One cessationist's perspective

Imagine this scenario.

You are about to fly to the U.S. Suddenly, over the intercom, you hear the pilot’s voice:

“Ladies and Gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. I’ve had…a leading from God. He told me that I shouldn’t take you to the U.S. Yes, I heard his voice while I was shaving. You know what? We aren’t flying to Los Angeles today. We’re going to Moscow. How about that?”

What would you do? That’s the last time I fly Shekinah Airlines, that’s what I would say!

Over the years, I have slowly seen the dominating influence of the charismatic movement across all denominations and churches. In fact, the rise has been meteoric and wide-ranging. Music is the one such vehicle of this transmission. When I heard “Shout to the Lord” in a conservative Catholic church one Sunday, I knew that it wouldn’t be far long before the Vatican would have it’s own version of the televangelists on TBN (But being Italian, they’d have a lot more style, I presume). In fact, the Catholic Charismatic movement, by some estimates, far exceeds the number of Protestant Charismatics.

In the past, I was content to keep quiet because the raging debates between myself and some of the more vocal charismatics in my own family were so divisive that my grandmother banned all theological discussions at the family dinner table for a while.

Yes, I know, I have a weird family; others fight over money, we fight over Theology.

But now I’m taking a stand because of what I see as an almost patronising and arrogant view by charismatics in general that their view is that dominant, and therefore correct hermeunetical view. This disregards the fact that their movement is only about a hundred years old, and other views have had a longer and more traditional base to claim on. Might, numbers and being the newest doctrine on the block doesn’t always equal righ

Who of us that have maybe questioned the validity of what charismatics believe have been accused with these lines:

“ You are trying to quench the Holy Spirit’s power. That’s a sin!”

“ Sigh. I guess you don’t understand how the Spirit works..”

“ Why are you being an obstacle to God’s work?”

“ I think Satan has clouded your judgement. There’s demonic activity somewhere!”

“ You are only experiencing of what it feels like to be a Christian. If only you could feel what I’m feeling”

and my personal favourite:

“ You think too much. Don’t over analyse. Just let go, and let God!”

What if I told you that there were Christians who thought, felt, saw and tasted God more intently than ever before outside of the charismatic circle?

What if by leaving most of that goofiness behind, the authentic Christianity you would experience would render that a pale shadow?

Far from taking you into a ‘experience’ with God through a secondary baptism in the Holy Spirit ( a Biblically dubious contention), you become wrapped in world where self-worship sometimes becomes the norm, where you lay your God-given rational faculties down for superstition wrapped up in pseudo-Christian gift wrapping and where Gnostic patterns of ‘hidden knowledge’ suffuse it’s practice

I think one reason why people like me haven’t spoken up is that we didn’t want to look as though we were dividing the body of Christ. Maybe some of it was a low self-esteem; it could be that deep down, we thought we were missing out on ‘something’. And we wanted to be part of the good stuff, but really deep down, it didn’t sink right

Keeping quiet was okay until I realised that silence to some meant assent to them. And this was not definitely so.

And when I started seeing people’s life’s get bent out of shape by false prophecies, healings that were supposed to occur but never did; I wanted to address them

Also, and when the people who could one day run the world’s greatest superpower with nuclear weapons at hand could alter the course of my destiny, and my unborn children with policies that are dictated by your ‘leadings’, then you’ve crossed the line

It took me many years to work out why. It meant unloading all the rubbish that I had been fed and seeing again with the eyes of the Spirit. And this time, I understood what living in the Holy Spirit meant. It means that the focus is on Christ – and only him.

I am a Cessationist. This means that I believe that the more spectacular gifts in the early church, like speaking in tongues, ceased upon completion of the Canon (the Bible). I think that God still heals, and will always heal. He is the source of all healing – whether it’s from your white blood cell count stabilising on it’s own or in the form of a flying hospital giving you your precious sight back. He can work miracles outside of the natural laws, although all evidence points to the fact that for this time period; he has chosen to work within them.

I find the practice of ‘being slain’ downright goofy and not backed by scripture. Tongues as spoken today seems to be more of an auto-suggestive practice and until I find a healing incident involving the resuscitation of the dead and regeneration of a severed limb backed by the British Medical Association or some reputable scientific body; I remain sceptical