Cessationism and North Korea.

[Dkshotwell]

I have always considered myself a cessationist, but after watching a 20 minute video "Persecution and the North Korean church" I'm kind of wondering about it. In the video was a testimonial about Christian's that only know a handful of verses praying over wounded or sick folk only to see immediate miraculous healing. I know full well what miracles were for, they were to validate the word of God. Is it so unreasonable that the Lord would use miracles to validate His word in a place so dark and bereft of light, to validate the words of one who only knew a few? I think that would be right in line with His character. Like the man being interviewed said "those in attendance who saw saw the miracle, were forced to deal with what they witnessed". The Lord's miracle gave weight to the testimony.

 

[Polanus1561]

The Puritans, Strange Fire, Cessationism, and the Westminster Confession

Without a doubt, the Westminster Confession of Faith teaches cessationism, but it is a cessationism which requires considerable nuance and allows for supernatural surprises so long as they are working with and through the Word of God.

www.thegospelcoalition.org

 

[Ryan&Amber2013]

I have always considered myself a cessationist, but after watching a 20 minute video "Persecution and the North Korean church" I'm kind of wondering about it. In the video was a testimonial about Christian's that only know a handful of verses praying over wounded or sick folk only to see immediate miraculous healing. I know full well what miracles were for, they were to validate the word of God. Is it so unreasonable that the Lord would use miracles to validate His word in a place so dark and bereft of light, to validate the words of one who only knew a few? I think that would be right in line with His character. Like the man being interviewed said "those in attendance who saw saw the miracle, were forced to deal with what they witnessed". The Lord's miracle gave weight to the testimony.

God can surely do whatever He pleases. In this case healing is a normal Christian testimony. As far as the charismatic gifts, I'm open-minded, but with that stuff I would believe it when I see it. I've seen charismatic stuff done wrong and have heard quite a few liars, but haven't seen the gifts legitimately performed. I would rejoice to see these things in truth.

 

[TheInquirer]

I just had a conversation with someone the other day who clearly did not understand cessationism and confused it with maybe something akin to believing God never does miracles anymore - common error.

 

[Polanus1561]

I just had a conversation with someone the other day who clearly did not understand cessationism and confused it with maybe something akin to believing God never does miracles anymore - common error.

Ironically, that error betrays sola scriptura.

 

[Deleted member 6112]

I have always considered myself a cessationist, but after watching a 20 minute video "Persecution and the North Korean church" I'm kind of wondering about it. In the video was a testimonial about Christian's that only know a handful of verses praying over wounded or sick folk only to see immediate miraculous healing. I know full well what miracles were for, they were to validate the word of God. Is it so unreasonable that the Lord would use miracles to validate His word in a place so dark and bereft of light, to validate the words of one who only knew a few? I think that would be right in line with His character. Like the man being interviewed said "those in attendance who saw saw the miracle, were forced to deal with what they witnessed". The Lord's miracle gave weight to the testimony.

The extraordinary gifts and operations of God are for extraordinary times and circumstances. North Korea would seem to fit that category.

 

[MW]

If they only know a few verses how do they test these "miracles" against a proper understanding of the Word? How do they know they are not being duped? How do you know they are not being duped?

My guess is that most people would let it go out of some sense of sympathy with the persecuted church; but they wouldn't allow Christians to think so uncritically in their own country.

 

[RamistThomist]

As a grudging cessationist, it's best to say God can (and often does in the 3rd world) do miraculous things. (We must never fall into the mistake of David Hume). But that isn't the normal way of means of grace (Word and Sacrament).

 

[Redeemed Ronin]

I find that the Westminster Confession makes this fairly clear:

1.1 - Of Holy Scripture

Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation; therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his Church; and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which maketh the holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God's revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.

Link: https://relight.app/resource/WCF.1.1

5.1-3 - Of Providence

God, the great Creator of all things, doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.

Although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly, yet by the same providence he ordereth them to fall out, according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.

God, in his ordinary providence, maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them, at his pleasure.

Link: https://relight.app/resource/WCF.5.1

Put together, God's method of revealing His salvific will through the OT means – primarily prophets – no longer applies because we have Jesus Christ, our savior and God's true and ultimate Prophet; and the Scriptures that describe and exposit His teaching and ministry have a closed canon. There is no need to validate the fact that God's kingdom is here through signs such as miraculous healings anymore. That said, God can, as He deems fit, use extraordinary means to fulfill other purposes that we are not privy to.

In other words, God can perform miracles as we see in Scripture, but it is not something we should expect to happen ordinarily or regularly, and is for the purposes of His glory as He governs His creation for according to His purpose. To presume that miracles ought to be widespread is the error of the charimatics who refuse to acknoledge God's ordinary means of providence, while the preclude miracles occuring today is the error of hard ceassationists.

The inner workings of God's wisdom is that for us to comprehend, as much as a child does not need to concern himself with his father's reasoning for being generous to in various contexts versus others.

 

[Sovereign Grace]

I guess one of the main reasons why I hold to cessationism is due to the abuse of it. If you read the bible, the bible does not show a whole lot of miracles. I mean that when you take the total of scripture, miracles are not the norm. Yet, the way its taught today, you'd think the bible was a bible of nothing but miracles.

​

Yes, there were several miracles in the gospels and Acts and I am not denying that.

 

[darrellmaurina]

The extraordinary gifts and operations of God are for extraordinary times and circumstances. North Korea would seem to fit that category.

Precisely. I no longer have the book (most of my library was lost decades ago thanks to a move) but back in the 1990s I read a book written in the 1800s by one of the conservative Princeton-trained missionaries to China describing situations of demonic exorcisms in which people screamed out, in a local Chinese dialect, the same words used by demons in the New Testament. Given the remoteness of the villages involved, there was absolutely no reason to believe the people being exorcised had ever before come in contact with any portion of the Bible. The modern charismatic movement didn't yet exist so there was no charismatic influence, either.

In places where the Word is not present, Satan runs rampant, and Christians who have no access to Bibles need to use whatever Scripture portions they have committed to memory. Extraordinary things happen in extraordinary situations that are not necessary when the Word is readily available.

Before we assume the need to memorize Scripture due to lack of Bibles is only something for places like North Korea, take a hard look at missions in Muslim lands, or the former Soviet Union. Even in Europe, the Waldensian traveling preachers prior to the Reformation were expected to memorize large parts of the Bible as an ordination requirement, in addition to hand-copying a Bible for their own personal use since printing presses didn't exist, but since it was too dangerous to carry a copy of the Bible, the major books had to be memorized before being sent out as a missionary.

We need to be thankful for the massive resources we have available to us in the modern Western world, and embarrassed by our too-frequent failure to use them.

 

[Phil D.]

It seems hard to escape the role that the miraculous has apparently played in the historical spread of Christianity. The 4th century conversions of Constantine and Tiridates, to name two examples, which resulted in the formal Christianization of large swaths of the Western and Near Eastern worlds, both stemmed from earnest professions of having experienced the miraculous. More examples are found in the conversion epics of pagan princes and peoples in Britain, Gaul, and northern Europe. To be sure, many accounts of these events have been passed on in hagiographical works, but such things often have their basis in some fact. In any case, I am slow to believe they were always total fabrications.

This is not to say I think miracles, as we are defining them here, ordinarily play a role in the conversion of individuals in lands already familiar with, and having ready access to the truth tenants of Christianity. In fact I think there are good reasons to believe that the many "miracles" claimed in modern charismatic and even evangelical circles are largely faked, conjured, and imagined, and way too often for nefarious purposes. But that is a misappropriation and counterfeit of something genuine, seen in both the Old and New Testaments and, as I would argue, subsequent church history.

I don't doubt that God might still choose to get certain people to pay attention to what a missionary, pastor, or even a gospel tract is saying by also getting their attention with something miraculous. Especially in places where the gospel light has only ever been dimly seen, or has now almost been extinguished for the current generation, like North Korea. So I guess I would say I am "mostly" as opposed to strictly cessationist.

Yes, there were several miracles in the gospels and Acts and I am not denying that.

List of Miracles in the New Testament

 

[Ploutos]

It seems hard to escape the role that the miraculous has apparently played in the historical spread of Christianity. The 4th century conversions of Constantine and Tiridates, to name two examples, which resulted in the formal Christianization of large swaths of the Western and Near Eastern worlds, both stemmed from earnest professions of having experienced the miraculous. More examples are found in the conversion epics of pagan princes and peoples in Britain, Gaul, and northern Europe. To be sure, many accounts of these events have been passed on in hagiographical works, but such things often have their basis in some fact. In any case, I am slow to believe they were always total fabrications.

This is not to say I think miracles, as we are defining them here, ordinarily play a role in the conversion of individuals in lands already familiar with, and having ready access to the truth tenants of Christianity. In fact I think there are good reasons to believe that the many "miracles" claimed in modern charismatic and even evangelical circles are largely faked, conjured, and imagined, and way too often for nefarious purposes. But that is a misappropriation and counterfeit of something genuine, seen in both the Old and New Testaments and, as I would argue, subsequent church history.

I don't doubt that God might still choose to get certain people to pay attention to what a missionary, pastor, or even a gospel tract is saying by also getting their attention with something miraculous. Especially in places where the gospel light has only ever been dimly seen, or has now almost been extinguished for the current generation, like North Korea. So I guess I would say I am "mostly" as opposed to strictly cessationist.



List of Miracles in the New Testament

You could still call yourself cessationist, since continuationism is not merely the continuation of miracles but also the appropriation of specific revelatory gifts by individuals. It's that crossing the line from "God can do such-and-such whenever he pleases" to "I have the gift of such-and-such".

 

[MW]

In any case, I am slow to believe they were always total fabrications.

I wouldn't call them fabrications. They were interpreted to be miracles within the open and uncritical worldview in which the people of the time operated. I judge that Constantine was ultimately converted. I can make that judgment without needing to accredit the idea that God actually showed him the sign of the cross. My a priori conviction that the cross is not to be used as a religious symbol is enough to discredit that idea. The same would apply to the idea that Jesus appears in dreams to Mohammedans, while at the same time I can appreciate that some of them also go on to show that they were genuinely converted in spite of it.

 

[Ploutos]

I wouldn't call them fabrications. They were interpreted to be miracles within the open and uncritical worldview in which the people of the time operated. I judge that Constantine was ultimately converted. I can make that judgment without needing to accredit the idea that God actually showed him the sign of the cross. My a priori conviction that the cross is not to be used as a religious symbol is enough to discredit that idea. The same would apply to the idea that Jesus appears in dreams to Mohammedans, while at the same time I can appreciate that some of them also go on to show that they were genuinely converted in spite of it.

Can you elaborate on this? I gather that you are outright dismissing the notion that Jesus appears to Muslims in a dream. To me, that would be saying that they are lying and building their salvation experience on a lie - but I'm sure that some clarification would help me to understand better.

 

[Phil D.]

I wouldn't call them fabrications. They were interpreted to be miracles within the open and uncritical worldview in which the people of the time operated. I judge that Constantine was ultimately converted. I can make that judgment without needing to accredit the idea that God actually showed him the sign of the cross. My a priori conviction that the cross is not to be used as a religious symbol is enough to discredit that idea. The same would apply to the idea that Jesus appears in dreams to Mohammedans, while at the same time I can appreciate that some of them also go on to show that they were genuinely converted in spite of it.

I would be interested to hear more about when, and to what extent you think miracles/wonders ceased.

 

[MW]

Can you elaborate on this? I gather that you are outright dismissing the notion that Jesus appears to Muslims in a dream. To me, that would be saying that they are lying and building their salvation experience on a lie - but I'm sure that some clarification would help me to understand better.

If that is what they were trusting to then it would be a lie. But it turns out that some of them sit under the ordinary means of grace and come to know the Lord Jesus Christ through His word. The longer you live as a Christian in the world you find that there are all kinds of "experiences" that move people to take up religious inquiry. It may be that they do not interpret their experience correctly and they need others to help them see it in the light of Scripture.

 

[MW]

I would be interested to hear more about when, and to what extent you think miracles/wonders ceased.

The miracles we see in the Scriptures were given for the purpose of confirming the Word. They ceased with the cessation of revelation through the apostles and prophets.

I hold to creatio ex nihilo. Existence is a miracle. The duplication of cells is a wonder.

 

[Ploutos]

That is definitely a more "hardline" stance, then - not allowing for the possibility of God still working miracles but categorically stating that God does not and will not perform miracles (which I am here defining in the sense of a supernatural setting aside of the normal laws of nature, not in the broader sense of your penultimate sentence).

I'm sure there's a better and less pejorative word than "hardline" but I want to make sure I am accurately understanding your view.

 

[MW]

That is definitely a more "hardline" stance, then - not allowing for the possibility of God still working miracles but categorically stating that God does not and will not perform miracles (which I am here defining in the sense of a supernatural setting aside of the normal laws of nature, not in the broader sense of your penultimate sentence).

I'm sure there's a better and less pejorative word than "hardline" but I want to make sure I am accurately understanding your view.

I don't accept that a miracle is "a supernatural setting aside of the normal laws of nature."

I am happy to be called "hardline." If something is right I stick to it. Irrational concessions do not serve intelligent inquiry.

 

[Ploutos]

Could you define what it is that you believe to have "ceased with the cessation of revelation through the apostles and prophets"?

 

[MW]

Could you define what it is that you believe to have "ceased with the cessation of revelation through the apostles and prophets"?

Mark 16:20, "And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen."

Heb. 2:4, "God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?"

 

[Ploutos]

It is those signs and miracles which I am asking you to define.

 

[MW]

It is those signs and miracles which I am asking you to define.

In terms of what?

 

[darrellmaurina]

I'm about as anti-charismatic as anyone can get, having seen horrible abuses firsthand. Back in the 1980s, I was open to and sympathetic to the charismatic movement early in my Christian life and certainly didn't come with any "a priori" objections to it. Seeing the way charismatics operate, playing fast and loose with the Scriptures and failing to follow the crystal-clear standards of Scripture for evaluating the veracity of a claimed "prophet," and not allowing tonguespeaking without interpretation, soured me on that movement. To cite just one example, I listened to an older woman who had been married for many years telling me she was going to divorce her "unspiritual" husband because God told her to do so via private revelation. Never mind the plain teaching of God's Word regarding believers married to unbelieving spouses -- her private revelation, not God's written revelation in His Word, was her source of authority.

However, we need to be very careful about saying God **NEVER** uses extraordinary means or miracles.

Most are false. I agree. When we have the written Word, we don't need them, or at best, they are confirmations of the veracity of the Word for weak believers and used to get the attention of unbelievers.

I don't want to deny God's sovereign ability to do what He wants, when and where He wants it, particularly in places where the written Word is not available.

 

[MW]

I don't want to deny God's sovereign ability to do what He wants, when and where He wants it, particularly in places where the written Word is not available.

But you just did so when you gave the example of the lady who was told to divorce her husband. You have concluded that God cannot do something the Word forbids. It is clearly not a question of "ability" but "will," and God has revealed His will to us in such a way that we can say certain things come from God and other things do not. The claim that miracles are taking place among persecuted churches is not sufficient for us to credit these as miracles. We need the Word to interpret what is happening. And when we turn to the Word we find that the purpose of miracles was never to confirm weak believers. The purpose was to confirm new revelation.

 

[Ploutos]

In terms of what?

I have to confess that I don't understand the difficulty of getting a straightforward answer. If one is a cessationist, one has to explain what ceased. All you did was quote a Bible verse without providing any further explanation. I'm asking you to define your terms.

You believe signs and wonders and miracles have ceased. I'm asking you to define what are those signs and wonders and miracles that have ceased. It seems like that shouldn't be a hard question, so help me understand what I'm missing.

 

[MW]

I have to confess that I don't understand the difficulty of getting a straightforward answer. If one is a cessationist, one has to explain what ceased. All you did was quote a Bible verse without providing any further explanation. I'm asking you to define your terms.

You believe signs and wonders and miracles have ceased. I'm asking you to define what are those signs and wonders and miracles that have ceased. It seems like that shouldn't be a hard question, so help me understand what I'm missing.

You have a straightforward answer in the statement you originally questioned. It is the signs and wonders given in confirmation of revelation. Your question asked for further definition but did not set any terms. I asked you, In terms of what? I am happy to be specific but you will need to give some direction as to what needs to be specified.

 

[Ploutos]

So signs and wonders can continue as long as they're not given in confirmation of revelation? You are defining signs and wonders as those things given in confirmation of revelation, rather than providing any concrete explanation of what makes something a sign, wonder, or miracle. If the only defining characteristic that you can provide is that they are given in confirmation of revelation, then it sounds like we can still have signs and wonders, just not ones that confirm revelation.

 

[MW]

So signs and wonders can continue as long as they're not given in confirmation of revelation? You are defining signs and wonders as those things given in confirmation of revelation, rather than providing any concrete explanation of what makes something a sign, wonder, or miracle. If the only defining characteristic that you can provide is that they are given in confirmation of revelation, then it sounds like we can still have signs and wonders, just not ones that confirm revelation.

No, there is no continuation. What we see in the Bible does not happen on a regular basis. They only happened for the purpose of confirming the Word. These "miracles" don't happen otherwise. With the cessation of revelation they ceased. We are not to expect them. We would have no way of validating them apart from the introduction of a new movement in redemptive history; and as far as redemptive history is concerned the next great revelation will be the second coming of Christ.

I'm not really sure what you desire by way of definition as the subject is so broad that a miracle could be defined in any number of ways. A working definition for me is that a new cause introduces a new effect. The laws of nature remain intact. A good example of this is the virgin birth. The Holy Spirit introduces a new cause; the new effect is that the virgin conceives. Yet the laws of nature produce and bring forth a baby as we would expect.

Do I think the miraculous happens? Yes, everyday. Cell multiplication is a miracle. But that is not what we mean when we speak of a miracle in the biblical sense. Does ordinary providence sometimes cause unexpected outcomes? Yes. God is wonderfully good. But this is not a miracle in the biblical sense.