What is Reddit's opinion of Surprised by the Power of the Spirit?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

How do you rectify Acts 2:4, 10:44-46, and 19:6 with 1 Cor 12:30 then?

In Acts "they were all filled, and spoke with other tongues"

In 1 Cor "Do all speak in tongues? [no]"

and if we are devolving to link debate, here's mine: https://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Power-Spirit-Jack-Deere/dp/0310211271

Yes. I called him yesterday on my way to the gym, and talked to him for maybe 25 minutes.

I took down some notes in my phone after our chat. (All from memory, so there are likely some mistakes and misunderstandings):

• He was professional singer, pastor, salesman — his vocal ability had been a big part of his life (and his livelihood), which is why he was especially interested in finding a way to fix his voice.

• His lead physician was Jewish (and is now 88-90 years old and retired). The physician was in tears after he'd been healed. The physician believed God was responsible, but not necessarily that Jesus was divine. Duane said he'd come to peace with that distinction.

• From my recall, Duane said over "200" medical professionals were involved overall; 60+ specialists plus their teams.

• He saw lots of doctors not because he didn't believe their diagnosis, but because new medical professionals approached him when his case was discussed at medical symposiums, for example. His doctors would bring up his case for discussion, and other specialists in the field would have ideas and suggestions to try.

• He called himself a "guinea pig" vs. a "private" patient. (I assume this meant he was using experimental treatments?) This meant he didn't have access to all the medical records, since Baylor technically owned the records. He said he did have access to some of the medical records.

• He said his physician made over 1000 copies of the audio tape to distribute to his colleagues after the healing occurred.

• He said the lead physician said something along the lines of "there was talking and joke about these sorts of miracle healing claims among medical professionals, but this was the real thing".

• He said a man (with 2 children) with stage 4 cancer attended his sunday school class once; That man was not healed and died 3 weeks later. He said this during our discussion about the apparent arbitrariness of God's healing miracles.

• He said he doesn't know why god doesn't heal amputees. (Bummer, I was hoping he'd know.)

• He was generally not comfortable with the idea of miracles from a theological perspective. He said he is "conservative theologically".

• He cited an author of a "charismatic" bent out of Dallas Theological Seminary who wrote a book and had criticized him for his reaction to the miracle in that moment. Duane Miller makes the comment "I don't understand this right now" right after his voice was restored, which drew criticism (the basis of which I'm not sure I fully understand) from this guy. (I think this is the book: https://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Power-Spirit-Zondervan/dp/0310211271)

• He said his doctor said the scar tissue was gone after he'd been healed.

• He made reference in passing to doctors saying they didn't think he'd get better (as opposed, for instance, to doctors saying he'd never get better).

• He said his grandfather(?) was there near (and involved, perhaps as a minister?) the beginning of the Assemblies of God in Hot Springs in 1914. He was raised AG, but became Baptist.

• His throat issue started in 1990 and was healed in 1993.

• Baylor was the main medical facility where he received treatment.

• He felt a "pressure" in his throat for 3 years that was relieved when his voice was restored.

• He mentioned his story was used in a book by Lee Strobel.

He was very pleasant to speak to, and he seemed sincere. I thought he was very accommodating to my call, especially since I called out of the blue and had no appointment.

He likes to talk. He's not rude and he's a good listener, but he will fill the space with words if you let him. He is articulate and well-spoken and engaging.

I'm doing some more research. I'll let you know. Maybe I'll write it up as a post.

Yeah, Reddit debates are difficult because people open up 50,000,000 lines of attack and it becomes almost impossible to dialog. I'm trying to constrain my points to one or two issues at a time to allow clarity and simplicity. This said, I'll give a response to what you've specifically asked for.

> Please respond to my claim that Hebrews 1 and 2 declare explicitly that God bore witness of those who heard the Lord with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Here's the verse:

"It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will." - Hebrews 2:3-4

And here's a direct response from Dr. Jack Deere in the book I've used in the past with you (worth a read if you want to get an answer to all of your burning questions)

> "The word translated as “confirmed,” bebaioo, is also used of Christ’s confirming the promises of God to the patriarchs (Rom. 15:8) and of God strengthening his servants (1 Cor. 1:8; 2 Cor. 1:21; Col. 2:7; Heb. 13:9). But it is never used of miracles confirming a servant. Hebrews 2:3-4 is frequently used by cessationists to prove that miracles ceased with the apostles. The author of Hebrews asks us: How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. The author of Hebrews is not limiting this text to the apostles. He does not say that the message was confirmed by the apostles, but that the message was confirmed “by those who heard” the Lord. The apostles were not the only ones who heard the Lord. Others heard him also, and others did miracles and received miraculous gifts of the Spirit. In other words, the writer of the book of Hebrews seems to be saying that neither he, nor his audience, heard the Lord directly nor saw his miracles directly. They first heard the message about the Lord Jesus through “those who had heard him” directly. When they heard this message, God confirmed it by working signs and wonders through the group that preached to them. It could have been the apostles who preached to them, but it also could have been others who had originally heard the Lord. The text certainly leaves open the possibility that God will confirm with miracles the message about the Lord Jesus when it is preached by others who did not hear Jesus directly."

Cessationists, it's worth a read to at minimum understand our refutation of your arguments.

https://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Power-Spirit-Zondervan/dp/0310211271/

And here is Dr. Ruthven from Regent Theological in his masterpiece, On the Cessation of the Charismata, which is called the "nail in the coffin" of Warfield's arguments (basically what most cessationists quote these days):

> The second passage, Hebrews 2: 4,again, makes no necessary connection between the miraculous operations of the Spirit and the specific accreditation of the Apostles. The passage describes three more or less parallel “witnesses” to the same gospel: the Lord, His hearers, and God via the distributed charismata. In Biblical tradition “two or three witnesses” presenting the same message guarantee its certainty (Deut. 17: 7; 19: 15; Mt. 18: 16; 1 Cor. 14: 27; 2 Cor. 13: 1). The miracles in this context do not “accredit” the Kingdom of God, but are a manifestation of it: they are not proofs of the gospel; they are the gospel. The English expression “sign” may well suggest an image of a “sign post,” having little intrinsic significance except as it points to something of vastly greater importance. Certainly this is Warfield’s notion of sign/miracle, but as in the case of the “signs of a true apostle” above, the very characteristic of the Christian message was that it came expressed in “word and deed” (prophecy and miracle) two aspects of the Kingdom of Heaven breaking both the mental and physical bondage characterizing the kingdom of this age. The passage further suggests that the gifts of the Spirit were distributed to the Christian community at large, rather than restricted to Apostles (cf. 1 Cor. 12: 7 and 11; Rom. 12: 6 and 1 Pet. 4: 10). In this context, then, these “signs, wonders, miracles and gifts of the Spirit” do not appear as proofs of apostolic authority but the normative expression/ confirmation of the gospel working in acts of divine power working in and through the Christian community. The proof texts Warfield positively offers as support for cessationism can be interpreted, in fact, as contradicting it.

https://www.amazon.com/Cessation-Charismata-Protestant-Post-biblical-Miracles-Revised/dp/0981952623/

And here's Sam Storms basically saying the same thing:

http://www.samstorms.com/enjoying-god-blog/post/hebrews-2-and-the-continuationist---cessationist-debate

> Fourth, nothing in the text asserts that these miraculous phenomena must be restricted either to those who personally heard the Lord or to those who heard the message of salvation secondhand. Why wouldn’t God continue to testify to the message when it is preached by others in subsequent generations? In other words, in saying that God “bore witness” to the people of the early church he is not necessarily saying that God never “bore witness” for the benefit of those in the church of more recent days.

Have you read Jack Deere's Surprised by the Power of the Spirit? https://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Power-Spirit-Zondervan/dp/0310211271/

Here's a lengthy quote in response to what you're saying here. This is from Deere interviewing prospective students to get into Dallas Theological Seminary's doctorate program:

> When I asked him a third question, namely, what he believed about the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, his confidence seemed to return. Undaunted, he replied that they were not given any longer. Again, his reason for this was that it was the plain teaching of the Scriptures. I asked him what he thought was the strongest evidence from the Bible to support the passing away of the miraculous gifts of the Spirit. “The Bible teaches that there are only three periods where miracles were common in the history of God’s dealings with his people. They were common during the time of Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, and Christ and the apostles—three periods of two generations each. The next time miracles will be common will be during the reign of the Antichrist and the great Tribulation,” he replied without a moment’s hesitation. “Did you arrive at this position from a careful inductive study of the Scriptures?” I asked. “That’s correct.” At this point, I knew he was not telling the truth. He did not come to that position from a careful study of the Scriptures. Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield, the Princeton theologian, had popularized that position at the beginning of the twentieth century, with the result that reformed and dispensational theologians have been using it ever since. One or more of us had passed this teaching on to the student, and now he was trying to claim that he had gotten it by careful study of the Scriptures. His dishonesty was a little more than I was willing to tolerate, so I said, “Let’s see if you can defend that position now. Let’s start with chapter one of Genesis and think our way through every chapter of the Old Testament to see if the biblical evidence supports your theory. Remember, we should only find three periods in which miracles are common. What took place in the first chapter of the Bible?” “That is where God creates the world.” “How about chapter two?” “That is the story of the creation of the world with man at the center.” “Chapter three?” “That is where the Devil comes to Adam and Eve and tempts them to sin, and God has to expel them from the garden.” “Are these things miraculous?,” I asked. “Well yes, but you have to start somewhere.” “O.K., fine. Chapter four?” “The first murder,” he said. “Chapter five is a genealogy. What happens in chapters six to nine?” “That is where God wipes out the whole earth with the flood and rescues eight people in an ark, on which species of every living animal have been miraculously summoned.” “Chapter ten?” “Another genealogy.” “Chapter eleven?” “The Tower of Babel, where God comes down and confounds the language of all the families of the earth.” “So really the first eleven chapters of Genesis don’t actually fit your theory, do they?” “Yes, but that is primeval history; I mean you expect things like that at the very beginning.” “O.K., for the sake of argument let’s dismiss the first eleven chapters of the Bible. At chapter twelve and for the rest of the book of Genesis we move into simple narrative biography. What happens in chapter twelve?” “God sovereignly calls Abraham to leave Ur of the Chaldeans and go to a land where he is going to begin a program to redeem the entire world.” “Anything else strike you as supernatural or miraculous elsewhere in Abraham’s life?” “Well, in chapter fifteen there was that supernatural smoking oven and flaming torch that passed between the parts of the sacrifice Abraham had laid out (Gen. 15:17). Besides the divine conversation in chapter 17, the Lord and angelic beings appear to Abraham in chapter 18 and eat with Abraham. Then there was the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, when the heavens rained fire and brimstone on those cities (Gen. 19). Then there was the supernatural birth of Isaac in chapter twenty-one and the encounter with the angel of the Lord as he offered up Isaac on the altar in chapter twenty-two.” “So, the life of Abraham doesn’t really fit your theory that miracles or the supernatural are not common until the time of Moses and Joshua, does it?” “No.” “What about Isaac, Jacob or Joseph; anything there seem miraculous or supernatural to you?” “Chapter twenty-eight—the prophetic messianic vision of the angels ascending and descending on that ladder while Jacob slept.” “What else in Jacob’s life?” “Chapter thirty-two. He actually wrestles with God, or the preincarnate Christ, all night long. Then with Joseph there are all of those dreams and interpretations.” So I said, “As far as the evidence goes, the book of Genesis doesn’t fit your theory, does it?” “No.” “Now we are at the book of Exodus, and we have already said that Moses’ and Joshua’s life contain miracles and supernatural occurrences, so let’s skip from Exodus through the book of Joshua and come to the book of Judges. Anything in the book of Judges strike you as miraculous?” He said, “Well, the angel of the Lord actually appears to Gideon, and there is all that stuff going on with the fleece. Then the angel of the Lord appears to Samson’s parents, and there is the miraculous power of Samson.” “So the book of Judges doesn’t actually fit this theory, does it?” “No.” “What do you have in the book of 1 Samuel?” “A prophet whose words do not fall to the ground” (1 Sam. 3:19-21). And on and on the discussion went. In chapter after chapter the student was forced to list miraculous and supernatural occurrences that contradicted his assertion that miracles only occurred at three points in the history of Israel.1 The student was forced to admit not only that could he not defend his position, but that the Scriptures actually contradicted it.

Edit - I own the book and can send you my Kindle copy if you're interested in more. PM me an email and I'll send it your way.