I've been a MAD for going on 10 years. In that time, I've met (as I'm sure many of you have) or communicated with several "names" within the movement, some bigger, some smaller, but still "names." It soon became apparent that for whatever reason - the flesh, I suppose - there were many unexpected divisions within the "Grace movement" that I naively did not expect to find at first. Yet there they are...some are necessary divisions over irreconcilable doctrinal differences while others (I won't yet say which) strike me as pointless time-wasters. And there are still others which I find to be glaring issues which never, ever seem to get on the radar of the Grace movement as a whole; things most folks see but never discuss. It troubles me, but Christ will sort it all out at the Rapture, then at the Bema.
There is one issue, though, which very, VERY few even consider thinking about. I'm one of them. This...suspicion I have (I can't call it a belief because I can't 100% prove it) will likely get me banned from any fellowship I belonged to; in fact it would very likely preclude it. Without beating around the bush further, I'll just spill it and see who replies:
I believe it is possible that ALL the gifts listed in 1 Corinthians and even Ephesians 4 were temporary for the founding of the Church while the full revelation of God was still being given and compiled. By "all," I mean ALL of them...not just the sign gifts, which goes without saying as they were for unbelieving Israel's conviction, but the ministerial gifts claimed by thousands throughout the centuries since. I believe this is possible for a few Scriptural reasons as well as for a few real-world practical ones but, naturally, to even broach the subject in most places would be enough to get you shunned if not officially disfellowshipped.
Anyone else think the way I do? Again, I'm not totally convinced of it but...I wonder. This suspicion is not new to me as a MAD but goes way back to my loosey-goosey campus ministry beginnings and my later indie-fundie Baptist days...so I've been chewing it over for a loooong time. But if my suspicion is true, man oh man would it explain A LOT.
I welcome any and all thoughts, rebukes and accusations of heresy.
I'll take that even further as is.
Many who do hold to that exactly as you wrote it - that all the gifts have ceased - will then assert things from everyday circumstances they believe God had something to do with.
You yourself have done that yourself, on here, on occasion, lol
By the time of Paul's latter letters he is talking "if a man desire the office of..." 1 Tm. 3:1.
What this issue really boils down to is how each person examines it.
Meaning, are they even doing that examining soundly?
What principles might determine that?
Belief, and its close cousins, learned, and concluded beliefs, play a strong role in the mis-understanding of all this.
Was "that which is perfect...come" that "that which is in part" was "done away" - 1 Cor. 13:10?
It depends not only on where one looks for an answer, but how one looks, and what one thinks one is looking at.
Very few are as objective about a thing as they would like to think.
One clue - how easily they will shut others out when they encounter what challenges their assertions - to where they take personal offence.
One has to ever be willing to look at what another is asserting no matter how much one disagrees with what it can just as often only appear to be asserting.
I was there. I know.
The first time I heard the Cessasionist view, I was shocked by it.
Fortunately, the KJVO-A9D person I first heard it from knew all its ins and out like few I have ever encountered, heard, or read to this very day.
And I am not one easily impressed by the few who most would conclude really profound.
Later, as this sense of shift in my Paradigm ceased to be at the forefront of my awareness, and I went back to my day to day, I began to note inconsistencies in my newly adopted view - what was obviously still a holdover from beliefs I had obviously held prior to that shocking moment.
Later, I found I was not alone in this. That this kind of a realization that there was an inconsistency between the supposed conclusion the professed practice of the hermeneutic had resulted in and its actual application in one's examining of their day to day as to where and how God was working, had quietly been taking place in the inner man of others for years... until Jordan made an issue of it at a conference, got in trouble for doing so, but found that others had been coming to a similar day to day understanding, but had been quiet about it for the anathema stink bomb it threatened to unleash against them from the more commonly held status quo belief, despite the obvious inconsistency in their hermeneutic it made so obvious to all but to the most legalistic, set in their ways "you're being divisive" nonsense they right off accuse one of.
The "that's not for us!!!" crowd.
Who have never gotten to what they assert - "well, see, the mystery is the key to peace among the brethren."
So long as it is "their" version of what's what, and how God does, or does not work, and all the rest of their own little club's malarkey...
Does God work outside of His Word in the inward man at all?
I hold that He does not. Many more do as well.
But even within our own ranks, it does not appear many have really sat down and examined the actual consistency of their belief in this.
And that's people who hold the view that, no, He does not work outside of His Word in you that believe.
In the end, the best position is just to remain fascinated about it all.
But not only about it all, but also, about what principles might help one understand how to "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves...," 2 Cor. 13:5, as to this and all the other issues that only being A9D ever keeps so fascinating...
As if a kind of an "Alice in the Looking Glass" effect is built into this "manifold wisdom of God in a Mystery..."