10. Reformed Baptist Distinctives: Cessationism

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11. Reformed Baptist Distinctives: Regulative Principle

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I'm sorry, commandment keeping.

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The next one is cessationism. Cessationism refers to the theological view that certain spiritual gifts mentioned in the

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New Testament, specifically gifts such as prophecy, healings, tongues, discerning of spirits, have ceased or passed away at some point in antiquity, usually at the closure of the canon or the death of the last apostle.

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Now, some who are Calvinists and hold to the ongoing gifts of the

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Spirit would say, no, no, no, we're still Reformed. But we would have to say, how can you still hold to the gifts of the

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Spirit and the revelatory gifts if we have the completed canon? If we have the completed canon, we don't need any more revelation to tell us what we need to do.

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If that's true, then Paul's letter to Timothy, where he says, Now, here's what

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I have to tell us, tell all of us. It doesn't mean that God is not supernatural. It doesn't mean that God doesn't still heal today.

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We pray that God heals people, right? We have a long prayer list and lots of people on it.

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We pray that God would heal them. Why? Because God can heal them. Oh, isn't that the ongoing gifts of the

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Spirit? No. That's God intervening and healing somebody. So when somebody tells me, oh, so -and -so has the gift of healing,

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I say, okay, give me so -and -so's name because I want to bring him to the Stony Brook PQ unit or the

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Veterans Hospital and see what they can do. And they say, well, you know, he'll pray.

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I say, no, no, no, no, no. You told me he has the gift of healing. Anytime the apostles laid hands on somebody, they were healed.

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If he has the same gift, he should see the same results. Well, he sees more healings than most, and that's not the gift of healing.

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All you have is what I have. You have access to God your Father, who you can petition and ask

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Him to intervene and heal people. But know this, just because we're cessationists does not mean that God isn't active in the world today.

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His Spirit is active. His Spirit regenerates people. That's a miracle. Bringing a dead heart to life is a miracle.

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Healing people is a miracle, and God still does that. What we're talking about is the apostolic sign gifts, the gifts that confirm the authority of the apostles when they were writing the

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New Testament and bringing the church to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the outer parts of the world.

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So this is a controversial topic among Reformed Christians, and not all hold to cessationism, but most do because they hold that the

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Scripture is sufficient to equip the man of God for every good work. Phil Johnson says we're obligated to the

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Word of God as confessed by the Reformed churches. Scripture alone is canonical. There's no truth, prophetic truth, revealed truth, that we need to know that's not in the

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Scriptures. The point of Sola Scriptura is to say that it is the unique and un -norm norm for the

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Christian faith and the Christian life. And we confess that unique canonical authority for faith and life over and against Rome and the

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Charismatics and the Pentecostals of all ages. We hold to the sufficiency of Scripture. That's all we need.