Five Words Rather than Ten Thousand

The Cessationalist claim that tongues, prophecy, healing and many other gifts are not for today. Here is part of their thinking: The nature of the New Testament miraculous gifts . If the Spirit was still moving as he was in the first century, then you would expect that the gifts would be of the same type. Consider the speaking of tongues. At Pentecost, the languages spoken were already existing, understandable languages. The New Testament gift was speaking in a known language and dialect, not an ecstatic language like you see people speaking in today. I’m still looking for a citation on this one (all the others too!) Some may point to 1 Corinthians 13:10 and say that the “perfect has come” in the form of the complete cannon of scripture and that “tongues will cease.” All spiritual gifts are partial. The perfect comes with the full revelation of the church under the personal and direct control of Jesus Christ. This was the belief of all the Apostolic and early chu...

Spiritual Gifts are for Today This is a refutation of the article “7 Biblical Arguments for Cessationism,” the first point for a discontinuation of spiritual gifts was that miracles were only for certain periods in the Bible and  states for his first argument that miracles don’t happen anymore. “ The unique role of miracles . There were only 3 primary periods in which God worked miracles through unique men. The first was with Moses; the second was during the ministries of Elijah and Elisha; the third was with Christ and his apostles. The primary purpose of miracles has always been to establish the credibility of one who speaks the word of God—not just any teacher, but those who had been given direct words by God.” The writer invokes the fuzzy phrase “primary periods.” Yes these men’s ministries were distinguished by miracles, but to try to confine to certain periods does not take into account the full counsel of the scriptures concerning workers of miracles. The m...

I came across an article some years ago stating that the gifts of the Holy Spirit had ceased to operate for around 1,900 years. You can imagine my surprise. So I formulated my response mentally and filed it away for future use. Well lo and behold I have come across this phenomenon again and it’s called Cessationism. This time I’ll put my thoughts down for your enrichment or perhaps your aggravation. I was intrigued by the title of the article, “7 Biblical Arguments for Cessationism.”   I expected a frenzy of scriptures and proof texting but sadly there was none. I will summarize their points and offer my counter to their arguments based on the principle of the witness of 2 or 3 scriptures. This should take a couple of days. Today I will issue my primary answer to these arguments and it will be based on Acts 2:17-21; 38-39. Peter on the day of Pentecost started his sermon with, “And it shall be in the last days,’ God says, ‘That I will pour forth of My Spirit on all manki...