order, there had to be structure because that’s like God. Thirdly, there had to be someone to interpret. Verse 27 goes on to say, “And one must interpret, but if there’s no interpreter, he must keep silent in the church and let him speak to himself and to God.” No one was allowed to speak in tongues in the corporate worship of the church unless there was someone else who understood that language and could interpret what had been said.

Why is that? Because how would anyone know if he was telling the truth or not? In the mouth of two or three witnesses a manner is established. Fourthly, women were not allowed to speak in tongues in the corporate worship as he puts that all-encompassing command at the end…verse 34, “The women are to keep silent in the church for they’re not permitted to speak but are to subject themselves just as the Law also says.” That’s how the gifts, the New Testament gifts of tongues was to be exercised. In verses 29 to 34 Paul goes on to regulate the practice of the gift of prophecy, the New Testament gift or prophecy.

Rule number one, two or at the most three were to prophesy at a church service. Notice verse 29,, “Let two or three prophets speak.” Secondly, other prophets and the congregation were to evaluate those prophecies against previous revelation. Verse 29 says, “Let the others pass judgment.” They were to speak one at a time, verse 30, “But if a revelation is made to another who is seated, the first one must be keep silent, for you can all prophesy one by one so that all may learn and all may be exhorted and the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is not God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.” Fourthly, women are not allowed to prophesy in the corporate worship, verse 34 again.

Now I want you to look at those verses, I want you to think about those guidelines. Tragically most Charismatic practice today completely disregards those clear biblical commands. So not only are today’s Charismatic gifts not the New Testament gifts, but the clear directives the Apostle laid down for the practice of the New Testament gifts are largely ignored. In most of the contemporary Charismatic practice, the Holy Spirit is not honored. Instead, He is routinely grieved and disobeyed. The result is not the work of the Spirit, but it is a work of the flesh, clear rebellion even if it were the New Testament gifts.

There are seven biblical arguments for cessationism. How should we respond to these arguments? Let me speak to you first if you’re already a convinced cessationist. Don’t overreact and downplay the crucial role of the Spirit in your life. John gave us a wonderful list this morning of what the Spirit does, what the Scriptures teach that the Spirit does in our lives. Don’t allow the Holy Spirit’s work to be hi-jacked by those who abuse His name. Secondly, hold to your confidence in the all-sufficient Word. We may soon be in a minority, but we stand in the historic position of the church and in the light of Scripture. Thirdly, know what you believe and why. Be able to defend the truth. Number four, reject all forms of continuing revelation, including the favorite evangelical form, subjective impressions from God. Don’t ever say “God told me.” Don’t ever talk about feeling something from God. God has given us, as Luther said, the external Word. He who would have God speak, hear God speak, let him read the Word. Don’t give credence to the Charismatic Movement by our own version of mysticism and mystical talk as though God were revealing something to us today outside of His Word.

Finally, respond wisely to the different kinds of continuationists. There are different kinds. To the false teachers who along with their Charismatic practices deny the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, the biblical Jesus, the biblical gospel, do not be afraid to say with Jesus when you make a proselyte, you turn him into twice the child of hell that you are. Don’t be afraid to use the language of Jude and 2 Peter. Don’t be afraid to say with Paul that they teach another gospel and if they don’t renounce that false gospel, let them be anathema, let them be damned.

To the Charismatics who have bought into the prosperity gospel and as John reminded us, that’s the vast majority, confront them with the biblical gospel. Challenge even those who have only been marginally influenced by the prosperity gospel, to examine themselves to see if they’re in the faith, or whether they have simply pursued bread from Jesus like those in the first century, their own physical needs being met.

When it comes to our Charismatic brothers, those who profess faith in the biblical Jesus and the true biblical gospel and there are some of those, graciously clarify the nature of the true biblical gifts as we’ve done this morning. Make the biblical argument for cessationism. Remind them of the biblical directives for how the spiritual gifts were to be exercised. Treat them as brothers but don’t downplay the serious and significant differences, the sufficiency of Scripture is at stake.

If you’re here or if you’re listening and you’re unconvinced, let me challenge you. Don’t allow yourself for the sake of peace to simply refuse to come to a convinced position. Don’t embrace the cautious but open stance out of a desire for peace or acceptance with your peers, or frankly just because it’s cool right now. Be like the Bereans who searched the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

Listen to Martin Luther. “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.” May God make us faithful to Him and His Word. Let’s pray together.

Father, take these things and seal them to our hearts. We thank You, we bless You, O God, that You have given us Your Word, that You have given us the external Word on which we can build our lives, we can know that You have spoken and we are not subject to the winds of mysticism and feeling and impressions. Father, we bless You, help us to be faithful until You come. We pray in Jesus’ name.

WinsomeX:


Well, I am happy to learn you agree with something John said at least. Like I promised, this will only be one response. Hopefully you may respond to my post here and we could proceed to another summary.



I agree with John here. Satan’s preoccupation is introducing false beliefs into the world and distorting the truthin men minds. That's why renewing our mind is a leading responsibility of all Christians; there is no scripture that says we should seek deliverance as part of our sanctification. I agree that the root of sin, the father of lies and the progenitor of all evil is satan but in the day to day walk of the Christian, the Christian flesh is his contention against sin not satan. The Christian however must beware of Satan’s deception, which is ultimately an assault on our thinking.

In the matter of Jesus, Peter and Satan one can dispute that it was not the issue of the flesh but of the mind. When the same Peter had understood Christ better, he didn't deny him anymore despite greater persecution.



This is one place we must agree to disagree. Jesus went about doing good and healing all. Christ healing ministry pointed to his peculiar mandate of being God's prophet. The healing pointed to his authenticating Jesus. After the message is authenticated, there is no need for it. God does heal today but at his own time, will and plan. There is no one who operates Christ or his apostles sort of healing ministry today. All those who claim such today have failed the slightest verification.

Christians should go about doing good. Goodness born from the fruit of the Spirit. If our efforts are blessed with the miraculous, we thank God. If not, we press on.



He spoke of a Christ centred life and the glory that come from it. There is no evidence in scripture or real life that say a life radiating Christ centredness will attract people. What I suspect will happen is that it repel the carnal which most people are. MacArthur is right, the Pentecostal theology is essentially self centred and naturally cannot be Christ centred at the same time. Of course, again, we can disagree here too.



Unfortunately, it is true that an emphasis on the Spirit detracts from the person of Christ. It's not a point I expect you to accept that easily since we have debated it before. The central figure of the Christian gospel is JESUS. It is in exalting him that God the Father and the Holy Spirit are truly honored. It is a truth of course that Unitarians and Pentecostals will find hard accepting.



I think you should be the one to go find out the tremendous similarities btw catholic charismatics and pentecostals. While these Catholics still profess the errors in their creed. What association should light have with darkness? That a few of them are persecuted in their fold does not justify their errors.



Here we have the Prosperity Gospel in a nutshell. Sorry to be this blunt with you: the moment anyone succeeded in appending that word "prosperity" to the gospel these men claim to preach, it clearly has been shown that that gospel is another gospel. It is at best false, and at worst demonic.



Joel Osteen is a false prophet. That is even putting it mildly. That we have these sort of debates among Christians is the pervasive influence his teachings are having on Christians minds.



Now, we are getting to the poing. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not a health and wealth gospel. In the gospel, the sin trouble was solved. So regardless of the Christian state, he may be poor or rich, sick or healthy; it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he has a living faith in Jesus, his finds grace in him to walk in holiness daily, and he has learnt to put his hope both in this life and the one to come in Christ. That's a Christian.

However, God who is ever wisd and faithful is rich in his blessings to us. So if certain minimum are reached, a Christian will prosper. They include hard work, faithfulness and faith in God. There is also the issue of the Christian country. I see that God has connected our individual prosperity to that of our nation. So a wealthy America is likely to have more prosperous Christians than a corrupt and backward Nigeria. This is the reason I am particularly concerned with replacing the present evil and clueless leadership of Nigeria with someone who might even be Muslim. Becausd in Nigeria prosperity, will we all prosper. The last factor is God. Regardless of whom, it pleases God to give wealth to people. Everyone trusted with much is expected to give much.

I am happy however that you acknowledge the prosperity of cessasionists here, who mostly are non tithers. It shows at least that they have found solution to the devourer trouble.



They do. A Pentecostal confims this here: http://questiontradition./2013/10/24/a-pentecostal-in-general-support-of-the-strange-fire-conference/:

The cessationists are free to believe that human beings no longer have the power to heal. What they cannot legitimately dispute is that sicknesses and diseases are real even today. I also hope they are not making any absurd claim that demons or evil spirits no longer operate on earth. If they accept that those beings exist, it means that they continue with their activities of possessing, oppressing and influencing human beings. When demons or agents of satan invade people’s lives, they cause them to do bad things. Those bad things are called sins. Whether it is prostitution or robbery or murder. To say that it’s all about working on such people’s minds evidences spiritual blindness.

I’m not sure I understood you regarding Peter. What’s the distinction between the flesh and the mind? Is the Christian battling the flesh or battling the mind?

As to glory in the midst of cessationists, the point you cannot refute is that you have no proof that you guys have any more glory of God than anybody else. Where’s the evidence? Because you say so? Sorry, not good enough for me. I agree with you though that such glory will repel carnal people. So, leave the carnal people alone and let your glory attract the people that are not carnal. Yet that’s not happening whether here or elsewhere.

As for the Pentecostal you linked, he’s entitled to his opinion.

And Joel Osteen is a holy servant of God. Whom God has raised to bless humanity in our day. Your opinion of him counts for nothing.

120% agreed.

May be demons took cue from the completion of the canon and took a backseat waiting for judgement.

Cessationists would like to imagine that Calvin is the custodian of the Truth. Aks any of them to show you ONE thing Calvin got bad

nlMediator:


The cessationists are free to believe that human beings no longer have the power to heal. What they cannot legitimately dispute is that sicknesses and diseases are real even today. I also hope they are not making any absurd claim that demons or evil spirits no longer operate on earth. If they accept that those beings exist, it means that they continue with their activities of possessing, oppressing and influencing human beings. When demons or agents of satan invade people’s lives, they cause them to do bad things. Those bad things are called sins. Whether it is prostitution or robbery or murder. To say that it’s all about working on such people’s minds evidences spiritual blindness.

I’m not sure I understood you regarding Peter. What’s the distinction between the flesh and the mind? Is the Christian battling the flesh or battling the mind?

As to glory in the midst of cessationists, the point you cannot refute is that you have no proof that you guys have any more glory of God than anybody else. Where’s the evidence? Because you say so? Sorry, not good enough for me. I agree with you though that such glory will repel carnal people. So, leave the carnal people alone and let your glory attract the people that are not carnal. Yet that’s not happening whether here or elsewhere.

As for the Pentecostal you linked, he’s entitled to his opinion.

And Joel Osteen is a holy servant of God. Whom God has raised to bless humanity in our day. Your opinion of him counts for nothing.

WinsomeX:
Continued:

If the Spirit were still gifting believers today with the miraculous gifts, they would be the same gifts that we find in the New Testament. However, the Charismatic gifts claim today bear almost no resemblance to their New Testament counterparts. Consider, for example, the gift of tongues. According to Luke in Acts 2, the New Testament gift was the capacity as manifest at Pentecost to speak in a known human language. Listen to Acts 2, verses 7 and 8, “They were amazed and astonished saying, ‘Why are not all these who were speaking Galileans and how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born?’” Our own dialect, these were known languages, the languages to which they were born.

You come to the second occurrence that’s recorded in the book of Acts. In Acts 11:15 when Peter reports on the gift of tongues that was given to Cornelius and his household after his conversion, this is what Peter says in Acts 11:15. “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as He did upon us at the beginning.” It’s the same thing. Peter says it’s exactly what happened to us. So what happened in Cornelius’ household is exactly what happened at Pentecost, and what happened at Pentecost is clear.

When Luke reports of a third episode of tongue speaking in Acts 19, there is absolutely nothing in the context there to indicate that it was any different than what had already happened in Acts 2 and Acts 10. And think about what Luke knew. Luke when he wrote the book of Acts, he knew what Paul had written six or seven years earlier in 1 Corinthians 14. He knew what was actually happening at Corinth, and yet Luke still defines speaking in tongues as we hear them in our own language, or our own dialect. No mention of anything ecstatic. That was the New Testament, gift, speaking in a known language or a known dialect. Compare that with today’s tongues which are ecstatic speech. It’s not the same thing.

Also, the New Testament gift of tongues, including 1 Corinthians 14, was a public gift meant for at one level the edification of others. There had to be someone to interpret. Today’s tongues, on the other hand, are primarily a private prayer language.

So today’s speaking in tongues has almost nothing in common with the New Testament gift except the word “tongue.” Or consider the nature of the gift of prophecy. This too is different. The New Testament gift in today’s manifestation are two different things. Contrary to Charismatic doctrine, nowhere does the New Testament distinguish the Old Testament prophets from the New Testament prophets. Instead, the New Testament equates Old Testament prophecy with New Testament prophecy. There is no difference in the terms that re used…and let me just admonish you to do this, go through the book of Acts and notice every time the word “prophet” or “prophecy” appears, and you will see that the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament prophets, they are interspersed with not even a hint of difference between them. That means that just as the Old Testament prophets spoke direct infallible revelation from God, so did the New Testament prophets. Just like the Old Testament prophets, their words were to be evaluated against previous revelation, but once it was approved, as we saw in Acts 2, their prophecies were added to the teaching of the Apostles to form the foundation of the church. Ironically in Acts 21 verse 11, one of the favorite texts of Charismatics to defend the idea that New Testament prophecy is different from Old Testament prophecy, the prophet Agabus used exactly the Old Testament prophetic formula when he says, “This is what the Spirit says…” No difference.

So New Testament prophecy then is direct, infallible revelation. That is not what is called prophecy in the twenty-first century Charismatic Movement. The most capable defender of today’s Charismatic prophecies, Wayne Grudem, admits that prophecy as it is practiced in the Charismatic Movement should not be prefaced with “Thus says the Lord.” Instead, he suggests that prophecies in the Charismatic church today should begin with, quote: “I think this is what the Spirit might be saying.” That is not the New Testament gift of prophecy.

Consider another example, the gift of healing. In the New Testament when someone with the New Testament gift of healing used his gifts, the results were complete, immediate, permanent, undeniable, every kind of sickness, every kind of illness. The purported healings of today’s faith healers are the antithesis of those biblical miracles. They are incomplete. They are temporary, at best. And they are unverifiable.

So the displays that are today called the miraculous gifts are just not the same as the New Testament gifts. And it’s interesting, even many Charismatics agree with that. For example, on the issue of prophecy, Wayne Grudem wrote, “No responsible Charismatic believes that today’s prophecy is infallible and inerrant revelation from God.” Grudem went on to say, “There is almost uniform testimony from all sections of the Charismatic Movement that today’s prophecy is impure and will contain elements which are not to be obeyed or trusted.”

Now, we appreciate our brother but if that were the standard, if that happened in the Old Testament times, the prophet would be dead. Third Wave theologian Jack Deere admitted in his book Surprised By the Power of the Holy Spirit, that modern Charismatics do not claim to have apostolic quality gifts and miracle working abilities.

When Charismatics do claim that their miracles are on the same level as the New Testament gifts and there are those, such as the wild claims of limbs restored, or of resurrections, for example, they are almost always hearsay and if they’re not hearsay, they’ve not been verified. So the nature of the gifts practiced by today’s Charismatics is simply not the same as that of the New Testament gifts and that’s because they are not the New Testament gifts.

A fifth argument for cessationism is the testimony of church history. Now let’s start with New Testament church history. You see, the practice of the miraculous gifts declines even during the apostolic period. Pentecost and the events of Acts 2 happened within ten days of our Lord’s ascension, after ten days. The second mention of tongues in Acts 10:46 occurs sometime within the next fourteen years before the death of James in 44 A.D. The third mention in Acts 19:6 occurs early in Paul’s ministry at Ephesus. That’s in the early fifties A.D.

First Corinthians, the only book outside of Acts that speaks about tongues was written in 55 to 56 A.D. Now if you align the New Testament letters based when they were written, 1 Corinthians was only the fourth inspired letter that Paul wrote, following Galatians and 1 and 2 Thessalonians. Paul would write nine other canonical letters after 1 Corinthians to six different churches. There is never a mention of the gift of tongues again.

In the pastoral epistles in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, the books written near the end of Paul’s ministry as permanent directives for the post-apostolic ministry of the church, there is no mention of the miraculous gifts.

You see this come to its climax in the book of Hebrews. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 1, verse 1, “God after He spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, our Old Testament, in these last days,” an expression the Jews had for the times of the Messiah, “in these last days He has spoken to us in His Son.” God’s last word is His Son and those whom He appointed. That’s why when you come to chapter 2 verse 1, the writer of Hebrews says, “For this reason,” because of who this message comes from, “we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard.” And he goes on to argue that if the penalties for disobeying the first covenant ministered by angels was severe, how much more severe to disregard this new Covenant message by the Lord Himself? Far superior to angels.

Verse 3, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” Now let me remind you that this book, the book of Hebrews was written almost certainly just before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. That gives you a time frame. I want you to notice how the writer of Hebrews refers to the miraculous. He says it was first, that is the message of salvation, this final word from God, it was at first spoken through the Lord—there’s generation number one, the Lord Himself. Then there’s a second generation in this verse, “It was confirmed, that message was confirmed to us by those who heard.” There the Apostles. The writer of Hebrews is putting himself in a third generation, us. And he says of the second generation, the Apostles, “God also testifying with them…not with us…both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.” Already before…just before 70 A.D., the writer of Hebrews is saying that was then, this is now. That was something the Lord and the Apostles did and we witnessed.

So in the chronological flow of the inspired New Testament history of the church, you find that even before the Scripture was complete, the miraculous gifts had already begun their decline. The miracles that were intended to confirm the apostles and their message had already began to die out. That’s the reality of the New Testament historical record.

When we leave New Testament history, we discover that the testimony of the church after the New Testament era, was exactly the same, in both what was taught and practiced. It was that the miraculous gifts ceased with the Apostles. Here are just a couple of examples from different periods of church history. Here’s John Chrysostom, the great exegete in the 300’s. This whole place, speaking about 1 Corinthians 12 and the gifts there, is very obscure but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place. Augustine, writing in the late 300’s, early 400’s, said, “In the earliest times, the Holy Spirit fell upon them that believed and they spoke with tongues which they had not learned as the Spirit gave them utterance.” That thing was done for a sign and it passed away.

The penultimate and last paragraphs show the inconsistency, if not outright duplicity, of the cessationists. They want to have it both ways. On the one hand, they claim the canon is complete and there's no truth outside the canon. On the other hand, they rely on experience and human wisdom, like the positions of Chrysostom and Augustine they referenced, to reject what is clearly written in the Bible. Paul wrote that God has given spiritual gifts for the profit of all. Neither he nor any Bible writer ever said these gifts have ceased or will even cease before Jesus' return. James said sick people in the church should call on the elders to pray for them to get well. Cessationists reject these clear statements of scripture in favor of human opinion. No, if they're faithful to their claim, they'd accept what the Bible says regardless of what our experience says. What would they say if some of us did the same with other parts of scripture and state that the fact we are not seeing it occur in our lives, e.g. Being blessed feeding on the Word of God, means it has ceased? Would they accept it or would they respond that reading the Bible blesses them and it's my fault if I don't get similar blessing? Well, healing and miracles scriptures work for me and it's the Cessationists' fault if they don't work for them.

I also notice that while those who teach that God prospers His children financially do not refer to their message as the prosperity gospel, the cessationists and others hang that label on them. Then turn around to claim that since it's called prosperity gospel, it's another gospel. How convenient. And completely fatuous!

nlMediator:


The cessationists are free to believe that human beings no longer have the power to heal.

Sure they are and they must believe this if they must stay true to what scripture articulate.

nlMediator:

What they cannot legitimately dispute is that sicknesses and diseases are real even today.

There are sick christians in almost any hospital you turn today, will this ever stop? No

Is God with them on their sick bed? Definitely.

How do I know this? because God says when we go through the fire He will be there with us, He never said we won't go through these things. If the continuist think there shouldn't be fire, the onus is on them to use the supposed power they have to stop it all together.

nlMediator:

I also hope they are not making any absurd claim that demons or evil spirits no longer operate on earth. If they accept that those beings exist, it means that they continue with their activities of possessing, oppressing and influencing human beings.

Jesus said 'You shall know the truth and the truth that you know shall set you free'. Hence, I do not believe anyone in Christ indeed can be subdued or inhabit any evil spirit. No christian was ever possessed by an evil spirit in scripture and I believe none can be today.

nlMediator:

When demons or agents of satan invade people’s lives, they cause them to do bad things. Those bad things are called sins. Whether it is prostitution or robbery or murder. To say that it’s all about working on such people’s minds evidences spiritual blindness.

It must be said that if demons invade anyone, we must point them to Christ through His word. It is not a time to arrange 'prayer mercenaries' to scream over such person or all other extra biblical activities people come up with in the name of deliverance.

nlMediator:

I’m not sure I understood you regarding Peter. What’s the distinction between the flesh and the mind? Is the Christian battling the flesh or battling the mind?

The flesh is the remnant of the sin nature imputed at the fall of man. The flesh through its members i.e eyes, hand, nose are naturally against God and His will. Many christians erroneously believe these flesh and its members become perfect at the hour they become followers of Christ but this isn't so. We need the word of God for the renewing of our minds to subdue the inborn desires of our flesh.

As for the mind, the bible makes us understand that there is a general problem that occurred as a result of the fall. The human mind was damaged at the fall, the mind of man became evil and deceitful. One can be a christian and yet keep this distorted mind. This sort of maladjusted mind will never produce good and satisfactory fruits as far as God is concerned, no matter how noble the intents seem. well, it can produce a fruit of dissimulation through self-deceit.

The battle ground is in the mind. God and the devil need the mind to take control of our being on relative issues. God take control of our being when we study, understand and apply scriptures rightly and the devil is in control when we improvise, add to or close the scripture all together. In the absence of constant refurbishment of the mind by the Word, our minds return to its default mode thus one cannot please God no matter how decent or noble our actions seem.

nlMediator:

As to glory in the midst of cessationists, the point you cannot refute is that you have no proof that you guys have any more glory of God than anybody else. Where’s the evidence? Because you say so? Sorry, not good enough for me. I agree with you though that such glory will repel carnal people. So, leave the carnal people alone and let your glory attract the people that are not carnal. Yet that’s not happening whether here or elsewhere.

What will be good enough for you?

I guess if you were to be around Paul during his incarceration days, his life might no longer fit that lofty imagination of a man who is on the side of God.

nlMediator:
As for the Pentecostal you linked, he’s entitled to his opinion.

Guess anything goes in christianity these days, we are all free to aver our opinion whatever it is even if it is the adulteration of the true Word.

nlMediator:

And Joel Osteen is a holy servant of God. Whom God has raised to bless humanity in our day. Your opinion of him counts for nothing.

On what basis is your conviction that this man is of God, could this be His style, his self aggrandising messages, his pernicious ways, the number of followers or the Word of God?

Isn't this the same man that says he does not know if Jesus is the only way to heaven?

nlMediator:

Paul wrote that God has given spiritual gifts for the profit of all. Neither he nor any Bible writer ever said these gifts have ceased or will even cease before Jesus' return.

Of course spiritual gifts has these thread constantly emphasise were given as a result of the people's unbelief. God constantly spoke through signs to His people and He did so to the gentiles at penteost(the birth of the church). Is He still speaking to to the church through signs today? No, He isn't. He speaks to the church through His word which encapsulate all of His sovereign power.

nlMediator:


James said sick people in the church should call on the elders to pray for them to get well. Cessationists reject these clear statements of scripture in favor of human opinion. No, if they're faithful to their claim, they'd accept what the Bible says regardless of what our experience says.

This is where we must rightly divide scripture to understand what we should believe. James was Jesus' half brother, he was a jew and he upheld all jewish traditions in the temple even as a christian. His message was primarily preached to the jews. The use of oil was used in the old testament as a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Oil in its literal sense has nothing to do with our health today like it was in the Old Testament and in the jewish culture.

Apostle Paul's message revealed most of these mysteries. His message was primarily to the complete church void of legalism, mosaic law and jewish customs. We have a record of a few co-workers of Paul that fell sick, no where did the bible say they used oil to recover or they prayed for them and they recovered as a result.

nlMediator:

What would they say if some of us did the same with other parts of scripture and state that the fact we are not seeing it occur in our lives, e.g. Being blessed feeding on the Word of God, means it has ceased? Would they accept it or would they respond that reading the Bible blesses them and it's my fault if I don't get similar blessing? Well, healing and miracles scriptures work for me and it's the Cessationists' fault if they don't work for them.

I think we need to understand what we call blessing to what God calls blessing. Blessings depend on the perspective from which we are viewing. Blessing to a prosperity preacher or a prosperity seeker is wrapped up in created things like cars, houses and money; but from God's perspective blessing is the continuous acknowledgement of God in all ramification and dimension. When we know more of God our joy will be attached to God but when we account riches as blessings our confidence can easily be attached to money and wealth.

Blessings we get by studying our bible is the breaking down of strong hold and warped thoughts of mind which consequently leads to thinking like God will have us think.

nlMediator:
I also notice that while those who teach that God prospers His children financially do not refer to their message as the prosperity gospel, the cessationists and others hang that label on them. Then turn around to claim that since it's called prosperity gospel, it's another gospel. How convenient. And completely fatuous!

Whatever name they call it really do not matter. Some boldly and proudly say they have been sent by God to preach a gospel of prosperity, so we both know what we are talking about when we call it a prosperity gospel. The question we should ask ourselves if we must accept the scripture as God's word is- Did Jesus preach it? did Peter (same one who plainly said silver and gold, I have not) ? did Paul (needless to say all Paul went through)? If they did not, why then should a prosperity preacher jostle himself as a teacher of Christ's message if he/she herald a different message?

Can't catch up with this thread but reading behind my fellows.

Summary of Tom Pennington's Case for Cessationism

1. Cessationism is a false label because those labelled as such do not claim that the Holy Spirit has ceased working.
2. "So what is it that cessationists believe the Spirit has ceased. Let’s be very clear. We only believe He has ceased one function and that is He no longer gives believers today the miraculous spiritual gifts, gifts like speaking in tongues, prophecy and healing."
3. Cessationism does not mean God no longer does the miraculous. God saves people, the greatest possible miracle; he heals; etc.
4. Cessationism does not mean the Holy Spirit cannot give a human some extraordinary ability but it just would not be the same with the NT gifts.
5. Cessationism says the Holy Spirit no longer gives miraculous gifts as he did in the NT.

Here are seven reason why Cessationists believe these are so:

1. The unique role of miracles in God's plan. Miracles were predominant in three distinct periods in the bible: Moses, Elisha and Jesus. The aim was for God to use miracles to confirm the message of the Law, the Prophets and the Gospel.

2. The gift of Apostleship ceased with the death of the apostles. To be an apostle, one needed to have seen Jesus, been commissioned by him and you had to be able to work miracles. Only the 12, including Paul, could do this and no other man in church history could claim apostolic authority like him. If apostleship could cease, miracles can cease too.

3. The foundational nature of the NT apostles and prophets, clearly referred to in Ephesians 2:19ff. A foundation is laid only once.

4. The New Testament revelation were infallible but most charismatics agree that most revelations given in their midst are fraught with errors and many so called prophecies are never fulfilled. Certainly this cannot be the same with the infallible gifts of the New Testament.

5. The testimony of church history confirms the miraculous gifts to have gone with the apostolic era. It could be said that these gifts began to decline in the latte years of the apostles with the Pastoral epistles making no reference to miraculous gifts. Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Spurgeon, all spoke of cessation.

6. The Sufficiency of Scriptures also renders miracles not needful. We do not need extra revelations. Scriptures are sufficient.

7. The rules laid down for the exercise of these gifts are constantly being flouted by charismatics today. There is little reason to believe they exercise the NT gifts when they will not abide in the rules that should govern them as listed in 1 Cor 14.

Here is a word from:

Martin Luther.

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”

[size=16pt]A WORD FROM THE LORD? EVALUATING THE MODERN GIFT OF PROPHESY by Nathan Busenitz[/size]

Well, good afternoon.  My name is Nathan Busenitz and the title of our seminar this afternoon is A Word from the Lord? Evaluating the Modern Gift of Prophecy.  That subtitle really defines our goal in this session. We want to look at prophecy in the contemporary Charismatic Movement and compare it to the Word of God.

Now as a side note, at the beginning, I want to note that much of the material that we’re covering this afternoon parallels what you’ll find in the Strange Fire book which you’ll be receiving tomorrow. And I’m mentioning that at the outset so that if you’re interested in doing further study on this important topic, you can do so by reading what Dr. MacArthur has published in that important resource.

Now before we begin this afternoon, it’s important for us to define several terms.  And I realize that these terms have been defined and used throughout the keynote sessions so far. But I feel like it’s important from the beginning to define some key terms. One of those terms is Charismatic.  The term “Charismatic” is very broad. It encompasses millions of people and thousands of denominations.  In fact, according to the International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, there are more than twenty thousand distinct Charismatic and Pentecostal groups or denominations in the world.  These groups are generally subdivided into three different categories or waves. The first wave began in 1901 in Topeka, Kansas, it really got started in 1905 or so here in Los Angeles and that would be classic Pentecostalism under the leadership of men like William Seymour and Charles Fox Parham.

The second wave is known as the Charismatic Renewal, began in the 1960’s and it represents really the influence of Pentecostal theology in the mainline denominations. Actually started in Van Nuys, California, just a few miles from here.

And then the Third Wave began in the 1980’s, really started under the leadership of two Fuller Seminary professors, C. Peter Wagner and John Wimber.  Wimber, of course, associated with the Vineyard Fellowship and this is Pentecostal theology influencing evangelicalism and it’s called the Third Wave.

These three waves together represent the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement and in our seminar today, we’ll be using the term Charismatic I a broad sense to refer to all three of these waves, recognizing that it’s not possible to deal with all of the nuances and specifics in the hour or so that we have this afternoon.

Another important term that we need to discuss is the term “Continuationist.”  The term Continuationist simply means that those who are continuationists believe that the gifts have continued, the miraculous and revelatory gifts of the New Testament have continued throughout the church age and are still operational today.  Often the term, continuationist, is used to differentiate theological conservative Charismatics from those in the broader Charismatic Movement.  And well-known continuationists would include Christian leaders like John Piper, Wayne Grudem, and Sam Storms, and I think it’s important at the outset to mention the fact that we have great appreciation and respect for much of what these men and their ministries represent.

I like how Bob Kauflin defines the term Continuationist.  He says this, “The term Charismatic has sometimes been associated with doctrinal error unsubstantiated claims of healing, financial impropriety, outlandish and unfulfilled predictions, an over-emphasis on the speech gifts and some regrettable hair styles.”  Then he says this, “That’s why I’ve started to identify myself more often as a continuationist rather than a Charismatic.”  So I think it’s helpful for us to note the distinction there between those two terms.

And then finally, we have the term cessationist.  The term cessationist refers to those who believe that the miraculous and revelatory gifts passed away in church history shortly after the apostolic age ended. Cessationists assert that phenomena like the gifts of apostleship, prophecy, tongues and healing are no longer operational in the church today.  Once the apostolic age passed, and the canon of Scripture was complete, the primary purpose for these gifts was fulfilled and they passed away.

Now with those sort of basic terms defined, we can then define the term prophecy.  When we speak about prophecy or the gift of prophecy, or a word of prophecy, we are talking about the human declaration of divine revelation.  In fact, continuationists author Sam Storms defines prophecy exactly  that way as quote: “The human report of divine revelation.”

Now, just to be clear, we are not talking about preaching, rather we are specifically talking about the reception of new revelation from God which is then articulated by a human prophet.  And I think in terms of that very rudimentary definition of prophecy, I think most cessationists would agree, biblical prophets like Moses and Isaiah, they received new revelation from God which they then reported to people both by speaking the truth, declaring it, and by writing it down.  Charismatics today similarly claim that they receive revelation from God and that they are then able to articulate words of prophecy to others.

Another term, the word prophet.  The word prophet itself comes from the Greek, prophetes which means to speak in the place of or to be a spokesman.  So a prophet is by definition a spokesperson for God.

I think this is an important point. When someone claims to be exercising the gift of prophecy, or claims to have received a word from the Lord, they are in essence claiming to be a spokesperson for God.

This brings up an important thing for us to consider, the need to test prophets.  Throughout history there have been many people who claimed to be prophets, who claimed to speak for God.  But all Christians, whether Charismatic, Continuationist, or Cessationist would agree that at least some, if not all, of these individuals were false prophets.

Now just for the sake of time, I’ll give you three quick examples.  One example from the second century would be Montanus.  Montanus claimed to speak for God.  In fact, the Montanus Movement called itself the New Prophecy.  He said that the world was about to end.  He promoted extremely legalistic ethical standards on his followers.  He claimed that God was going to establish the New Jerusalem not in Jerusalem, but in the town of Pepusa(?) in Phrygia(?).  And needless to say his predictions of the imminent end of the world did not come true and he was declared a heretic by the early church.

continued:

Moving all the way up to the Reformation, Dr. Lawson yesterday talked about some of the radical Reformers who at times claimed to receive direct revelation from the Holy Spirit. One of those would be a man named Melchior(?) Hoffman(?) who claimed that the New Jerusalem was going to be established in Strasberg, Germany. And we have Yen(?) Mathis one of his sort of disciples.  Mathis said the New Jerusalem would be established in Munster, Germany.  At some point somebody is going to recognize that the New Jerusalem is going to be in Jerusalem, but in any case, he and his followers essentially took over the city of Munster, Jerusalem and were finally eradicated and declared to be false prophets.  The predictions that they made did not come true.

And then another perhaps more well-known example in the nineteenth century would be Joseph Smith who, of course, claimed to receive direct revelation from God.  In his case, it came in the form of some golden tablets which he allegedly translated and the result is the Book of Mormon.  Smith, of course, is widely recognized, in fact in his own day was widely recognized as a con-artist.  He was in imprisoned.  In fact, he was killed while in prison by an angry mob who was offended by his doctrine of polygamy. And we would all regard Joseph Smith as a false prophet.

Now what’s the point of these historical examples?  Simply to demonstrate the truth that false prophets exist and that they represent a major threat to the church.  Both the Old and New Testaments repeatedly warned believers about the danger of false prophets.  And if time permitted, we could go through dozens of similar examples and dozens of passages in which God’s Word warns people to avoid anyone who claims to speak for God but in reality does not.  So when a person claims to have received new revelation from God then, we might ask, “What criteria can we use to discern whether or not they are really speaking for God?”  How can we recognize a false prophet?  And I think that really is the key question that we have to ask even as we think about the modern Charismatic version of prophecy.

The Bible articulates three criteria for identifying a false prophet. And Tom Pennington hit on these quickly in his seminar just this morning.  These three tests, I’m just going to state them briefly and then we’ll go through them in more detail. The first would be the test of doctrinal orthodoxy.  God’s true prophets proclaim doctrines that are right and true.  New Revelation is always consistent with previous revealed truth.

Second, moral integrity.  God’s true prophets are characterized by personal holiness. Those who claim to speak for God must also live out that truth in their lives.

And then thirdly, predictive accuracy…predictive accuracy.  God’s true prophets foretell future events or reveal hidden things with 100 percent accuracy. 

We’ll go through these each in more detail.

First, a true prophet must be doctrinally orthodox.  Conversely any self-proclaimed prophet who deceives people by leading them into theological error is a false prophet.  Now there are many places in Scripture that we could look to bear out this point, but we’re just going to look at two today, for the sake of time.  One of them was mentioned by Tom in his earlier message, that’s Deuteronomy 13:1 through 5.  Here’s what it says, “If a prophet were a dreamer of dreams rises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder and the sign or the wonder comes true concerning which he spoke to you saying let us go after other gods, let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet  or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.  You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him. And you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him and cling to Him.  But that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death because he has counseled rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk so you shall purge the evil from among you.”

In other words, Moses is saying if a prophet comes to you and even if the prophet does things that seem spectacular, even if they say things that come true, if that prophet leads you away from biblical doctrinal truth into heresy or error, that prophet is a false prophet.  And you’ll notice how seriously God takes this offense, the death penalty itself is attached to those prophets who would tread in this area. 

In a New Testament context, Peter gives a similar warning in 2 Peter 2:1.  He says, “But false prophets also rose among the people just as there will also be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.”  And notice in that passage Peter equates false prophets from the Old Testament with false teachers in the New Testament.  Those who teach false doctrine demonstrate themselves to be false prophets.

Now, if we wanted to do so, we could spend the whole time this afternoon documenting time after time when well-known Charismatic prophets have taught egregious forms of doctrinal error from the prosperity gospel to the Word of Faith Movement, to one is Pentecostalism, those things that Dr. MacArthur articulated this morning.  The larger Charismatic Movement is hardly known for its doctrinal orthodoxy. And I realize I’m speaking in broad terms.

But when we see egregious doctrinal errors being taught by self-appointed prophets, like when Benny Hinn famously claimed there were nine members of the Trinity, or when Kenneth Copeland stated that Jesus took on the nature of Satan on the cross, we can be immediately certain that those individuals are not true prophets.  But we need to move on.

Moral integrity, a second requirement or a second test for a true prophet of God.  Any self-proclaimed prophet who lives in unrestrained lust and greed, or unrepentant sin shows himself to be a false prophet.  Again we could look at numerous texts in Scripture that bear this out, but once more we will consider just two.

eremiah 23, Jeremiah says this, “Also among the prophets of Jerusalem, I have seen a horrible thing, the committing of adultery and walking in falsehood, and they strengthen the hands of evil doers so that no one has turned back from his wickedness.  All of them have become to me like Sodom and are inhabitants like Gomorrah, therefore thus says the Lord of hosts concerning these kinds of prophets, Behold I am going to feed them wormwood and make them drink poisonous water.  From the prophets of Jerusalem pollution has gone forth into all the land.  Thus says the Lord of hosts, do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you, they are leading you into futility, they speak a vision of their own imagination which is not from the mouth of the Lord.”

continued:

There in an Old Testament context, here we have these immoral prophets and God says don’t listen to them, they are false prophets.  In the New Testament context, Matthew 7 verse 20, Jesus said that prophets will be known by their fruit which certainly includes the fruits of their lives.  Second Peter 2, we read verse 1 already, here’s verses 2 and 3, “Many of the false prophets whom Peter is describing, or those who follow them, many will follow these false prophets sensuality and because of them, the way of the truth will be maligned.  And in their greed they will exploit you with false words.  Their judgment from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep.”

So again we see that false prophets can be identified by their life style and also by the lifestyles of those under their influence.  We really can know them by their fruits.  And again, if we wanted to this afternoon, we could spend our whole time documenting times in the broader Charismatic world where some of the best known Charismatic celebrities and self-proclaimed prophets have been exposed for the immorality, carnality, and greed that exists in their life styles.

When the best known leaders and public faces of a Movement are frequently embroiled in scandal and controversy to do lavish lifestyles and immoral escapades, it does call into question their self-appointed status as prophets.

Maybe just one example.  One of the most prolific prophetic groups from a few years ago, at least, is known as the Kansas City Prophets, included men like Mike Bickle and Rick Joyner, two of the most highly regarded were Bob Jones, not of Bob Jones University, different Bob Jones, and Paul Cain.  Both of these men were regarded as prophets by their fellow Charismatics.  Both of them were highly visible and influential, especially within the Third Wave circles where they ministered.  But both of them were subsequently disqualified from ministry on moral grounds. 

Bob Jones had to be removed from ministry when it came to light that he was using his prophetic gifts to illicit sexual favors from women. And Paul Cain’s ministry was publicly scandalized when he admitted to long-term drunkenness and homosexuality.  Irony is that in spite of their lack of moral integrity, they continued to be held up as true prophets by many within the Charismatic world.  Bob Jones, for example, still has a thriving ministry.  On his web page he compares himself to the prophet Daniel.

Well that brings us then to a third test of false prophets, predictive accuracy.  And this is where we’re going to spend more of our time this afternoon.  When a true prophet speaks about future events or other unknown things, he speaks with 100 percent accuracy. And that’s because God knows all things. So if someone is accurately speaking on God’s behalf, what he says will invariably be true.

Now once again, there are a number of scriptures that we could look at on this point, but we will consider just two.  The first is Deuteronomy 18 which Tom Pennington referenced this morning, but it’s worth reading again.  Here God Himself says this, “The prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.  You may say in your heart, ‘How will we know if the Word, or how will we know the Word which the Lord has not spoken?’”  In other words, how will we know if this is a true prophet or a false prophet.

“When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken.  The prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you shall not be afraid of him”  Well that’s just about as clear as you could possibly make it.  God says if a prophet claims to speak for God, but then says things that do not come to pass or are inaccurate, then that prophet has spoken presumptuously and he can be considered a false prophet.

The rest of Scripture reverberates the same truth.  According to Isaiah 44:26, God confirms the words of His true messengers.  According to Jeremiah 28:9 the true prophet is the one whose predictions come true.  According to Ezekiel 12:25, “The Word which God speaks will come to pass.”

By contrast a false prophet, all he can do is hope in the wishful thinking sort of hope, hope that what he has predicted will actually happen.  Here’s what Ezekiel 13 says, “Thus says the Lord God, ‘Woe to the foolish prophets who are following their own spirit and have seen nothing.  O Israel, your prophets have been like foxes among ruins.  You have not gone up into the breaches nor did you build the wall around the house of Israel to stand in the battle on the day of the Lord. These prophets, they see falsehood and lying divination who are saying, The Lord declares, when the Lord has not sent them.  Yet…notice this…they hope for the fulfillment of their word.’  Did you not see a false vision and speak a lying divination when you said the Lord declares?  But it is not I who have spoken. Therefore thus says the Lord God, because you have spoken falsely and seen a lie, therefore behold, I am against you, declares the Lord God.  So My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and utter lying divinations.  They will have no place in the council of My people, nor will they be written down in the register of the house of Israel, nor will they enter the land of Israel that you may know that I am the Lord God.”

So a prophet who claims to speak for God and then what he says turns out to be a lie, turns out to be false, God Himself says that He is against those prophets.  So God’s Word is very clear.

Now when we compare the modern Charismatic form of prophecy to this third biblical requirement, we again find that it falls far short.  In fact, by their own admission, proponents of the modern gift of prophecy readily acknowledge that modern prophecies are often inaccurate and full of error.  Just to give you some examples.  Here Rick Joyner says, and he’s commenting about Bob Jones, he says, “There is a prophet named Bob Jones who was told that the general level of prophetic revelation in the church was about 65 percent accurate at this time.  Some are only about ten percent accurate. A very few of the most mature prophets are approaching 85 to 95 percent accuracy.  Prophecy is increasing in purity but there is still a long way to go for those who walk in this ministry. The problem is biblically a true prophet is not recognized based on how many predictions he gets right. Rather, false prophets are recognized by how many predictions they get wrong.”

Rick Joyner again in a different place says this, “One of the greatest hazards,” and this, by the way, helps us understand, what do they do with Deuteronomy 18?  They know that it’s there, what do they do with it?  Well they just ignore it.  Here’s what he says.  “One of the greatest hazards effecting maturing prophets is the erroneous interpretation of the Old Testament exhortation that if a prophet ever predicted something which did not come to pass, he was no longer to be considered a true prophet.  The warning was that if this happened, the prophet had been presumptuous and the people were not to fear him.”  That’s a right understanding of the text.  But Joyner just says, “If one predicts something in the name of the Lord and it does not come to pass, he probably has spoken presumptuously and that needs to be repented of but that does not make him a false prophet.  No one could step out in the faith required to walk in his calling if he knew that a single mistake would ruin him for life.”