Arguments Against Cessationism

Cessationism, Tongues, and the Meaning of Spiritual Gifts

Not just to think about, well, my freedom is being kind of disturbed here.

No!

Screw your freedom!

What's wrong with you people?

I'm serious.

I mean, this is what's wrong with the Christian church today. We don't know who God is, and we don't know who we are.

This is Apologetics Live! To answer your questions, your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport!

We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your most challenging questions about God and the Bible. In fact, we can answer any question that you have about God and the Bible. And if you doubt me, well, just come on in, go to ApologeticsLive .com, and from there you will see a link to join us.

It's the little duck icon, the StreamYard link, but you can join us live at StrivingForEternity .com is where it'll take you to. This is Administrative Striving for Eternity. By the way, I should say that those two quotes were totally out of totally different context, but when I was going through some different things I had in my audio files, I was like, oh, those two kind of fit well together.

Yeah.

But so there was no context there of, you know, R .C. Sproul was not speaking about what Arnold Schwarzenegger was saying there. So just want to welcome you all. If you want to come in, what we're going to talk about tonight is some arguments against cessationism.

These are arguments that were made by Remnant Radio. And the reason we're doing this is, well, a lot of folks challenged me, told me I was running scared from the guys at Remnant Radio. And so I reached out every way that I could find to say, since they said they were open to having a debate or discussion on the spiritual gifts, I said, I'm here, I'll do it.

And I heard crickets, nothing. And so we figured, well, since they won't actually have the discussion, we will. We will take their arguments. And unlike where they were just reading arguments that they came up with, not sure where, we're actually engaging with what they exactly say.

So let me bring in our special guest or just a regular guest here, Mr. Drew Vonita.

How are you?

Howdy, howdy. Regular, one time, all the time, guest, repeat.

Drew asked me if we have any special guests and I said, yes, a man named Drew Vonita. He's the special guest.

And I heard that guy was a killer preacher and teacher and just all around nice guy.

I think the word you used was dynamite preacher.

Dynamite, if you know the good times show, JJ Johnson.

I think that guy died young, right? That was a real thin guy. He was like super thin.

I don't think he died young though. I think he died pretty old.

I don't know, I remember it was in my childhood, but I thought he died like of a drug overdose or something, but I could be wrong.

Although that time in the seventies, moving into the eighties, probably.

All right. Let's see. What was his name? You got me curious.

It was JJ what?

JJ Johnson. I'm trying to think, I think that was his character.

Oh, there's some JJ Johnson chef. So I don't know what his real name is.

Let's see.

Good times, I'll type in good times. Good times. Here's what happened live, live radio. Nope. Chef JJ Johnson.

So Jimmy Walker.

Jimmy, that's his name.

Yeah.

Jimmy Walker.

Okay.

So you got his name, but did you find out how he died?

How did he die?

I don't know. Let's find out. Jimmy Walker, good times died. Let's see. Can we trust Wikipedia?

Not this one.

Well, he died at the age of 76.

Yeah. In Brooklyn.

There you go.

Yeah.

All right. Let's see the things you can learn on this show.

So look, Melissa already had it. JJ Walker right there. Jimmy Walker.

Yeah.

I guess I should bring it up. It might help.

Yeah.

For people to see. So now I see someone backstage. You want to put your camera on, then we'll know that you want to come in. Or if you don't want to be on camera, just put a thing in the private chat.

We can bring you in.

Hold on.

I'm sitting in front of the dish thing.

This is the thing when Drew has been kicked out of his studio into the kitchen to do recording.

What spoon do you need?

This spoon.

This one. A spoon is a spoon. I don't get it. We're live, ladies and gentlemen.

Well, hey, we finally get to see her. We're in the back of her. We won't tell her. All right. So in the news section, this is actually a little bit concerning to me that I wanted to bring up before we get into the whole issue of tongues.

Glossosalia. Glossosalia.

Yeah.

And then after the end of the news section, we're going to bring someone in that I think has a question.

Let me address this question real quick from Brother John. He says, Drew, looking good. Looks like you've lost some weight and health. Are you working out? Actually, I had the flu last week, so I have lost weight for sure.

I had the flu. Let me just say, so it started out with our youngest, right, Rhett.

He's two.

He got the flu. Then I got the flu. Then our four-year-old got the flu. Then my wife got the flu. And we all had the flu, and it was terrible.

So essentially, you guys were sharing the love.

Oh, yeah.

All of the nice flu miserableness.

So you lost weight the way you don't want to lose weight. So in other words, next week we're going to see you, and Brother John's going to be saying, Drew, you look like you gained weight.

Gained weight, yeah. Well, I just now started getting an appetite back, and it's been a week.

Yeah.

All right.

So I am going to preface this with I'm not 100 sure how I feel about this case. So in the news, there was a case where a 15-year-old went to school, shot up four people, and he had a trial. In his trial, he was tried as an adult.

Now, this part I do feel strongly about. But the issue was that they now have gone after both the mother and the father's cases coming up. The mother was found guilty of four counts of basically 15 years each sentence of being involved in the son's murder.

And the reason is basically they said, well, she was too focused on an affair she was having with some firemen. Basically, it's her fault for not paying attention to the child. The father who bought the son the gun is being charged.

His case will be coming up. So here's my view with this. The court has tried the child, the 15-year-old, as an adult. And now charging the parents because he's a child. I see an inconsistency right there off the bat.

There's many people who are saying that this is all about the fact that it's because of a gun. So they want to basically make parents scared of buying guns for their kids. The one thing that I find interesting with this case, though, is they actually admitted one thing we've known all along with these mass shootings, that they're always involved one common trait.

The person has a mental illness. I mean, that's the thing. Well, they said the parents should have known better. Now, it's interesting because the school called the parents in. They were triggered because he drew a picture of a gun and said something like, blood everywhere, or made some threatening comments.

But before the parents saw that, this is a big thing because the mother was found guilty because of this picture he drew in school and they didn't think it's so serious. But the thing that's interesting with it is that the picture, if you see the picture before and after, in other words, the picture that they took, a picture of what he drew, and then they crossed out things like, I think the worst things he said, like blood everywhere, everyone die, things like this.

Someone wrote in, love to play video games. And so the parents saw this edited one, no gun, the guns all scribbled out. So when you see the two pictures, all of a sudden you're like, ah. So the school changes the picture, brings the parents in and say, we're very concerned about this, demanded that he have counseling.

And because the parents didn't take him out of school, I guess an hour later, he shot people and they're holding the parents responsible. So where should we as Christians view this? I mean, there's a sense where, do parents have responsibility for their children?

Yes, to an extent. How far is that? Well, I would argue when you claim, when a court claims, that the child is understanding what he did enough that he could be tried as an adult, then you can't go to the parents and say, well, he was just a minor.

You can't have it both ways in the court. I think I would have argued that if it was me as a parent to say, you tried him as an adult, you felt he was an adult, you don't think that I'm responsible, right?

I think where my concern is, where does this stop now? If you're going to say that parents are responsible for everything their children do, and at the same time, tell the schools that they have the right to hide information from parents, like being transgender stuff, but then if the children act out, and Drew, we may end up dealing with this in a future episode, is this article that came out in the Epoch Times that was linking violent crimes to transgenders.

Therefore, that's something where they don't want to talk about that, but that's starting to become more and more of an issue. The transgenders are arguing that 33, hold on to this number there, Drew, it's going to blow your mind, 33 transgenders supposedly were killed because they're transgender in over a year.

Now, 33 out of 350 million people, really, really, really small percentage, but more than 33 people died by the hands of transgenders when they were doing mass shootings. By the way, one thing to just note, those 33 that died, it wasn't that they died because they were transgender, they were transgender who happened to be killed because of drug deals and other behavior that they were doing that put them in a position where they got killed.

It wasn't that they, they may sound like, oh, they're killed because they're transgender, they weren't killed because they were transgender.

Well, I mean, also think about the suicide rate amongst transgenders because one, the drugs that they're on, right? And the article talks about once you start getting into the drugs and changing the mind and changing the chemistry and the hormones, it changes the behavior, which it throws everything all out of whack.

But when you start getting someone who thinks they should be something else, and then they try to transition into that, and then they come to the realization, they're never going to actually be that, now what do they do?

And then everyone that was around them supported them and encouraged them to do this thing, and now they can't go back. So now what do they do? They take their own life.

Yeah, and so, you know, like when you look at this stuff, I really, I find it very irresponsible that the courts want to say that the schools have the right to hide information from parents, but then they're going to say parents are responsible for everything the children do.

Now, I mean, part of me says, yes, when parents fail in their responsibility, there is a certain level of blame they have for the children living in their home that are, you know, non-adult children.

But then we look at the way things are happening and going, but you can't have it both ways, and that's the thing I have a concern. So I want to get to Jody's question, even though she came out, she backed out of backstage, she left her question here for us.

And I should mention, I wanted to mention this, Drew. I have, in over the last two weeks, I have gotten a number of emails and messages thanking us here for having a very well-balanced view with the whole situation with Alistair Begg.

If you folks haven't listened, if you don't follow our Theology Throwdown podcast, that's one that all of the podcasters of the Christian podcast community do, we dealt with that in detail on that one as well.

And I really was surprised to see how many of our podcasters had a similar balanced view to say that, yes, what Alistair said was wrong, don't agree with that counsel, but all the people jumping on them are equally as wrong.

One of the things I brought up in that one that I didn't bring up on this show was to ask the question, did Alistair Begg sin? Everyone's calling him to repentance, but was there sin? And when people think about it, well, not really.

Okay, then what's he repenting of?

Just bad advice doesn't equal sin. It just equals bad advice.

Exactly.

And I think that was something that got me, as we were discussing it, and then I used an argument that my wife brought up, and it was interesting to see the reaction, and I just want to throw this out in case you guys haven't listened to Theology Throwdown.

I encourage you to go follow that podcast. It's where all the Christian podcast community podcasters get together, we talk different topics. But my wife had a really interesting argument. Do you go to a christening in a Catholic church?

I mean, they totally destroy the meaning of baptism. They argue it removes original sin so that you could save yourself. Do you go to something like that, that totally butcherizes what biblical baptism is?

Interesting discussion there, right? And so just putting that out there, you guys could go listen to see what we said, but you could think your thoughts. So do you want to read Jody's question that she put in the chat before she left the backstage?

Yeah, yeah. She's actually now in, I think she's watching through Facebook. She just put a comment there. But she says, off of tonight's topic, so that she's getting off topic. Can someone please explain the difference between a Christian who sincerely is questioning their beliefs and faith versus a deconstructionalist?

Or we would just say a deconstructionist.

And this is why I want to address this before we get into the main topic, because it was off topic. So let me answer it this way, Jody. Let me first say that there's a difference between the assurance of salvation and eternal security.

So let me first define that. We have, once we are saved, genuinely born again, we cannot lose that salvation. And if people disagree with me, we can, you know, join us. We'll spend some time going through what the scriptures actually say.

Because a proper understanding of what salvation is and who saved who leads you to realize if God saved us, we can't take it away from him. We're just not that strong. Just saying. So once you're saved, you may be in a position, positionally right with God, but there's times in our life where we sin.

And what ends up happening is that you don't feel like you're saved. That's assurance of salvation. So the assurance is more feeling thing. Eternal security is more a positional thing.

Okay.

So there's times where maybe we haven't been, we haven't been going to church. We haven't been reading our Bible. We haven't been in prayer and we don't feel saved. That happens. So in that case, what happens sometimes is we start doubting our salvation.

Now, I think there is a clear difference between doubting our salvation or even challenging our own faith and deconstructing our faith. Deconstruction is where you are outwardly rebelling against the faith and want to prove it wrong.

So you're outwardly saying that this is false. It's not true. It's, you know, you may argue you once were a Christian, but now you know better things. Well, that is deconstruction, where they want to deny the faith that they once claimed is even true.

Questioning your faith is totally different. I mean, when I first became a Christian, not knowing any other Christians, not knowing the Bible, I actually went through the Bible looking to say, okay, someone told me about this, but can I prove it to be true?

And, you know, can I, can I, because I didn't want to believe in something that was false. And so here's what I ended up doing. I realized that, and if you guys think about it, how would people maybe make mistakes if the Bible's not true?

I'll give you a for instance with the Book of Mormon. One of the things I did when I was studying the Book of Mormon was I wrote a computer program to calculate the birth rate and the death rate. And I used that to show the number of people that died in the Book of Mormon means that for the Book of Mormon to be true, you have to have someone who, or a birth rate that was 15 times the birth rate that it was in the 1990s when I did this research.

That's kind of hard to believe that you had a birth rate 15 times the number back thousands of years ago. I mean, this is supposedly 2 ,000 years ago that the Book of Mormon claims these events happened.

When people were dying younger, they didn't have the medicine we have today. We live much longer. Yes, they had more children, but very few of them made it to adulthood to be able to reproduce. And so the birth rate was much less back then.

Well, that was the way I was able to mathematically prove that the Book of Mormon is wrong. So I looked at the same thing. I actually went through all those genealogies that we often skip when reading through the Bible in a year.

Like, oh, so-and-so begot so-and-so, and they were this age, and begot so-and-so. Well, what I did was I actually built a chart.

And went through.

All of those genealogies to figure out if anyone, what I was looking for, did anyone live beyond the flood? Because if I could prove.

That anybody.

Lived a couple of years.

After the flood other than Noah's family, those eight people, then I would be able to show that the Bible was wrong and that what I was believing wasn't true. Now, did I believe it?

Yes.

But did I still try to want to reinforce my faith?

Yes.

And I thought this was a good way because when someone's putting down all these numbers, they're not going to do the calculations. That's the problem with the Book of Mormon. They were doing the calculations of people dying in warfare that were common for the 1800s, not common for 1 AD or actually 33 AD.

And so, the number of people that die in warfare are much greater.

So,.

That's what I ended up doing. Now, was that deconstruction?

No.

That was just challenging. Right? So, what I ended up discovering,.

By the way,.

Give you the answer. The answer is no one lived past the flood. Actually, Methuselah would have died the same year of the flood.

Hmm. So,.

You know, he's the oldest person. He might have died in the flood. I don't know. No evidence on that. I couldn't...

So,.

Doing things like that is when you're just doubting. I wish that we had recorded Wednesday night I was teaching through 1 Peter. And if we had that recorded, I could have just directed you to that, Jody.

It was a thing where what I talked about there was the fact that when we look at 1 Peter and what he's saying there, the more we go through trials, not go around them, not avoid trials, the more we go through trials and we come through the trial, our faith is tested.

It's assumed to be more genuine. By doing that over and over and over again, we then can look back and see where God has brought us. And that gives us more of the assurance that we're saved because we see how God has carried us through.

Yeah, it's actually a really good thing to ask questions of what you believe.

Right?

And so when I tell people about doing apologetics, I tell them that basically apologetics is knowing what you believe, knowing why you believe it, and then being able to relay that or communicate that.

Right?

Because it's good to ask why do I believe this? Which is different than the deconstructionist. Because if you look at the deconstructionist that we've seen that have made themselves known, typically there's some kind of sin that they want to live in.

Right? There's something they don't like about biblical Christianity and they go, I want to dismantle that. I want to get away from that. Therefore, that can't be historic Christianity. So I'm going to deconstruct it.

I'm going to break it down. I no longer believe that way anymore. It's a new day. I'm my own person. And I'm just going to build up a Jesus basically in my own image that gives me what I want.

Mm-hmm. So Jody put another comment there that you marked if you want to bring that one up when you read that one. Yeah.

So she says, so the person isn't just trying to figure their own faith out.

Wow.

No, they're not trying to figure it out. They're trying to dismantle it so that they can live a version of Christianity that they want that doesn't call for personal holiness or personal accountability to a holy God.

Yeah.

I remember someone that was claiming they were a Christian, that they walked away from the faith, that they were a Christian. And it was interesting because as she's sharing things, she's trying to make the case that she was genuinely a Christian.

But the reason she walked away and denies the faith was because she couldn't have sex with her boyfriend.

Oop.

Or no, actually, the way she actually, I can't continue having sex with my boyfriend. So the reality is she had sex, she went to college, had sex with a boyfriend. She wanted to continue that, but she knew scripture said that she couldn't.

So what does she do? Throw out the Bible rather than the sexual relations.

Yeah.

She posted another comment, which is a really good one, and it's good for us to end here.

This is why people should come in, by the way, and ask the questions so we can have the dialogue. I know she dropped out, but that's okay.

But she says, next question to piggyback the first question of mine. The artists, meaning the singers and songwriters and past pastors who have deconstructed their faith have just been trying to avoid giving up their sin.

Yeah, because if you look at their life now, if you look at or even what they were hiding then, they were what? They were having affairs or they were living these secret lives of sin or now they can dabble in whatever it is that they want.

Yeah, that's absolutely it.

Yeah.

All right. So let us get to... I just want to see which ones you... Okay, so we have a couple things that came up that you posted here or that you grabbed that were related to...

I didn't grab these.

Oh, maybe I grabbed the first one. I thought... Oh, maybe I grabbed the second one. All right, so let's... These are at least in line with what we're talking about. So Melissa said this, why are continuationists so crabby?

Every discussion I see online is crazy with them. Now, here's the thing, Melissa. I think they would make the same argument with us. They would probably say we're crabby and we're crazy.

They would say we deny Scripture and the Holy Spirit.

That is true. John ends up saying here, arguments against cessationism. I find one problem is everyone has a different interpretation of cessationism. I think...

I don't really think so though because when we had Les on, I tried to bring this up with Les and he asked a question and I was like, you know, that's a good point. I don't know anyone that actually believes this kind of extreme view that's talked about that just believes every single gift or everything like that has ceased outright.

But it's the belief that the apostolic gifts, the sign gifts, have ceased. When we say ceased, we mean they're no longer normative. It doesn't mean that God can't... you can't be in a place and God can't use, say, the gift of tongues where you're speaking in a different language and someone understands you in a different language.

It's just not normative. I've even heard MacArthur say that. But there's no need for them today because we're not laying the foundation of the church. We're not giving new revelation. They're unnecessary.

Okay, so... we might have differences then.

Right?

So let's see. Justin Peters would be really clear. He'd say if you believe that the gifts of these things continue, you're a continuationist. So he'd say John Piper's a continuationist. So the caution, cautious, open but cautious, he says, are continuationists because they say they could continue.

A cessationist believes they stopped. Not just that they're not normative. Now, can God heal?

Yes!

Can God do these things? Correct. Well, that's not a gift.

Right?

Like, let's not fall into the trap because if the Redmond Radio was to listen to this, they would stop us and say, hey, there's no such thing as signed gift. And that would be a fair point. The word sign doesn't appear there.

It doesn't appear, right.

So it's a gift.

Well, technically, I mean, because it does speak of signs and wonders, but those signs are accompanied through what? Or manifest through what? Through the giftings.

Now, it's a thing where, and we've talked about this last time that we dealt with their arguments, I would argue that these gifts that we're going to talk about are revelatory.

Gifts and.

Miraculous gifts. Opposed to, and I think everyone would agree these gifts are miraculous versus.

Teaching.

Is something that's natural. Speaking a language you don't know is not. Right? So I think we could all agree that there were certain gifts that were miraculous in nature and some that were natural in nature.

Okay?

And we're speaking to those that are the I do not call them, I'll get to this, the apostolic gifts. I'll explain why in a moment because that's going to be one of their arguments. And so when we look at this, we just have to recognize that when it comes to the definition, I'm going to say that a cessationist is someone who believes that these gifts ceased.

So the Holy Spirit does not give this gifting to a new believer.

Okay? Right.

Now, by the definition you kind of gave, Matt Sinek and I would both be cessationists, and yet Matt believes that prophecy continues. But he doesn't believe it's normative.

Okay.

Right?

I wouldn't even say prophecy itself continues because of the nature of what prophecy was. It was the giving of the revelation of Christ, and we have no need for any new prophecy.

Ever.

Yeah. So let me bring up James's comment here. So James Russo says, I tried talking with my Pentecostal pastor dad about this. He refused to accept the idea that the apostles had the gifts in a unique way, even when I limited the statement to them giving Scripture.

So the issue there is and this is where some people say, well, they're apostolic gifts because the apostles had them. And so the issue is not whether we have these gifts or didn't have these gifts because of the apostles, and I think that what James is getting to is what my argument that I make is that the purpose of them is for the giving of Scripture.

So when Scripture is complete, we don't need them.

Correct. Yeah.

That's fitting with the text of 1 Corinthians 13. It's fitting with history throughout the Bible. Only three times in history that we have these miraculous works that in Hebrew says that would vindicate the Bible, the Scripture, is miracles, signs and wonders.

And we have three times in history and all three times are within the years before the writing of Scripture. So Moses, then he's got like 40 years of miracles with some writing of Scripture. Then you have Elijah and Elisha.

Following them, there's new Scripture being written, Jesus Christ and the disciples and new Scripture being written. And so what we end up seeing is, I just got distracted by Brother.

John. I saw.

The only way I would.

Win a debate with Andrew is if we have it in Spanish. I just happened to see that one. Sorry about that, folks. But what you end up seeing, though, is that when we look at these gifts, the question really isn't whether the apostles had them or what was the purpose for them?

And did the Bible say they would cease? Well, the Bible says they would cease. Now the question is when? Well, I'm going to stay with the closing of the canon. They aren't needed anymore and that's why it says that they're going to cease.

But what.

We're going to see is.

That.

If we're going to say that it's not the closing of the canon, you're going to say that they need to continue for today because they were done that way. Well, historically, it doesn't support it.

You only.

Have about seven miracles done by human beings outside of those three times in history that I mentioned with the writing of Scripture. And if you want to check those out, just go to strivingforeternity .org slash miracles.

Strivingforeternity .org slash miracles. I have a paper out there. That was my message at the cessationist conference.

And.

At that message, basically, I went through all the different miracles to show.

That.

We only have them in those times of history in this new Scripture. All right. So before we get to the arguments, anything else you want to bring up, Drew?

Nope.

I want to start with argument three before we get to argument two. And I'm going to tell you why I want to do this. Argument three is really quick because they didn't address it. They kind of just brushed it off.

But the reason I want to start with article three is because their answer against cessationists like myself, I think throughout the rest of argument two, we're going to see that they're guilty of what they accuse us of doing.

Okay? So for that sake, I want to play argument three. This is about 41 seconds, 42 seconds. So here we go.

So question number three, what biblical or theological evidence is there that tongues have ceased? First, the gift of tongues was a miraculous revelatory gift, and the age of miracles and revelation ended with the apostles.

There actually has to be an eisegesis of categories, and that's our primary discomfort with this understanding, is that we have to go outside of the Scripture, create a category called apostolic sign gifts, and then read that into every biblical passage.

The Bible calls them gifts and puts them all together. There's no reason to separate them out in separate categories to say these gifts ceased and these gifts have continued. By and large, that's what I'd say.

Okay. So he accuses us of eisegesis because we say they're apostolic.