ECT Do Miracles still happen today?

[TweetyBird]

Your version of God is one cruel being - to subject people to such horrors just to call them home. What foolishness.

Read the OT much?

As a result "the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you" and yours in your nonsense before a world in need of concrete answers over this pagan superstition of yours.

The world only wants an answer they can understand. God's wisdom is far above ours. There are millions of Christians who believe the literal verse - that God works out all things for the good.

Paul said it was foolishness to the world that God would send His own Son to die for the world in order to reconcile them to God and forgive of their sins and give them eternal life. Those in Christ are secure in the knowledge that God knows exactly what He is doing, even when it is ripping them apart. God promised to "hold us" not deliver us from tribulations - unless it is His will.

Roman Catholic works based pergatory on the spot nonsense is what that is.

I am not RCC and do not believe in purgatory.

It sounds all 'o the Lord works in mysterious ways..." wonderful.

But what it is, is plain old, wisdom of this world, we are clueless, but this sounds good...superstitious nonsense.

God's ways are higher, His plans are not ours. Read Isa 55 - it's good to see the truth from God's perspective.

 

[musterion]

On the other hand, the Bible student will conclude that God was fully satisfied when Paul put his pen down - with the arrival of that which is perfect - the Word filled full with the full revelation of the Mystery...in written form.

Know what? I can agree 100% with that statement and frame it on my wall, but I'd still be honest enough to admit, brother, that it indicates NOTHING about God's willingness to intervene in the lives of His own as, when and IF He chooses to do so. But you're free to believe as you wish (how's that for cultic narrow mindedness?)

Look --let's not be speculative eisegetes about this or any issue. It says what it says and doesn't say what it doesn't say. Believe what you want but be honest enough to see that you're being a grade A first class hypocrite on this very issue: you are Mr. Iron Hand MAD on what YOU say 100% cessation means. It's YOUR way or the highway...without a shred of non-inferred Pauline support for your position. Exactly what you go around accusing us of doing, you're doing on this issue.

 

[Danoh]

Know what? I can agree 100% with that statement and frame it on my wall, but I'd still be honest enough to admit, brother, that it indicates NOTHING about God's willingness to intervene in the lives of His own as, when and IF He chooses to do so. But you're free to believe as you wish (how's that for cultic narrow mindedness?)

Look --let's not be speculative eisegetes about this or any issue. It says what it says and doesn't say what it doesn't say. Believe what you want but be honest enough to see that you're being a grade A first class hypocrite on this very issue: you are Mr. Iron Hand MAD on what YOU say 100% cessation means. It's YOUR way or the highway...without a shred of non-inferred Pauline support for your position. Exactly what you go around accusing us of doing, you're doing on this issue.

Not at all.

I don't accept or reject you on the basis of what we each view as being Cessationist.

I post in agreement or disagreement to one and all on a post by post basis, regardless of whether they hold to Mad or not, and you know this.

 

[musterion]

Not at all.

I don't accept or reject you on the basis of what we each view as being Cessationist.

I post in agreement or disagreement to one and all on a post by post basis, regardless of whether they hold to Mad or not, and you know this.

To this very day, you've call us cultic and narrow on various issues, including this one. Anything we disagree with you on makes us almost 28, narrow and cultic.

Fine.

I made my case that God can and does intervene if He chooses because Paul nowhere said He won't. And depending on what He deems our needs to be, He has guaranteed to do so (Phil 4:19).

You likewise make your case from silence, except in the opposite direction -- somehow reading into the fact (and it IS a fact!) of the completed revelation of the mystery what Jordan and others say is the complete, utter, essentially deistic cessation of all material intervention by God during this dispensation of grace.

Whatever. You're free to believe as you wish. Your doctrine won't cause you to stand or fall before me. Vice versa.

And you have no more chance of convincing me otherwise than I have of convincing you.

So let's just be honest here and agree we both, largely, are arguing from the silence of what Paul did NOT say.

Can you handle that much grace this evening, or is it asking too much?

 

[Danoh]

To this very day, you've call us cultic and narrow on various issues, including this one. Anything we disagree with you on makes us almost 28, narrow and cultic.

Fine.

I made my case that God can and does intervene if He chooses because Paul nowhere said He won't. And depending on what He deems our needs to be, He has guaranteed to do so (Phil 4:19).

You likewise make your case from silence, except in the opposite direction -- somehow reading into the fact (and it IS a fact!) of the completed revelation of the mystery what Jordan and others say is the complete, utter, essentially deistic cessation of all material intervention by God during this dispensation of grace.

Whatever. You're free to believe as you wish. Your doctrine won't cause you to stand or fall before me. Vice versa.

And you have no more chance of convincing me otherwise than I have of convincing you.

So let's just be honest here and agree we both, largely, are arguing from the silence of what Paul did NOT say.

Can you handle that much grace this evening, or is it asking too much?

The cult-like reference is to the one sided, our way alone, or the highway, never correct one another...conduct.

It is not a reference to the Almost 28er views held.

This latter would be the result of mishandling various passages, just as the 28ers do, thus, the Almost 28er like conclusions.

The least such could do is let TOLers know that is their view, not that of the majority of Mads out there.

Is that really asking so much?

 

[Danoh]

And my case on the Cessationism is not from silence but from an understanding from Scripture of where God is working today - in the inward man through His Word when properly understood.

Not through His Spirit revealing things from on high, nor through the reading into of all things work together for good, nor through other external situations read into things.

We differ on some of this.

What gives you and yours the right to assert your view but another is supposed to not assert theirs because your one sided club says Mads are not to challenge one another's understandings.

Such is the mark of a cultist.

Like it or not, it is duplicitous. Plain and simple.

O look - there comes that waste of bandwidth with his ever useless two cents :chuckle:

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

My mom and I disagree that Miracles still happen today, that people get miraculous healing, supernatural causes save peoples lives, etc.

Can God still perform miracles? Of course and I suspect He does. But that is not the same as a person possessing the signs of an apostle (Mark 16:17-20; Acts 2:43; 2 Corinthians 12:12; Hebrews 2:3, 4). I would say that it is perfectly reasonable for us to pray for God to do a "miracle" for someone, and that God may well answer that prayer according to His good pleasure. However, a person with great faith may not be healed at all. And someone with weak faith be healed whole. A person devoid of faith shouldn't expect any help from God. But someone with faith has no claim or expectation of special treatment from God based on the quality of his faith.

Not only this, but no effect of a "healing" today cannot be infallibly attributed to the "power of God". We may be completely unaware of whatever "natural factors" God (whether immediately, or by physicians, or whatever) may have used to bring about the apparently miraculous cure. We do not have the unimpeachable testimony of an Apostle to reveal from heaven the nature of the cure, or the immediate source of the power that cured. All we can do is thank God for his work in our lives.

Why doesn't God get credit for all the "good work" he does through physicians? He gets all the blame when things don't go as planned or hoped but God rarely gets the credit for incredibly skilled and physicians and wonderful technology and medicine. I think we too often have a "God of the gaps" theology whereby we only "see" God's hand when we can't explain things otherwise.

Being healed in a hospital may well confirm our faith, but what if we weren't healed? What then? That's why faith must be centered on Christ and not on what God has "done" (outside of Christ) or not done "for us." When is God not "doing"? Don't we confess the "everywhere present power of God, whereby as it were, He upholds and governs all things..."?

Sure we do. I think a lot of our (with no reference to this particular case) predestinarian Pentecostalism is grounded in a poor doctrine of God and theology of providence.

As for the stories of miracles (truly fantastic miracles that sound like biblical miracles)--I think it worth asking: why, if these things are real, are they isolated incidents and why do they occur almost invariably in murky circumstances? Paul and Peter raised the dead (in different places), Peter and John gave the lame man back his legs, and many other wonderful things took place besides, in the presence of hundreds of witnesses, believing and unbelieving, in the heart of the most urbane culture of the day. Perhaps the answer is that God works more often extraordinarily and immediately in places where there is much less in the way of "ordinary" advanced medicine, such as we have in the West. But in either case, it is still God's will being done, He still preserves life or takes it away at His pleasure. And let us be honest. Unverifiable claims are all too often exaggeration, misunderstanding, or contain some level of deception.

But the bottom line is, we never know how much of any healing (no matter how extraordinary, no matter how well attested) is truly fantastic, and how much is "ordinary" (albeit unusual) providence. And we know there is no more "authentication" of the gospel message going on. All the authentication necessary is already present in the reports of miracles present in the apostolic testimony--the book of Acts.

We often hear of "miracles" occurring in the mission field. Perhaps God works extraordinarily in areas where the ordinary means, such as the availability of modern medical facilities, is non-existent. But, the issue here is: are these events are "miracles" or the wonderful extraordinary providences of God?

AMR

 

[musterion]

What gives you and yours the right to assert your view but another is supposed to not assert theirs because your one sided club says Mads are not to challenge one another's understandings.

Now you're back in creepy mode.

I've never tried to silence you. Wouldn't do so even were it in my power. Nor am I aware of any MAD who has indicated they would if they could.

We're persecuting you, is what you're saying.

There is something really wrong with you.

You oppose us on many points (fine and dandy) but use false insults and scorn. You run us down to others...tell them we're a cult...but are extremely congenial to false teachers, apostates and committed heathens.

But when YOU are opposed by us (almost invariably in response to what you said), suddenly you are being persecuted and we want to silence you.

:AMR:

What you said up there is false. You sound like you need to get away from us for awhile, since we're such a thorn in your side. God knows what is wrong with you but something IS wrong with you.

Seriously. Take a break. You're less than rational.