WWUTT 2020 Q&A Responding to Critics of Cessationism

What is cessationism and what is continuism? Are there verses in the Bible that defend these two positions?

And how do we understand the working of spiritual gifts in the church today? The answers to these questions and others when we

Understand the Text. Many of the

Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we Understand the Text is an online ministry dedicated to teaching the

Word of God in context, promoting sound doctrine while exposing the faulty. Here's your teacher,

Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky, and greetings, everyone. I am flying solo this week. Becky is not in with me, although I do want to try to get her in here for one more

Q &A before I have to pack up this room and we head out to Arizona.

In case you don't know, we made this announcement a couple of weeks ago, but we're leaving our church family at First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas.

It's been a great three years. They still have wonderful pastors there, but I need to get back to being a senior pastor and preaching every

Sunday again. So I have been privileged to have been invited to come be pastor at Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

I'm scheduled to preach there on November 5th, so we are trying to pull out of here either the 1st or 2nd.

Praise God, we've got a place to go. We have a house that we are renting, and it is a very spacious place.

We found one within our budget that had enough rooms for us. When we came here to Texas, we really did not plan well for the house we sold in Kansas and what we were going to purchase here in Texas, and nor could we even find anything because the housing market was just so booming here.

Booming in the sense that it was a seller's market, not a buyer's market. We couldn't find anything.

And so we settled on a house that really just didn't work for us. It doesn't meet all of our needs, especially when it comes to being a podcast family.

There was nowhere for me to go and record my podcast. You'll probably remember I was recording in my office at the church for a year and a half or something like that, two years maybe, before I got this room done, which is a corner of our garage.

And then I've been recording in here only this year, and now we're leaving it. But I've added an extra room in the garage, so whoever buys the house, hey, hope you enjoy this room.

I don't know what you'll turn it into, but maybe you'll find something creative to do with it.

Well, we found a house in Casa Grande that is perfect for podcasting. It has enough space for us to be able to do that.

And the rental agreement has gone through and everything. We're excited about this. So we won't have to be off the air very long.

In fact, I don't want to be off the air at all. I'm trying to record some programs in advance. And so for next week's

Q &A, I want to try to get Becky in so that we can do one more Q &A here from Texas before everything kicks in automated, and for a couple of weeks, you're going to hear episodes that I've recorded ahead.

So we shouldn't ever have to be off the air if I've planned all this outright. But I do have to finish up in here.

There's things on the walls that I haven't done yet. I have to take the foam down, all the

Styrofoam that I've hung up and the carpet on the walls to dampen the sound and stuff like that. I'm not going to leave that here for the next person that comes in.

I think it would look strange to them if they're not podcasters. They would look around and go, what is all of this?

What is the reason for this? So I'm going to take all that down and finish out the room. But I have to get enough of the podcast recorded in advance before I do that.

So we appreciate your prayers, your support, and your encouragement for us as we are finishing up things here and heading out to Arizona.

We want to pray for good health, pray that all the things that we've got to get done as far as packing goes, all of that lines out.

As soon as we're out of this house, it goes up for sale. So we want that to go quickly because we don't want to have to be paying a mortgage and rent at the same time.

And so your prayers for us would be greatly appreciated. We thank you for your support of the ministry over the years and that you're behind us no matter where we go, whether we're broadcasting from Kansas or Texas or now moving to Arizona.

And it has been our delight to continue to provide for you Bible teaching five days a week as I have been devoted to do on this program for over eight years now.

We do New Testament Study on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Old Testament Thursday, and then our Q &A on Friday.

So this being the Friday edition of the broadcast, I'm taking questions from the listeners and you can send those questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

I have only one question that I'm going to be responding to today. This came from John, but this is going to be enough material for me to devote the entire hour to responding to this email.

John says, hey Gabe, I'd love to see you and Sam, referring to Sam Storms, have a public forum debate on the cessationist film, the documentary cessationist.

We've talked about it in the past here on this program. I'm in the documentary cessationist.

Most of what I talk about there in the program is about speaking in tongues, but then I'm also part of sharing the gospel at the very end.

So John goes on to say, if you were not aware, Sam wrote an eight -part response, not too lengthy, asking for a response from people that are in the cessationist film.

I believe that you are featured in the film. And then he sends me a link to Sam Storms' response, which is like an eight or nine -part blog.

It was pretty lengthy. Grace and peace, John. Well, I sure appreciate it, John. I have been asked by a couple of people to do some interviews as a follow -up to the cessationist film.

I've turned down all the interview invites that I've received. In fact, I've been turning them down for about the past month.

Interview invites of any kind, not just regarding cessationists. But obviously, since we're packing up and moving,

I don't have the time. I'm really not built for video interviews anyway. I never have been.

If you saw the interview that I did with Justin Peters recently, for example, you'll notice that his video quality is better than mine.

It's because he's built for that and I'm not. And there's been other video interviews that you'll probably see of me, and it looks like that.

Gabe's just using the camera on his laptop instead of having some high -tech camera in my studio.

I never anticipated doing live streaming video or anything like that, so I've just never invested in it.

So I've been turning down interview invites. I've told a couple of people, hey, can you get a hold of me again in November or after Thanksgiving or something like that?

I'll probably have a little bit more time then. But right now, I'm not doing any interviews. So I won't have any engagement with Sam Storms or anybody else that has invited me to respond to some of the criticisms behind cessationists or even do any interviews promoting cessationists.

I've done some promotion for it through the what videos. You may have seen a what video that I did recently on this, but I've not yet done any interviews promoting it just because I don't have the time.

However, I am willing to engage with some of these arguments that have been made contrary to the film.

I listened to Remnant Radio do their four -part criticism to cessationists.

I was doing a lot of driving this past week, so that's where I found the time to be able to listen to all four parts of this criticism.

And they really—their arguments were not very well done. I think they were charitable.

I think that they were very devoted to the scripture. I think they did their research before they made some of the arguments that they did.

But there were occasions in which these guys—it was like they weren't even hearing what was being said.

They were responding to an argument that wasn't even being made. And I'll elaborate on that here in just a minute.

But let me come to the scriptures. We haven't opened up with scripture on this program yet. So I'm in Romans chapter 12, beginning in verse 4.

For just as we have many members in one body, and all the members do not have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

But having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, whether prophecy in agreement with the faith, or service in his serving, or he who teaches in his teaching, or he who exhorts in his exhortation, he who gives with generosity, he who leads with diligence, he who shows mercy with cheerfulness.

Let love be without hypocrisy by abhorring what is evil, clinging to what is good, being devoted to one another in brotherly love, giving preference to one another in honor, not lagging behind in diligence, being fervent in spirit, serving the

Lord, rejoicing in hope, persevering in affliction, being devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, pursuing hospitality.

Now whenever we talk about gifts of the Spirit, more often than not, we're talking about those miraculous gifts of the

Spirit, aren't we? How many times have you heard somebody refer to the gifts of the Spirit, and you just automatically assumed that what they were talking about was loving one another?

Was some of these other gifts that are mentioned after prophecy here in Romans chapter 12, service, teaching, exhortation, giving, leading, showing mercy.

Those are all gifts of the Spirit. But when we talk about gifts of the Spirit, we think miraculous gifts, the prophetic sign gifts, not prophecy as forth -telling, but prophecy as foretelling, miracles, healing, raising the dead, restoring withered limbs, speaking in tongues.

These are some of the sign gifts that we'll sometimes refer to them as, because they're miraculous gifts, casting out demons being another one of those.

But we don't give so much weight to those other gifts as being actual gifts of the

Spirit. And what we bicker and argue over are whether those miraculous gifts are still in regular use in the church today, or has their regular usage ceased?

This is the difference between cessationism and continuism. Now let me define these two terms like that again, okay?

So you understand where I'm coming from when I use the term cessationism and continuism. Cessationism is the idea that the regular use of the miraculous sign gifts has come to an end.

And I'm talking about those gifts that are clearly miracles, something that would be against nature, but are supernatural in their exercise.

Things like healing, like raising the dead, like miraculously speaking other languages that the person speaking did not previously know, prophetically predicting future events with 100 % accuracy and clarity, casting out demons, really casting out demons, not doing the thing where people flop on the ground and somebody prays over them and they claim that they have cast out a demon, but somebody that you know has been demon possessed and has now cast out that demon, okay?

And all of these things that I've just detailed for you here, a practical cessationist, which

I believe that a practical cessationist is a true cessationist, but sometimes in order to define the terms or define the categories or where you stand as far as cessationism goes, there are those that will call themselves practical cessationists.

And a practical cessationist, which again I believe is the normal cessationist, believes that miraculous gifts still happen.

The Holy Spirit will still, by his own will, do miraculous things, as the

Spirit wills. But they are not in regular use. You don't see them occurring with the frequency that they happen in the

Book of Acts. It's a very rare thing that you would ever witness something like this.

In fact, it's so rare, I've never seen it. I have never seen a genuine exercise of something that I would have defined as miraculous.

And don't think that I am in some sort of cessationist echo chamber, in which because I'm in this echo chamber, of course

I would never see some miraculous exercise of these spiritual gifts. I spent 10 years in the

Charismatic Church, between the ages of 18 and 28. When I got out of my parents' home and I went to college, the churches that I most often attended in those 10 years were

Charismatic. I was in Christian radio for a long time, and Christian radio, not really a place for a lot of sound doctrinal theology.

So a lot of the friends that listened to me did not attend sound theological churches.

They attended these very Charismatic churches. And so they would invite me to go to those churches. When I left home and I'm living on my own, and people knew me from the radio, it was usually those friends that were very

Charismatic in their background and the churches that they attended that invited me to go to church with them. I dated a couple of girls who were from Assemblies of God churches.

One of my best friends in high school and in college, and even up into probably about 33 or 34, he's still a good friend today, in fact, but we haven't seen each other in a long time.

He is the son of an Assemblies of God preacher. And at one point, we thought we were going to do ministry together.

I thought I was going to be pastor and he was going to be my worship leader, and it just never worked out that way, and probably for the better.

This was when I was still in my continuous phase. So anyway, all to say that I was in Charismatic circles for many, many years.

I heard what people called speaking in tongues, but isn't really speaking in tongues. I heard people claim to do miraculous signs, to be able to do these healings, to make prophetic declarations and things of that nature.

I never witnessed anything, not one thing, in that 10 plus years.

It was 10 years that I was in Charismatic circles, but I continued in Continuism until I was about 35, 36 years old.

So I never one time saw anywhere something that I would qualify as being genuinely miraculous.

None of them were miracles. Now as we've been going through Matthew together in the study that we're doing on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, there

Jesus is performing miracles that the Pharisees see, and they cannot deny that these are obviously miracles that are being done.

Jesus casts out a demon from a demon -possessed man who is blind and mute because of the demon that is in him.

And when he heals the man, casts out the demon and heals him, he can see and he can speak.

All the crowds are astounded. You cannot deny that what Jesus did was clearly miraculous.

The Pharisees don't deny that a miracle has taken place. You can't. You cannot deny that this is something miraculous.

This guy was blind and mute, and now instantly he can see and speak, casting out this demon.

So what do the Pharisees come up with? Well, the only reason he's able to do that is because he's of Satan himself.

That's how the Pharisees excuse what it is that Jesus is able to do. He's of Beelzebul.

And Jesus responds and says, any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and any city or house divided against itself will not stand.

And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?

That's in Matthew 12. We went through that a couple of weeks ago, two or three weeks ago. So when

Jesus performed miracles in the Bible, they were clearly miracles. What I watch people do in the

Charismatic Church, even when I believed that what they were doing was miraculous things,

I look back on it now and I know it wasn't. Not one of those things was miraculous. There were times, even when

I was a Charismatic, that I would see that happen and I would go, no, that's not what they said it was.

And I would hear a person do something prophetic that just turned out to be dumb. It was a total flop.

It wasn't prophecy at all. But I didn't deny that these spiritual gifts are still at work.

I just thought, well, he got it wrong. But there's still spiritual gifts at work in the world today.

And then the gift of tongues was really the one that tripped me up the most. No pun intended. Tripping up the tongue. Yeah. Anyway, that was the one that would stump me the most, because maybe that person is speaking in tongues.

But who am I to say whether they are genuinely in the Spirit or not? And then it was just, you know, come through the scriptures.

It was a friend of mine that walked me through the scriptures and gave me a Biblical understanding of what these miraculous gifts were, according to scripture, that I finally looked and saw and recognized that what a lot of these people were calling miraculous wasn't miraculous at all.

And even what they were calling tongues was not actually speaking in tongues. And once I was convinced from the scriptures,

I had to admit that what all of these charismatics are doing and claiming that they are doing in the

Spirit is not really that at all. And so I became a cessationist.

And like I said, practical cessationist, meaning that the Holy Spirit is still doing miraculous things.

I pray for healing all the time. I don't for a moment think that God won't heal somebody.

James 5 says to pray for healing. In fact, it says he must bring it to the elders of the church.

This is James 5, beginning in verse 13. Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful?

He is to sing praises. Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the

Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.

And if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.

The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. I do that. I do exactly that in James 5.

I've even gone with my fellow elders to a person's house who was sick and was asking to be anointed with oil, confessing his sins, and desiring to be healed.

And we did that. Now, in the moment that we did it, he wasn't immediately healed.

He was healed later on. And the funny thing about it is, he was the one that requested of us to come and do this.

I've done this several times. I'm just thinking of a particular moment when we did this. But he was the one that asked us to come and anoint him with oil and pray over him.

And so, when we gathered around him, and he had confessed his sin to us, we had counseled him regarding his sin, we rebuked him, he received our rebuke.

And I said to him, do you understand what we're doing here and what this signifies? And he said, yes.

He said, I think it's kind of strange anointing me with oil and laying hands on me and praying for me, but it's what the Bible says.

And so, I want to be in submission to what Scripture says. He was the one that asked us to come do this for him.

But even he admitted, it's kind of strange, but I want to be healed, and I want to confess my sin, and I want to be forgiven.

And so, we did what James 5 says to do. And he wasn't immediately healed on the spot, but he was healed.

So I do pray for healing. Don't for a moment think that because I would call myself a cessationist, that I don't think

God is not healing people. I go to the hospital every week, and I pray with people in the hospital that God would heal them.

I'm on the phone with members of my own congregation and asking that God would give them healing.

I have never thought, well, God's not really healing anybody right now, so there's no point to even pray for that. If it is

God's will, he will do it. I pray for it all the time. I believe that God afflicts people because of their sin.

Why would I think that God afflicts, but he doesn't heal? That would be absurd.

That would be cruel. God just harms people because of their sin, but he doesn't heal anybody who confesses their sin.

I believe that he does both. I am one, as a matter of fact, that has been afflicted in my body, and I have had physical illness because of sin that I was in.

And when I turned from that sin, gradually I got better. It wasn't until years later that I realized truly what

I had done, and that the Lord showed me mercy. But I can tell you that in those moments that I was feeling as sick as I was,

I was about 20, 21 years old, nobody knew what was wrong with me. Friends at church didn't know.

I was attending a charismatic church. I had people pray over me and ask for healing. I was never healed. I went to the hospital.

Doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I even took a couple experimental drugs. I was in college. I was willing to try something experimental, and even that didn't help.

I'm talking, you know, prescription stuff, not illegal stuff. Anyway, nothing ever worked.

And it wasn't until years later, looking back on that and realizing, I know exactly what was happening to me now.

I was living in sin. I wouldn't repent of my sin. And I was being physically sickened by what

I was doing and ignoring the remorse and the conviction that I was feeling over that.

And just trying to excuse it as, I'm just fine. This isn't my sin doing this to me.

I just happen to be sick. Okay? Anyway, all this to say that I still believe

God does miraculous things today. And any cessationist does. There are probably hyper cessationists out there.

I don't know that I've ever met one. But there are people, I'm sure, that would say God doesn't do any kind of miracle of any kind today.

There might be some of those guys out there. But they would be fringe. They are so few and far between that, like I said,

I don't know that I've even met one before. So cessationists do believe that God still does miraculous things.

He's just not doing miracles through people with the regularity that we were seeing these things done in acts, when these miracles were happening with the frequency that they were, and with the amazement, the amazing level at which these things were being done, to authenticate the message that was being proclaimed by the apostles.

That the people would know that this message that is being proclaimed came from God. Now that that message has been proclaimed, and as Peter says in 2

Peter 1, we have the prophetic word now fully confirmed, there is not a reason anymore for the frequency of those miraculous sign gifts to continue with the manner and the level that we saw them in the book of Acts.

Will God still do miraculous things today? I believe that he will. Will God gift one person more than another to maybe see some of those miraculous things happen on a more regular basis than perhaps he would do with another person?

I'm sure he does that as well. Although there is no such thing as a faith healer, and I've made that point perfectly clear.

There's no such thing as a modern -day prophet or a modern -day apostle, like we see a prophet or an apostle in Scripture, Old Testament or New.

They don't exist in the world today. Hebrews 1 .1, long ago at many times and in many ways

God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his

Son, through whom he has made heir of all things. So God is not giving those kinds of prophetic revelations, revealing these major future events, or God speaking in such a way that a person would speak with the same authority level that we would see of the prophets and the apostles in Scripture.

If what a person said came from God, then it's on the level of Scripture. But since Scripture is completed and canon is closed, then we don't have that kind of prophetic messaging happening anymore today.

Even when I was a continuous, I was at least there, nobody is prophesying on a level that is,

God spoke to me and here is that word, and that word is every bit as on par with the rest of Scripture.

I knew that. I at least knew that in my, and that came from my Sola Scriptura upbringing.

My dad teaching me that the Bible is the highest authority, so I know that no one is going to come up with a word that's even equal to that authority, because Scripture, canon is closed and Scripture is our authority in all things.

So again, at least I knew that much, but I continued in continuism for many years before doing a systematic study of Scripture and then coming to the conclusion of cessationism.

Now that said, cessationism and continuism are both systematic theologies.

Now what do I mean by systematic theologies? Meaning, this is an argument that continuists will use against cessationists a lot.

They'll say there is no verse in the Bible that you can point to that says that the miraculous sign gifts have come to an end.

You can't even point to a verse that says these are the sign gifts, okay, I do believe

I can make that argument from Scripture, but yeah, right, there's not a verse that says here's the sign gifts and here's the other gifts, yes,

I will agree with you there. So the continuous says to a cessationist, you can't point to a verse in the

Bible that says these miracles either came to an end or are going to come to an end. And that's true, but the same argument works the other way.

The continuous can't find a verse or point to a verse that says these things are going to continue either.

Now they will say that they can, 1 Corinthians 13, beginning in verse 8, love never fails, but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away.

If there are tongues, they will cease. If there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.

So they'll make the argument, see, those things continue until Jesus comes. But cessationists have used that same passage of Scripture to say that the perfect is the completed

Word of God. And now that's done. Canon is closed. And so these gifts come to an end. See, both the cessationists and the continuous will use that verse to their advantage.

I'm going to engage with that verse a little bit later on. I'm not going to get into the exegesis of it right here.

But anyway, all that to say the continuous will say that they can point to a Scripture claiming that the gifts will continue.

And I'm arguing the cessationists can point to the same verse and make it work in their camp. All of that to say, these are systematic theologies.

Neither one can point to a verse to defend their side. So you go through Scripture to show, here's how we can be sure or have confidence that this regularity of the sign gifts would eventually come to an end for the cessationists.

And for the continuous to believe, no, they're still continuing on and they will continue until Jesus comes. Both are using systematic studies, going through the

Scriptures to make their case, not pointing to respective verses. So neither one can say of the other, well, point to me the verse that proves you right.

We're going to have to discuss it to come to an understanding, which by the way, I believe that the very fact that we're having this discussion is proof of cessationism.

It is an argument for cessationism more than it is an argument for continuism. Because if continuism is true and these miraculous giftings are still regularly at work in the world today, in the church today, like we saw in the book of Acts, you should be able to point out to me a miraculous happening, a miracle.

Point out to me a miracle or show me a prophet who has with 100 % accuracy predicted the future and it came true and he's never been wrong.

Scripture doesn't give an allowance for a prophet to be wrong. You are able to show me

Acts level miracles and they happen all the time. Should be easy for you to find that point to it and say to me, see, proof that these spiritual gifts are continuing today.

But you can't because the need for these miraculous sign gifts has ceased.

Instead, we debate about the continuation of miracles, which proves or at least makes an argument for the fact that they don't have the proof.

That is a point on the cessationist side, I would say. The cessationist is arguing for the absence of a thing.

The continuous is arguing for the continuation of a thing. But the continuous should be able to point to those miraculous signs to prove that they are still at work in the world today.

And there is way more fakery, way, way more fakery than there is any genuine practice of any miraculous signs.

The miraculous is rare. You will seldom see it. And so most of what people are doing in charismatic churches today is not at all what we see demonstrated in the

Book of Acts. Now, the guys with the Remnant radio program, when they're responding to the documentary cessationist, they really never define their terms.

They didn't say that miracles have to be what we see miraculous signs as in the

Book of Acts or in Scripture. As a matter of fact, you have to listen to them for a while before you get to this.

But what they start calling healing or prophecy or whatever else is not at all what we see in the Book of Acts.

They never define their terms, and so they're arguing on a basis that it's kind of difficult to know where it is they're going exactly.

And sometimes it feels like they're arguing with an argument that wasn't actually made in the cessationist film.

So it becomes very strawman -like. If you know what a strawman argument is, you're creating a caricature of the argument that's not the actual argument, so it's easier for you to knock it down.

A strawman, just like when I did sparring when I was in college, when I did karate, you would have those dummies that you would fight, right?

The dummy can't fight you back. And so that's what a strawman argument is. You're creating something that you can easily knock down.

And even though these guys will play clips of the cessationist documentary, the argument that they're responding to doesn't come from the documentary.

It's like they've made up their own argument that they can knock down. Sometimes they make some good arguments, but most of it, it was really difficult to get through.

Even though I listened to four episodes of it, it was hard to get through some of the arguments that they were making.

This is Joshua Lewis of King's Fellowship in Ada, Oklahoma, Michael Miller of Reclamation Church in Denver, Colorado, and Michael Roundtree of Bridgeway Church in Oklahoma City.

And I'm going to play a clip. I'm going to play this clip just to give you an example of what I'm talking about. This was one of the most egregious examples of them responding to an argument.

It was almost like they didn't even hear what the guys in the cessationist documentary were saying.

So what you're going to hear is Joshua, Michael, and Michael setting up the clip.

And then you're going to hear a clip from the cessationist documentary. And then the guys are going to come back in and respond to that.

Now, it would be easier to follow who's talking if this was a video. And like I said,

I don't do video podcasting. So you'll just have to bear with the fact you're going to hear multiple verses here and you won't know who's talking, but you'll get the gist of what it is that's happening.

So we begin here with Joshua very charitably saying that, you know, we consider our cessationist brothers to be brothers and we want to engage with their arguments.

And sometimes this will get a little bit spicy, but that's how these things go because we're all passionate about our positions.

And then they're going to play the clip and then respond to the clip. So here we go. I'm going to play this in its entirety and then

I'll respond to it on the other end. We want people to know on the front end, we are continuationist.

We love the gifts of the spirit. We love our cessationist brothers. We consider them brothers. We consider them

Christians. We have to say that on the front end of the show because we're really going to push back on some of these teachings and doctrines.

We're going to push back on some of these interpretations of history. We're going to kind of expose some of the self -contradictions that are taking place in this film.

And when you do stuff like that, things can seem a little spicy, a little aggressive, and we're not trying to put on that kind of posture.

We believe these are Christian brothers, but we do want to engage with their arguments. We love them. We pray for them.

We pray for them before we do our show. And we're hoping that these kinds of discussions can help people who are on the fence realize, man, these things aren't super biblical.

We want to help you pursue the gifts of the spirit because we think it's good for you, for the glorification of Christ and at the edification of the church.

You guys ready to dive into this first video? Yeah, we're calling it clip number 13.

That's right. Cessationists can't figure out their own timeline. Okay, so let's play the clip.

Play that beautiful beam. Later on, as we see, particularly after the periods of persecution, Constantine has come into power.

Christianity has become legalized. That's the time period where we see this expectation of the miraculous. You do have a kind of continuationism developing in Roman Catholicism.

Their notion of canonizing certain people as saints was built upon the notion of the continuation of miraculous signs.

One story says that when St. Patrick was baptized as an infant, the priest was blind and couldn't read the baptismal order. So he took the baby's hand, made the sign of the cross over the ground and a spring of water burst forth to wash the priest's eyes.

His vision was restored and he could perform the baptism. That's just crazy legendary stuff. It's just crazy legendary stuff, guys.

Cool. Let's dive into this first clip. Let's talk about it. Let's start off with the timeline.

This historian says that the gifts of the spirit seem to be bolstered after 325, right?

After Nicaea. I think he might have even said 324, 325 is, you know, Nicene Creed is kind of like formalized completely, if I recall correctly.

And regardless, he says after this point, there's kind of this expectation of charismatic gifts. But that seems to be contradictory to the other things

I've heard in the same documentary. When you guys want to take it away. Yeah. Yeah. OK, sure.

So we've we've got Phil Johnson saying you have an axe, for example, Paul would send pieces of fabric out.

People would be healed by that. That's not happening anymore. And it wasn't happening in Paul's time either, because when he learned that Timothy had because when he learned that Timothy had a stomach ailment, he couldn't hear him.

He's talking about where Paul tells Timothy, take a little wine for your stomach ache and for your frequent illnesses.

And it's a common claim made by cessationists that the gifts were already dying out in the first century, that even in Paul's lifetime, they're beginning to die out.

That's why Paul couldn't heal Timothy. But they're actually starting with their own premise baked in that healing is always on demand.

We look at that and we say, yeah, healing wasn't on demand because we also have other instances, Acts 28, 9, where Paul at the end of his life heals an entire island of people.

He healed 100 percent of them. Pretty sure the healing gifts not dying out. So one, what Phil says is wrong.

It's unbiblical. It's incorrect. Two, and this is the main point that we're trying to make in this case, is that you have a church historian that we just showed a clip of him saying the gifts began to come onto the scene around the fourth century.

And we have a different cessationist saying they died out in the first century.

So they died out in the first century. They exploded in the fourth century. I just want to ask my cessationist brothers and sisters in Christ to my dearly love.

How can both be true? Okay, so I hope you got the gist of the argument that they were making there.

The last guy that was talking there was Michael Roundtree. And there are two errors, serious errors in what he said there.

First of all, he said that the cessationists will claim that the spiritual gifts were even coming to an end during the time of the apostles because Paul told

Timothy to drink a little bit of wine to help with his stomach ailments instead of sending him one of those sweat cloths like he was using in Ephesus that some of the friends of Paul were taking and healing people with, just with the cloth that Paul would use to wipe his brow as he's working on tents out in the sun.

Why didn't Paul include one of those little handkerchiefs in the letter that he sent to Timothy and said, here, rub this on your tummy and it will help you with all your stomach ailments.

No, he told Timothy to drink a little bit of wine. So the argument from the cessationists is that's one of the indications that we see even the regularity of these miraculous signs coming to an end during the time of the apostles because Timothy has stomach ailments, but Paul doesn't heal him.

He just says, drink a little bit of wine. So Michael Roundtree makes the argument that we do see

Paul performing miracles at the end of his life because at the end of the book of Acts, he heals an entire island of people.

Well, 1 Timothy was written after Acts 28. Surely Michael Roundtree as a pastor understands that.

Acts 28 was not at the end of Paul's life. Paul went to Spain, read

Romans. His first imprisonment there in Rome, which he writes about in Philippians, in Ephesians, in Colossians, the prison letters as we refer to them, his first imprisonment did not end with him being martyred.

He even says to the Philippians that the Spirit has told him he's going to get out. And then the letter that he writes to Timothy, the second letter, 2

Timothy, that's at the end of his life. That's when he's been in prison a second time, and he knows that he's about to be martyred.

So what we don't have record of after the book of Acts, Paul makes it to Rome. He preaches the gospel in Rome, obviously gets there in chains because he's appealed to Caesar.

So he goes to Rome and he is under house arrest. He's chained to a

Roman guard while he preaches the gospel. And at some point in there, after a couple of years, he gets out of prison, of being under house arrest.

He travels westward to Spain as he told the Romans that he was going to do. And then when he was coming back eastward, apparently he's arrested a second time and thrown in prison.

And it's from there that is at the end of his life that he writes 2 Timothy. So in the chronology of Paul's ministry and writings,

Acts 28 precedes 1 Timothy. So it is wrong for Michael Roundtree to say, well,

Acts 28 proves that the miracles were not coming to an end at the end of the time of the apostles.

He has his own timeline wrong there. But then the second thing, and this is the most baffling, really, about Roundtree's argument.

He says that the cessationists can't even get their own timeline right, because in this clip that they played, the church historian says that there was an interest in the signed gifts that was starting up around the 4th century.

But some of these cessationists earlier in the documentary said that the miraculous signed gifts were coming to an end at the end of the 1st century.

So which can it be? Are there signed gifts in the 4th century, or are the signed gifts coming to an end at the end of the 1st century?

Roundtree completely—and all three of the guys did this, because nobody corrected him on this—Roundtree completely misunderstood what was being said in the documentary.

There's an interest in the signed gifts around the 4th century. The theologians being interviewed—a couple of the other ones included

Sam Waldron and Joel Beeky—but the theologians that were being interviewed were saying that this is where a rise in charismaticism started coming in, in the

Roman Catholic Church in the 4th century. They were not saying that they were miraculous signs that started being performed in the 4th century.

So Roundtree is making an argument against the inconsistency of the cessationist documentary when he did not even understand what it was that they were saying.

And all three of the guys made that error. And again, this is the kind of argument—these were the kind of arguments that I listened to them make for four episodes.

Yeah, how did I last that long? I don't know. But I listened to them for four episodes make this argument.

I really wanted to know where they were coming from. I wanted to understand the continuous arguments, especially from a

Reformed standpoint. Because when I was in those charismatic churches, they were not at all

Reformed. So I was not hearing charismaticism from a Reformed perspective, or from those who believe

Calvinism anyway. I was hearing just straight -up Arminian, free -will, charismaticism craziness.

That's what was going on around me for that decade that I was attending charismatic churches. So I did want to hear their arguments.

I wanted to hear a scriptural basis for some of the claims that they were making. So that's why I endured that for four episodes.

But again, the arguments that they made were largely straw men. Like I'm going to set this up and make it something easy for me to kick over.

I don't think they were deliberately doing that. But they were clearly not listening to what they just played.

Because that was not the argument. The argument that Roundtree was responding to was not the argument that was made in the documentary.

Anyway, as I go here, I'll probably play some other clips from those critiques that they did.

But I did want to engage with this series of articles that Sam Storms did.

And this was what John sent my way. And he said, I'd love to hear you engage with Sam. And maybe you guys can have a debate one of these days.

Listen, I've met Sam Storms before. Very, very kind man. In fact,

I met him and his wife in a hotel lobby one time. Very, very kind guy.

Stopped to talk to me for a while. We didn't talk about charismaticism. As a matter of fact, I was still a continuous at the time that I met

Sam. But all that to say, I just thought he was a nice guy. I've read a couple of his books and his blog, multiple articles on his blog.

However, I don't recommend Sam Storms. And I don't pass on to people, hey, read what

Sam Storms has to say on this, that or the other. Unless I'm telling them, read what

Sam says about these particular charismatic gifts. So you get an understanding of where a charismatic comes from on these things.

That'd be about the only time that I would make a reference to Sam Storms. Because this guy pals around with really heretical teachers.

Storms is as much in the kooky, crazy area of charismaticism as Todd White or Benny Hinn or Ken Copeland or Mike Bickle.

Because Sam Storms used to be at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, working with Mike Bickle.

He thinks Bickle's like one of the greatest preachers on the planet. Bickle claims to have gone to heaven and have had a personal audience with Christ.

Not just once, but I believe twice. And I've played those clips on this program before. Some of the clips are in one of the

What videos that I have as well, of Mike Bickle being carried away into heaven and having a personal audience with Jesus.

Bickle also claims that there's going to be apostles that will rise up in this age that will be greater apostles than the apostles who gave us the

New Testament. And when we die and go to heaven, the apostles who gave us the

New Testament are going to be standing in line, waiting to shake the hands of the modern day apostles, which will be superior to them.

Paul responded to this super apostle nonsense in 2 Corinthians chapter 11.

Mike Bickle is a fraud. And when I was pastoring up in Junction City, Kansas, we felt the influence of the

International House of Prayer. People that would come out of IHOP, people that would even come to our area and plant churches and want to do an

IHOP style church. Or we had Southern Baptist pastors, in fact, who would want to revamp their church to be something that was more in the style of the

International House of Prayer. It was a huge problem. The false teaching that would come out of there and would infect our area and the people that I had to sometimes rebuke or warn about the false teaching that they were getting caught up in.

And this is the kind of stuff that Sam Storms promotes. So I don't ever recommend Storms.

I don't think that Storms is on the same level as like a John Piper or a D .A. Carson, who also claim to be reformed and charismatic.

I don't think Storms is there. I think he's way more into the mainstream charismaticism that does all the wildness and calls it legit.

But I'll go ahead and engage with what Storms says here. And I'll at least get through part one today.

I'm not going to be able to do more than just one part. Like I said, there's like nine, and it's kind of lengthy.

So when I do these episodes by myself, when I'm flying solo, I'll be engaging with some of the responses to the cessationist documentary.

When Becky gets back on with me, God willing, next week, we'll get to our regular questions. So don't forget, you can send questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

This is Sam Storms' point -by -point response to the film Cessationist, part one.

So I'm going to read this and engage with what he's got here. On September 22nd of this year, a full -length documentary film was released under the title

Cessationist. It features numerous individuals on both sides of the debate concerning the continuation or cessation of certain spiritual gifts described in scripture.

Given the fact that I am cited and criticized perhaps more frequently than any other charismatic continuationist, it seems only fitting that I should respond to the film.

My response will be unavoidably lengthy, so it will be released in several installments.

I want to begin by making an appeal to the cessationist behind the film, as well as those who appear in it.

Please hear me well. If you can find fault with any of the biblical interpretations that I present, notify me of them.

If your criticisms are valid and substantive, I will repent openly on this blog and in public.

But I would also ask that, if you cannot find fault with how I understand the biblical text, you will repent and forever cease to make use of such arguments in the defense of your position.

I'm going to take that as a pun. With that understood, let's begin. So then

Storms goes on. Although it doesn't appear at the beginning of the film, I want to bring clarity to one massive misstatement on the part of the producers of the documentary.

I, together with Wayne Grudem, John Piper, and D .A. Carson, am referred to as one who takes an open but cautious approach to the issue of spiritual gifts today.

Now, I want to stop there for a moment and say, I would not have put Sam Storms in that category. Because like I said,

I don't consider him the same as a Grudem, Piper, or Carson. Sam is very much in the

Looney Bin area of the charismatic movement. So he goes on. That is completely and utterly false, he says, talking about this description of him as being open but cautious.

I won't speak for my three friends, but only on my own behalf. Merely to be open to miraculous gifts of the

Spirit is far short of what the Bible commands. Paul clearly and repeatedly says something altogether different.

He's going to give some scriptural references here, and I want to engage with the way that he uses these. The first one is 1

Corinthians 12 .31, but earnestly desire the higher gifts.

I'll come back to that. His next one is 1 Corinthians 14 .1, pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.

1 Corinthians 14 .12, so with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the

Spirit, and Paul nowhere tells them or us that such eagerness is misguided, far less that it is sinful, strive to excel in building up the church.

1 Corinthians 14 .39, so, my brothers, earnestly desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues.

Now, it would be helpful here if Sam would define his terms. What do you mean by prophesy? What do you mean by speaking in tongues?

Because I guarantee your definitions of those two words are different than what a cessationist would define them to be.

This is why defining your terms is very, very important. Now, I tend to have a broader definition of prophesy than even some of my cessationist brothers have.

I'll get to that later on. It probably won't be this week. It'll be another week, but we'll talk about that. Some of these miraculous gifts, how we categorize them that way, and so forth.

So, he references 1 Corinthians 12 .31, but earnestly desire the higher gifts.

Okay, let's look at that in context. So, here is 1 Corinthians 12, beginning in verse 27, and this is going to sound similar to what we read out of Romans 12.

1 Corinthians 12 .27, now, you are Christ's body and individually members of it.

And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues.

What is last on that list? Speaking in tongues, it is the least of the spiritual gifts.

But what is the one that you seem to see practice the most or at least that gift that most characterizes a charismatic service?

It's almost always speaking in tongues. But Paul defines that as the least of the gifts.

Now, whenever we talk about categorizing these gifts, and there are certain gifts that we will call miraculous sign gifts, we'll say that those gifts are different than other gifts of the

Spirit. Charismatics don't like that so much. They want to believe that all the gifts are the gifts of the

Spirit and they're all the same, but they're not. And Paul does categorize them. He sets them in a list of importance and says that prophecy is the greatest of all of them.

Which is why he says in 1 Corinthians 14 .1, pursue love, yet earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.

That's the most valuable one, because it's that one that's in the Word of the Lord. And remember that Romans 10 .17

says, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ. So a person is going to come to faith or grow in their faith by a declaration of the

Word of God. And so that's why Paul says, especially desire that you may prophesy.

We'll come back to that a little later on. So verse 28, God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets.

And again, I have said there are no modern -day apostles, no modern -day prophets. Not in the way that we see apostles and prophets in the

Old and New Testaments. Now, I could call somebody a prophet because he proclaims, he prophesies the

Word of God as we have it in the scriptures. I think that's a loosely defined usage of the word prophet.

I think you need to be very, very careful with how you would use that kind of a word. But there's nobody who is receiving miraculous visions from God that they are then proclaiming to people the way that the prophets did in the

Bible, speaking a word that comes from the Lord. We do not have prophets in the world today like they were testifying of those things in scripture.

So no modern -day apostles, no modern -day prophets. But they still have authority.

The apostles and prophets still have authority over us. They have authority every time we open the

Bible and we read the words that they said or wrote in scripture. So that's why we would still be under the authority of apostles and prophets, because it was to them

God gave these words that they wrote down for us in scripture. But there's not going to be any more modern apostles or prophets.

So then Paul goes on to say third teachers. So first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues last on that list.

Okay. Verse 29. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers?

Are all workers of miracles? Do all have gifts of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Do all translate?

These are rhetorical questions and the answers to all of those questions is no. Not everyone is an apostle.

Not everyone is a prophet. Not everyone gets to be a teacher. In fact, we are told in James 2 .1 that not many of you should aspire to become teachers because you know that teachers will be judged with greater strictness.

I'm sorry, that's not 2 .1. That's 3 .1. So not everybody is going to be a teacher.

Are all workers of miracles? No. Do all have gifts of healings? No. Do all speak with tongues?

No. Contrary to those Pentecostal churches that will say you have to speak in tongues to prove that you have the

Holy Spirit. If you haven't spoken in tongues, then you don't really have the Spirit of God. They're liars and deceivers.

Do not listen to them. Paul plainly says that not everyone will speak in tongues.

Do all translate? No. Verse 31, but you earnestly desire the greater gifts.

Okay, there's the reference that Sam made to 1 Corinthians 12 .31. Can you have all of those gifts that are listed there?

No. Should you desire those gifts? Yes. Will you receive it?

No. You probably won't. There are people I have known who have desired a gift of teaching, but they don't have it.

And they need to be content with the gifts that God has given to them. They would still in their life desire that higher gift of teaching, and maybe

God never blesses them with that or never gives them the opportunity to be able to exercise that as a teacher.

And they need to be content with what God has given to them. It is good to desire those higher things, because even if a person does not come into the gift of teaching, they would still labor for it.

They would yearn for it. It's something that brings them back to the Lord, submitting to God and recognizing that there is a time and place that His Spirit moves and applies these gifts to certain people in certain ways.

And it just may not be for them at that time to have that gift of teaching, but to earnestly desire it.

That is the command that we are given there. Now, I don't think that you should aspire to or desire to be an apostle or a prophet.

You need to be content with the fact that God appointed apostles and prophets for a certain period of time, and they've completed their work.

And their completed work is given to us in the scripture in canon. You won't be an apostle or a prophet.

But there are other higher gifts that you can desire. And if it is God's will,

He'll give it to you. I pray that He would give me an opportunity to be able to heal somebody.

I would love to be able to do that. I think it's going to be extremely rare, but it is only in God's good timing.

And like I said earlier, I pray for healing all the time. Not that healing would come through me, but that God would heal.

And if it is God's will to heal, then He will. So earnestly desire the greater gifts. And then the rest of verse 31, and I will show you a more excellent way.

And that is the way of love that we have next in chapter 13. So that's the first verse that Sam referenced.

The next one is 1 Corinthians 14 .1. Pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.

Now, once again, that's kind of repeating what we just read at the end of chapter 12, because we have that parenthetical in between chapter 13, where Paul shows the more excellent way, which is the way of love.

So then he comes back into the argument that he was making regarding spiritual gifts in chapter 12, when he resumes in chapter 14.

Pursue love, yet earnestly desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy. And once again, because prophesying or preaching the word of God is a higher gift, especially higher than speaking in tongues, which

Paul puts at the bottom of the pole. Prophesying at the top, but then the speaking in tongues is at the bottom, even though speaking in tongues seems to be the thing that charismatics do the most, at least what they call speaking in tongues.

Now, I'm out of time here. I said I was going to give an hour to this today, and I've kind of met that hour here.

So I'm not going to go through the rest of these scriptures, especially because going through them, I'm going to hit prophecy, what it means to prophesy, according to 1

Corinthians 14 .1, and then down the list as I go through the context of that passage.

So I'm going to save that for next week. We'll come back to this article, not next week, maybe the week after, since I want to try to get

Becky on. But when I come back to responding to these things from Sam Storms about the cessationist documentary, that's where I'll pick up.

So it'll be in this article with the next passage in 1 Corinthians 14 .1. So let's wrap that up for now.

Once again, if you are interested in the documentary Cessationist, just go to cessationistmovie .com. If you've got

Amazon streaming, I know that you can look up cessationist there, and you can rent it or even buy it.

I think you can buy the digital copy as well. And you can watch the documentary that way. And looking forward to continuing to engage on these things.

I'm very appreciative of the makers of the film that they invited me to be part of it. I am low on the totem pole.

I don't know why anybody would interview me for anything like that, but it was certainly a privilege to be able to do it.

And I love the documentary as it came out. So I encourage you to watch it as well. Don't forget about the documentary

The Essential Church. I think you can also find that one on whatever streaming service that you use. That was the documentary that was put out by Grace Community Church.

And I highly encourage you to watch that one also. So you've got a couple of good Christian documentaries that have been released by Christian filmmakers this year.

Look for The Essential Church and look for The Cessationist documentary. Thank you so much for listening this week.

We appreciate your prayers. And thank you so much for your support of this ministry. Let me pray and we'll...

I was going to say, we'll be dismissed. That's what I say when I'm preaching or I say it to my

Sunday school class. Let's pray and we'll be done. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the goodness that you show to us daily.

Your Holy Spirit is still at work in Christians, in believers today. For every day through your spirit,

I am reminded of the goodness of God that you have shown through Jesus Christ, our Savior.

He who came and put on flesh and dwelt among us, who lived a perfect life that we could not live, who died the death that we were supposed to die as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven where he is seated at the right hand of God.

He is coming back again to judge the living and the dead. And all who believe in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

The work of the Holy Spirit that is done in our hearts today brings us from death to life that we may live according to the promises of Christ.

And I pray that you would give us the courage to go out with the gospel, that others would repent of their sin and turn to the

Lord Jesus Christ and live. Help us to live today for your glory. It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. This is When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. There are lots of great

Bible teaching programs on the web, and we thank you for selecting ours. But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family.

Find a good gospel -teaching, Christ -centered church to worship with this weekend, and join us again Monday for more