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In a forthcoming book I argue that this standpoint does not express the Biblical emphasis or goal. Appendix IV shows that the central message of Acts is not Protestant soteriology, or even the enhancement of Protestant soteriology by more charismatic power, but rather, the message is that the core emphasis of scripture—its very goal—is the restoration to mankind of immediate, prophetic revelation.
Cessationism, then, is not simply an odd, tolerable doctrine of traditional theology. It strikes at the very heart of biblical revelation—at the core message of the Bible: that the normative pattern for God and man is the goal of immediate, direct revelation as the essential part of the intimate, divinely-ordained relationship, so that “I will be their God and they shall be my people” (Jer 31:33). Cessationism expresses the central spirit of the scribes in the New Testament. Jesus astutely identified this rabbinic cessationist mentality in John 5:37–39 “You have never heard his voice or seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent. You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life.” The scribes had chosen the Old Covenant of mediated revelation over the New Covenant of immediate, direct revelation into the heart (2 Cor 3>Jer 31:31–34). To the scribes, the “word” was memorized scripture, not the
So I believe Barth was onto something. Stressing its importance, all four Gospels emphasize and define the mission of Jesus: “he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (repeated as the New Covenant action point of Peter’s Pentecost address, Acts 2:38–39, citing Isa 59:21). Traditional Protestantism seems studiously to avoid Jesus’ stated mission from John; the essence of its theology stops with the preparatory part of John’s message: “repent and be baptized.” But by this tradition the mission of Jesus—the emphasis and goal of scripture—is marginalized. So the goal of the Bible is God’s direct, prophetic communication with his people, the very essence of the New Covenant.
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