Acts 5:12-16 excerpt on cessationism

Out of signs, wonders, miracles. Now people want to know today, our day, people want to know why don't we see signs and wonders, right? Some people say, you know, show me one and I'll believe. But is it the fact that this movement, Christianity, that it grew itself a sign and a wonder?

Consider that. Well, there's two main answers among Christians as to where are the signs and wonders now. Where do they go? Some say that they have ceased, that they were just for the inauguration of the church and they then stopped after the completion of the New Testament, that first generation.

Cessationism and the Sufficiency of Scripture

That doctrine is called, a name for it, cessationism. Cessationism is the belief that the manifestation to the Holy Spirit's power and signs and wonders and dreams and visions and all that, that it ceased when the New Testament was complete.

Now, a lot of quote, reformed Christians, sort of like us today, they believe in that, but there's, seems to me there's two major problems with that. First, the Bible nowhere teaches that, which is, seems to me, a huge problem with that doctrine because of what the doctrine says.

It seems to me it's just, it's just a major problem itself. After all, the doctrine itself, the main reason given for cessationism, that is the signs and wonders, dreams and visions and all that, that they have ceased, they say they have ceased because they say, well, those were for proving the message of the Bible, sort of endorsing it, showing that this is true, before the Bible had been fully given, before the New Testament had been finished.

And they would say, now that we have the Bible, we have it all, then we don't need the signs and manifestations of the spirit power anymore. I'd also point out, I don't think the signs and wonders weren't to prove to us who already believe it, it was to prove to those outside, and I don't see how that's changed any, but nevermind that.

Again, the doctrine says that we don't need anything other than the Bible, so we don't need the signs and wonders, except, did you notice what they just said we need? We need this nice little argument that the gifts have ceased, that we can't prove with the Bible.

It seems to me to be self-contradictory to say that the Bible is sufficient, that part's true, but it's self-contradictory to say the Bible is sufficient, so we don't need signs and wonders, that's the questionable part, but we do need the doctrine of cessationism that the Bible doesn't teach.

Do you get the contradiction? In other words, you can't teach the sufficiency of scripture with a doctrine scripture doesn't teach, right? Seems to be illogical, okay? The second major problem with cessationism is that there are, in fact, many accounts of signs and wonders here and there throughout church history.

Signs and Wonders in Church History

For example, Augustine, in the 300s and early 400s, first believed in and then came to look into several accounts of miracles and recounted them, and he said they still exist today, in his day. Even the people I studied, the Puritans, who are basically the epitome, the pinnacle of what it means to be, quote, reformed, they believe that God still revealed himself, like is mentioned in Acts chapter 2, you know, your young men will see visions, you dream dreams, that kind of thing.

Contrary to how I've seen them often described, they were not cessationists. The scandalous witchcraft, the Salem witchcraft trials were caused by them believing that a group of girls were receiving visions about people involved in witchcraft, and they accepted those visions as evidence.

They would have been better off at that point if they had been cessationists, but that's beside the point. They didn't believe every account of a vision though. They should have been more discerning with the Salem witchcraft trials, but sometimes they were very discerning.

When an Indian chief, a sachem, claimed that he had received a vision of the great Puritan missionary John Elliot, who by that time was dead, but he said he had, this Indian chief said he had seen a vision of John Elliot preaching to him, telling him to repent of his drinking, his pow-wowing, which is sort of this, you know, pagan incantations of spirits, and telling him to keep the Sabbath.

And the Puritans, when they heard this, they concluded it was a false vision. It was whatever, just made up in his imagination, because John Elliot, the real John Elliot, would never tell people just to keep the law.

In other words, repent of your sins, stop doing this and start doing that. He would also tell anyone to believe in the gospel, believe in what Jesus has done for your sins. Now what they didn't say, the Puritans, was that we don't believe that's not a vision because we believe signs and wonders and dreams and visions have ceased.

They didn't say that because they didn't believe that. They were people who were open to experiencing God in all his power. Now today, sometimes we hear claims of miracles on the mission field, particularly on the front lines of where the gospel is going into new places.

One recent story, it's not verified, I wish I could have proof of it, but I don't, but it is that a believer in China said that God had told him that the mine in the town where he was was going to collapse and that the miners needed to evacuate, get out of that mine right away, and they decided to listen to him and the mine in fact did collapse and many of the miners and the other witnesses around there became believers.

Signs and Wonders as Breakthrough Power in the Advance of the Gospel

But then you think, well that's fine, it's always somewhere else. Why don't we see signs and wonders regularly? I think that's because they aren't meant to be regular events. They're regular here because this is a special time, you know, the cross, the resurrection, Pentecost, the giving of the spirit to the church, breaking through to the Jews and then eventually to the Gentiles.

The power of the spirits seems to be displayed at special breakthroughs when the gospel is advancing to new groups of people, especially against opposition, by the way. Almost any time in the Bible you see there's lots of signs and wonders and miracles and things like that, there's also a lot of power coming the other way, satanic power, maybe from the world persecuting the church.

So be careful what you pray for if you're going to pray for miracles because that means the enemy gets to have power too. Just like the power of the gospel is often on display when it's advancing in major ways, just like the power of the military is on special display in times of great conflict.

You know, when the army advances against the enemy then it unleashes its power. But we all know it has that power, right? Even though we probably never seen it, right? Hopefully we know that. We've seen it in movies.

We've never seen it in real life. But you don't think, well, I've never seen it in real life so I don't believe it exists. I don't believe they really have bombers or atomic bombs or machine guns because I've never seen them.

You don't think that way, do you? Of course not. But like, take for example the power that was on display at the Normandy invasion. You know, the bombers, they got all the bombers they could get. They dropped their loads of bombs, naval guns from battleships and so forth were blasting away.

Planes filled the sky. Thousands of ships filled the sea. Explosions covered the land. Over 150 ,000 men were landed on the beach in one day. The display of power was stunning. All to blast away the enemy, to advance through enemy lines, to invade.

Of course the enemy fired back with all the power that they had. The fighting was ferocious and fierce. Power against power. Well now, imagine if you got to go to France and you went to the Normandy. You walked on the peaceful beach.

Maybe see a few plaques there. That'd be all that was left, right? It'd be peaceful. It'd be nice. The waves rolling in. You wouldn't conclude, would you? I hope not. That just because you don't see the power, that power anymore, that it didn't really exist.

Or maybe it did exist in the past but it doesn't exist anymore. That it all just passed away. You'd know, hopefully, that the the peace there now, the freedom and the justice now that's now in France, that it came from the power that was unleashed on D-Day.

Just because you don't see that power in your experience, doesn't mean it's not still available. So in the same way, just because we may not see these kind of signs and wonders regularly, at least not much, doesn't mean that we no longer have that kind of power behind us.

Maybe we're not on the front lines of the war, you know, between the kingdom of God and the present evil age. Maybe we're somewhere else in the battle. Maybe we're not where the breakthrough is happening right now.

That we should still be confident, as the Lord Jesus promised, we have received power, great power. From last week, remember, mega power. And it's still available for us, should we need it. Where do we come from, after all?

We came from great power and we still have it. Well, the second way some people deal with passages like this, or the other extreme, some say it's all ceased, but others say, hey, look at this. Hey, if miracles were regular, as it says in the SV here for them, why shouldn't they be regular for us?

Are Miracles the Normal Daily Life of the Church?

Now we've basically already answered that, I think. But some will say that, you know, if we aren't regularly seeing miracles, it must be because maybe we're too unbleeding. Maybe we're in sin. We're doing something wrong.

So make us feel guilty. We're not seeing miracles, it's our problem. Assuming that this here is our norm, that this is our, what we just read, is our standard operating procedure. It should be what it's like for us, the daily life of the church.

But what we see here isn't intended, like some think, to be the norm for all the church at all time. No more than June 6, 1944, was intended to be a normal day at the beach on Normandy. It's what was needed to free Europe in World War II.

The power on display here in Signs and Wonders was what was necessary to free the church, to launch out into the world. And it may be necessary again, from time to time, to break through to new groups of people, to Chinese, or to Africans, or South Americans, or in the future to Japanese.

Maybe back again to break through to Americans again. It's still available. It's where we came from. We, we, the church, are the evidence of that power.