Introduction
The first thing I want to say is that I am a cessationist. I believe that the sign gifts ceased at the end of the apostolic age. Therefore this is an in-house critique. It is an important consideration when arguing our position that we should not use invalid arguments to do so.
So what is the straw man that has prompted this missive? It is this. The suggestion/demand made to continuationists that if they truly believe that God is really speaking to them they should take what was said, write it down and staple, glue or otherwise affix it to the back of their Bibles. The tacit accusation here is that the continuationist does not believe in a closed canon. While I am sure there are those that believe in an open canon I am fairly certain that if you ask any continuationist if they believe in a closed canon they would answer in the affirmative. I was one and I certainly would have done so.
This is a rather shallow jibe made by my cessationist brothers and I would respectfully request that they stop saying this. There are good arguments from Scripture against the continuation of the sign gifts, and some good historical points can be made as well. Let us stick to those and cease making accusations that are for the most part untrue and rather disingenuous to those who in many cases are actually brothers and sisters in Christ.
So why do I think that the continuationist need not add their prophetic utterances (or those of others) to the current canon of 66 books?
The arguments
I have three arguments.
- Not all the words of Jesus were written down as Scripture
- Not all prophecy was written down as Scripture.
- Modern prophecy does not meet the test for canonicity.
Jesus
I think it is fair to say that every word that Jesus spoke was from God. Because Jesus is Himself God every word He spoke could rightly have been recorded in Scripture and been considered Scripture. However we can be sure that not everything Jesus did and said is recorded in Scripture. John 21:25 says “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
Only the words the Holy Spirit inspired the Gospel writers to remember and write down became part of the Bible as we know it today. So if many of the words of Jesus Himself were not chosen by the Spirit to be part of Scripture why should the prophecies of, say, Beth Moore be worthy of inclusion?
New Testament Prophecy
Both cessationists and continuationists would agree that the gift of prophecy and the office of prophet existed in the New Testament church. Acts 21:9 indicates that Philip has daughters who prophesied. Agabus is called a prophet and is mentioned twice (Acts 11:27-30 and Acts 21:10-14) as having prophesied things that later came to pass. No prophecies uttered by Philips daughters were recorded in Scripture. Yet the Scriptures indicate that they prophesied. Two prophecies of Agabus were recorded but I am loath to think that this was the sum total of the prophecies that he made. Thus at least one and possibly more direct revelations from God that were brought through Agabus did not find their way into the canon of Scripture. If genuine prophets in the New Testament did not get all their prophecies canonised why should we presume that modern day “prophets” must have their words added to the canon?
Canonicity
Anyone who has studied canon knows that the books we accept as Divinely inspired were not picked from a list based on a set of criteria. And no, Constantine had nothing whatsoever to do with the compilation of the canon. What we do know however is that by looking at the books that ARE canon we can see attributes that these books have in common that show their validity in the canon of Scripture.
Modern day prophecy does not fulfil any of the criteria that are indicate the canonicity of the books we have in Scripture.
Since there are no living apostles today the prophecy could not have been made by an apostle or someone close to an apostle.
The prophecy is not widely accepted as from God by a majority of the churches.
The prophecies in most cases are not widely attested to by the churches. And so on and so forth. So even if you assume that the prophecies are truly from God and are accurate, they fail the test of canonicity and thus cannot be tacked on to the back of anyones Bible.
Conclusion
So by applying three simple criteria we can safely conclude that none of the prophecies of the so called modern day prophets qualify for inclusion in the canon, and even if they are true and accurate they have only limited temporal application and have no bearing on the body of Christ in general.
The arguments for the cessation of the apostolic sign gifts are solid. We don’t need straw man catch phrases to ram home our point.
Let us as Christians always take the high road and use the best arguments and catch phrases to argue and illustrate our position and leave the straw man arguments to those who have nothing better in their arsenal to combat the awesome truth that is found only in God’s Holy Word.
