Your Sons & Daughters Shall Prophesy - Prophetic Gifts Today In The New Testament Church

Did Prophecy Cease-or Does It Continue?

would also see that the miraculous ministry of Jesus in one small nation was then carried forth by the Church to reach all nations. Would this new Bible reader find anything to indicate that the mira cles and gifts of the Spirit ceased after the early Church? Quite the contrary. Our reader would find lists of spiritual gifts and ministries scattered throughout the New Testament. 3 He would acknowl edge the assumption of the apostles that the spiritual gifts were standard ministries in the Church. He would affirm statements like the one by Peter in Acts 2:39 about Gentiles: "The promise [of the Holy Spirit] is for you and your children, and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call to Himself." Our friend would find no teaching about the cessation of prophecy anywhere in Scripture. This marvelous book filled with miraculous stories and statements would register only one thought in his mind: that the early Church believed in the miraculous and that miracles are normative in the lives of God's people today. Once rescued and brought back to civilization, our friend would seek to find the church he had read about in the Bible. Instead he would find, to his amazement, that many Christians do not believe in the miraculous at all, while others conclude that signs and wonders were only for Bible days and not for modern believers. Although he had discovered on the island that Scripture teaches the existence of miracles and the gifts of the Spirit, he would find a strange situation: Many purport to revere the Bible but do not believe what it says. These people have a conviction based not on Scripture but on their own bereft experience.

Answer 1: The Bible Does Not Teach Cessationism

Five Scripture passages are used by prominent cessationists in their con tention that the gift of prophecy no longer operates: Romans 15:18-19; 1 Corinthians 13:8-13; 2 Corinthians 12:12; Ephesians 2:20; Revelation 22:18-19. 4 We will look at each passage, then consider some brief, cogent thoughts about the meaning of the text that will set the tone for the rest of the book.

1. Romans 15:18-19 (NN)

I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accom plished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done-by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully pro claimed the gospel of Christ. 233.