Cessationism on the duck farm

This is a duck.

I, of course, as a Christian with Pentecostal leanings, am hard to sell on cessationism. It is like explaining to a duck farmer that ducks are extinct, like the dodo. So, what is that pudgy bird I just saw waddling by and quacking? The cessationist can only answer that what I saw isn't really a duck.

On such a view, a word of knowledge that proves true and useful was just a really good hunch. Something similar is said of a prophetic utterance that brings clearer light to a situation--it was just really good extemporaneous preaching manufactured by the speaker's subconscious. Tongues in contemporary use are simply gibberish and interpretations are the same, or at best, like the so-called prophecy, a sensitive use of intuition.

A great concern of cessationist theology is that new prophecy might somehow undermine the authority of scripture. But how can that be, when real deal Pentecostals and charismatics use scripture as their yardstick? The canon is closed; nothing can be added or taken away from the way of salvation or the laws of morality. God will not contradict what he timelessly proclaimed. Contradicting scripture is one of the ways you spot a false prophet. The other way is our Lord's test of the fruit of what someone does. You shall know false prophets by their fruits. That echoes and strengthens Moses's advice not to follow after prophets who say things that either are said in the name of other gods or else aren't real and don't come to pass. So the accusation that Pentecostals undermine scripture cannot be true. That is simply a canard. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...

Of course I find much to criticize when it comes to charismatic abuses and nonsense, but I find that sincere Pentecostals and charismatics (the ones you hardly ever see on TV) are among the strongest supporters of the authority of scripture, and they have inherent caution about anyone who claims to be someone great because he is spiritual. If you are spiritual and I am spiritual you are not special. 

I view cessationism as well intentioned in its desire to debunk people whom I and other Pentecostals already describe as fakes and frauds and hucksters and worse things. But it tars with too broad a brush. At bottom, in its practical effect, cessationism is schismatic, rejecting for the sake of some very bad eggs in our own time something that God explicitly bestowed in his church, and never explicitly took away. The cessationist cannot help painting as delusional the people who practice the gifts that he says are gone for all time.

That hardly makes for chummy interchurch picnics.

I'll bring the duck.