House Church Talk - Re: cessation of spiritual gifts

[Bruce Woodford]

Dear Ross,

You have given us the intricacies of the reasoning behind your theory that 
the gifts have ceased, but the fact that your cessationist theory CANNOT 
ANSWER simple questions demonstrates that it is just a theory that does not 
find its'teaching stated in scripture!

Here are the questions I asked which you have utterly failed to answer:

(1)I had asked:"Dear brother in what passages of scripture did Paul say:
-that ALL the spiritual gifts of Rom.12, I Cor 12 and Eph.4 WOULD PASS AWAY?
-that any of them DID pass away?"

Since scripture NEVER SAYS  what you say, you could not answer these 
questions! You simply offered you opinion which has no scriptural basis 
whatsoever. You said: "The three (tongues, prophecy and knowledge)represent 
all(19)." Nor is there a sentence of scripture that teaches that any of the 
gifts HAD passed away during Paul's lifetime or HAVE passed away prior to 
our day!

(2)I had asked:"What is it in this passage (I Cor.13) that identifies, to 
your mind, the coming of the Lord?

You totally ignored this question, although you made the same claim in your 
last post!

(3)You claim that faith remains until the coming of the Lord, but you did 
not respond to the observation  that faith is one of the 19 gifts of the 
spirit which you say passed away in the first century!  This is another 
indication that your theory is anything but a scriptural doctrine. 
Scriptural doctrines are not self-contradictory!

(4)I had written:"That event (the coming of "that which is perfect") marks 
the timing of  3 things:
(1) the doing away with that which is in part (knowledge and prophecy),
(2) the end of our seeing through a glass darkly and the beginning of our 
seeing "face to face",
(3) Paul's knowing as he was known.
Please explain for us how and why you have concluded that all four of these 
things have already happened and when (at what point in history) you think 
they happened."

You never explained how you understand from scripture that our "seeing 
through a glass darkly" was replaced by "seeing face to face"! Is this a 
reality in your own experience today??? Nor did you explain how Paul came to 
"know as he was known"!

(5) I'd written:"Brother, it seems to me that you are saying two 
contradictory things here:
(1) "We HAVE ALL come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the 
Son of God, UNTO A PERFECT (MATURE) MAN, unto the measure of the stature of 
the fulness of Christ" and
(2) We HAVE NOT ALL come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of 
the Son of God, UNTO A PERFECT (MATURE) MAN, unto the stature of the fulness 
of Christ.
So, brother, the big question seems to be, "Has that which is perfect 
(maturity in the Body of Christ) come or has it not?"

You knew that to deal with the matter of who comprises the "we all" of 
Eph.4:13 and "the whole body" of Eph.4:16 would automatically scuttle the 
entire theory which you have proposed here!  Both of those terms include we 
who are members of that body today as well as all who will ever be members 
of it!

Ross, just one final observation:  You have twisted the meaning of the word 
"perfect or mature" and inserted your own interpretation as "established"!  
In this regard you claimed the following: " Paul was commissioned to 
minister to the new man and as in Col 1, was working towards establishing 
it."

Brother, neither "the new man" nor any commission to Paul to "establish it" 
are even mentioned in Col.1!   Rather Paul was "made a minister" of "the 
gospel"!  Col.1:23  He was also "made a minister" of the church which is 
Christ's body. Col.1:24,25
Finally, in Col.1:28, Paul says of Christ, the hope of glory..."Whom we 
preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may 
present every man perfect in Christ Jesus."

This ministry of preaching and teaching Christ was NOT Paul's alone, notice 
he uses the word "we", NOT "I". This is the ministry of every preacher and 
teacher, even today!  Paul's goal and the goal of every godly preacher and 
teacher is to "present every man perfect in Christ Jesus."  Although, by the 
end of his earthly life, Paul had "finished his course", he had not 
"presented" ANY MAN perfect in Christ Jesus, let alone EVERY MAN!! In Paul's 
final letter to Timothy (in which he wrote that he had "finished his course" 
etc, he also wrote, "This thou knowest, that all they which are in Asia be 
turned away from me; "  II Tim 1:15    This would hardly have been true of 
believers who were "perfect in Christ Jesus"!!!

A body may be "established" long before it is mature!  An immature body has 
all of it's members!  A newborn infant has all of it's members but is a long 
way from maturity!   But the body of Christ does not even have all of it's 
members yet! So the time when all the members are mature has certainly NOT 
arrived yet!

So brother, I would encourage you to allow ALL of scripture to be the 
standard by which you evaluate every theory of men, including the theory 
that the gifts of the spirit have ceased.

Your brother in Christ,
Bruce Woodford

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