Cessationism: Where Does the Bible Say Explicitly That the Miraculous Gifts Cease?

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Welcome to Bible Bashed, where we aim to equip the Saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

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Listen and enjoy this installment of Iron Sharpening Iron, as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions.

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Here's Pastor Tim. We recently did a podcast on the question of the difference between cessationism and continuationism.

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The question that we were trying to ask was the question, should people who claim to be speaking words directly from God today essentially be considered false prophets?

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Now, a sincere question that we had that was related to this was the question coming from an individual who occupies basically the open but cautious position.

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And that position is essentially the kind of position that says, hey, look, a lot of the charismatic phenomenon that I'm seeing, the tongues, the gift of healing, the direct words from the

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Lord, these things kind of creep me out, to be honest. But then when I'm reading the Bible, I don't know that I have some sort of direct

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Biblical reason to say that these things are no more. So as I read the scriptures, I see that, hey, there was a thing like a gift of tongues, and there was gifts of prophecy.

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You see people speaking directly from God in the New Testament, in the Old Testament. It seems safer to just say, hey,

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I'm open to the idea that God can still do that sort of thing if He wanted to do it.

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But then I'm cautious, meaning I'm looking out and seeing what

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I'm seeing. It doesn't seem to be done very poorly. But in the absence of some sort of direct word from God saying,

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I'm not going to do that anymore, it seems the safer bet just to be open to the idea, but cautious and basically suspicious.

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And so, is there anything in the Bible that would seem to close the door on these kind of things? Is there any direct sort of statement in the scriptures that would, or verses in the scriptures, which would tell us that we shouldn't expect the supernatural gifts anymore, the gift of healing, the gift of tongues, this kind of stuff.

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So what would you say to that? Now, part of what's happened here, related to this kind of question, is that there is a misunderstanding of what the signed gifts are, the miraculous gifts actually are.

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One of the things that the Charismatic Movement has done is the Charismatic Movement has come along and basically normalized the signed gifts, essentially.

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Basically, the Charismatic Movement is built on the assumption that the signed gifts were normative for believers throughout the church age.

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And this is an assumption that really is incredible when you think about it, and this assumption that doesn't, that has to be assumed, it has to be read into the text of Scripture.

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It's not something that naturally arises. And so typically when God gives signed gifts, these signed gifts are always limited in their function, if that makes sense.

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So what I mean is that when God sent Moses into Egypt, one of the things that he did was he gave him certain signs to perform.

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So when God sent Moses into Egypt, he gave him a leper's hand, he gave him a serpent's staff, and the ability to turn water into blood.

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Now, why did he do that? Well, he did that because essentially Moses understood the basic dilemma of him going into Egypt and speaking to Pharaoh.

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Moses was essentially a homeless man who was going to walk into Egypt, and he's going to say to Pharaoh, God says,

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Lord, let my people go. And Moses says, well, how will they know that I'm sent from you? Like, well, how will they know that I'm not just some, you know, raving lunatic, some, you know, meth addict or something like that?

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Why would they believe me? Why won't they think I'm crazy and out of my mind? And God essentially, in response to that, gives him a certain series of signs to perform.

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One of them was the leper's hand. He could put his hand inside of his coat, pull it out, and it would be leprous, and then put it back in and bring it back out and be clean.

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The ability to turn a staff into serpent and water into blood and that kind of thing. And so God gives him signs.

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These are sign gifts. They're signs that are going to establish him as his messenger. That's what they were for.

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All right. So now, no one under the old covenant, there is no expectation under the old covenant that these sign gifts were normative things that your average

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Jodo -Ish or like, you know, magic tricks that they could perform in order to edify the church or something like that.

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They're not for that. That's not why they were there and no one ever made the assumption that they would ever be normative.

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They had a specific function. They were going to validate Moses as the prophet of the

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Lord. When that function was fulfilled, the sign ceased.

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And so here's the thing. I mean, there's no verse in the Bible that says that Christians shouldn't expect to turn a staff into a serpent or be expected to turn water into blood or to have a leprous hand.

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There's no verse in the Bible that's going to say, hey, that's done away with. Just like that.

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But the reason why there's not is because literally no thoughtful reader of the

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Old Testament should ever assume that that's a normative thing. It was given to a particular person for a particular situation for a particular purpose.

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That's the point. Okay, so when it comes to tongues, one of the things to realize is that tongues in the

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Bible, we'll just deal with tongues, for example, just to establish this basic point in order to try to illuminate where the cessationist position is coming from.

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You think about something like tongues. Tongues are clearly foreign languages. That's what they are. So if you go to Acts, you go to Acts chapter 2, one of the things to realize is that Acts 2 talks about tongues and the language of foreign languages.

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Now, Acts 2 verse 1, when the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place and suddenly there came from heaven sound like a mighty rushing wind which filled the entire house where they were sitting and divided tongues of fire appeared upon them and rested on each one of them.

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And they were all, each of them, filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues or languages as the

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Spirit gave them utterance. How do you know there are languages? Well, notice what it says, verse 5. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven, and at the sound the multitude came together and they were bewildered and each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language.

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And they were amazed and astonished and saying, Are not these who are speaking Galileans? So how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language,

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Parthians and Medes, Elamites and the residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both

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Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues or our own language the mighty works of God.

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And they were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean? But others mocked, saying, They are filled with new wise. So here's the thing.

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God, like God says to his apostles, I have more commands to give you, but you can't bear them.

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So you're going to be my witnesses to Jerusalem, to Judea, and to the ends of the earth. Wait for me and the promised coming of the

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Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes, He's going to guide you in all truth. He's going to take from mine and declare it to you.

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He's going to give you those additional commands. And so what was the sign of the coming of the Holy Spirit? It was the sign of the

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Jews from all nations under heaven speaking words. They were speaking human languages.

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So they were speaking human languages and the people from different parts of the country were saying,

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We hear ourself. They didn't hear Babel. They didn't hear, I want to buy a Honda. They heard people speaking in their own language.

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So tongues and acts was the sign of the coming of the Holy Spirit to God's church.

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That's what it was. It was a sign of the Holy Spirit coming. Now the same thing happens later on.

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So first the Holy Spirit is poured out in Acts 2 on the Jews and they all speak in tongues and they hear them speaking in their own language.

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And then in Acts 10 the Holy Spirit falls upon the Gentiles and the Gentiles also hear them speaking in tongues.

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And so they hear them speaking in foreign languages, human languages that they actually understand.

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Why would that happen? Well, because God first went to the Jews and afterwards He went through the

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Greeks and this was something that happened with Peter where Peter became aware that God makes no distinction between Jews and Greeks.

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He's building his church. It's going to be included of Jews. It's going to be included of Gentiles. And so the

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Holy Spirit came in two different phases, first to the Jews and then it came to the Gentiles and that was to unify the

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Church of God. So it had a particular purpose. It was a sign. Now Paul says it as much like when you read through 1st

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Corinthians, one of the things that you're going to see is this 1st Corinthians 14 20

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He says brothers do not be children in your thinking be infants and evil But in your thinking be mature in the law

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It is written by people of strange tongues or languages and by the lips of foreigners

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I will speak to this people and even then they will not listen to me says Lord Thus he says tongues or the gift of human languages are assigned

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What does he say not for believers but for unbelievers while prophecy is assigned not for unbelievers but for believers

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If the whole if therefore the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues and outsider or unbelievers enter

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Will they not say that you are all out of your minds if you're just babbling in foreign languages without interpreters?

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And will they not think that you're out of your mind? So but if all prophesy and the unbeliever outsider enters he's convicted by all he's called an account by all the secrets of his

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Heart are disclosed and so falling on his face. He will worship God and declare that God is really among you Here's the thing

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Paul Paul says don't be infants in your thinking. So don't be childish in your thinking, right?

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don't Don't be childish in your thinking in the law is written by people of strange tongues in the lips of foreigners

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I will speak to this people and even then they will not listen to me. What were time science tongues It says thus songs are assigned not for believers, but for unbelievers

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What were what was the purpose of tongues the purpose of tongues was a sign of judgment in the law is Predicted that God was going to speak to the

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Jews by men of foreign tongues. What happened in an axe? well, one of the things that you see in acts is that there's

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Jews from all over heaven the Holy Spirit comes and They all hear them speaking their own language.

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Then the Holy Spirit comes to the Gentiles. This is a sign of judgment For the

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Israelites basically saying by by by men of strange length strange languages

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I'm gonna speak to them and for all this they were not here. The issue is tongues had a historical significance

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It was a sign of judgment on the unbelieving Jews They were being judged by God and this was a sign that God was moving from the

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Jews to the Gentiles to be his primary Base of operations that was the purpose of tongues And so you say well, where is a passage which says like tongues will be done away with where is that passage, right?

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Well, I mean I think you know, you can go to 1st Corinthians 13 and 13 8 it says love never ends as for prophecies.

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They will pass away as for tongues They will cease as for knowledge It will pass away for I know in part and prophesy in part

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But when the perfect comes to partial pass away, the text is saying that tongues are obviously going to cease But you want you want to know what specifically when does it say they cease will it cease when the function of tongues cease the

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There is no need. Here's the point. There is no need as you as you read through the

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New Testament There is no there's no need for a continual sign of judgment

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Against the unbelieving Jews who last periodically throughout the entirety of the church age

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The this was a sign of judgment against the Jews tongues was a sign of judgment against the Jews It was a sign that God moved from the

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Jews to the Gentiles primarily in terms of his primary base of ministry Once that sign of judgment was enacted

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There's no more purpose for tongues or this miraculous gift as far as that goes now

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There's much more that we can say about the other sign gifts as well Like whether the gift of healing which was a sign or whether the gift of knowledge

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Gift of prophecy or anything else But this is just one example of the kind of the way that a person has to learn to think about the way

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These signs gifts actually work It's not enough just to assume that if there's a sign gift is going to continue in perpetuity

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Throughout the church age you have to ask what was the purpose of the sign and in this case Paul tells us the purpose It was a sign of judgment for unbelievers this has been another installment of iron sharpening iron as Always if you would like to have your question included in one of these midweek episodes email us at Bible bashed podcast at gmail .com

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Don't forget to subscribe and follow us on Facebook Twitter and gab Now go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move