Number One Flaw in Cessationism

[CharismaticLady]

No, but they are the only ones who could bestow the gifts.

18 And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, (Acts 8:18 KJV)

6 Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. (2 Tim. 1:6 KJV)

That's not true. Peter did not lay hands on Cornelius, and was shocked when they started speaking in tongues. You keep forgetting - it is the Spirit who ultimately gives the gifts.

 

[CharismaticLady]

Verse 2 is an explanation. Do you realize that Chapter 14 was written to the Corinthian Church? It was a Church that had the gifts. That's why Paul writes this. That doesn't mean that people today have those same gifts.

Here we go again. They were in the SAME New Covenant as we are.

 

[Saint Steven]

No, but they are the only ones who could bestow the gifts.

18 And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, (Acts 8:18 KJV)

6 Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. (2 Tim. 1:6 KJV)

That's not correct.
What about Ananias who laid hands on Saul? And the Elders in Timothy's church?

1 Timothy 4:14
Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you.

 

[Butch5]

That's not true. Peter did not lay hands on Cornelius, and was shocked when they started speaking in tongues. You keep forgetting - it is the Spirit who ultimately gives the gifts.

The Bible's not true? How do you know if Peter laid hands on Cornelius? No, it's the Father who gave the gifts

 

[CharismaticLady]

That's not correct.
What about Ananias who laid hands on Saul? And the Elders in Timothy's church?

1 Timothy 4:14
Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you.

Steve, Cornelius never had hands laid on Him.

 

[swordsman1]

#112

Correct. That is also mock.

But it is also a positive sign to those who accept it. Eg at pentecost.

Interestingly the quote from Isaiah in 1 Cor 14:21 that Paul equates to Corinthian tongues is foreign human languages. Further proof that Corinthian tongues were human languages.

In the Law it is written:
“With other tongues
and through the lips of foreigners
I will speak to this people,
but even then they will not listen to me,
says the Lord.”
Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers;​

 

[Butch5]

That's not correct.
What about Ananias who laid hands on Saul? And the Elders in Timothy's church?

1 Timothy 4:14
Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you.

It's likely that Paul was there with the elders. That's the only way to reconcile the passages. Ananias was an apostle, he was sent by the Lord. He just wasn't one of the twelve.

 

[Butch5]

Steve, Cornelius never had hands laid on Him.

How do you know that?

 

[CharismaticLady]

The Bible's not true? How do you know if Peter laid hands on Cornelius? No, it's the Father who gave the gifts

These three are one.

Acts 10:
44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word. 45 And those of the circumcision who believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. 46 For they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God.

 

[Saint Steven]

@CharismaticLady
Life is so much better with the ungifted on IGNORE. - lol

 

[ICONO'CLAST]

I probably don't know everything, but I know enough to know that nothing ceases inside a covenant until the covenant, itself, ends. Each covenant also has a sign of the covenant. Do you know the sign of the Old Covenant? Do you know the Sign of the New Covenant?

So be my guest - teach me what I don't know. I'm very interested - honestly.

Introduction: On Covenant Theology | Monergism

Second, the Word of God is not properly understood till it is viewed within a covenantal frame.

Covenant theology, as was said above, is a biblical hermeneutic as well as a formulation of biblical teaching. Not only does it spring from reading the Scriptures as a unity, it includes in itself specific claims as to how this should be done. Covenant theology offers a total view, which it is ready to validate from Scripture itself if challenged, as to how the various parts of the Bible stand related to each other. The essence of the view is as follows. The biblical revelation, which is the written Word of God, centers upon a God-given narrative of how successive and cumulative revelations of God's covenant purpose and provision were given and responded to at key points in history. The backbone of the Bible, to which all the expository, homiletical, moral, liturgical, and devotional material relates, is the unfolding in space and time of God's unchanging intention of having a people on earth to whom he would relate covenantally for his and their joy. The contents of Scripture cohere into a single consistent body of truth about God and mankind, by which every Christian -- indeed, every human being -- in every generation is called to live. The Bible in one sense, like Jesus Christ in another, is God's word to the world.

The story that forms this backbone of the Bible has to do with man's covenant relationship with God first ruined and then restored. The original covenantal arrangement, usually called the Covenant of Works, was one whereby God undertook to prolong and augment for all subsequent humanity the happy state in which he had made the first human pair -- provided that the man observed, as part of the humble obedience that was then natural to him, one prohibition, specified in the narrative as not eating a forbidden fruit. The devil, presented as a serpent, seduced Adam and Eve into disobeying, so that they fell under the penal sanctions of the Covenant of Works (loss of good, and corruption of nature). But God at once revealed to them in embryo a redemptive economy that had in it both the covering of sin, and a prospective victory for the woman's seed (a human Savior) over the serpent and his malice. The redemptive purpose of this new arrangement became clearer as God called Abraham, made a nation from his descendants, saved them from slavery, named himself not only their God but also their King and Father, taught them his law (the family code), drilled them in sacrificial liturgies, disciplined their disobedience, and sent messengers to hold up before them his holiness and his promise of a SaviorKing and a saving kingdom; which in due course became reality. The Westminster Confession summarizes what was going on in and through all this.

"Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by (the first) covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace: wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe. . .
"This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel; under the law it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foresignifying Christ to come, which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the old Testament.
"Under the gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper . . . in them, it is held forth in more fullness, evidence and spiritual efficacy, to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles; and is called the new Testament. There are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations" (VII.iii. v. vi).

So the unifying strands that bind together the books of the Bible are, first, the one covenant promise, sloganized as "I will be your God, and you shall be my people," which God was fulfilling to his elect all through his successive orderings of covenant faith and life; second, the one messenger and mediator of the covenant, Jesus Christ the God-man, prophet and king, priest and sacrifice, the Messiah of Old Testament prophecy and New Testament proclamation; third, the one people of God, the covenant community, the company of the elect, whom God brings to faith and keeps in faith, from Abel, Noah and Abraham through the remnant of Israel to the worldwide New Testament church of believing Jews and Gentiles; and fourth, the one pattern of covenant piety, consisting of faith, repentance, love, joy, praise, hope, hatred of sin, desire for sanctity, a spirit of prayer, and readiness to battle the world, the flesh, and the devil in order to glorify God . . . a pattern displayed most fully, perhaps, in Luther's "little Bible," the Psalter, but seen also in the lives of God's servants in both Testaments and reflected more or less fully in each single one of the Old and New Testament books. Covenant theologians insist that every book of the Bible in effect asks to be read in terms of these unities, and as contributing to the exposition of them, and is actually misunderstood if it is not so read.

Third, the reality of God is not properly understood till it is viewed within a covenantal frame.

Who is God? God is the triune Creator, who purposes to have a covenant people whom in love he will exalt for his glory. ("Glory" there means both God's demonstration of his praiseworthiness and the actual praising that results.) Why does God so purpose? -- why, that is, does he desire covenantal fellowship with rational beings? The most we can say (for the question is not one to which God has given us a direct answer) is that the nature of such fellowship observably corresponds to the relationships of mutual honor and love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit within the unity of the divine being, so that the divine purpose appears to be, so to speak, an enlarging of this circle of eternal love and joy. In highlighting the thought that covenantal communion is the inner life of God, covenant theology makes the truth of the Trinity more meaningful than it can otherwise be.

Nor is this all. Scripture is explicit on the fact that from eternity, in light of human sin foreseen, a specific agreement existed between the Father and the Son that they would exalt each other in the following way: the Father would honor the Son by sending him to save lost sinners through a penal self-sacrifice leading to a cosmic reign in which the central activity would be the imparting to sinners through the Holy Spirit of the redemption he won for them; and the Son would honor the Father by becoming the Father's love-gift to sinners and by leading them through the Spirit to trust, love and glorify the Father on the model of his own obedience to the Father's will. This covenant of Redemption, as it is commonly called, which underlies the Covenant of Grace, clarifies these three truths at least:

(1) The love of the Father and the Son, with the Holy Spirit, to lost sinners is shared, unanimous love. The tritheistic fantasy of a loving Son placating an unloving Father and commandeering an apathetic Holy Spirit in or save us is a distressing nonsense.

(2) As our salvation derives from God's free and gracious initiative and is carried through, first to last, according to God's eternal plan by God's own sovereign power, so its ultimate purpose is to exalt and glorify the Father and the Son together. The man-centered distortion that pictures God as saving us more for our sake than for his is also a distressing nonsense.

(3) Jesus Christ is the focal figure, the proper center of our faith-full attention, throughout the redemptive economy. He, as Mediator of the Covenant of Grace and of the grace of that covenant, is as truly an object of divine predestination as are we whom he saves. With him as our sponsor and representative, the last Adam, the second "public person" through whom the Father deals with our race, the Covenant of Grace is archetypally and fundamentally made, in order that it may now be established and ratified with us in him. ("With whom was the covenant of grace made?" asks question 31 of the Westminster Larger Catechism, and the prescribed answer is: "The covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed.") From the vital union that we have with Christ through the Holy Spirit's action flows all the aliveness to God, all the faith, hope and love God-ward, all the desire for him and urges to worship him and willingness to work for him, of which we ever were, are, or will be conscious; apart from Christ we should still be spiritually dead (objectively, lifeless; subjectively, unresponsive) in our trespasses and sins. Christ is therefore to be acknowledged, now and for ever, as our all in all, our Alpha and Omega, so far as our salvation is concerned -- and that goes for salvation subjectively brought home to us, no less than for salvation objectively obtained for us. The legalistic, sub-spiritual Roman Catholic theology of Mass and merit, whereby Christians are required by the Father, and enabled by the Son, to take part in the achieving of their own salvation, is a further distressing nonsense.

 

[ICONO'CLAST]

@CharismaticLady
Life is so much better with the ungifted on IGNORE. - lol

You ignored yourself???

 

[Butch5]

These three are one.

Acts 10:
44 While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word. 45 And those of the circumcision who believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. 46 For they heard them speak with tongues and magnify God.

Firstly, God sent Peter there for a specific reason. You don't know that Peter didn't lay hands on Cornelius. You're just assuming.

 

[Saint Steven]

How do you know that?

The Spirit came on the whole house while Peter was still speaking.

CharismaticLady said: ↑
Steve, Cornelius never had hands laid on Him.

 

[CharismaticLady]

But it is also a positive sign to those who accept it. Eg at pentecost.

Interestingly the quote from Isaiah in 1 Cor 14:21 that Paul equates to Corinthian tongues is foreign human languages. Further proof that Corinthian tongues were human languages.

In the Law it is written:
“With other tongues
and through the lips of foreigners
I will speak to this people,
but even then they will not listen to me,
says the Lord.”
Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers;​

Even extinct languages were human languages, and the point is only that GOD UNDERSTANDS THEM ALL. But angels have a language also, and Paul wouldn't confuse us like Clement did by taking about a mythical bird. 1 Corinthians 14:2 is either true or it is not. And there is only one way that supernatural tongues can be understood. How?

 

[Saint Steven]

Firstly, God sent Peter there for a specific reason. You don't know that Peter didn't lay hands on Cornelius. You're just assuming.

They were manifesting the Spirit. (which comes with gifts) The next step was water baptism.

 

[CharismaticLady]

Firstly, God sent Peter there for a specific reason. You don't know that Peter didn't lay hands on Cornelius. You're just assuming.

His whole household received. Is Peter an octopus?

 

[Butch5]

The Spirit came on the whole house while Peter was still speaking.

CharismaticLady said: ↑
Steve, Cornelius never had hands laid on Him.

Yeah, and we're not told what all was going on. But even if it was without Peter's hands physically on Cornelius, it was in presence of an apostle and God has specifically sent Peter there for that purpose. This still doesn't negate other passages of Scripture. Luke clearly said that the Holy Spirit was given by the laying of the apostles hands.

 

[Butch5]

They were manifesting the Spirit. (which comes with gifts) The next step was water baptism.

Again, we don't know what all was going on.

 

[CharismaticLady]

Introduction: On Covenant Theology | Monergism

Second, the Word of God is not properly understood till it is viewed within a covenantal frame.

Covenant theology, as was said above, is a biblical hermeneutic as well as a formulation of biblical teaching. Not only does it spring from reading the Scriptures as a unity, it includes in itself specific claims as to how this should be done. Covenant theology offers a total view, which it is ready to validate from Scripture itself if challenged, as to how the various parts of the Bible stand related to each other. The essence of the view is as follows. The biblical revelation, which is the written Word of God, centers upon a God-given narrative of how successive and cumulative revelations of God's covenant purpose and provision were given and responded to at key points in history. The backbone of the Bible, to which all the expository, homiletical, moral, liturgical, and devotional material relates, is the unfolding in space and time of God's unchanging intention of having a people on earth to whom he would relate covenantally for his and their joy. The contents of Scripture cohere into a single consistent body of truth about God and mankind, by which every Christian -- indeed, every human being -- in every generation is called to live. The Bible in one sense, like Jesus Christ in another, is God's word to the world.

The story that forms this backbone of the Bible has to do with man's covenant relationship with God first ruined and then restored. The original covenantal arrangement, usually called the Covenant of Works, was one whereby God undertook to prolong and augment for all subsequent humanity the happy state in which he had made the first human pair -- provided that the man observed, as part of the humble obedience that was then natural to him, one prohibition, specified in the narrative as not eating a forbidden fruit. The devil, presented as a serpent, seduced Adam and Eve into disobeying, so that they fell under the penal sanctions of the Covenant of Works (loss of good, and corruption of nature). But God at once revealed to them in embryo a redemptive economy that had in it both the covering of sin, and a prospective victory for the woman's seed (a human Savior) over the serpent and his malice. The redemptive purpose of this new arrangement became clearer as God called Abraham, made a nation from his descendants, saved them from slavery, named himself not only their God but also their King and Father, taught them his law (the family code), drilled them in sacrificial liturgies, disciplined their disobedience, and sent messengers to hold up before them his holiness and his promise of a SaviorKing and a saving kingdom; which in due course became reality. The Westminster Confession summarizes what was going on in and through all this.

"Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by (the first) covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace: wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe. . .
"This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel; under the law it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foresignifying Christ to come, which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the old Testament.
"Under the gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper . . . in them, it is held forth in more fullness, evidence and spiritual efficacy, to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles; and is called the new Testament. There are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations" (VII.iii. v. vi).

So the unifying strands that bind together the books of the Bible are, first, the one covenant promise, sloganized as "I will be your God, and you shall be my people," which God was fulfilling to his elect all through his successive orderings of covenant faith and life; second, the one messenger and mediator of the covenant, Jesus Christ the God-man, prophet and king, priest and sacrifice, the Messiah of Old Testament prophecy and New Testament proclamation; third, the one people of God, the covenant community, the company of the elect, whom God brings to faith and keeps in faith, from Abel, Noah and Abraham through the remnant of Israel to the worldwide New Testament church of believing Jews and Gentiles; and fourth, the one pattern of covenant piety, consisting of faith, repentance, love, joy, praise, hope, hatred of sin, desire for sanctity, a spirit of prayer, and readiness to battle the world, the flesh, and the devil in order to glorify God . . . a pattern displayed most fully, perhaps, in Luther's "little Bible," the Psalter, but seen also in the lives of God's servants in both Testaments and reflected more or less fully in each single one of the Old and New Testament books. Covenant theologians insist that every book of the Bible in effect asks to be read in terms of these unities, and as contributing to the exposition of them, and is actually misunderstood if it is not so read.

Third, the reality of God is not properly understood till it is viewed within a covenantal frame.

Who is God? God is the triune Creator, who purposes to have a covenant people whom in love he will exalt for his glory. ("Glory" there means both God's demonstration of his praiseworthiness and the actual praising that results.) Why does God so purpose? -- why, that is, does he desire covenantal fellowship with rational beings? The most we can say (for the question is not one to which God has given us a direct answer) is that the nature of such fellowship observably corresponds to the relationships of mutual honor and love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit within the unity of the divine being, so that the divine purpose appears to be, so to speak, an enlarging of this circle of eternal love and joy. In highlighting the thought that covenantal communion is the inner life of God, covenant theology makes the truth of the Trinity more meaningful than it can otherwise be.

Nor is this all. Scripture is explicit on the fact that from eternity, in light of human sin foreseen, a specific agreement existed between the Father and the Son that they would exalt each other in the following way: the Father would honor the Son by sending him to save lost sinners through a penal self-sacrifice leading to a cosmic reign in which the central activity would be the imparting to sinners through the Holy Spirit of the redemption he won for them; and the Son would honor the Father by becoming the Father's love-gift to sinners and by leading them through the Spirit to trust, love and glorify the Father on the model of his own obedience to the Father's will. This covenant of Redemption, as it is commonly called, which underlies the Covenant of Grace, clarifies these three truths at least:

(1) The love of the Father and the Son, with the Holy Spirit, to lost sinners is shared, unanimous love. The tritheistic fantasy of a loving Son placating an unloving Father and commandeering an apathetic Holy Spirit in or save us is a distressing nonsense.

(2) As our salvation derives from God's free and gracious initiative and is carried through, first to last, according to God's eternal plan by God's own sovereign power, so its ultimate purpose is to exalt and glorify the Father and the Son together. The man-centered distortion that pictures God as saving us more for our sake than for his is also a distressing nonsense.

(3) Jesus Christ is the focal figure, the proper center of our faith-full attention, throughout the redemptive economy. He, as Mediator of the Covenant of Grace and of the grace of that covenant, is as truly an object of divine predestination as are we whom he saves. With him as our sponsor and representative, the last Adam, the second "public person" through whom the Father deals with our race, the Covenant of Grace is archetypally and fundamentally made, in order that it may now be established and ratified with us in him. ("With whom was the covenant of grace made?" asks question 31 of the Westminster Larger Catechism, and the prescribed answer is: "The covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed.") From the vital union that we have with Christ through the Holy Spirit's action flows all the aliveness to God, all the faith, hope and love God-ward, all the desire for him and urges to worship him and willingness to work for him, of which we ever were, are, or will be conscious; apart from Christ we should still be spiritually dead (objectively, lifeless; subjectively, unresponsive) in our trespasses and sins. Christ is therefore to be acknowledged, now and for ever, as our all in all, our Alpha and Omega, so far as our salvation is concerned -- and that goes for salvation subjectively brought home to us, no less than for salvation objectively obtained for us. The legalistic, sub-spiritual Roman Catholic theology of Mass and merit, whereby Christians are required by the Father, and enabled by the Son, to take part in the achieving of their own salvation, is a further distressing nonsense.

Thanks very much. I haven't read it, but I did save it into a document to print and read in bed.