Session 3: Andrew Rappaport - The New Testament Case For Fading Miracles

Andrew Rappaport is the President Director of Striving for Eternity Ministries.

He is known to most, if not all of you, and he also directs the Christian podcast

community, and this is session number three, the New Testament.

Case for the fading of miracles.

Andrew.

Jim knew I was gonna wear red, so he appropriately dressed.

The advantage of this is the day will just get better with me starting, so everything after this

will be good, so you have that to look forward to.

Let's start with a brief word of prayer.

Lord, we are grateful for the fact that we have your word.

We have something that we can trust and rely upon as an absolute authority for our faith

and practice.

May we look to you, not just in this hour, but this entire conference, to see what you

would have to teach us, that we would rest solely upon what

you have revealed of yourself in your word.

And may you, by the person of the Holy Spirit, take your word and illuminate it to our understandings

and to the application for us.

We thank you in Christ's name, amen.

Well, I'm very glad that yesterday Kevin started us off with laying a foundation, and that's what

we're gonna try to build upon now, is the foundation that Kevin had laid for us.

And in dealing with this, I have to start by laying my own foundation for the question of the fading

of the New Testament miracles.

What I first want to do is start off with a personal experience.

Some of you know that I grew up from a Jewish background.

Being raised Jewish, I knew nothing of Christianity.

I didn't know anything of the New Testament when I got saved, and didn't meet any other Christians until I got to college.

When I got to college, most of the people there were word of faith.

I assumed, ignorantly, that they must know the Bible better than me because they all grew up in church.

I did not.

And so I was believing what they were telling me.

I lacked discernment.

And in that lack of discernment, what ended up happening was, I was believing things that later I would find

were not true.

I remember when I was—the pressure that was put upon us, those of us, the few of us that didn't speak in

tongues, to practice speaking in tongues.

I remember as a child, my sister and I would be in the store with my mom, and

you'd hear people speaking other languages, probably Spanish.

And my sister and I decided that we would pretend like we had our own language.

So we would sit in the cart and just talk gibberish to one another.

And I remember, with the pressure that was upon me to to speak in tongues, that they were like, just try, just

try.

So I went back to my childhood and spoke in gibberish.

And everyone was so ecstatic, as if I just got saved.

And the reality is, is that I remember sitting at a Bible study many years later, just listening to two men.

I wasn't even involved in the conversation.

They were at the other end of the table.

One gentleman says to the other gentleman that not everybody believes that the gifts continue to today.

I'd never heard anything like that.

And so I went home that night, sat down with the Scriptures, and I read 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14 in

one sitting.

And in that process, I came to realize not only was I taught incorrectly, but Paul was actually condemning the very

things that I was taught to believe.

I realized that much of what they were saying, they took out of context.

And I realized that Paul was actually condemning the spiritual pride that I saw in college, where when someone spoke in

tongues, another person had to have a word of the Spirit.

And when someone had a word of Spirit, someone else had to have a prophecy.

And so I ended up realizing that actually led me into a four -year study in

hermeneutics, where I wanted to never be taught incorrectly again.

I wanted to learn how to handle the Scriptures, and that's really been kind of the mark of what I'm known for as hermeneutics.

But I want to ask the question, why do charismatics get upset?

We have to deal with some things.

I said I want to lay the foundation before I get to the main topic, and so we have to understand that this is

a highly personal issue when you talk to continuationists.

And we have to recognize that.

One of the things we have is feel that just are a little bit too like, hey, this is what Scripture says, move on.

But this is something that for many people, this becomes very emotional, because this is how they get they find their

identity in their experience.

And so for that reason, it becomes emotional, it becomes personal, and often rationality you'll find goes

out the window, not with all, but with many.

And so when discussing cessationism, and with this film that's going to come out, we're going to see that there's going to be

a lot of people who end up arguing the way that many charismatics do today, by

arguing that you first have to accept the gifts as continuing to see it in Scripture.

Well, that is a begging -the -question fallacy.

When you accept the conclusion, when you must accept the conclusion to prove the point, when your conclusion

is that it has to be accepted for the premise, begging -the -question is a type of logical fallacy that's based on an

assumption rather than concrete evidence.

And you're going to see that with folks.

And so let's first start by defining miracles.

When we look at this, Michael Aubrey says this, quote, foundational to the biblical narrative is the

concept that God acts supernaturally with his created world.

Sometimes God acts directly in the world, sometimes he uses an intermediary.

Many times, the supernatural acts carry with it a greater significance or

meaning for the people involved, unquote.

So basically, a miracle is when the natural order is disrupted by the

supernatural.

That would be a basic definition of a miracle.

But I think that as we look in Scripture, it has a more specific meaning.

It is not just the disruption of the natural world by the supernatural, but miracles function

as a God -inspired revelation to those who witness them.

Miracles in the Bible are not just merely the violation of natural law, but they are

divine acts that communicate God's Word and his purpose.

And so we can see that there's actually a couple criteria that we can look at when we're thinking of what

defines a miracle.

MacGyver gives it four points.

One is, can the supernatural event be attributed directly or indirectly to a

supernatural agent?

In other words, this is primary because the agent must first be supernatural if they're going

to work outside of nature.

So can they be identified back to a supernatural agent?

This is necessary and leads to the second one he has, number two, does the event function to

reveal the power or identity of that agent?

In other words, not only is it a supernatural agent, but it has to point back to the agent.

So when God does a miracle, we don't look at the person doing the miracle, we look back at the God who worked

through the person.

When God raises an axe head in water, people don't go, oh, look at the axe head.

They go and look at God.

A third thing that he mentions is, does the event have noticeable and perhaps alarming

effects in the natural world?

In other words, this is not an everyday thing.

When people see a miracle, they recognize this as something unusual.

This is not normal.

So we're not talking about someone who gets up in the morning and, oh, my back is hurting and I got a

miracle, I was feeling a little bit better.

The fourth that he mentions is, is there a human intermediary performing the

supernatural event?

Now, this is sometimes in our day expected as the norm that people can perform miracles.

We're gonna see in a bit that that's not so normal, and it's not necessary.

God can do it without humans, but sometimes he can do miracles through humans.

Norman Geisler says this, quote, each of the three words for the supernatural

events, sign, wonder, and power, delineate an aspect of a miracle.

From the human vantage point, a miracle is an unusual event,

that's a sign, by means of an

unusual power, power.

But from the divine vantage point, a miracle is an act of

God, that's the power, that attracts attention of the people of God, wonder,

to the Word of God, the sign.

So what Geisler is saying is that the miracle's purpose is not to be focused on the miracle, but to

point to something, to point to the Word of God.

So in short, a miracle is an act of God that confirms the message as true

and substantiates and verifies or vindicates the Word of God.

So as we look at the the purpose of miracles, we end up seeing that there's a couple of purposes that we

see in Scripture.

I'm gonna give you the three that Geisler gives, and he says one is to glorify the nature of God,

second is to give credit to certain persons as spokesmen for

God, and a third is to provide evidence for a belief in God.

Now Geisler states that, quote, those who accept

biblical miracles debate among one another as to whether the special gift of miracles used

to confirm a revelation from God has ceased since the times of the Apostles.

The issue has significance for apologetics.

First, existence of of apostolic sign gifts, sign gift

type miracles today, raises the issue of whether New Testament miracles uniquely confirmed

the truth claims of Christ and the Apostles as recorded in Scripture.

Second, if miracles that confirm divine truth claims exist today, the

truth claims they accompany to be accepted are on par with Scripture,

has divine revelation ceased?

So note what he's saying is, he's saying that the purpose of the miracles is to confirm revelation.

Well, if the purpose of miracles is to confirm revelation, if that's the purpose when humans are most often

doing miracles, then the question is that are these things that they're confirming still continuing?

If there is no more revelation, then what are the miracles pointing to?

We think about the miracles we hear people say today, and we find that most often those miracles that people are

claiming point to self and not God.

If miracles continue today, then they should be pointing to Scripture.

If they're used to prove, if they're spoken as God, if you have prophecies,

then that should be in par with Scripture.

We see that many continuationists want to argue that miracles done today, they'll accept that this is

God speaking, but they say that the New Testament miracles are different than Old Testament miracles in such

that they're not actually Scripture.

They're not God's Word somehow.

What makes Scripture God's Word?

It is that it's breathed out by God.

2 Timothy 3, 16, and 17 says this, all Scripture is breathed out by God and

profitable for teaching, for a proof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be

complete, equipped for every good work.

Paul is very clear that we do not need miracles for the completing or equipping of our faith.

We need the Word of God.

He's not saying that our sanctification is based upon miracles.

He says Scripture serves the purpose and is necessary to sanctify us.

There is no mention here of miracles.

Now, if you were here last night, you'd realize maybe why, as Justin mentioned, it could be because, well,

1 and 2 Timothy are later books, so there wouldn't be as the need for them.

So, miracles by definition are not normative.

I want to address this because this is going to be a thing that I think in the argument of the fading of miracles, we have to

address.

We look at the arguments of those that are proponents of continuationism, and they want to claim that miracles can

continue to today, and we should expect them.

Geisler gives us four arguments that proponents give.

One, God performed miracles in redemptive history.

They're recorded from Genesis through Revelation.

There seems to be no reason to believe they would cease arbitrarily with the Apostles.

Number two, God has not changed.

Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

If a miracle -working God has not changed, why would the miracles cease?

Number three, Jesus spoke of continuing miracles.

He said, if anyone has faith in me, they will do what I am doing.

He will do even greater things than these, because I go to the Father.

In his commission, he recorded in Mark, Jesus said that miracles would accompany when the gospel went out.

And number four, Geisler says, miracles manifest God's greatness and glory to deliver God's children

in need and to communicate God's message with his people.

This needs to continue today.

So let's look at each one of these arguments, because we need to know how to answer these arguments

to answer the question of, do the New Testament miracles fade?

So the argument that God performed miracles in redemptive history.

Miracles are not performed as often as people think.

If I was to ask you to give a number of how many miracles you think are in the Bible, I've been polling some

people, and most of the people are in the thousands.

The answer is there's only 265 miracles mentioned in the Bible.

Over 4 ,000 years of history of the Bible.

When you limit that to humans performing the miracles, you get down to 81

miracles in 4 ,000 years.

Clearly, miracles were not common in the Bible, and nor should they be today.

We'll see in a bit that miracles were extremely rare in biblical history.

Therefore, to argue that something that rarely happened over 4 ,000 years, we should expect to see commonly today,

wouldn't be logically valid.

If miracles continue today, it would logically fit that they should not be as rare as they are

in Scripture.

Past history, as we're going to see, reveals that there's only some 100 years of miracle

activity in the 4 ,000 years of Bible history.

I'll give another quote from Geisler.

He says, logically, there is no connection between past and present miracle occurrences.

Even during thousands of years of Bible history, miracles are clustered in three

very limited periods.

One, the Mosaic period, from the Exodus through the taking of the Promised Land, with a few

occurrences in the period of Judges.

Two, the prophetic period, from the late kingdom of Israel

and Judah, during the ministry of Elijah and Elisha, and to a lesser extent, Isaiah.

And three, the apostolic period, from the first century ministries of Christ and the Apostles.

Occurrences of miracles were neither continuous nor without purpose, unquote.

The fact that miracles occurred in these three times, and that's it, reveals

that we do not see, in the rest of history, that these are normative.

The real problem with this argument is that miracles were an anomaly in

history, not the norm.

You never define things by the anomaly, by the exception.

But that is what we have continuationists wanting to do today, is to say that this anomaly in history should be

normative, that the exception should be the norm.

If this argument was valid, then we would have to see that there would have been lots of miracles

in Bible history.

The second argument that they often make is, God has not changed.

To argue that God has not changed, and we all accept this, every one of us accepts the fact

that Jesus is the same yesterday, and today, and forever, that God is immutable, He does not change

in His nature.

But this is a category error that we talk about in logic, where you take two different categories and put them

as the same.

You see, the nature of God and the way God works with people are two different

categories.

So the fact that God is a miracle -doing God hasn't

changed.

God still does miracles today.

And often when you speak to continuationists, they're going to argue that those of us that believe that these gifts have ceased

are going to challenge us by saying that we don't believe God does miracles anymore.

Let me affirm this.

I believe God still does miracles.

He does not do them as a gift through people.

That's the distinction.

And so the way He works with people is different through time.

How many of you keep kosher?

No, you enjoy your bacon.

Trust me, having sausage on a cheese pizza is really enjoyable.

Some of you don't understand what it's like to keep kosher.

But why don't you keep the Passover?

For in fact, that was commanded to the Israelites to keep forever.

Why don't we keep these festivals?

Because God has changed the way He works with His people.

Those laws are not for us in the church.

And those bacon lovers say, amen.

To claim that God changed those laws, but somehow He

doesn't change the gifts, isn't fitting.

See, the gifts fit within the way He works with His people.

God does change over time.

Let's look or change the way He works with us over time.

Then the third argument people make is that Jesus spoke of continuing miracles.

This argument is again a begging the fallacy question.

It's a begging the fallacy question because it assumes you have to start with the fact that in John 12, I'm

sorry, John 14, that when Jesus says you will do greater things, they assume

that's speaking of miracles.

They claim that the greater things referred to is miracles.

They're interjecting that in the white space.

It's not there.

There's an attempt to make the Bible say what they wish it said rather than

what it does say.

The key to the greater things is tied to what Jesus Himself said, that He goes to the Father.

The reason that it is a greater thing is precisely because there are no

miracles attesting to what they're saying.

It's the lack of miracles that will make it greater.

But don't take my word for it.

Let's take Jesus's.

There's nothing in the text of John 14 speaking of miracles.

But let's see, if you turn to John 16, we don't have time because, well, Jim only gave me 15

minutes, not three hours.

But if you look at John 16, you end up seeing that Jesus explains the meaning of the

greater things.

And He doesn't mention miracles.

He mentions joy in suffering.

That's what He says.

That the greater, Jesus is stating, is having joy in suffering.

This argument logically ignores what Jesus Himself said as an

explanation to what He meant.

I will take Jesus's meaning over anyone else's of what He meant by what He said.

We end up seeing in 2 Corinthians 12 .12, it says the signs of a...

I didn't put that slide in, so back up a little.

It says in 2 Corinthians 12 .12, the signs of a true apostle were performed among you

with the utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.

Now, if miracles are the signs of an apostle, and there are no more apostles,

the question should be, why should there be any miracles?

Why should they continue if the apostles are no longer here?

So, miracles, the fourth one that Geisler provided, is miracles manifest

God's greatness.

And as we look at this, and as people argue that we need to have miracles today to see how great

God is in all His glory, I would argue we

have something greater.

Do we need miracles to know God is great?

No.

We have this, God's self -revelation.

What more do we need to argue that we need something beyond what God has revealed

of Himself?

It's to say that this is not sufficient.

We have not only God's self -revelation, but we have something that many of

us...

Sorry, let me correct that.

Many of you Gentiles don't appreciate.

Do you appreciate that you have the indwelling Holy Spirit that not only illuminates God's

Word for you, but also helps you in the application thereof?

I say that because to the Jewish mindset, this is the new covenant that Jewish people look forward

to, Jeremiah 29 and Ezekiel 36, that we would no longer need a

priesthood because God Himself would indwell us so we can understand His Word.

What more do we need than God's Word and Himself in the personal Holy Spirit?

To say we need something more?

What does that do to the personal Holy Spirit?

I would say it puts Him at a lower level.

I know that my continuationist friends would disagree.

But the reality is, is desire for miracles is often a felt

need.

But not all felt needs are real needs.

I mean, Job had a felt need for healing, and you know, when he went through what he went through,

did God give him a miracle?

No, God actually never told him what was happening.

You know, we could look at Paul.

Paul was sitting there, and he prayed for relief.

God never gave it, and he wrote most of the New Testament.

No, just because we feel a need, because we want confirmation, doesn't mean we get it.

What is the confirmation that John the Baptist received?

When he wanted to see some vindication, and what was it he was told?

Go to the Scriptures.

Look at what the Scriptures say about the Messiah, and look at what is happening with the Messiah, and you have your answer.

The confirmation was not the miracle.

The confirmation for John was the Word of God.

Now, when we compare this with the periods that

prompted miracles, I would argue that there's no comparison when we look to

Scripture.

The Scripture provides us everything we need to see God's glory and greatness.

Miracles can manifest God's greatness, is what Geisler says.

He says, through miracle, though miracles can manifest God's greatness, glory, and deliverance, he accomplishes these

things in other ways.

The heavens declare the glory and greatness.

Spiritual deliverance is accomplished through the power of the gospel.

God works through general and special providence without suspending natural

laws.".

So miracles are not the only way that we can see the greatness and glory and deliverance of God.

And oh, that last one, the message of God.

Suffering does these things.

Oh, we don't like to think of that.

But so does evangelizing.

So does worship, fearing the Lord.

There are many things that help us to see the greatness of God, to reflect upon His

creation, and be amazed, because in the New Testament times, they did not understand the

universe the way we do.

And they never understood a cell, let alone an atom, let alone quantums.

We have gone to the vastness of the universe, to the smallest parts of cells, at least that's what we think today, but they thought the

atom was the smallest, and then we got smaller.

But the reality is, the more we dig, the more we find the wonder of God.

Because we look at His creation and go, wow!

He creates within every atom of your body, with every cell of your body, this little motor called a flagellum that can go from

0 to 300 in a split a second.

I'd love that in a car.

Alright, so what we end up seeing, though, is we want to look at the nature of miracles, because

this is where much of the debate ends up becoming.

The difference between what we're going to refer to as the fact of miracles, and the gift of miracles.

Because, as was said last night, so eloquently by both of the speakers,

is the fact that we all accept that miracles continue.

It is the gift of miracles that we're saying do not continue.

When we looked at this, the fact that miracles continue, we have miracles that occur any time,

and yet the gift of miracles were limited to Bible times.

They were limited within Bible times to a few periods of time.

So the fact of miracles are permanent.

They're all the time, throughout history, where the gift of miracles was temporary.

The fact of miracles is done without human beings.

God does miracles, where the gift of miracles are done through human beings.

The fact of miracles do not confirm revelation.

Where the gift of miracles was their purpose of confirming revelation.

And so we end up seeing is that the view that miracles ceased with the Apostles

does not demand that God does not perform miracles anymore.

Again, a category error.

We argue that the gift of miracles do not continue.

And so as we look at some of the characteristics of a miracle, and all this is laying the foundation, but as

we do this, I want to point out some characteristics of miracles, so we know how to define what a miracle is, so we

can recognize them.

Now when we look at the New Testament miracles, there's some things we notice.

One, miracles were always instantaneous.

When Jesus, or the Apostles, performed a miracle, it was not a partial healing.

There was no gradual healing over days, or weeks, or months.

Now some will point to one incidence where Jesus takes a blind man, and he has a partial sight, but

what happens when he goes and washes his eyes as Jesus tells him?

It's an immediate sight.

So even that one is still an immediate miracle, it's just Jesus chose to do that in two stages.

That's unlike the miracle of the healings that we see today.

When we see these miracles done today, they're usually partial or incomplete, or as Justin said last night,

psychosomatic.

This is in contrast to the biblical miracles.

Biblical miracles were immediate, complete, performed on anyone,

believer or not.

This is in sharp contrast to the supposed miracles performed by people today.

A second characteristic of miracles in the Bible, in New Testament, is they never failed.

And there's a reason for that, because their author is God, who never fails.

A miracle is a special act of God, and since God cannot fail, the miracle cannot fail.

There's no record in Scripture of anyone relapsing into this

condition they were before.

In fact, I believe that if that had happened, the Jewish leaders would have used that to

discredit Jesus and the apostles.

However, the prophets and apostles that claim to be that today,

also claim that they're only about 80 -85 accurate in their prophecies.

The Old Testament would demand their death for every one of them.

For example, not one of these miracle -working

prophets noticed or saw this thing, maybe you guys heard

of it, COVID.

Not one of them, by January 2020, predicted COVID.

The other thing that every one of them got wrong, every one of them got the election wrong of 2020.

They all said Trump was going to be the president at the end of the election.

If you doubt me on that, I'll encourage you to go to Justin Peter's YouTube channel, he's got a great video that details

all of that.

But that is a major failure.

They didn't see the elections, they missed that, they got that one totally wrong.

They didn't see COVID and the effects on the government.

That's just some major failures, wouldn't we say?

I mean, that's kind of affected the world, and they missed that one

too.

Two of them, I guess.

So what we see is that their excuse will be this, and you'll sometimes hear this, is,

well, Old Testament prophecies are different than New Testament prophecies.

That the New Testament prophecies, they can fail, it's okay.

So they'll claim, and so we end up seeing is that the workers today, the miracle workers today, have a limitation on the

belief of the person that's receiving the miracle, rather than we see in the Scriptures

that it's on the person performing the miracle.

They have it backwards.

A fourth argument, a fourth credential is the fact that it was to establish the Word of God, and

we're going to see that throughout here.

Now what I want to do, and this is, I want to go through the miracles of the Bible.

This is what I found interesting as we look at this, and because I'm going to give

charts and data, this is not very easy, it's not very easy to explain in

words, numbers.

And so I did put this out, it's on my website right now, strivingforeturning .org .miracles.

It has all these charts, actually the entire message, with all of the data underneath.

So if you go to strivingforreturning .org .miracles.

So there's 256 miracles in the Bible.

Jesus did 104 of them.

That's 39 percent of all the miracles in the Bible.

We should expect that, because something was different with Jesus.

This is when the infinitely holy God became a man.

The infinitely holy God enters into his own creation, becomes a man, and the miracles he did

was for the specific purpose of putting his deity on display.

So that is unique in all of history.

And so we would expect that he does a bulk of miracles, but there's 178

miracles of those that are done by the Godhead.

That's 67 percent of all miracles mentioned in the Bible.

That leaves 87 miracles done by created beings, six by angels, leaving us with 81

miracles.

That's 31 percent of all the miracles in the Bible.

Now, one thing we can conclude from this is that miracles definitely were not

normative in the scriptures.

In 4 ,000 years of recorded history, there's 81 miracles that are performed by

human beings.

23 of these are done in the New Testament, so that's 28 percent of them.

That's over a 30 -year period.

So that leaves us with 58 miracles left in the Old Testament, and most of them are done by Moses and

Elijah, and we're going to look at that.

In fact, the total number of miracles, if you take away those that are done during the writing of the

Torah, the law, and that first writing from Moses to Joshua, you remove Elijah

and Elisha and the prophets, so you take the period where the law and the prophets are being written.

You have a total of eight miracles being done

in history.

I cannot see how you can make a case that that is normative, that we should expect them to continue.

So let's look at some charts.

We look here, this is the 256 miracles done by 25 agents.

As I mentioned, Jesus does 104 of them, God does 64, and then after that the number drops drastically, as

you can see, to 22 by Moses.

So let's look just at the Old Testament.

Over a 50 to 60 -year period of the New Testament, over that 4 ,000 years,

we go to the Old Testament and we see that here just two individuals, Moses

and Elisha, make up 59 percent of all the miracles.

Very few people throughout through Old Testament history were agents of miracles.

It's a far cry from the continuationist claim that they should be normative today.

We limit it just to periods of time, so what I did here was give you, I joined Moses and Aaron together

with Elijah and Elisha together, and 84 percent of all the miracles are done just by those four men.

However, we start to see something in this chart, because what makes those two time periods special?

Well, I've already said it.

It's the beginning of the writing of Scripture after a period of silence.

There was no Scripture being written in the time of Moses, and he starts writing Scripture, and you see

miracles.

And then there's a period of silence after that period, and Elijah and Elisha start, and then we have the prophets.

Then we have a period of silence, and we have the writing of Scripture again with the apostles.

Three periods of history, three times of miracles, and outside of them we don't see many miracles.

So what we end up seeing is that the miracles, both Old and New Testament, were to vindicate the

writing of Scripture.

Now, if you look at the number of miracles within the books of the Bible, you end up seeing

that there's only 20 out of 66 books of the Bible that's less than

one -third that contain miracles.

And as we look at this, this is divided by them by agent, and you see that most of them are conducted by God, we

already mentioned.

So let's limit that just to the number of miracles by human agents, and you only have 12 books

in the entire Bible that contain miracles.

That's 18 percent of the books of the Bible.

Just to give you a better picture of it, I put all 66 books here, and these are all the total miracles.

And even though that looks a little bit sparse, it looks even worse once we limit it just to human

miracles.

Very rare.

Well, let's look at it in time.

Here's a timeline.

I took this in 250 -year increments.

It doesn't look like we see a lot of miracles throughout time, and this is all the miracles.

So let's take this and let's limit it just to humans, and what do we see?

You see that over, and this is displaying a 4 ,500 -year period, there's the 81 miracles.

It's not very often.

They're not common.

So all of this to lay the foundation for the waning of New Testament miracles.

When it comes to the case of saying that the New Testament miracles have faded,

I think there is a problem with the challenge.

I think that when people ask if the New Testament miracles have waned,

I think the question is malformed.

It is like asking someone, why do bad things happen to good people?

You all know the problem with that, don't you?

The answer is there are no good people.

You see, asking about the waning or fading of New Testament miracles assumes that

miracles are common.

You see, so right built into the challenge, we have to first reframe the

question, which is what I've been trying to lay the foundation here, the foundation of Kevin's house.

We're building up the walls now, but what we end up seeing is the miracles are not common in the first place.

The challenge would actually be on the other person who would challenge us to say, why in the world

would we expect them?

We expected them at no other time in history.

It's not that they somehow faded, it's that the miracles are an anomaly.

We should not expect them in the first place.

So, the fact that we've seen that they're rare, extremely rare in Scripture, when we discuss the

fading nature, we have to first say that they're an anomaly.

And what do we see when we look at the other two periods of miracles?

I said, as you looked on the chart, we're only talking about a hundred -some years out of 4 ,000

years.

What do we see?

After the time of Moses, 30, 40 years, and miracles disappear.

Elijah and Elisha, 30, 40 years, and miracles disappear.

The apostles, 30, 40 years, and miracles continue to today, 2 ,000 years.

It doesn't fit the biblical pattern.

Why?

Because the purpose of the miracles no longer exists.

If you do not have the continuing revelation, what are the miracles pointing to?

Now, people would say to God, but the way most people view miracles, I would have to say to self.

Because how do we see the miracle workers today?

Look what I did.

You get a Todd White out there on the streets, who's he really giving credit to?

Himself.

Look at what he did.

How do you know?

Because he says, pour in the money.

The question is, if they continue to today, why did they not

continue after Moses, after Elijah, and after the apostles?

Miracles have only been active in those three short periods of history.

They waned every other time.

We should expect that they should wane today.

In fact, we see Paul will encourage Timothy, when he

is drinking just water, he gets dysentery, and Paul says this, no longer drink water

only, but use a little wine for the sake of

your stomach and frequent ailments.

Paul didn't say, Timothy, go get healed.

He didn't go and heal him.

He says, take a little bit of wine.

As we see that the gift of miracles probably were waning, that's the most logical answer.

Why?

Because as was said last night, 1 Timothy is a later writing of Scripture.

There was no more need to vindicate Paul as a writer of Scripture.

So he says, take a little wine.

In 2 Timothy, a later book, he leaves Tropimus ill and just

continues on with his missionary journey.

He doesn't heal him.

In fact, we could see the fact that these miracles seem to wane in the life of Paul,

when we see that one of the best examples is Paul's friend Epaphroditus.

To understand this a little bit, we have to talk about the prison system in Rome.

In the Roman prison system, the prisoners got basic needs.

Some stale bread, water, no comforts.

The guards had no care for the prisoners.

The prisoners' friends would have to bribe the guards to be able to get food and comforts to a prisoner.

Part of the system.

So it's very, very difficult to survive in prison without friends on the outside.

Well, Epaphroditus was that person for Paul.

He was sent by the Philippians to provide for food and care for Paul while in prison.

But he got very sick.

So sick that Paul states it was even unto death.

This is what he says in Philippians 2.

I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier,

and your messenger and minister to my need.

For he has been longing for you all and has been

distressed because you heard he was ill.

Indeed, he was ill, near death.

But God had mercy on him, and not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have

sorrow upon sorrow.

I am more eager to send him to you, therefore, that you may rejoice in seeing him again, and that I

may be less anxious.

So receive him in the Lord with all joy and honor, and honor such men.

For he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what is

lacking in your service.

So toward the end of Paul's life, he's not healing his most necessary friend at the time,

he's praying for him.

The most obvious answer to this is because Paul could not do any miracles at that time.

It's the most fitting answer.

And the reason would be because he's no longer writing new scripture.

So a question to ask is, so I'm trying to make the argument that the question of the waning of

miracles is the norm.

When we see the miracles in scripture, they've only lasted 30, 40 years each time.

But the question that I would like to ask and challenge is, what

does it matter?

We must ask ourselves, what's the big deal if people believe miracles continue to today,

and they expect to see them?

I mean, does it do much harm?

Why are we having a conference and a film on the cessation of gifts?

Why?

Why is it such a big issue?

The question assumes that the normative of these miracles, and we

don't see that as I've expressed, we don't see them through history nor in scripture.

However, there's something greater of issue here.

When people focus on the miracles, rather than that which the miracles serve, they lose focus.

What is it that miracles point to?

They point to scripture.

The vindication of the writing of scripture to the message of God, His self

-revelation.

And it has to be with miracles, because how are you going to know it's actually from God?

Only if the person saying it's from God could do something that only God can do.

This is why the miracle workers today, where miracles in the Bible are used to

qualify a person as speaking for God, the miracle works done today are used to

disqualify the people that say they're doing it.

Because when those miracles fail, it disqualifies them as speaking for God.

But the reason this is an issue is because it comes down to the sufficiency of

scripture.

That's the issue.

When you look to that, to the miracle, rather than to what it points to, which is

scripture, you lose focus on the scripture.

Now, they would say they do not, but it shows a lack of the sufficiency because you need something

more.

This makes it sound like those that many are of the foolishness of Romans chapter 1, where they

worship the creation rather than the creator, says this, therefore God gave them up to their lust of their

hearts, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies amongst themselves, because they exchanged the truth of

God, the truth about God, for a lie and worshiped and served the creature

rather than the creator, who is blessed forever.

Amen.

God has given us all that we need for faith and practice in his word.

We do not need miracles.

We do not need anything more.

To expect miracles is to miss the sufficiency of scripture.

Do we need miracles to know God exists?

No, we have the word of God.

Do we need miracles to worship God?

No, we have the word of God.

Do we need miracles to know that God cares for us?

No, we have the word of God.

Do we need miracles to defend the faith?

No, we have the word of God.

Do we need miracles for anything for faith and practice?

No, we have the sufficient word of God.

And this is what the writer of Hebrews says in his argument in Hebrews chapter 2.

He says this, therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we

drift away from it.

For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, every transgression or

disobedience received as a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such

a great salvation?

It was declared at first by the Lord and is attested to by those who heard,

while God also bore witness to signs and wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit

distributed accordingly.

The word attested there is an aris indicative, which means that the way this is, it's a snapshot in history in the

past.

It's a past event.

So the writer of Hebrews is making it clear that, as we've seen throughout, that these signs and wonders and

miracles are tied to Scripture.

That's why he says in here that we must pay closer attention to the miracles.

No, to the word of God.

That's the focus.

The revelation of God.

Now, if the revelation that we have from God, that self -revelation of the canon, is closed, the question is, why would we

expect to see miracles?

Let me give you a Geisler quote.

One last one is this.

He says, indeed, the apostles claimed the revelatory power, claiming the church was

built on the foundation of the apostles.

The early church recognized this authority and devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching.

The apostles were eyewitnesses of Christ, even Paul.

Since these divinely authorized channels of all truth died in the first century, it follows

that the divine revelation ceased with them.

If revelation ceased, there is no longer a need for miracle signs of new

revelation.

What we end up seeing is that the arguments for the

continuation of gifts miss the mark.

They focus on the wrong thing.

The purpose of the miracles were to point to the revelation of God.

But now that we have that, we don't lack these gifts because there is no

need for these gifts.

We have all that we need in the Word of God.

And if the Word of God is not enough for you,

the Word of God, the trice, holy,

infinite being that spoke the universe into existence and has

revealed himself, and we say, but we want more, then we are no different than the

Israelites who roamed the wilderness as God dropped food from heaven in manna,

and it wasn't enough for them.

And we look back at them and say, what is wrong with them?

Don't they see what God is doing?

God has given us all that we need.

The reason the New Testament gifts faded is because they

were never meant to be permanent.

They were meant to point to the revelation that we now have.

We should not expect to see them unless God is writing new scripture.

So let me conclude with this, if we see that the gifts that we see in the scriptures,

let us focus on what they focus on, the scriptures.

Let us not lose focus and think that somehow we need to look to something more than what God has

designed these gifts for.

We have all that we need.

Scripture is sufficient.

Let's pray.

Lord, we come before you and are so

amazed that you came through your creation to give

us your Word so we can look at it in an objective source of

truth.

And instead of looking, Lord, in a culture that doesn't want to

define an absolute truth, and they're just wandering in a sea

of subjectivism, and we have an objective truth that is a firm

foundation.

And yet some want to go back to subjectivity in miracles.

Lord, help us, help each one of the speakers that follow me to communicate this message so

strongly and boldly so that those who may believe gifts continue, that they may see that the purpose of gifts

have ended and that we have all that we need in your Word, that the foundation of our faith

is based in your Word.

We thank you for your Word.

We thank you for you, the personal Holy Spirit, to illuminate it to our minds.

And I lift up my fellow brothers that will be at this pulpit that you would use them in a

mighty way so that people would see the positive notion of the cessationism.

We are not looking to attack those that believe in continuationism, but we're seeking to see

what your Word teaches and to see the gloriousness of the fact that you give

us your.

Word.

We thank you in Christ's name.

Amen.

If somebody has the gift of miraculous healing, surely all he needs

to do is to prove it.

But let's face it, we've been battling with COVID, and the so

-called miracle workers went into hiding together with us.

Cessationism is the view that certain miraculous gifts that stood as signs of an

apostle, speaking in tongues, healing, prophecies, interpretation of tongues, gifts

like that,.

Ceased with the apostles.

Cessationism has fallen out of favor because commitment to the authority.

Of Scripture has fallen out of favor.

When you turn on Christian TV, you don't see expositors of Scripture, John MacArthur or Steve

Lawson.

You see Joel Osteen, Joseph Prince, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, Paula White.

That's who you see because that's the mainstream.

Speaking in tongues.

You're going to speak out of your spirit.

Don't worry about what it sounds like.

Our understanding of speaking in tongues must be guided by the Scriptures, not our feelings.

They were known languages that were capable of interpretation, and not everybody speaks in.

Tongues.

If God speaks, it must be infallible, inerrant, and authoritative.

And the Lord said to.

Me, will you howl for me?

I said, don't ask me to do that, Lord.

There's no longer the need for the.

Gift of prophecy.

Speaking forth divine revelation from God.

We have now the whole counsel of God.

This word is the final word.

The apostolic gifts have gone.

They were never intended for our generation.

We have everything that we need from the Holy Spirit today.

It's hard to get anyone.

Who's gone through that to come back and take a serious look at faith in Christ,

focused on the gospel, rather than focused on these phony miracles.