When facing a crisis or controversy sparked by a disagreement on doctrine, if I were you I would first examine how committed I am — and how committed I ought to be — to the cause. Jesus said that someone who begins construction should first count the cost, lest he cannot finish and bring shame upon himself. He said that someone who goes to war should consider if he can attain victory. If you take a stand for the word of God, you better follow through to the end. How serious is it? If someone receives a deep cut on his leg, or if one of his bones breaks, he will heal as long as the man is alive and intact. The injured part is not unimportant, but it is not so essential that the whole man collapses. Now what if I could somehow rip out all the blood vessels from his body? This would not be something that can naturally heal or be endured. How integral are God’s promises, Christ’s commands, and the Spirit’s endowments to the normal Christian doctrine and experience? Do you think all these things are only cosmetic issues to the body of Christ? If we refuse these things, would it only be like a cut on the leg? Or would it be like ripping out all the blood vessels from a man’s body? What do you think? You must decide for yourself based on what you honestly perceive from Scripture. Can you tear out these things from the gospel, and still have the gospel? Really? If so, then keep your church, and keep your friends. But if ripping out the gospel in the gospel actually destroys the gospel, then you must continue in the doctrines of faith no matter what, so that you may keep your God.

Preachers are often more zealous for ethical principles that grow out of the gospel than for the gospel itself. What if the controversy you face concerns abortion? Or if your church has been supportive of homosexual doctrine and behavior, what would you do? Still want to keep your friends? Many churches would have split six different ways by now, and no one would bother to consult me. Jesus said that the measure or standard you use to judge others is the measure or standard by which you will be judged. Christians demand unbelievers to obey the ethical standards of the Bible, but at the same time they denounce the supernatural promises of God and the missional commands of Christ. Christians claim to know the Bible when they use it to condemn the unbelievers, but they also condemn the things that the same Bible teaches – faith for miracles, healing the sick, casting out demons, prophecies and tongues, visions and dreams, signs and wonders, the baptism of the Spirit for supernatural endowments, and a long list of other things. The same Bible that they use to condemn others will be the same Bible that condemns them. What, aren’t the unbelievers murderers, idolaters, adulterers, and liars? Sure enough, and all these can be forgiven. But religious people blaspheme the Holy Spirit, and that will never be forgiven. As Jesus said, many will come from the east and from the west, and they will sit with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. You think he was just waxing poetic, or being sentimental? This will really happen. It first happened to the people of Israel, and now it is happening to the people of the church. Many who are now condemned by the Bible, will repent and believe the Bible – all of it – and they will be saved. But many who now condemn others by the Bible, will be condemned by this same Bible, because they never believed it.

Cessationism is far more destructive than the sins of the unbelievers. In fact, cessationism and cessationists have encouraged the continuation of sin in the church and in the world, because they have deliberately suppressed the full spectrum of the things that God wants to say and show to the world. If God is silent, hidden, and inactive, then sin and sinners run rampant. There is no sense of threat, no sense of consequence, no sense of holiness and otherworldly presence and power among them. This single betrayal by the church has allowed the global historic exponential growth of a multitude of sins. The world is increasingly reaping what the church has sown, including depravity, sickness, and poverty. We cannot hide much of the gospel from the world — if we still have a gospel after that — and then demand the world to conform to the implications of this gospel. If there is no God, then we cannot demand people to obey the commands of God. If there is no gospel, then we cannot demand people to follow the ethics of this gospel. The implications of cessationism pertain to not only core issues such as faith in God, healing and prophecy, the effects of the atonement, Christ’s present work of baptism with the Spirit, and the like, but they pertain to all areas of life and society.

If you have concluded that the gospel is the gospel, and that the gospel is one, then you must remain firm and unmovable. Go all in with Christ. Go all in with faith. Commit to this fight. Cessationism must cease. This is one issue that warrants wars and riots in the churches. It demands us to reevaluate creeds, redefine orthodoxy, restructure leadership, and renounce tradition. It demands us to defund anyone and disband anything that persists in this cessation of faith. The heresy strikes at the gospel in such a devastating and pervasive manner that unless a group undergoes a conversion to the truth not unlike the individual’s born again experience, it warrants the dissolution of the church, or seminary, or denomination. Just as a man cannot be saved unless he is born again, a church of unbelief and tradition cannot be saved unless it is converted. A half-baked recovery is worse than death. Nevertheless, if you are in a situation where there is some hope for change, and especially where you have some authority and influence, a revolution is not the first thing you could attempt. You can use a long-term approach. The word of God is like seeds, and by sowing seeds — or thoughts — into people’s minds one can sometimes overturn generations of spiritual famine. Some plant life can begin as a seed, but as it sprouts and grows, it can work through the cracks of a stone wall and eventually bring down the entire structure. A little leaven works through the whole dough. This is how unbelief had worked in the church through the centuries, and it brought down the momentum of faith established by the apostles, until the church has come to represent only senseless rituals and petty scruples to the world, instead of a voice and power from another dimension.

This works for truth and holiness just as much as it does false doctrine and sin. Satan sows seeds of doubt, but you can sow seeds of faith. You can throw out thoughts here and there about God’s promise to work miracles, and how we can heal the sick and cast out demons in the name of Jesus. You can throw out questions here and there to cast doubt on traditional doctrines of unbelief. Most of the people adhere to the orthodoxy of unbelief not as a result of a thorough and honest study, but because of hearsay and custom. Make them question these things. There is often a need to take an offensive approach more than a defensive approach. Faith has been attacked by the church for more than 1500 years, and unbelief has been orthodoxy. Traditional religious assumptions must be challenged. However, if you are speaking to your own people over a period of time, you can begin this slowly and gently, line upon line, precept upon precept, here and little, there a little, and only become more forceful and condemning as they prove to be obstinate against God. You ought to escalate the content and the rhetoric in any case. This is applied to your own people if they are hardened, but if they go along with you, then let them band together to become a hostile force toward the unbelief of outsiders and other groups. In any case, even if you take the long-term approach, you must remember that the changes must eventually go all the way, or there is in fact no genuine transformation.

There must be some substance to what you say to the people. Break through their excuses with well-reasoned explanations from Scripture, but then also expose their motives for persisting in unbelief. Unbelief is never sincere or innocent. It is never only about what the truth is. There is also something about themselves that they wish to protect against the truth. Unless you address this latter thing, they will keep resisting even if you answer all their objections. If you have been speaking truth, do not apologize for anything that you have done. Proceed with wisdom, and avoid causing unnecessary trouble for yourself, but be brave and never retreat. If even those of us who know the truth compromise, and if we allow ourselves to be silenced, then who is there to show the way out of dead religion? The voice of faith must become stronger and stronger. Faith must become more aggressive and overbearing. People are accountable to God to accept the truth regardless of how it is presented to them. It is still their fault if they refuse it. Since they have the Bible, they should have come to the same conclusions even without us. They ought to be encouraging us and supporting us, not resisting us. The fact that we need to make any effort to convince them is already a blight on their record with God. I had so thirsted after the living water that I would have gleefully accepted Christ even if you had written the gospel on a baseball bat and clobbered me senseless with it. I would not have blamed the baseball bat as an excuse to refuse. There are people who condemn those who violently kick down the prison doors with the shoes of the gospel, and not condemn those who imprisoned them in the first place. They complain to their liberators, “Why kick so hard?” And these are imbeciles who would choose to remain in prison even after the doors have been kicked down. We see people like these all over our churches and seminaries. Some make entire careers out of maintaining this status quo. Thus it is often better to disband and start over.