My cessation views, and other people’s, I think.

My goal here in addressing my cessationist views, and those of my closest associates through the years, it to be honest about what I believe and debunk some misconceptions others may have when they hear or read us say that signs and wonders have ceased. I will attempt to insert some tension-reducing humor and enough self-deprivation to mask my arrogance in this topic. (I warned you).
I believe in miracles. I believe in healings. So do those cessationists who I associate with and those from whom I have been mentored. There is only one healer; God. He uses many tools, including medications, doctors and the most powerful one, prayer. He doesn’t have to use any of those tools at all.
However, the purpose and method of God’s healings are not found in people who are gifted to lay hands on people and then blame them because their faith is not strong enough.
To explain this, I will have to take one step back and point at something. There will not be enough time and space to unpack it, but enough for you to begin an enriching Bible study to investigate it.
Many cessationists point to spiritual gifts and teach that those which provide the Body of Christ a service, such as mercy, teaching, prophecy (I will have to explain this, won’t I?), service, giving, etc…, are still around, but the “signs and wonder” gifts are not needed to strengthen faith by sight or convince the unbelieving world of the validity of the Christian way. This has led to a lot of confusion.
Bill Gothard and Elmer Towns did a great disservice to the Christian community in developing their comprehensive lessons and written tests on Spiritual Gifts. They taught that spiritual gifts were endowments from God at salvation (no substantiation) which allow each believer to operate with a skill and calling in the body. To develop such teachings, these and their predecessors had to take every passage in the that said “gifts” in order to flesh out a compelling lesson. That is dangerous in any topic. The danger of this is that many began to live in trust of their gifting and not dependence upon God through His Spirit.
Many of the passages about gifts were speaking of individuals that God gave to the Church in salvation and natural gifts that he gave to the Church. With such distorted teachings, non-charismatics had to devise a way to explain why some permanent spiritual gifts were relevant today when others went against our teachings. Thus, the confusion over “signs and miracle” gifts. Let’s start over. Tell me how your study on “gifts” is coming along as you seek if each passage is speaking about natural gifts or spiritual gifts.
Actually, much of the confusion can be removed if we recognize the difference between natural gifts (which is all you can test for) and spiritual gifts. It helps to understand that our natural gifts are still gifts from God to the Body of Christ as we serve. We ourselves are gifts because of our natural gifts (Romans 12:16, 1 Corinthians 12:28-31, etc…).
Spiritual gifts were never abilities given at salvation that reside on the believer. They were supernatural, momentary empowerments as needed. Modern teachings (Gothard, Towns, etc) restrict the believer’s service to that which one is naturally comfortable. True spiritual gifts cause us to say, “I can do all things through Christ, who empower me (Philippians 4:13)”, freeing us to serve in supernatural ways.. Since my natural gifting from God is exhortation (encouragement) and teaching, I can boldly approach any situation that needs mercy, service, or giving. True spiritual gifts expand our service for the moment, but don’t permanently empower us.
As a pastor, I became frustrated because NOBODY was teaching spiritual gifts and natural gifts as they were presented plainly in the scriptures. I would ask someone to each the middle school students and hear, “That is not my spiritual gift.” I would think, “No, that is not your natural gifts and you cannot trust God to empower you to do the uncomfortable.” Cheese and crackers!
Once the avenue of error was opened concerning natural and spiritual gifts, there was no stop from drifting further away from the truth. Who am I to question Bill Gothard’s and Elmer Towns’ scholarship?
If we get this straight, the rest of the conversation falls into place concerning spiritual gifts. When the Church was an infant, it was treated differently. “I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Galatians 4:1-4.
We all understand why a father runs with the child on the bicycle to hold it up. After a while, the father can let go and trust the training wheels. Even after those come off, the father runs just behind until the father sees that the child has mastered the laws of inertia, centrifugal force of the spinning wheels and the skill of the child to maximize those.
When the infant Church began, those believers did not even have the full instructions. They did not fully understand the economy of faith. Faith means no training wheels. Simply believing, when no reason supports that belief except that God said it (Hebrews 11:1). Jesus Himself said on more than one occassion, “A wicked and adulterous generation seek a sign (Matthew 12:39, Matthew 16:4).”
Jesus knew that those who were won and convinced because of what they saw miracles would just as easily see something else and change. “Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man (John 2:23-25).” Faith supported by sight, signs and miracles will not stand during the tests of life.
Jesus knew that signs and wonders would go to the other side as Satan sought to deceive. “The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10).”
I was once asked by a large Church with a world television ministry to be their photographer. I toured the facilities and was shocked by the “prop room”. When I asked about it, the personnel manager said that these were for actors. To answer my dismay, he said, “Sometimes, people’s faith needs to be stimulated.”
I practice spiritual gifts daily. I know my natural gifts. I have taken the spiritual gift tests and used to give them, not as spiritual gift tests. They are common in sales training to determine ones natural gifts.
But I am placed into a position almost every day that does not match with my natural gifts. However, I carry within my clay vessel the most valuable treasure, the life of Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus said, “”Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will”, I can do nothing with my natural gifts that has eternal value. God must do it.
Everything Jesus did was from a spiritual gift (a momentary endowment of power, attributed only to the power and glory of God, the Father). Everything Paul did was from spiritual gifts. He said, “For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ (Romans 15:18-19).
When you put 1 Corinthians into that perspective, it makes total sense that Jesus was weening His bride from reliance on signs and wonders to the walk of faith and the works of the Spirit through their lives (gifts of the Spirit). There would someday be no signs and wonders for the Church, but the test would be, would they believe anyway? Would they hang on.
This is seen in Paul’s life, as well as the declining number of signs and wonders through the book of Acts. Admittedly, Paul healed, brought the dead to life and many other signs and wonders. But he had to leave Trophimus at Ephesus because Paul could not heal him later in his ministry (2 Timothy 4:20). He also had problems with the health of Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:25-30), and his very own health (2 Corinthians 12:6-8, Galatians 4:15 and Galatians 6:11).
No one has ever explained to me why God would say that He was conditioning, testing and training us to believe Him with pure faith, without sight, feelings, evidence or proofs, and then send enough signs and wonders to keep our faith off-balance. I do not believe He does, but I have seen many stumble and fall into the lust for miracles, then collapse when nothing could sustain them except pure, unaided faith.
For this reason, I will not go see the “kid goes to heaven” movies. I understand that people come back and say they were blessed (emotionally moved). But they were not strengthened. Their faith could become “because” and not because God said it. Mine would. Why risk it?
I believe in miracles. I believe in healings. I don’t believe that producing those are one’s permanent spiritual gift. I don’t believe they can be worked up by a frenzy. I believe they simply serve His purpose and come from Him, not the touch of a gifted servant. No servant needs any validation today but the completed, sufficient Word of God.