What is the Scriptural Basis for Cessationism?

Jair Crawford

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Your words were...………
"It was loud worship music ".

Thanks for your honesty. By your own words then you can see that from the music will come an adrenaline rush and excitement which leads to doing what you think is expected of you.

I understand that music has an effect on adrenaline and all that but honestly it all started earlier. We were at a conference and one of our youth had begun to have a migraine. This happened when we were at a restaurant eating lunch. I immediately felt emboldened to pray like never before in my life. Again, in a restaurant, not at the conference. I had begun to pray on the way back from the restaurant and to the conference but felt God urging me to continue to pray throughout that whole time. Then the praise and worship music started. Everyone around me was singing along as usual. No tongues or anything like that. But I felt so very strongly that I needed to keep praying specifically so I was down on the floor, praying, with everyone else standing around me when it just happened.

Nobody laid hands on me, nobody thumped me with a Bible, nothing. Everyone else was singing.

I kept going on and on praying, focusing on my communication with God that at that point felt so focused it was as sharp as a pin point. It is so hard to describe. I didn't stop praying until the worship stopped and then the sermon started (which was a long time as this was a conference), although I probably continued very very quietly even past that point.

We can always try to find rational explanations for things. But we can get into a deep rut with that line of thinking if we're not careful. It's something I've done recently actually.
 
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The foundation of cessationism is in the humanist philosophy that emerged in the middle to late 19th Century where there was a departure from the believe that there is a Personal-Infinite God who created the universe and everything in it, including mankind. This philosophy maintained that man is a product of time and chance, a mere machine. This devalued man from being a person created in the image of God. This meant that instead of good and evil being opposites, they became sythesised, in that good and evil were equal according to the persons own set of morals. This made one person actions good according to his own set of morals, and another persons cruelty good for him according to his set of morals. The principle of a objective standard of morals as stated in the Ten Commandments went by the board and each individual had his own opinion about what was right or wrong. This was humanism. The meaning of life then was come out of man instead of anything, including God, outside of him. Therefore the humanistic man regulated himself. When this started to affect Christian theology, the first thing to go was the inerracy of the Bible. The modernist attitude was that the Bible is full of mistakes, and the Genesis accounts were myths and the miracles were not real miracles at all, but were natural occurrences, or made up stories to put forward a religious principle.

This gave rise to an increasing number of evangelical churches adopting that part of modernist theology that denied the supernatural and miraculous and used certain vague verses of Paul's letters to try and prove it. The problem these ones had was that they could not explain why miracles were still happening in many places, and so some blamed the devil and the occult, or made out that those who were testifying to the miracles were either lying or mistaken. As time went on, these evangelical churches adopted more of the modernist theology and now many of them deny that there is a Personal God, no virgin birth, no resurrection, and that Jesus didn't really die on the cross at all. They have reduced their version of Christianity to a type of religious moral living.

Yet they still refer to God and they say that God is good, but there is a conflict because they don't believe that there is anything outside of our physical universe. Because they need to escape the meaninglessness and pessimism, they have taken an existential leap of faith, without any substantiation, to refer to a "God" who could be out there somewhere, but this is a mystical caricature and not a real god at all. They have to give the appearance that they are Christian and have Christian faith, but it is not Godly faith, but a blind leap of modernist theological faith that has no substance to it. They are correct if they say man is just a machine, because a machine is dead. The reality is that these modernist cessationists are dead - dead in their sins because they reject the Personal-Infinite God who created them.
 
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Major1

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The foundation of cessationism is in the humanist philosophy that emerged in the middle to late 19th Century where there was a departure from the believe that there is a Personal-Infinite God who created the universe and everything in it, including mankind. This philosophy maintained that man is a product of time and chance, a mere machine. This devalued man from being a person created in the image of God. This meant that instead of good and evil being opposites, they became sythesised, in that good and evil were equal according to the persons own set of morals. This made one person actions good according to his own set of morals, and another persons cruelty good for him according to his set of morals. The principle of a objective standard of morals as stated in the Ten Commandments went by the board and each individual had his own opinion about what was right or wrong. This was humanism. The meaning of life then was come out of man instead of anything, including God, outside of him. Therefore the humanistic man regulated himself. When this started to affect Christian theology, the first thing to go was the inerracy of the Bible. The modernist attitude was that the Bible is full of mistakes, and the Genesis accounts were myths and the miracles were not real miracles at all, but were natural occurrences, or made up stories to put forward a religious principle.

This gave rise to an increasing number of evangelical churches adopting that part of modernist theology that denied the supernatural and miraculous and used certain vague verses of Paul's letters to try and prove it. The problem these ones had was that they could not explain why miracles were still happening in many places, and so some blamed the devil and the occult, or made out that those who were testifying to the miracles were either lying or mistaken. As time went on, these evangelical churches adopted more of the modernist theology and now many of them deny that there is a Personal God, no virgin birth, no resurrection, and that Jesus didn't really die on the cross at all. They have reduced their version of Christianity to a type of religious moral living.

Yet they still refer to God and they say that God is good, but there is a conflict because they don't believe that there is anything outside of our physical universe. Because they need to escape the meaninglessness and pessimism, they have taken an existential leap of faith, without any substantiation, to refer to a "God" who could be out there somewhere, but this is a mystical caricature and not a real god at all. They have to give the appearance that they are Christian and have Christian faith, but it is not Godly faith, but a blind leap of modernist theological faith that has no substance to it. They are correct if they say man is just a machine, because a machine is dead. The reality is that these modernist cessationists are dead - dead in their sins because they reject the Personal-Infinite God who created them.

Hello Oscar! I have not heard much from you. I hope that you Have you been well???
 
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Major1

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I understand that music has an effect on adrenaline and all that but honestly it all started earlier. We were at a conference and one of our youth had begun to have a migraine. This happened when we were at a restaurant eating lunch. I immediately felt emboldened to pray like never before in my life. Again, in a restaurant, not at the conference. I had begun to pray on the way back from the restaurant and to the conference but felt God urging me to continue to pray throughout that whole time. Then the praise and worship music started. Everyone around me was singing along as usual. No tongues or anything like that. But I felt so very strongly that I needed to keep praying specifically so I was down on the floor, praying, with everyone else standing around me when it just happened.

Nobody laid hands on me, nobody thumped me with a Bible, nothing. Everyone else was singing.

I kept going on and on praying, focusing on my communication with God that at that point felt so focused it was as sharp as a pin point. It is so hard to describe. I didn't stop praying until the worship stopped and then the sermon started (which was a long time as this was a conference), although I probably continued very very quietly even past that point.

We can always try to find rational explanations for things. But we can get into a deep rut with that line of thinking if we're not careful. It's something I've done recently actually.

May I say to you that we as humans will do what we WANT TO DO.

If we want to go to a football game in the rain, we will go.
If someone says, "Do not go to Ruby Falls", we will go if we want to.

In that light, IMO, it seems to me that the teaching of "cessationism" originated in EXPERIENCE.

When anyone reads and studies the Bible and focuses the sign gifts of miracles and healing should come away with several questions about these things.

I think that we all need to ask ourselves these question......…
1. Why do the epistles have little discussion about them?
2. Why does Paul leave people sick (Phil 2:26-27; 1 Tim 5:23; 2 Tim 4:20)?
3. Why does James have the sick call the elders and not one with the gift of healing?
4. Why do I not see miracles today?
5. Why do we not see healings today?

When I said that "cessationism originates in experience", I am saying that what we actually see and experience plays a huge part in what we understand the Bible actual says.

No One could affirm cessationism if miracles and healing and the real Bible tongues were happening all about him.

Yes, we see so called miracles on religious T.V. We see carefully orchestrated events that in most cases have been proven to be faked and fraudulent.

We see people speaking in gibberish with no interpreters and nothing said that glorifies the Lord Jesus and we accept it as valid because we KNOW that born again believers would never ever fake tongues to make themselves appear spiritual.
All of those things come under the roof of EXPERIENCE.

PETER POPOFF claimed to be a faith healer when all the time he had his wife speaking to him in a ear phone telling him what his works had found out from people standing in line to enter his tent meeting.

In 1991 ABC-TV’s Prime Time Live ran an investigative report where W.V. GRANT was included with segments on ROBERT TILTON and LARRY LEAL. All were thoroughly busted for their misrepresentations to the public and the church and fraud.

Ole Anthony of the Trinity Foundation, a watchdog organization keeping tabs on the tele-evangelists was influential in making this happen. So began an era of open discovery for those fleecing the flock.

ABC’s hidden cameras caught W.V. Grant and his staff informally circulating among audience members before services. They would hand-pick those who were to be called forth that night. They would ask them questions about their personal lives, their goals, finances, sicknesses, making careful note it would be passed on to Grant who would later claim was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit.
http://www.evidenceunseen.com/theology/practical-theology/faith-healers/

Experience
is the confirming factor in the case of either continuation or cessationism. Ultimately, the Bible must affirm or allow our experience.

If we experience REAL, VERIFIABLE miracles and healings and the correct use of tongues as recorded in the Scriptures then there would be no need to promote CESSATIONALISM at all.

Just something for you to think about. You certainly do not have to agree with me.
 
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Hello Oscar! I have not heard much from you. I hope that you Have you been well???
Yep. I have been involved in other projects. I started to read the works of Francis Schaeffer and am getting a great refresher course in Reformed theology as opposed to modernist philosophical existential theology. So, having some fresh material to contribute I decided to make some comments on CF again.

I guess my comments about Cessationism will make your juices flow!! Hahahaha! I'm looing forward to some fun discussions with you about that. Its all in good natured debate.
 
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swordsman1

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The foundation of cessationism is in the humanist philosophy that emerged in the middle to late 19th Century where there was a departure from the believe that there is a Personal-Infinite God who created the universe and everything in it, including mankind. This philosophy maintained that man is a product of time and chance, a mere machine. This devalued man from being a person created in the image of God. This meant that instead of good and evil being opposites, they became sythesised, in that good and evil were equal according to the persons own set of morals. This made one person actions good according to his own set of morals, and another persons cruelty good for him according to his set of morals. The principle of a objective standard of morals as stated in the Ten Commandments went by the board and each individual had his own opinion about what was right or wrong. This was humanism. The meaning of life then was come out of man instead of anything, including God, outside of him. Therefore the humanistic man regulated himself. When this started to affect Christian theology, the first thing to go was the inerracy of the Bible. The modernist attitude was that the Bible is full of mistakes, and the Genesis accounts were myths and the miracles were not real miracles at all, but were natural occurrences, or made up stories to put forward a religious principle.

This gave rise to an increasing number of evangelical churches adopting that part of modernist theology that denied the supernatural and miraculous and used certain vague verses of Paul's letters to try and prove it. The problem these ones had was that they could not explain why miracles were still happening in many places, and so some blamed the devil and the occult, or made out that those who were testifying to the miracles were either lying or mistaken. As time went on, these evangelical churches adopted more of the modernist theology and now many of them deny that there is a Personal God, no virgin birth, no resurrection, and that Jesus didn't really die on the cross at all. They have reduced their version of Christianity to a type of religious moral living.

Yet they still refer to God and they say that God is good, but there is a conflict because they don't believe that there is anything outside of our physical universe. Because they need to escape the meaninglessness and pessimism, they have taken an existential leap of faith, without any substantiation, to refer to a "God" who could be out there somewhere, but this is a mystical caricature and not a real god at all. They have to give the appearance that they are Christian and have Christian faith, but it is not Godly faith, but a blind leap of modernist theological faith that has no substance to it. They are correct if they say man is just a machine, because a machine is dead. The reality is that these modernist cessationists are dead - dead in their sins because they reject the Personal-Infinite God who created them.

Wrong, I'm afraid. Cessationism started long before the 19th Century. It was established shortly after the apostolic age when the Church Fathers observed and declared the supernatural gifts to have ceased, having served their purpose of authenticating the fledgling Church and it's leaders. This remained mainstream Christian doctrine right up until the start of the twentieth century when the new Pentecostal movement invented the claim that they had regained the supernatural gifts, despite the fact their supposed gifts do not match the biblical descriptions of those gifts:
  • Their 'tongues' are not the known foreign languages that the only description of the gift in scripture defines. All professional linguists that have studied today's tongues have concluded that it is fundamentally not a language, but rather nothing more than the human vocal organs going into 'autopilot' and producing strings of meaningless syllables - a technique that anyone including non-Christians can discover.
  • Their 'prophecies' are nothing more than thoughts popping into their heads which are presumptuously declared to be a 'word from the Lord' yet are regularly proved to be false, while the prophets of scripture were spokesmen of God who received real infallible words from God and passed them on authoritatively as 'Thus says the Lord...'.
  • Their faith healers do not heal people with serious disabilities instantly, completely, 100% of the time as the disciples did with the lame and the blind. The 'healings' they perform are usually unverifiable illnesses such as back pain which are known to be improved by psychosomatic techniques and the power of suggestion. People's obsession with 'signs and wonders' results in their claims of miracles being propagated not by verifiable evidence but by rumours and hearsay, which people are only too gullible to accept as genuine. Others are outright frauds such as the leg lengthening parlor trick popular among the charismatic charlatans of today. If they can supposedly grow limbs then why are they not restoring the limbs of amputees?
People who knowingly counterfeit the supernatural gifts in this way are in danger of blaspheming the Holy Spirit by attributing to Him things which are clearly not of Him.

And Cessationism is anything but the Liberalism you describe. Quite the reverse. Cessationists reside at the conservative end of evangelicalism that has the highest regard for Scripture and see it as the infallible and inerrant word of God. They draw their theology from scripture alone, hence their cry of 'sola scriptura'. Liberalism is more the domain of Pentecostal and charismatic teachers who have little regard for scripture in their thinking. They draw their theology, not from scripture, but rather from subjective and non-biblical experiences which they then attempt to shoehorn back into scripture using exegetical fallacies in order to justify them.
 
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The bottom line of Christian faith is 1. The absolute knowledge and acceptance that the Personal-Infinite God is really there and He has communicated with mankind in plain language that we can understand. A person can accept Christ every day of the week, but it will mean nothing until that person knows for absolute certainty that God is real, personal, and he is able to have person to person communication with Him.

The next point is 2. That our Christian faith rests upon the finished work of Christ alone. Period. Not on our ability to be holy, religious, have the correct doctrines, or experiences.

There is a difference between the old Pentecostals, who based their Christian experience on the above two points, and the new Pentecostals who base their faith on an "experience" of God. I accepted Christ in a Pentecostal church in 1966, and for two years I tried to have that experience, but failed. I had to get away into a place by myself and address myself to God personally. To do that I had to believe that God was a real Person and that He was in earshot of my voice. As a result, I became aware in myself that God was very real. It was not an "experience", more of a revelation - one moment I did not have the knowledge that God was real, and the next moment I did. I can't explain how that happened but it did, and it was not experiential.

So, I became aware that there are two worlds - our natural world, and an invisible world; and the two co-exist. This is how Jesus, after His resurrection could suddenly appear and disappear when visiting His disciples. This is how He could ascend and disappear into a cloud. He came and went from the invisible world into our natural world.

The point I am making is that God is a real and supernatural Person. The Holy Spirit is a supernatural Person. Therefore if He wants the supernatural to happen, He will make it happen. We can't make it happen. We can pray and ask God to make things happen when there is a need. Answers to prayer are always supernatural. This is why I can't believe in the supernatural nature of God and be a cessationist at the same time.

So, it doesn't worry me that the church in many areas does not believe in or practice the supernatural gifts of the Spirit. If they happen, they will whether I believe in them or not. If God has a reason why they are not happening, then they will not happen whether I believe in continuance or not. The two important things for me are that I know that God is real, and He talks to me through the Scriptures, and that the finished work of Jesus is all I need to live a productive and meaningful Christian life.

I have gone in this direction in my comments because you and me have dug over the same ground over and again about the whys and wherefores concerning cessationism and continuance.
 
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swordsman1

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The point I am making is that God is a real and supernatural Person. The Holy Spirit is a supernatural Person. Therefore if He wants the supernatural to happen, He will make it happen. We can't make it happen. We can pray and ask God to make things happen when there is a need. Answers to prayer are always supernatural. This is why I can't believe in the supernatural nature of God and be a cessationist at the same time.

What makes you think cessationists don't believe in the supernatural. Of course we do. The New Birth itself is a supernatural event. And of course God can perform miracles if it is his will. And occasionally He does.

But there is nothing supernatural about uttering strings of random syllables, a technique that even non-Christians can discover. The supernatural gift of tongues is described in scripture as somebody instantly being able to speak a known foreign language without ever learning it.

Nor is there anything supernatural about thoughts popping into your head. That is not the gift of prophecy as Pentecostals and charismatics teach. Rather it is described in scripture as God actually speaking words to the prophet who could then authoritatively say "Thus says the Lord...".

Nor is there anything supernatural in 95% of today's claimed healings and miracles, most of which are bogus. They are either fakes, such as the common leg-lengthening trick, or not miracles at all. Supposed healings that take days or months to occur are not a miracles. Nor are slight improvements in a persons condition that can be accounted for by the natural healing process. Nor are improvements brought about by psychosomatic effects. I am an asthmatic so I know all about the effect the mind can have on your health. You lose your inhaler and you instantly panic and often feel an attack coming on. Find it again and relief kicks in and, lo and behold, the attack subsides - without even using the inhaler! Even remarkable healings and events are often not really miracles, where a miracle is defined as being a suspension of the laws of nature. A car losing control and missing you by an inch is not a miracle. Being levitated above the skidding car would be a miracle. God may have been involved in the event but I would call that an act of divine providence, rather than a miracle.

But despite the counterfeits, God can and does perform miracles. Would I pray for a friend with cancer to be miraculously healed? Sure I would. Would I expect the tumor to instantly disappear without trace? It has happened before so I would be hopeful, but as the millions of Christians with cancer would testify, God does not normally operate that way. Despite intense prayer, many of them are not healed and will often go on to die from their illness. Thousands of charismatics prayed for John Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard church, but he was not miraculously healed from his cancer. He had to have radiotherapy. Nor was he healed from his heart disease, and had to have open heart surgery. Shortly after which he died at the premature age of 63. So much for faith healing in the charismatic church. So I would pray that my friend with cancer would also be healed by other means as well - for an accelerated natural healing and for wisdom for the doctors to be able to successfully treat it.

But even if God does supernaturally heal in answer to prayer that is not the gift of healing. If you have to pray for healing it proves you do not have the gift of healing. The gift of healing as demonstrated in scripture was when the disciples could heal seriously disabled people instantly and completely with just a command or a touch. And that gift ceased at the end of the apostolic age. When scripture gives us the prescription for dealing with the sick in the church today in James 5, it doesn't say to call for the person with the gift of healing. It says to call for the elders to pray for them.
 
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As I said, either in this thread or another, Paul taught that not all speak in tongues. This means that there are different ministries in the Church. The ability to pray in tongues may be given to one who has an intercessory role to enhance their intercession, and another may not be given that revelation knowledge about the use and effectiveness of the gift. So, for many, the principles around the gift of tongues may be outside of their knowledge and so they don't see any use for it. I can understand that.

The question I have is this: If God erased everything about the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of prayer from the Bible and these no longer applied to Christian worship and practice, would our churches change, or would they merely continue as before? I would say that in most churches, including Pentecostal and Charismatic ones, things would not change at all.
 
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swordsman1

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The question I have is this: If God erased everything about the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of prayer from the Bible and these no longer applied to Christian worship and practice, would our churches change, or would they merely continue as before? I would say that in most churches, including Pentecostal and Charismatic ones, things would not change at all.

I would agree. Pentecostal and Charismatic churches are determined to follow their obsession with 'experiences', regardless of whether they are biblical or not. Any detailed examination of scripture will show that what they claim to be supernatural gifts do not match the biblical descriptions of those gifts. Not to mention the practices of the wilder charismatic churches that are absent from scripture completely ('fire tunnels', 'holy laughter', 'slain in the spirit' etc).
 
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One thing I don't understand about cessationism. Throughout the Book of John, Jesus constantly points to the miracles and good works performed as an indication that He was from The Father, because generally speaking the religious leaders didn't accept the words He spoke concerning His identity. The same thing happened in Acts with the early church. If Jesus used the Gifts of the Spirit to reach the lost and He is our model, even saying we would do greater works than Him, what is the scriptural basis for the gifts ceasing after the Scripture was complete? Does the completion of Scripture somehow belittle the need for healing the sick, raising the dead and casting out demons? Why would we divorce ourselves from the spiritual gifts if they were and are so effective in reaching the lost? Furthermore, if even John said the entire record of Jesus couldn't be contained in the word, why do we make such an emphasis on the word instead of Jesus who is the Word incarnate?

Jesus and His Apostles used sign gifts to "establish credibility". Some still did not accept it, but there are a few things in the NT that convinced me. Timothy was greatly loved and trained by Paul. He was Paul's emissary and eventually, he finished his career in Ephesus. There is not a single account of Timothy performing any of the sign gifts. The same goes for Titus and Silas, both close associates of Paul and trusted by Paul.

There is still provisions for some of the miracles such as healing - they are anointed with oil and the elders lay hands on the individual as discussed in 1Tim. It is also not to say God couldn't temporarily bestow a gift on someone for a specific purpose. Finally, when you read Paul's exhortation on sign gifts to the church at Corinth, he cautions them about seeking the right spiritual gifts and to seek them with love and with desire to edify the Church and not themselves.
 
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Here is part of it:

1 Corinthians 13

8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part;
10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.

Yours and His,
David
But here's the rest of it:

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Unless you know fully even as you have been fully known - which is none of us yet - then the perfect cannot be the Bible. We still see in a mirror dimly. We do not yet see face to face!
 
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swordsman1

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But here's the rest of it:

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Unless you know fully even as you have been fully known - which is none of us yet - then the perfect cannot be the Bible. We still see in a mirror dimly. We do not yet see face to face!

The 'knowing' in this passage is referring to revealed knowledge. The two gifts that cease when 'the perfect comes' (or 'when completeness comes' - NIV etc) are the revelatory gifts of prophecy, and words of knowledge. These 'in part' gifts are replaced by a far better and complete method of revelation - the New Testament. Thus we do 'know fully' with regard to God's revelation to man.

We do see "face to face" compared to the limited and restricted method of revelation through piecemeal prophecies and words of knowledge before the NT was written ('seeing dimly'). 'Face to face' has nothing to do with seeing the face of Christ (who is never mentioned in this passage).

See my previous post in this thread on 1 Cor 13:8-13: https://www.christianforums.com/thr...for-cessationism.8063185/page-2#post-72645411
 
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RestoreTheJoy

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The 'knowing' in this passage is referring to revealed knowledge. The two gifts that cease when 'the perfect comes' (or 'when completeness comes' - NIV etc) are the revelatory gifts of prophecy, and words of knowledge. These 'in part' gifts are replaced by a far better and complete method of revelation - the New Testament. Thus we do 'know fully' with regard to God's revelation to man.

We do see "face to face" compared to the limited and restricted method of revelation through piecemeal prophecies and words of knowledge before the NT was written ('seeing dimly'). 'Face to face' has nothing to do with seeing the face of Christ (who is never mentioned in this passage).

See my previous post in this thread on 1 Cor 13:8-13: https://www.christianforums.com/thr...for-cessationism.8063185/page-2#post-72645411

Do you know fully, as you are fully known? No, you don't. And you won't, until you are with Him. You don't see face to face because you have the written scriptures.

There is no simply no evidence, scriptural or otherwise, that spiritual gifts cease when the New Testament is compiled. Paul tells us in scripture to earnestly desire the spiritual gifts and to use them to edify the Body, and indeed, by extension, the entire world. Nowhere in scripture are we told the gifts - or certain gifts - cease. In fact, Paul belabors a discussion of the gifts and their proper use in scripture, in 1 Corinthians. The gifts cease at the end of the church age, when we know God as fully as He knows us. Your interpretation entirely ignores 1 Corinthians.
 
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RestoreTheJoy

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Wrong, I'm afraid. Cessationism started long before the 19th Century. It was established shortly after the apostolic age when the Church Fathers observed and declared the supernatural gifts to have ceased, having served their purpose of authenticating the fledgling Church and it's leaders. This remained mainstream Christian doctrine right up until the start of the twentieth century when the new Pentecostal movement invented the claim that they had regained the supernatural gifts, despite the fact their supposed gifts do not match the biblical descriptions of those gifts:
  • Their 'tongues' are not the known foreign languages that the only description of the gift in scripture defines. All professional linguists that have studied today's tongues have concluded that it is fundamentally not a language, but rather nothing more than the human vocal organs going into 'autopilot' and producing strings of meaningless syllables - a technique that anyone including non-Christians can discover.
  • Their 'prophecies' are nothing more than thoughts popping into their heads which are presumptuously declared to be a 'word from the Lord' yet are regularly proved to be false, while the prophets of scripture were spokesmen of God who received real infallible words from God and passed them on authoritatively as 'Thus says the Lord...'.
  • Their faith healers do not heal people with serious disabilities instantly, completely, 100% of the time as the disciples did with the lame and the blind. The 'healings' they perform are usually unverifiable illnesses such as back pain which are known to be improved by psychosomatic techniques and the power of suggestion. People's obsession with 'signs and wonders' results in their claims of miracles being propagated not by verifiable evidence but by rumours and hearsay, which people are only too gullible to accept as genuine. Others are outright frauds such as the leg lengthening parlor trick popular among the charismatic charlatans of today. If they can supposedly grow limbs then why are they not restoring the limbs of amputees?
People who knowingly counterfeit the supernatural gifts in this way are in danger of blaspheming the Holy Spirit by attributing to Him things which are clearly not of Him.

And Cessationism is anything but the Liberalism you describe. Quite the reverse. Cessationists reside at the conservative end of evangelicalism that has the highest regard for Scripture and see it as the infallible and inerrant word of God. They draw their theology from scripture alone, hence their cry of 'sola scriptura'. Liberalism is more the domain of Pentecostal and charismatic teachers who have little regard for scripture in their thinking. They draw their theology, not from scripture, but rather from subjective and non-biblical experiences which they then attempt to shoehorn back into scripture using exegetical fallacies in order to justify them.

Cessationism is not a belief of the early church.

1 Corinthians 14:1 Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. Paul tells us to do it. Who are we to say we have decided that Paul was wrong?

Scripture simply does not establish the spiritual gifts will cease. Spiritual gifts will function in healthy Bible believing churches until Jesus returns.
 
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swordsman1

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Do you know fully, as you are fully known? No, you don't. And you won't, until you are with Him. You don't see face to face because you have the written scriptures.

Yes we do 'know fully' if we understand that 'knowing' is referring to revealed knowledge. We fully know God's intended revelation to man in the form of the NT. There are no further revelations to be had. Otherwise God would still be speaking authoritatively and the canon would not be closed. We fully know Gods revelation to man, even as we are fully known - intimately and completely.

'Seeing dimly' and then 'face to face' is simply an analogy, the same as a child becoming a man is an analogy in v11. Paul is contrasting the difference between Christians having to rely on prophecy and words of knowledge for guidance in the faith, to having the completed New Testament in their hands.

There is no simply no evidence, scriptural or otherwise, that spiritual gifts cease when the New Testament is compiled. Paul tells us in scripture to earnestly desire the spiritual gifts and to use them to edify the Body, and indeed, by extension, the entire world. Nowhere in scripture are we told the gifts - or certain gifts - cease. In fact, Paul belabors a discussion of the gifts and their proper use in scripture, in 1 Corinthians. The gifts cease at the end of the church age, when we know God as fully as He knows us. Your interpretation entirely ignores 1 Corinthians.

Apart from all the evidence I outlined in my earlier post for the 3 gifts ceasing after the completed canon (which has not yet been refuted) we also have apostleship listed as a spiritual gift (1 Cor 12:27), and yet most continuists would agree that apostles have ceased. If one gift ceased then why not other foundational gifts such as prophecy which, along with apostleship, scripture tells us was only for the foundation of the church ... "having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone" (Eph 2:20).

Then of course there is the undisputed historical evidence which documents how tongues died out around the same time the completed scriptures were being distributed. The church fathers reported tongues to have ceased by around 300ad and ceased it remained - at least until Pentecostalism dubiously claimed to have regained it at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Of course not all the gifts cease. Only the revelatory and miraculous gifts ceased, having fulfilled their purpose. The rest continue for the benefit of the church.
 
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swordsman1

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Cessationism is not a belief of the early church.

How early? Certainly not during the apostolic age. But cessationism was a mainstream Christian doctrine from the time of the Church Fathers from around 300ad right up the twentieth century.

1 Corinthians 14:1 Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. Paul tells us to do it. Who are we to say we have decided that Paul was wrong?

Scripture simply does not establish the spiritual gifts will cease. Spiritual gifts will function in healthy Bible believing churches until Jesus returns.

Paul told the Corinthians to desire prophecy at a time when the gift of prophecy was still active in the church. And he was specifically addressing the Corinthians, not the universal Church throughout time (his whole epistle is correcting a series of errors and problems within that church).
 
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RestoreTheJoy

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How early? Certainly not during the apostolic age. But cessationism was a mainstream Christian doctrine from the time of the Church Fathers from around 300ad right up the twentieth century.



Paul told the Corinthians to desire prophecy at a time when the gift of prophecy was still active in the church. And he was specifically addressing the Corinthians, not the universal Church throughout time (his whole epistle is correcting a series of errors and problems within that church).

Prophecy is still active in the church today. It will never violate scripture. It may not even look like what prophesy might be imagined to be, but someone can give a word from the Lord today with direction about tomorrow to an individual or to a group or congregation. Happens all the time. Is only proved out in time.

Cessationism is not only a doctrine of unbelief, but was primarily aimed toward diminishing Roman papal authority and advancing sola scriptura, though a proper understanding of the spiritual gifts is that they exist for building up the church in love, not tearing down the Word of God. They have never changed. We have. That's why we don't see what they see in the early church - not much in the States, anyway.

Augustine, Justin Martyr, and a large number of the early church fathers knew and wrote of the gifts of the Spirit.
 
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swordsman1

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Prophecy is still active in the church today. It will never violate scripture. It may not even look like what prophesy might be imagined to be, but someone can give a word from the Lord today with direction about tomorrow to an individual or to a group or congregation. Happens all the time. Is only proved out in time.

What people claim to be prophecy today does not match the description of prophecy in scripture. Today's prophecies are nothing more than strong thoughts popping into people's heads which are presumptuously declared to be a 'word from the Lord' yet they are regularly proved to be false. Whereas in scripture prophecy is described God actually speaking precise words to the prophet who could then infallibly say "Thus says the Lord...".

The Bible repeatedly records God speaking words to the prophets. Here is just a small sampling:

Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God, furthermore, said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you......

Exodus 34:10 Then God said, “Behold, I am going to make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform miracles which have not been produced in all the earth nor among any of the nations;

2 Samuel 7:4 But in the same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, saying, “Go and say to My servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Are you the one who should build Me a house to dwell in?

1 Kings 6:11 Now the word of the Lord came to Solomon saying, “Concerning this house which you are building, if you will walk in My statutes and execute My ordinances and keep all My commandments by walking in them, then I will carry out My word with you which I spoke to David your father.

1 Kings 13:20 Now it came about, as they were sitting down at the table, that the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back; and he cried to the man of God who came from Judah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Because you have disobeyed the command of the Lord, and have not observed the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you,

Isaiah 1:10 Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; Give ear to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah. “What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?” says the Lord. "I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle;"

Isaiah 38:4 Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying, “Go and say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of your father David, “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life.

Jeremiah 13:8 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Just so will I destroy the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem.

And the same formula applies to New Testament prophets:

Acts 21:10 "As we were staying there for some days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. And coming to us, he took Paul’s belt and bound his own feet and hands, and said, “This is what the Holy Spirit says: "In this way the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.’”

Now if God did not actually say those words, but rather were simply thoughts in the prophets' minds which they verbalized, then the Bible is lying, because it actually quotes the very words God spoke. I've not seen anywhere where God gave a prophecy via a prophet's thoughts. In fact this is what scripture says about people who claim prophecies from their own thoughts:

Ezekiel 13:1 The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing!

Jeremiah 14:14 Then the Lord said to me, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds.

Jeremiah 23:16. This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord."

Jeremiah 23:26 How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds?

The same applies to tongues and healers. Today's claimed tongues and healing does not match the biblical description of those gifts.

Cessationism is not only a doctrine of unbelief, but was primarily aimed toward diminishing Roman papal authority and advancing sola scriptura, though a proper understanding of the spiritual gifts is that they exist for building up the church in love, not tearing down the Word of God. They have never changed. We have. That's why we don't see what they see in the early church - not much in the States, anyway.

Augustine, Justin Martyr, and a large number of the early church fathers knew and wrote of the gifts of the Spirit.

Cessationism was prevalent in the Church long before Protestantism came on the scene. Although the early church fathers (from 100ad) testified that these gifts were still present, the middle fathers (200-300 AD) said they are rare, and the late fathers (300-400AD) said they had ceased. This ties in perfectly with the distribution of the completed canon.

Augustine (354-430), The Homilies On John
In the earliest time, “the Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed; and they spake with tongues,” which they had not learned, “as the Spirit gave them utterance.” These were the Sign adapted to the time. For there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy Spirit in all tongues, to show that the Gospel of God was to run through all tongues over the whole earth. That thing was done for a betokening, and it passed away.

Chrysostom (347-407), on 1 Corinthians 12
This whole passage is exceedingly obscure; and what creates the obscurity is both ignorance of these matters and the cessation of things which happened then but do not now occur.
Chrysostom on 1 Cor 13:8
For if both these [gifts of prophecy and tongues] were brought in for the sake of the faith; when that is every where sown abroad, the use of these is henceforth superfluous. . . . It is no marvel that prophecies and tongues should be done away.

Theodoret (393-458) Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians:
In former times those who accepted the divine preaching and who were baptized for their salvation were given visible signs of the grace of the Holy Spirit at work in them. Some spoke in tongues which they did not know and which nobody had taught them, while others performed miracles or prophesied. The Corinthians also did these things, but they did not use the gifts as they should have done. They were more interested in showing off than in using them for the edification of the church.
 
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RestoreTheJoy

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What people claim to be prophecy today does not match the description of prophecy in scripture. Today's prophecies are nothing more than strong thoughts popping into people's heads which are presumptuously declared to be a 'word from the Lord' yet they are regularly proved to be false. Whereas in scripture prophecy is described God actually speaking precise words to the prophet who could then infallibly say "Thus says the Lord...".

The Bible repeatedly records God speaking words to the prophets. Here is just a small sampling:

Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God, furthermore, said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you......

Exodus 34:10 Then God said, “Behold, I am going to make a covenant. Before all your people I will perform miracles which have not been produced in all the earth nor among any of the nations;

2 Samuel 7:4 But in the same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, saying, “Go and say to My servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Are you the one who should build Me a house to dwell in?

1 Kings 6:11 Now the word of the Lord came to Solomon saying, “Concerning this house which you are building, if you will walk in My statutes and execute My ordinances and keep all My commandments by walking in them, then I will carry out My word with you which I spoke to David your father.

1 Kings 13:20 Now it came about, as they were sitting down at the table, that the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back; and he cried to the man of God who came from Judah, saying, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Because you have disobeyed the command of the Lord, and have not observed the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you,

Isaiah 1:10 Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; Give ear to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah. “What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?” says the Lord. "I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle;"

Isaiah 38:4 Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying, “Go and say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of your father David, “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life.

Jeremiah 13:8 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Just so will I destroy the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem.

And the same formula applies to New Testament prophets:

Acts 21:10 "As we were staying there for some days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. And coming to us, he took Paul’s belt and bound his own feet and hands, and said, “This is what the Holy Spirit says: "In this way the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.’”

Now if God did not actually say those words, but rather were simply thoughts in the prophets' minds which they verbalized, then the Bible is lying, because it actually quotes the very words God spoke. I've not seen anywhere where God gave a prophecy via a prophet's thoughts. In fact this is what scripture says about people who claim prophecies from their own thoughts:

Ezekiel 13:1 The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are now prophesying. Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: ‘Hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing!

Jeremiah 14:14 Then the Lord said to me, “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries and the delusions of their own minds.

Jeremiah 23:16. This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord."

Jeremiah 23:26 How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds?

The same applies to tongues and healers. Today's claimed tongues and healing does not match the biblical description of those gifts.



Cessationism was prevalent in the Church long before Protestantism came on the scene. Although the early church fathers (from 100ad) testified that these gifts were still present, the middle fathers (200-300 AD) said they are rare, and the late fathers (300-400AD) said they had ceased. This ties in perfectly with the distribution of the completed canon.

Augustine (354-430), The Homilies On John
In the earliest time, “the Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed; and they spake with tongues,” which they had not learned, “as the Spirit gave them utterance.” These were the Sign adapted to the time. For there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy Spirit in all tongues, to show that the Gospel of God was to run through all tongues over the whole earth. That thing was done for a betokening, and it passed away.

Chrysostom (347-407), on 1 Corinthians 12
This whole passage is exceedingly obscure; and what creates the obscurity is both ignorance of these matters and the cessation of things which happened then but do not now occur.
Chrysostom on 1 Cor 13:8
For if both these [gifts of prophecy and tongues] were brought in for the sake of the faith; when that is every where sown abroad, the use of these is henceforth superfluous. . . . It is no marvel that prophecies and tongues should be done away.

Theodoret (393-458) Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians:
In former times those who accepted the divine preaching and who were baptized for their salvation were given visible signs of the grace of the Holy Spirit at work in them. Some spoke in tongues which they did not know and which nobody had taught them, while others performed miracles or prophesied. The Corinthians also did these things, but they did not use the gifts as they should have done. They were more interested in showing off than in using them for the edification of the church.
There are many warnings in scripture too about false prophets. It was happening then, during and after Jesus being here. It still happens now. It will happen until Jesus comes back. So will the real thing.

Ezekiel 13:9: My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and utter lying divinations. They will not belong to the council of my people or be listed in the records of Israel, nor will they enter the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Sovereign LORD.

Jer 23:16: This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD.

Matthew 7:15-20:
Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.
18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

2 Peter 2: But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves.

If you are right that the gifts have ceased, then Paul is a liar.
 
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