Your response to Baby Step 1 in my last question was "I think there's nobody who's really willing to say that it's a lack of experience which has any persuasive weight: it's the lack of the actual Biblical signs and wonders which causes us pause."
To quote Deere's response to this common argument, (entire quote can be viewed here)
"At first glance, this reason for rejecting the gifts of the Spirit looks like a biblical argument, but ultimately it is not. At best it is a confession of a lack of experience. The argument simply says that I do not see or hear of a contemporary ministry that has New Testament-quality miracles. But my limited experience cannot be used as a proof that no such ministry exists today."
But the most important for our readers:
Despite the fact the Bible never categorizes the manifestations of the Spirit as "apostolic gifts" or "sign gifts", you have unfairly and persistently assumed that category on our discussion from the beginning--without having to defend its use first-- for me or our readers.
I'd like to point out to the reader that the assumed yet undefended use of that category is an interpretation based in non-experience and theological prejudice forced on both the Bible and this conversation, but that truly stems from the cessationist tradition (interpretation of past and present historical experience), not from clear definitions or categories that Scripture teaches.
However, arguments from experience (esp. eye witness testimony) can be very credible as J.P. Moreland noted in this quote about the vast evidence of contemporary miracles and the idea of "rejecting beliefs that have enough rational support to make them intellectually obligatory to believe."
My question for you Frank is this:
All things considered, why should I or our readers consider your arguments from experience (or lack of experience) to be more intellectually obligatory to believe than say Wayne Grudem's and several others' testimonies of dealing with people who are demonized, my friend Michael Miller's testimony of seeing a deaf woman healed in Africa a few weeks ago, J.P. Moreland's testimony in his book, Matt Chandler and Bob Hamp's testimony, or my own testimony?
There are a lot of things in the world which should make a clever person cringe. The most shameful is misusing Scripture; the second is putting words in someone else's mouth. In this long-form "question," Bryan, you apparently are not above either.
To the assertion you make of whether or not Scripture defines what "signs and wonders" are, and whether or not they are common gifts or special gifts, I'll be pleased for you to point out where anyone not verbally sent by God does any of the things Scripture calls "signs and wonders." Because that list is woefully short (it may be empty), then I'll be pleased for you to finally admit that there is a difference between a miracle and providence, or between prophecy and wisdom -- because as I alluded to earlier in this exchange, you simply don't have adequate categories to distinguish these things even though Scripture does. See: this is what is at issue, really. The question is whether or not we see the Christian life the way Scripture sees it, including whether or not we live by wisdom or inspiration, and whether we should expect the ordinary means of God's grace to outpace the extraordinary means of God's grace because one set is in fact ordinary and the other is in fact something else more rare and particularly special.
What I have said, repeatedly, is not that we should doubt your claims of prophecy or healing or tongues because we have not experienced them: what I have said is that we should doubt them because you yourself have confessed that your experiences are nothing like Acts 2, or Acts 20, or Luke 1 -- they are far less. That's your explanation for what you experience, and on that basis -- that is, the basis of Scripture proving false something outside of Scripture which pretends to be inside a Scriptural category -- we should reject that which is false.
That's not an argument from experience: that's discernment. Though it is a harsh assessment, it's clear with this question that it's another category your side will not exercise in order to convince others of your points.
