Cessationists show their hypocrisy when they criticize the Pentecostals for accepting the biblical distinction between regeneration through Jesus Christ and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. They are fanatics! They are uneducated! They do not know the Bible! They want strange experiences! However, because Lloyd-Jones had achieved hero status in their eyes, they often mix their disagreement with praises for him and offer all sorts of generous explanations. For example, Peter Masters of Spurgeon’s church said that LJ succumbed to this biblical doctrine because he desperately desired revival. Well! Perhaps the Pentecostals also desire revival? Or perhaps some of the Pentecostals already have revival. They have more revival than a boring and dwindling church that has lost its legacy and has become nothing more than a tourist attraction. The Pentecostals believe the doctrine, and they are extreme fanatics, stupid anti-intellectuals. Lloyd-Jones believed something that resembled it, and he was a broken hero that deserves our sympathy. The truth is that they are respecters of persons. They are bootlicking religious sell-outs. Either LJ was correct, in which case the Pentecostals are even more correct, or he deserves the same scathing attack that they make against the Pentecostals.

Nevertheless, LJ did not get very close to the biblical doctrine. Compared to what the Bible teaches, he hardly started at all in preaching the word of God on this topic. And in terms of experience, and in practicing the word of God, being a doer of the word of God, he never started. He did not obey God. He never made it a regular practice to heal the sick and cast out demons, to prophesy and speak in tongues, among other things. This is a baseline that even many housewives and children have achieved. He merely acknowledged the starting line, but he never crossed it. This is even worse in a sense. If a person acknowledges a teaching but never becomes a doer of the word, he deceives himself. He will think that he has made progress, but he has never made any. He would harden himself even more, because he gives himself the illusion that he is doing what the word of God commands just by admitting what it says. Thus he hardens himself against the suggestion that he needs to begin. His admission of the doctrine becomes a testimony to his unbelief and disobedience. He knows the truth, but he does not do it.

Lloyd-Jones never arrived at the biblical doctrine. He appeared to think that regeneration has to do with salvation, then the baptism of the Spirit is a “sealing” that has to do with a greater commitment, an increased assurance and boldness, and then the gifts of the Spirit have to do with power. His presentation was so vague that it remains unclear if he thought that the BHS is needed for the gifts of the Spirit or if it invariably leads to the gifts of the Spirit. He would ramble on and on without arriving at a correct, definite, and final doctrine on the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is not a mischaracterization. Don’t try to hunt down one statement here or another there that seems to justify him. Take in the whole picture on what he said, and you will see that he was confused. Sometimes it is as if he thought that there are three things or three stages, instead of only two. This scheme is wrong. It is correct that the BHS is different from and subsequent to regeneration, or confessing faith in Christ. However, the BHS is not a “seal” for a greater commitment or an increased assurance and boldness in the faith.

Such a doctrine becomes a mere token to acknowledge the biblical distinction that there is a second experience, but it fails to acknowledge the necessary effect of this experience. The result is that one can supposedly acknowledge the biblical evidence for the BHS, receive the BHS, and still possess no supernatural power. Then for miracles to occur, the person would still need to wait for certain “gifts of the Spirit,” even though he supposedly has the BHS. This allows for practically no change from the cessationist way of life. And this was Lloyd-Jones’ way of life, although his doctrine appeared different from cessationism. His doctrine permitted himself to have it both ways – to disagree with the cessationist, but to live like the cessationist. The error is devastating, perhaps even more damaging than refusing to acknowledge the second experience. It creates a false safe zone for those who feel compelled by the biblical evidence, but refuse to commit to the theology and lifestyle of supernatural power demanded by this evidence. It makes the biblical evidence point to something else and thus neutralizes it. The Bible teaches that the BHS is an infusion of supernatural power from heaven. It is the doorway to supernatural powers and experiences. It is not a mere seal of salvation, an assurance that one ought to receive from the Spirit at conversion by faith in Christ; rather, it is an enduement of power by a different operation from the same Spirit.

Jesus said that the Holy Spirit is for power, and the power is not for sealing or assurance, but for visions, dreams, prophecies, tongues, healings, and miracles. Of course, this power could also increase assurance and boldness, and the abilities to perform whatever God has called a person to do, including administration, teaching, and the like. The workmen under Moses were given the Spirit to craft the tabernacle. It can enhance a person’s intellectual abilities, to a superhuman degree. However, this power is first intended to result in supernatural abilities and effects, and it will not offer less than visions, tongues, prophecies, healings, and miracles. The manifestation of this power is sometimes the gifts of the Spirit, but the gifts represent only one of several ways that miracles can occur. For example, healing the sick and casting out demons can be performed by faith alone without any spiritual gifts. Or by faith, a Christian can make intercession for the sick and God can heal them directly. This can happen a thousand times without the gifts of the Spirit ever getting involved. The Bible almost never uses the “gift” terminology to refer to spiritual manifestations, answers to prayer, or miracles. Manifestations of supernatural power as a result of the BHS are often not manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit, but events that fall under other categories. Any debate about spiritual powers and miracles is skewed from the start if we begin by talking about the “gifts” of the Spirit.

It is counter-productive to argue about the beliefs of past heroes. So what if Spurgeon talked about the Spirit more than his peers? Did he speak in tongues, prophesy, and cast out demons in front of everybody? Did he do this at least several times every week, if not every day? Given the size of his audience, the challenge is unreasonably lenient. He could have laid hands on the sick hundreds of times on some weeks. If he did not do these things, then he did not do what Jesus commanded. He was not a doer of the word. So what if Calvin and Luther had a marginally better theology of the Spirit than many cessationists? It was better by so little that it was virtually worse. Calvin and Luther – after bashing the Catholics for their false miracles and mysticism, did they provide a biblical teaching on the supernatural life and then demonstrated this power in a public and consistent fashion? They did not. When I read Lloyd-Jones on this topic I was glad that he had the courage to deviate from traditional orthodoxy – even that tiny bit would have invited persecution – but I was also puzzled by how weak and twisted his own version was. I saw it as a compromise that made zero progress, if not negative progress, due to the false safe zone it created. Were these religious heroes doers of the word? Did they obey what Scripture commands? Did they heal the sick and cast out demons? Did they encourage believers to prophesy and to speak in tongues? If not, then they disobeyed God and they deceived themselves.

It is foolish to emphasize the two or three times where someone acknowledged the biblical doctrine on miracles as if this settles the issue about his allegiance. What if he mentioned the deity of Christ only two or three times over the five thousand pages that he wrote? The Bible’s teachings on the Spirit, faith, and miracles are no less prominent, and they came from this Christ that we call God, so that if we reject them, we also reject the one who taught them. If someone made vague mentions of the blood atonement only several times in his entire life, we would not hail him as a groundbreaking theological genius. We would call him a worthless and unfaithful minister. We would be suspicious of him, if not call him an outright heretic. Did he believe the atonement, if he mentioned it only on several occasions over a lifetime? We would suspect that either he did not, or he was wickedly unfaithful to it. But somehow he is entirely vindicated if he weakly hinted several times that God still worked miracles! It is not enough to have spurts of spiritual experiences, if they even had that. It is pathetic to cite two or three miracles that happened by accident – even the crumbs from God’s table can heal the sick and cast out demons – over thirty, forty, sixty years, and then magnify these examples as if they vindicated someone’s entire ministry, or as if they now justify someone’s idolatrous admiration toward him. It is certainly not enough to convince the cessationists that revere the hero, or to distinguish this hero from the cessationists.

Jesus commanded much more of the supernatural from those who follow him, more than what he himself accomplished. He taught about faith and the supernatural in the most extreme manner. He stressed miraculous faith and power in his disciples with much more intensity, repetition, and variation than a number of doctrines that Christians have cherished as orthodox and essential, such as baptism and communion. In fact, compare how explicit, emphatic, and extreme were his teachings on miraculous faith and power demanded from all his disciples for all times, to his teachings on the atonement. Compare again with his teachings on predestination, on worship, on the church, on love and humility, on money and covetousness, well, on anything you choose. Jesus’ teaching that all disciples for all times are obligated to have faith and power for miracles does not come behind any of these doctrines in prominence, sometimes exceeding several of them combined. If we add to this the narrative portions of the Gospels that are instructive for receiving and ministering miracles, then the doctrine becomes more extensive than all of the major doctrines combined. Yet in the creeds, it receives a blunt denial, and in the historic heroes, at best a rare token acknowledgment. And the church is still arguing about it. This is disgusting. The truth is that if I were to write only about this for the rest of my life, or even for fifty more lifetimes, I would come nowhere close to making up the centuries of shameful neglect, and no one could accuse me of imbalance or overemphasis.

The cessationist is a complete idiot and fraud, so he should not be our baseline of measurement. Having more faith than an atheist does not make you an apostle. Stop wasting your time sifting through thousands of pages to prove that your heroes believed some bare minimum standard that you imagined. The Bible tolerates no such minimum. Why should we care about the sliver of truth that they believed, when you have the full display before you in the Bible and in some of the other teachers? You have not vindicated your idols or their doctrine, but you have managed to make them look even more worthless and unfaithful by drawing attention to how weak their theology was on this topic, how little they said about it, and how little they obeyed God, if they ever obeyed God at all. You say, “No theologian is perfect. No one is infallible.” But you do not say that nearly as often when you attack someone who disagrees with your favorite doctrine. In any case, the Satanist is also imperfect, and very fallible, but you still do not invite him to speak at your church. There is too much imperfection.

Sometimes a cessationist moron whines, “But…but not all cessationists are the same!” Is this a defense, or an admission that cessationism is rubbish? But is any cessationist a doer of the word of God? Does any cessationist preach that Christians can receive and minister miracles by faith, receive visions and dreams, speak in tongues, heal the sick, and cast out demons, and does he do these things regularly, expecting frequent and public results? If not, then all cessationists are the same. They refuse to believe God. They refuse to obey God. In the end it does not matter if non-Christians are atheists, or agnostics, or pantheists, Satanists or Buddhists, or this or that — if they are not Christians, God will throw all of them to hell just the same.

You can say that some Buddhists are better than other Buddhists, but they are still Buddhists. If some Buddhists are so much better that they are in fact Christians, then stop calling them Buddhists and call them Christians instead. You can say that not all atheists are the same. Some will indeed suffer more intense punishments in hell, but they will end up in the same place. Either you are a Christian, or you are not. Either you believe what Jesus said about faith and miracles, or you do not. And either you believe God’s word, or you are a cessationist. If you are a better cessationist, whatever that means, you are still a cessationist. If someone is so much better than he is no longer a cessationist, then he should no longer be called a cessationist. As long as he is called a cessationist, he is in deep rebellion and wickedness. Either you are a doer of God’s word to heal the sick and cast out demons, to speak in tongues and to prophesy, or you remain in unbelief and disobedience. You can be a hero of the faith only in the eyes of men. God will not admire someone who is ashamed of his promises and who disobeys his commands. What will happen to people who teach the opposite of what his word says, and who call his word heresy? Consider if God truly shares your admiration for your religious heroes. He might not be licking their boots like you are.

Jesus said, “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” Unless someone believes the whole gospel – which is to say, the gospel, since it cannot really be divided into parts – and unless he believes all of the word of God, he does not believe enough of it. To claim that some cessationists are better or different becomes a testimony that they knowingly refuse to believe much of what God says. Is this really better, or much worse? There is no improvement, but it is the same spirit of unbelief and disobedience. We can acknowledge the distinctions in their beliefs in a discussion that demands such nuance, but if even I know that you are stalling, and that you refuse to commit to the gospel, don’t you think that God also knows? He knows, and he will judge you for it. Can you believe in the deity of Christ just a little? Either you believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, or you do not believe enough, and if you do not believe enough, you do not believe.

Suppose someone believes that God will send Jesus to die for him “if it is his will,” and then never commits to Jesus. He has much faith that God will raise Jesus from the dead “if it is his will,” and he will commit to this the moment it happens. He refuses to acknowledge that this has already happened and that the matter has been settled, but he insists that he has tremendous faith for salvation, so that God can do all this to save him “if it is his will.” What would we say? He does not believe in Jesus, and he will burn in hell. He is not a flawed believer, but an unbeliever. He does not have strong faith, but zero faith, even anti-faith. Faith does not say, “Who will ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down),” or “Who will descend into the abyss? (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).” Faith does not say, “We need God to do this. We need God to do that.” It does not say this about something that God has achieved and explained. What does faith say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is, the message of faith that we preach), because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” You do not need God to send Jesus “if it is his will.” You can declare as boldly as you please, with all the self-righteousness and indignation that you can muster, that you have all the faith in the world for salvation, if God would only send Jesus to save you – if it is his will. This would not be faith, but insanity and unbelief. God already sent Jesus, and now you need to have the gospel in your heart and in your mouth. You believe. You confess. You say it. You do it.

What if Moses had said that God could give him the Ten Commandments “if it is his will” while reading the commandments to the congregation? What if Moses had so much “faith” that he shouted God could do absolutely anything, that he could even appear and write his words on stones “if it is his will” while holding the two tablets in his hands? Would that be faith, or insanity? This is how a cessationist appears when he claims to believe in miracles – he is a total flat-out moron. He is either the most oblivious man or the most dishonest man. He is making a joke out of the Spirit of God that has been poured out. Moses did not do this, because he was not stupid or wicked. He did not make a mockery of the word of God. Once God had given his commandments, Moses said to the people, “But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”

Are you a better cessationist, if you believe that God can work a miracle “if it is his will”? You are like the man who said that God would tell him to stop his affair with his friend’s wife “if it is his will.” Oh, a much better adulterer! So much faith! God has explained his will, and performed his will. He has poured out the Spirit of power. He has declared his promises and commands about miracles. He has said and done all that is needed for us to move forward in faith. The cessationist refuses to admit that the matter has been settled, but insists that he has faith, so that God can perform a miracle “if it is his will.” What should we say about someone like this? He does not have strong faith, but zero faith, even anti-faith. “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.” So what does faith say? “I will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover. In his name, I will speak in tongues and cast out demons. By the Spirit of God, I will receive visions and dreams, and I will prophesy.” You believe. You confess. You say it. You do it. This is the way of faith. Cessationist, you refuse to obey, but you think that if you throw the word of God back into “the will of God,” then there is nothing you need to obey. The scam is clear to me. It must look so much more obvious and wicked to God. You do not believe, but you want to have it both ways, so that you could claim to believe. You are neither hot nor cold. You are disgusting! Jesus will spit you out!

Are you trying to excuse your heroes, or are you trying to excuse yourself? You are a failure even as an idolater. If you are determined to worship mere men, at least choose idols that have more faith. I will leave them no excuse, because if they were such good people, they would not want me to lie for them, or to make them look better than they were. If their teachings were faithful to the word of God, there would be ample records of them demanding Christians to heal the sick and cast out demons, to prophesy and to speak in tongues. If you cannot find multiple, explicit, consistent, and lengthy statements to this effect, then they did not believe the word of God. You should not need to search through thousands of pages to contrive evidence hinting that they believed in miracles or experienced them. The fact that you need to do this is evidence that they did not believe or obey God. You make them look even more pathetic when you make excuses for them. And if you keep making excuses for past heroes, you will discover that it becomes more difficult for you to exceed them. You will hinder your own progress. Accept the fact that they failed, that they were in deep unbelief, and that they refused to obey God. What is important is that we succeed, that we have faith, and that we obey God. I will not allow figures in the past to hold me back due to some irrational obligation to honor them, or even to lie for them. And I will leave myself no excuse, because I would rather look bad for a short time, than to deceive myself forever and fail to attain the fullness of the power of Christ.