Author: Pennington, Tom
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Rick Shrader‘s Review:
This is a 2023 book on why the gift of miracles ceased with the apostles. It is forwarded by John MacArthur because Pennington presented this material at the 2013 Strange Fire conference at Grace Community Church. This book was a 10 year review and addition to that material. Pennington writes: “Since Strange Fire, I have further developed each argument, hopefully making the biblical case for cessationism more in-depth and compelling. Without the constraint of a one-hour sermon, I have been able to give further treatment to the details of the arguments. But I also wanted to keep it short enough so that no one interested in this subject would be discouraged by the book’s length” (p. xi).
The result it is a very readable 10 chapter, 177 page book that is faithful to the Scriptures and to the history of cessationism. His basic proposition is, “Cessationists argue that it is neither the Spirit’s plan nor His normal pattern to distribute any of the miraculous spiritual gifts to Christians and churches today. The miraculous gifts played a unique role in the Spirit’s work in the New Testament church and were never meant to be normative outside of the first-century, apostolic era” (p. 4). He also writes, “In about 4,000 years of Old Testament history, there were only 130 years in which God empowered men to work miracles. Even during those years, miracles didn’t happen frequently” (p. 31). In fact, Pennington shows, the three waves of miracle working in the Scriptures (Moses-Joshua, Elijah-Elisha, Jesus-Apostles) only covered 65 years, 65 years, and 70 years respectively.
Good readable book to give to believers who are doubtful in this area.