I find your comments rather tongue-in-cheek as usual - designed to give the (misleading) APPEARANCE that cessationists haven't cheapened the Kingdom or deprecated God in any form or fashion. It's a subtle way of seducing people into cessationism.
That's a bold statement coming from a cessationist. So the number of healings wasn't supposed to decline after all? Maybe the real problem is that the church has strayed off course starting almost 2,000 years ago? TruthSeek3r perceptively challenged you on this point. He asked you:
"Are you including here praying for someone to be healed of an incurable medical condition?"
AT WHICH POINT, you backed off some of that boldness, by replying:
Deflection. What happened to all that boldness? You continue:
How is "rare and intermittent" NOT a decline in His "intentions" (your word) with respect to the early church? Or with respect to Exodus 15:26, Mark 11:23, and James 5:15?
You pretend that the only viable explanation of the decline in the gifts is that God WANTED them to diminish. This attitude casts serious aspersions upon God because it makes Him look stingy. Jesus healed the sick out of compassion but now is largely stone-cold-hearted to them?
As I've pointed out to you before, here's Paul definition of a church - it's the only definition which I accept.
"And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues." (1Cor 12:28).
All other definitions of a church are man-made fabrications and traditions (including their man-made rites of appointment to office, ordination, and prequalifications for ministry such as seminary degrees). In the early church, God appointed apostles and prophets who, in turn, appointed local pastors.
Cessationism doesn't make God look stingy? That's odd, because if He REALLY wants people to get saved, wouldn't He want the following gift to proliferate even MORE than the early church saw it?
"If an unbeliever or an inquirer comes in while everyone is prophesying, they are convicted of sin and are brought under judgment by all,
25as the secrets of their hearts are laid bare. So they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!” (1Cor 14).
Cessationism is a confusing indeterminacy and thus a totally random shot in the dark. Meaning, if the gifts were supposed to cease, how can we know from Scripture the cutoff year? Cessationists claim, "When the gifts lapsed, that's the cutoff." But according to these same cessationists, the gifts declined at SEVERAL points in history, even for centuries at a time. By that logic, then, the gifts already ceased in the OT, which makes no sense given Acts.