When Cessationism Turns Into Deism

The Historical Categories of Cessationism and Providence

So the framers of the Westminster Confession of Faith, framers of the Second London Confession, you know, in this era of history, would have had categories for things that would make a lot of our Reformed friends very nervous.

The Lord coming to his people and ministering to his people in dreams, angelic visitation, prophetic impulses, as they would call it, unction of God. You know, so they had categories for all of this. We've already spoken about the Lord told me.

That's not what. But we should have a lot of room for the Lord to press all kinds of things on our hearts. Dreams. There are ways that angels minister to us that we just don't talk about very much. It's not that I'm all the time looking around like, where is my angelic visitation today?

But that I've got categories for that. That God will give particular unction or a particular burden over something in a particular season because this is really good that I engage this way or that I pursue this individual.

Rejecting Hyper-Cessationism as Functional Deism

God absolutely does those things. And so I think what exists today is a kind of hyper cessationism. To me, John, I think it ends up in a kind of, it almost sounds like deism, where like the Lord is kind of distant.

You know, he's not as intimately involved, even though nobody would say it that way. It still sounds like, well, God, God ain't going to get involved like that. And he ain't going to get, he's not going to do that.

He's kind of going to sit up there in the heavens and govern things according to his providence. But it's not.

Testing Claims by Scripture and Guarding the Gospel

This. There are going to be things that happen we can't fully explain, but we don't have to just throw our hands up and accept everything. That's dangerous. I fully believe there are false teachers and prophets who want to hurt me and hurt the church.

And so I am going to see what you're saying. I'm going to compare it to scripture. And if you affirm what's going on, then we can have a conversation. But if not, church, a listener, pay attention here.

The reason why I'm saying this is that Satan wants more than anything to destroy your vision of the gospel and of Jesus Christ. He wants you to get distracted by anything in any means possible. He wants to darken and clouden it.

And let's take Peter's advice here. Let's pay well attention to the prophecy of the fulfillment of Christ and allow that to be our shining light in the darkness and not be intrigued by the miraculous gifts or things that might be happening around us.

I'm not saying you have to ignore them, but please filter them through what we already know to be true and safe by scripture. Hey, look, I think there's some damaging things coming out of the charismatic movement, but guys, let's not swing so far that, you know, we're not allowing any work of the spirit at all.

Right. Let's back off here a little bit.