The king of Israel advanced and overpowered the horses and chariots and inflicted heavy losses on the Arameans. Afterward, the prophet came to the king of Israel and said, “Strengthen your position and see what must be done, because next spring the king of Aram will attack you again.”
Meanwhile, the officials of the king of Aram advised him, “Their gods are gods of the hills. That is why they were too strong for us. But if we fight them on the plains, surely we will be stronger than they. Do this: Remove all the kings from their commands and replace them with other officers. You must also raise an army like the one you lost — horse for horse and chariot for chariot — so we can fight Israel on the plains. Then surely we will be stronger than they.” He agreed with them and acted accordingly.
The next spring Ben-Hadad mustered the Arameans and went up to Aphek to fight against Israel. When the Israelites were also mustered and given provisions, they marched out to meet them. The Israelites camped opposite them like two small flocks of goats, while the Arameans covered the countryside. The man of God came up and told the king of Israel, “This is what the LORD says: ‘Because the Arameans think the LORD is a god of the hills and not a god of the valleys, I will deliver this vast army into your hands, and you will know that I am the LORD.'”
For seven days they camped opposite each other, and on the seventh day the battle was joined. The Israelites inflicted a hundred thousand casualties on the Aramean foot soldiers in one day. The rest of them escaped to the city of Aphek, where the wall collapsed on twenty-seven thousand of them. And Ben-Hadad fled to the city and hid in an inner room. (1 Kings 20:21-30)
The Reformed tradition is a human tradition that is based on the Christian faith. Like Catholicism, Mormonism, and a number of others, the Reformed tradition uses the Christian faith as a template to make up their own system. On some things it is exactly correct, but in many aspects, the resulting religion is unlike the actual Christian faith, the God is unlike the actual God, or the Christ the actual Christ, the gospel the actual gospel. It is something that looks similar and sounds similar enough to deceive many people, but it is not the same. It distorts some doctrines and discards others to make the system accommodate the people’s weaknesses, prejudices, and evil urges. This is why the Reformed tradition embraces cessationism among the other heresies that it endorses. It cannot accept the Scripture as it is written. It refuses to believe the gospel as it is preached. It condemns Jesus Christ as he has been revealed.
One of the most blatant lies from followers of Reformed theology is that they believe God is for all of life. The truth is that they regard him as God in fewer areas than many of those who do not make such a claim or even those who have not considered the issue. There are territories that they do not allow God to touch. Although they pretend to allow God to speak about those areas, they twist his words to accommodate what they wish to believe. So they construct opinions and policies on major issues using Christian terms, but these opinions and policies are often not truly Christian, and then they do not believe that God would actively, obviously, and miraculously involve himself in any area of life. Their God is a God of hidden providence.
Followers of the Reformed tradition believe that God is for all of life the least, although they claim to believe it the most, and they persecute those who behave as if God is for all of life. If someone prays to God for a parking space, they laugh at him. They belittle his faith as trivial and selfish. We can agree that finding a parking space is far less important than finding an eternal salvation, but this is what makes it an excellent illustration. If God is for all of life, then why can’t we have faith in him for both things, for all things? What is so terrible about this? These Christians act as if God is for all of life, and it is so much a part of their faith that they would behave this way without boasting about it. As for those only boast about it, their faith is a sham.
If God is too great to answer my trivial requests, then why in the world is he keeping track of my hairs (Matthew 10:30)? He started it, so why can’t I go along with it? Ah, the problem is not with God, or with me, or with charismatic fanatics, but with the religious phonies who claim to believe that God is for all of life, but in reality oppose it to the uttermost. They say he is a God of forgiveness and holiness, of conversion and sanctification, but to them he is not a God of healing, of prosperity, of protection, of revelation, of miracles, of happiness, of glory, of success, both in this life and in the life to come. They worship a pagan deity. They preach a pagan gospel. They persecute the God of the Bible, who blesses his people in all things. And they persecute those who worship this God, those who follow the Christian faith.
Their God can speak to you about health, but he is not going to do anything for you when it comes to health, at least not miraculously as the Bible promises. Their God gives you a theology of health and medical care, but you will have to help yourself when it comes to actually getting health and healing, just like the pagans. They even encourage the pursuit of health as long as you do it through natural means and do not claim that you can get it by faith in God, because that would mean adopting a gospel of health. But the God of the Bible says that the prayer of faith will heal the sick (James 5:15), that Jesus took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses (Matthew 8:17). The God of the Bible will miraculously remove the sickness and restore the person.
Their God can speak to you about wealth, but he is not going to do anything for you when it comes to wealth. Unlike the God of the Bible, this one does not give you “power to get wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18). Their God gives you a theology of work and economics, and might even endorse your capitalism, but you will have to help yourself when it comes to actually getting wealth and prosperity, just like the pagans. They even encourage wealth-building as long as you do not claim that you can get it by faith in God, because that would mean adopting a gospel of wealth, a prosperity gospel. But the God of the Bible says that if you will seek first the kingdom of God, then “all these things” that come under Mammon will be added to you (Matthew 6:33). He does not mean spiritual wealth, but he promises all the things that “the pagans run after” (v. 32). The God of the Bible can miraculously increase material resources, and even likes to make too much (Mark 8:18-21). The God of the Bible is a God of prosperity, a God of more than enough.
Their God is an idol derived from an anti-“health and wealth” heresy, fueled by the Catholic notion that pain is piety. These are two examples, but there are others. They are preferred because the Reformed are so against the gospel of health and wealth, but they are often more obsessed with these things than the people they criticize, only that they refuse to get them through faith in God, but pursue them by human and natural means. Here is one more: They say that God is for all of life, but when they want to change the world, they seek the God of Politics. The God of this kind of theology is not the God of the Bible. This is a limited God. This is a compartmentalized God. This is a philosophical God that serves as a heuristic principle for you to talk about everything in life, but that does nothing about anything in life. This is a God of the hills, and not a God of the valleys, or anywhere else. This is the God of the Reformed, the God of the Evangelicals. This is the God of heathenism. This is the God of cessationism. The God of the Bible is bigger, stronger, and more generous with all things than their ability to believe, and so they invented another God — a tiny God, a stingy God, a “spiritual” and hidden God, an idol in the form of a golden calf — and then they declare in triumph, “This is the God who brought you out of Egypt!”
The Reformed, Evangelicals, and cessationists are “Christian” heathens. They condemn a gospel of health and wealth. Such a crude gospel is unworthy of the Most High, they say. But then they turn around and worship the God of Medicine and the God of Finance, in order to obtain the same blessings that they denounce in the gospel of health and wealth. The difference is that instead of looking to the Christian God for all things for all of life, they look to a separate deity for each item they desire, using their own talents and efforts as offerings. Thus the anti-“health and wealth” gospel is in fact a non-Christian religion. These religious frauds still want all the things that they claim God ceases to offer, and they pursue them from other sources. Cessationism becomes polytheism. Cessationism is modern heathenism.
When they are exposed in such clear terms, of course they would resist. Heresies hide in ambiguities. Their doctrines and the implications are evident, but these people suppress the truth in unrighteousness. They love their system of religion, where each God stays in his own place, and they could go to each one to satisfy a different desire. With them, if you need forgiveness, seek the God of the Christians, but it is heresy to have faith in him for health and healing, especially if you expect him to do it regularly and miraculously. Although he has promised it, don’t you dare “name it and claim it,” because somehow a respect for divine sovereignty means that you must leave room for God to break his word. For healing, you will have to fornicate with the priests of evolution before the altar of science, dieting, exercise, medicine, and insurance. With them, if you want holiness, come to the God of the Bible, but it is heresy to trust him for wealth and prosperity, especially if you want more than what you need to survive. For that, you will have to worship at the temple of education, labor, capitalism, and investments. And with them, if you seek the other kinds of miracles that the Bible promises, like visions, dreams, prophecies, tongues, and various sign and wonders (Acts 2:17, 1 Corinthians 14:26), then you must be a horrible person, because everybody knows that when the apostles died, the Holy Spirit died with them, and those things have come under Satan’s domain. Of course, the Reformed are not the only ones that practice this kind of idolatry and polytheistic religion, but they are the most hypocritical, because they boast most loudly that the God of the Christians is for all of life, when the God of the Reformed does not do much in most areas of life, except by hidden providence.
There is only one God. This is the God of the Christians, the Trinity. Cessationism entails a revival of ancient paganism and polytheism. However, the pagan deities either did not exist, or they were demons. They were localized or specialized, or both. Their knowledge and influence extended over only certain geographical areas, or a limited number of topics and needs. Whether your God is Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Calvinist, Arminian, or something else, if it is a cessationist God, it does not exist. There is no such God as a cessationist God. People made him up to accommodate their phony piety, and to excuse their idolatry. There is no such gospel as a cessationist gospel. People made it up, reducing the true gospel into something that they can live up to without genuine faith, and to excuse their polytheism.
The God of the Bible, the God of the Christians, the only God, is alive, active, obvious, speaking to people and working in people, often in miraculous ways. This is the God who saves, who heals, who prospers, who blesses, and who judges. This is the God who takes away the suffering of life that we have been redeemed from, because Jesus suffered in our place. Jesus broke the curse of the law, a curse that included sickness and poverty, and a curse so strong that it could break a nation (Deuteronomy 28). Don’t you see, morons? The gospel can save a whole nation’s health and wealth, if the people would have faith in God. Jesus Christ is the hope of all nations, for all of life. To reject this, or even to reduce it slightly, is to undermine the work of Christ. It is to become anti-Christ. But you idiots are all worked up over cars and houses and vacations — over a few dollars? seriously? — and you persecute those who are in fact closer to the truth than you are. If they are wrong, then you should do better, but you are doing much worse. If you have more knowledge, then you should have faith for much more, not less. Or will a few extra bucks totally devastate your relationship with God? Then you do not have what you think with God in the first place. Why can’t a decent Christian handle a couple of million dollars? Why? Are you really that easily swayed by money? And you dare to lecture people about it? You wish to correct others, and you pretend to be a defender of the faith and of true piety, but you have nothing. You are fake. You are a poser.
If there are errors in those who affirm a gospel of health and wealth, or a prosperity gospel, the Reformed, Evangelicals, and cessationists are not ones who can say a word about it, because they cannot do it without becoming anti-Christ. I can, but they cannot. Their tradition and prejudice, and their lack of faith, have disqualified them. They want to wipe out everything that makes them look bad, and if they must get rid of God, Christ, and the gospel to make this happen, then so be it. I can correct the errors without attacking Christ himself, and offer a purified account of what the Bible teaches and promises, but since a significant part of their displeasure is in fact directed against what the Bible affirms, they cannot say a word without committing blasphemy. You stupid pretentious religious brats, let the people have their expensive clothes and houses, and let them have their cars and jets, as if God thinks these things are a big deal, as if God is unwilling to give them even more (2 Samuel 12:8), but you ought to find out what Christ has done for us and what faith can do before you criticize people who know better than you, although you look down on them, and end up attacking the gospel in the process.
Then, this is also the God for whom we endure legitimate suffering, not the phony suffering that anyone can experience just by laying down and doing nothing. The kind of suffering that the Bible honors comes from difficulties in fulfilling the commission of Christ, and from persecution for the sake of Christ. It might mean getting stared at or talked about, or it might mean getting cut in half or lit on fire. For many people, this kind of suffering comes most often from those religious charlatans who oppose the gospel that God delivers and blesses us in all of life, that good things come to us through Christ for every area of life. All teachers of the so-called health and wealth gospel that I have heard believe in this kind of suffering, and many of them experience this more than the Reformed, Evangelicals, and the cessationists that I know, often as they preach in less developed countries — sometimes in their expensive clothes and jets, sometimes not — while their high-minded critics write scathing monographs about them in the comfort of their university offices. It is their message of faith that enables them to endure both the assassination attempts from local shamans and the murderous writings of the religious intellectuals.
And this is the same God who will damn people to the lake of fire for their unbelief and idolatry. In hell, those who are so against a gospel of blessing, of health and wealth, and of miracles, will not be bothered with any of it. Finally, life will be exactly as their religion declares it should be.