To Cease or to Continue, that is the Question

[Saint Steven]

Oh I apologize, it was actually Francis Drake who made that claim.

So if you are using the popular verse used by Bill Johnson at Bethel, Matthew 10:8, did you not realized Matthew 10:5 also exists?

I always wonder why no one ever ask him why he deliberately left out Matthew 10:5. The instructions in vs 8 comes after vs 5 you know?

No worries. I wondered if the question was misdirected. - lol

I think you are selecting the wrong before and afters.

The Apostle Paul was sent to the gentiles, Jesus was not, nor was Peter. What Paul was doing is more direct to our situation. But miracles with all three.

1 Corinthians 2:3-5
I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

 

[Francis Drake]

So in case you have not seen my other post, do you think there are still apostles today?

Do you actually believe the scriptures when you read them, or do you look around and modify the scriptures to suit your limited church experience?
Here's what I read.
Eph4v11And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,
In reading the above, do you believe there are still evangelists pastors and teachers today?
If so why do you believe that?

 

[Saint Steven]

hmmm Jesus and the Apostles healed people they didn't pray for and that even had no faith.

so much your your assertion eh ?

That's an issue of your understanding. Only God can heal. Jesus and the Apostles couldn't heal anyone. This has not changed. Only God can heal. People without faith are still healed today and a lack of faith can still prevent healing today. We can pray for someone up front at a service and someone sitting down gets healed as well, or even instead. Even a prayer for someone over a cell phone will prompt a healing. The person need not be present.

 

[Jesus is YHWH]

Drivel.
Eisegesis is placing an end date in Romans or any other book of the bible which is blatantly not there in the original.

look up the word like I asked you to look up the word " yesterday"

more or your drivel since you are placing your own meaning on words instead of there actual meaning.

 

[Jesus is YHWH]

That's an issue of your understanding. Only God can heal. Jesus and the Apostles couldn't heal anyone. This has not changed. Only God can heal. People without faith are still healed today and a lack of faith can still prevent healing today. We can pray for someone up front at a service and someone sitting down gets healed as well, or even instead. Even a prayer for someone over a cell phone will prompt a healing. The person need not be present.

read your bible since its there as this is just more of your hairsplitting

 

[Saint Steven]

read your bible since its there as this is just more of your hairsplitting

Quit being so dismissive. I've been reading the Bible for over 40 years.
Are you claiming that God cannot heal today? I am not hairsplitting. I have ALWAYS allowed you to have your own opinion. A favor you have not returned.

Saint Steven said: ↑
That's an issue of your understanding. Only God can heal. Jesus and the Apostles couldn't heal anyone. This has not changed. Only God can heal. People without faith are still healed today and a lack of faith can still prevent healing today. We can pray for someone up front at a service and someone sitting down gets healed as well, or even instead. Even a prayer for someone over a cell phone will prompt a healing. The person need not be present.

 

[Saint Steven]

read your bible since its there as this is just more of your hairsplitting

Who wins when you play the Bible versus Bible game?
Is your Bible bigger than my Bible, or what?

 

[Francis Drake]

look up the word like I asked you to look up the word " yesterday"

more or your drivel since you are placing your own meaning on words instead of there actual meaning.

Haha. How's this for you?
Merriam Webster =
Definition of eisegesis
: the interpretation of a text (as of the Bible) by reading into it one's own ideas

A good example would be, despite Paul doing no such thing, placing an end date in Romans to suit your own agenda.

I prefer to read it as Paul intended.

 

[Jesus is YHWH]

Haha. How's this for you?
Merriam Webster =
Definition of eisegesis
: the interpretation of a text (as of the Bible) by reading into it one's own ideas

A good example would be, despite Paul doing no such thing, placing an end date in Romans to suit your own agenda.

I prefer to read it as Paul intended.

your sign gifts are not mentioned in Romans

next.................................................

 

[Francis Drake]

The question then becomes "If (whatever it is) DOES come to an end, how do we interpret that?"

Its called carnality, replacing spiritual Christianity with intellectual Christianity. You can't blame scripture for man's failure to believe it.

 

[Francis Drake]

your sign gifts are not mentioned in Romans

next.................................................

Again you limit God.
Romans12v6And we are having different gifts according to the grace given to us: if prophecy, according to the proportion of the faith; 7or service, in the service; or teaching, in the teaching; 8or exhorting, in the exhortation; giving, in generosity; leading, in diligence; showing mercy, in cheerfulness.

Paul talks about gifts in several places, the fact that his lists of spiritual gifts varies doesn't mean one list trumps another. When he talks about gifts it means all gifts and the different lists complement each other.

Romans1v11For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.
There's no way Paul would put limits on those gifts to suit your particular theology, or mine for that matter.

 

[Jesus is YHWH]

Again you limit God.
Romans12v6And we are having different gifts according to the grace given to us: if prophecy, according to the proportion of the faith; 7or service, in the service; or teaching, in the teaching; 8or exhorting, in the exhortation; giving, in generosity; leading, in diligence; showing mercy, in cheerfulness.

Paul talks about gifts in several places, the fact that his lists of spiritual gifts varies doesn't mean one list trumps another. When he talks about gifts it means all gifts and the different lists complement each other.

Romans1v11For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.
There's no way Paul would put limits on those gifts to suit your particular theology, or mine for that matter.

If those gifts were still in operation when Paul wrote his epistle then they would be included as active gifts. Your argument is nothing but one from silence.

next..........................................

 

[Albion]

Its called carnality, replacing spiritual Christianity with intellectual Christianity. You can't blame scripture for man's failure to believe it.

It's none of that. The question couldn't be more straightforward. Did tongues cease or did they not?

If they did, then the question about how to understand scripture answers itself. And that is the point on which the entire continuationist vs. cessationist disagreement rests.

 

[Francis Drake]

It's none of that. The question couldn't be more straightforward. Did tongues cease or did they not?

Oh it is entirely that, carnality destroys spiritual truth every day.
But your question is totally unprovable issue either way.

If they did, then the question about how to understand scripture answers itself. And that is the point on which the entire continuationist vs. cessationist disagreement rests.

But you have absolutely no knowledge whether tongues ceased or not. Most certainly the institutional church over the centuries has done its damnedest to stop it, killing and burning at the stake anyone suspected of such deviancy as speaking in tongues.

But nobody has any idea what happened behind closed doors.
I haven't attended any church for over 10 years, and I regularly pray and worship in in tongues with my wife.

Following a point you made, whether or not you accept their validity, I asked you a while back when you thought the modern manifestation of spiritual gifts restarted. Do you have an answer?

 

[Francis Drake]

If those gifts were still in operation when Paul wrote his epistle then they would be included as active gifts. Your argument is nothing but one from silence.

That's a childish, ill thought out comment.
If you insist on that approach you then need to go through Paul's writing and delete anything that isn't confirmed exactly by his other writings.

Perhaps he should have photocopied one letter and sent it to very church.

 

[Jesus is YHWH]

That's a childish, ill thought out comment.
If you insist on that approach you then need to go through Paul's writing and delete anything that isn't confirmed exactly by his other writings.

Perhaps he should have photocopied one letter and sent it to very church.

ad hominem

Definition of ad hominem
(Entry 1 of 2)

1: appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellectan ad hominem argument
2: marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions mademade an ad hominem personal attack on his rival

your responses to me say much more about your arguments/character

hope this helps !!!

 

[Albion]

Oh it is entirely that...

Yes. Did tongues cease or did they not? They did. That is the POV of the people who are termed cessationists. Agree with their thinking or not, this is the issue with them.

I put it as plainly as possible here in case there were a chance of discussing the matter on its own terms rather than through the maze of rapturous but irrelevant posturing that usually is exhibited in debates on this topic.

But you have absolutely no knowledge whether tongues ceased or not.

Oh sure we do. It's the verdict of history, just as we know that Egypt was a country to which the Holy Family could have fled, that crucifixion was a common way of conducting executions in the Roman Empire, and etc.

But nobody has any idea what happened behind closed doors.

Certainly we do. While every last individual case of some religious devotion has not been chronicled, it is impossible that for hundreds of years history overlooked such a dramatic and controversial thing as glossolalia. As I noted before, we know of far less important and colorful things; we'd know of this too if it had happened.

I haven't attended any church for over 10 years, and I regularly pray and worship in in tongues with my wife.

But this is not showing us that tongues didn't cease (following which various splinter churches and teachers tried to re-introduce the practice).

A cessationist, so-called, is not saying that no tongues-speaking can happen. The point of the term is to say that these Christians take note of the fact that they died out in past centuries, thereby refuting the claim that they couldn't do so.

Following a point you made, whether or not you accept their validity, I asked you a while back when you thought the modern manifestation of spiritual gifts restarted. Do you have an answer?

I answered that a few posts back. Before you asked it.

 

[Guojing]

Do you actually believe the scriptures when you read them, or do you look around and modify the scriptures to suit your limited church experience?
Here's what I read.
Eph4v11And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,
In reading the above, do you believe there are still evangelists pastors and teachers today?
If so why do you believe that?

Guess you have not read my previous post then.

I think most would agree that the gift of apostleship, that Paul mentioned before in 1 Corinthians 12:28, has ceased for today.

If you follow strictly the criteria to be an apostle, you have to witness the resurrected Christ 1 Corinthians 9:1, you have to perform signs and wonders of an apostle 2 Corinthians 12:12, all these will disqualify anyone who claim to be an apostle today.

Since that gift has ceased without being explicitly stated in the Bible, it is not that difficult to conclude that there might be other gifts, in that list 1 Corinthians 12:28, that has also ceased without being explicitly mentioned.

 

[Guojing]

No worries. I wondered if the question was misdirected. - lol

I think you are selecting the wrong before and afters.

The Apostle Paul was sent to the gentiles, Jesus was not, nor was Peter. What Paul was doing is more direct to our situation. But miracles with all three.

1 Corinthians 2:3-5
I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.

God gave Paul signs and wonders to authenticate to the other apostles that he was a legitimate apostle like them, and that the gospel he was preaching to the gentiles was legitimate.

If you recall Acts 15

12 Then all the multitude kept silence, and gave audience to Barnabas and Paul, declaring what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them.

He further confirmed that signs and wonders were necessary to verify apostleship in 2 Corinthians 12:12. Jews always required a sign (1 Cor 1:22).

But come to the end of his ministry, Paul indicated that those signs have ceased, even for him. In the letters to Timothy, that is where the advice of wine drinking came in.

 

[Albion]

Being an apostle is not one of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit as identified in Corinthians, but that verse is the focus of the continuationists vs cessationists debate.