Cessastionists Anonymous

Some may question my wisdom, but I have stuck my oar into the charismatic-cessationist debate that is still going on in the larger Christian blogosphere again. I know my voice is likely to be ignored, scorned, misunderstood and rejected, but I weighed all this, and decided I still wanted it to be heard. Not to speak up would only reinforce the assertions that are being made out there that there are no credible believers who believe that all the gifts of the Spirit and Ephesian 4 ministries are in operation today. I'm not suggesting that everyone should join me, we have different callings and different people we can be a voice to. There are many cessationist who simply want to pick a fight, and I have no interest in crossing swords with them, there are however others who are genuinely interested and undecided, and only hold a cessatonist position because they have never encountered a credible alternative (I used to be one of these).

I left some comments on a prominent cessationist blog, and initially had some good dialogue with some of the other commenters. However, it didn't last long and the thread degenerated to the point where further dialogue was pointless. Some are more interested in twisting your words, and then condemning you for something you never said. I'm not going to continue the discussion there, however, it is unfair to leave the few civilised individuals I did engage in fruitful debate with no way to come back. So this post is it.

Cessationists who are not merely out for a scrap seem to have the following main concerns:

1. They think the continuance of apostles is in conflict to the canon of scripture being closed.


2. They think the continuance of the prophetic gift is in conflict to Sola Scriptura and the sufficiency of scripture


3. They think that a prophet must be 100% accurate when he prophecies or he cannot be a true prophet

If you're looking for a scrap, please go elsewhere, but if you are genuinely interested and would like clarification on why none of these is a genuine issue, then please feel free to ask me a question in the comments below. You can stay anonymous if you like.

[I reserve the right to delete comments if they are off-topic or deliberately confrontational.]