Dear Pastor,

I have a friend who has a question on cessationism. Here is my question. (Actually it’s his question.) He wanted to know how it is that I make the distinction between a prophet called by God to speak for God to monarchs and to Israel and to the church — as well as to write scripture — which I was saying I thought was one kind of prophet, yet I then also wanted to distinguish the idea of prophecy as it’s described by Paul when he says that there are some who have a gift of prophecy. My friend is wanting to know how I know that Paul was not referring to the idea of ongoing prophecy. I’m clear that there is no ongoing prophecy or new revelation since the closing of the Cannon, but I’m wondering about how to clarify Paul’s meaning of prophecy And it’s ongoing application for the church today?

Clifford

Dear Clifford,

Thank you for the question. Let me know if I don’t give you enough information or if I have not answered the question.

First we would note that the word “Prophet” has a narrow and a broad meaning. Narrowly considered the word Prophet means fore-teller. This is one who predicts or sees the future. This would have been one dynamic of most of the Biblical prophets through the OT and NT until the closing of the cannon. There is a broader meaning of the word that means “Forth-teller.” A prophet by this definition is one who speaks forth the word of God in their speech. The Heidelberg catechism (and Biblical Christianity as a whole) holds that all Christians are Prophets in this broad sense of the Word.

Second, in terms of ongoing prophecy, I would say to your friend that there was ongoing prophecy until the close of the canon. The way we can know that is from Scripture. I Corinthians 13:8 teaches,

“Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.”

Prophecies, in the sense of fore-telling the future (narrow sense of the idea of prophecy) will come to an end. Tongues will cease. Knowledge (in the sense of charismatic ‘word of knowledge’) will vanish away.

Finally I would point him to Hebrews 1

1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son….

There is no further need for the various ways that God previously spoke since God has spoke finally (in these last days) by His Son.

And where do we find the Son speaking?

In the Scriptures.

Scripture teaches cessationism and any desire for God to continue to speak only dilutes the importance of His speaking in Scripture for if God continues to give verbal revelation then the verbal revelation that He has given in Scripture is reduced in import. Why look to old Revelation when one has newer Revelation to access?

“A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon –authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?”

Vladimir Lenin

Note that in the Leninist model Terror must be instilled in the population. There can never be too much terror in a Communist Revolution. It is how the wolf Marxists keep the sheep population at bay. When Bella Kohn’s Communist government failed in 1919 Kun reputedly said that the reason the government failed was that there was not enough blood spilled… not enough terror pursued.

One of Kun’s co-Revolutionary’s confirms Kohn’s conviction,

Tibor Szamuely  was Deputy People’s Commissar of War and People’s Commissar of Public Education during the short lived 1919 Hungarian Communist Government. Szamuely wrote,

“Now the power is in our hands. Who wants the old reign to come back, they should be hanged quickly. The one of this kind must be neck-bitten. The victory of Hungarian proletariat till this time required no serious numbers of victims. But now there is the need of bloodshed. We mustn’t be afraid of blood, the blood is like steel: strengthens the hearth and strengthens the proletarian class. Blood will make us gigantean. […] We will exterminate the whole bourgeoisie, if we have to.”

Revolution, in the Communist model, is accomplished by Terror and force of arms and right now the Terror that is being used is the mask. The mask terrorizes the population and fills people with fear. The mask has the same effect as the threat of being visited by the secret police. The mask makes you conscious of your fear all the time and even when you are not wearing a mask and only seeing others wearing a mask you are reminded that terror is stalking you. The mask is the shedding of blood while keeping the sheep alive.

If you are voluntarily wearing a mask you are contributing to the terrorism of your fellow citizen.

And that action, you dumbass clergy, is the very opposite of loving Jesus.

First there was Ella followed by Lee
So began the heirs of clan McAtee
Then followed Edward followed by Bret
The Marxists began to see the growing ominous threat

Next were birthed William and then Gwenevere
And now the enemy became familiar with fear
Followed soon Louis and Ben
The Marxist could see their ultimate end

Next came our two maidens so fair
Winry and Aurelia — “the Marxist’s despair”
And next the wicked meet “the Hammer” and Al
And departs from the villains all remaining morale

And clan McAtee is far from yet done
More arrows will follow to slay Marxist hun
More warriors and shield maidens to fill McAtee ranks
More babies for which the world will one day give thanks

“Woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day; For there shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” Matthew 24:19f If this “great tribulation” refers to 70 AD (and I’m convinced that it does) then the focus on the 20th century “holocaust” that suggests that particular tribulation is the greatest of all Jewish tribulations is unbiblical. Such a 20th century focus also does the work of minimizing the reason for this “great tribulation” of AD 70 that was found in the just punishment of the Jews for their crime in the crucifixion of the Christ and replaces it with a focus on the putative innocence of the Jews at the hands of those reported to have been Christians. That what God calls “The great tribulation” as recompense for the Jewish crime of the slaughter of their Messiah has been the standard reading of Scripture up until the second half of the 20th century. Many respected exegetes and theologians throughout history married this promised “great tribulation” as consequence to deicide just as they married the self-maledictory oath of Mat 27:25, ‘Then all the people answered and said, Let His blood be on us and on our children.’ with the blood of 1.1 million deaths in AD 70 at the hands of the Roman Armies. Evidence of this connecting of AD 70 with the Jewish self-maledictory oath as standard Christian interpretation is seen in the examples below, C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892), wrote, ‘For there shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” Read the record written by Josephus of the destruction of Jerusalem, and see how truly our Lord’s words were fulfilled. The Jews impiously said, concerning the death of Christ, “His blood be on us, and on our children.” Never did any other people invoke such an awful curse upon themselves, and upon no other nation did such a judgment ever fall. We read of Jews crucified till there was no more wood for making crosses; of thousands of the people slaying one another in their fierce faction fights within the city; of so many of them being sold for slaves that they became a drug in the market, and all but valueless; and of the fearful carnage when the Romans at length entered the doomed capital; and the blood-curdling story exactly bears out the Savior’s statement uttered nearly forty years before the terrible events occurred.’ And again in the pages of the Geneva Study Bible, ‘The destruction of Jerusalem was more terrible than anything that the world has ever witnessed, either before or since. Even Titus seemed to see in his cruel work the hand of an avenging God.’ (Commentary on Matthew, p. 412-413). Matthew Henry offers, “The Jews’ curse upon themselves has been awfully answered in the sufferings of their nation.” If this reading is accurate then when we read in Matthew 24:21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. it informs us that the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 was a greater tribulation than what is called today, “The Holocaust.”

“Wearing a mask is patriotic”

President Orwell Trump

“War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”

Three Slogans of Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth”

With each passing day we slide further and further into the labyrinth of doublespeak; that linguistic form of the Hegelian dialectic where in one sentence it is possible to construct the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, and that without blushing. Why say something particular in a sentence when one can say everything at the same time in a sentence?

So, per the latest doublespeak above “wearing a mask is patriotic,” when in point of fact wearing a mask is the height of dumbassery. Of course the very idea of doublespeak is that it can only work on a population that is characterized by the quality of dumbassery. Where people actually understand ratiocination, reason, and basic logic doublespeak cannot gain traction. Trump has nothing to worry about though as it has been scores of decades since people in America, generally speaking, weren’t dumb-asses.

It doesn’t matter that there is not one RCT (random control trial) experiment that shows that masks stop the spread of respiratory viruses. In fact 14 studies show that they do not work. No science has determined that masks can keep the spread down. You have been told that masking might save your sorry dumb ass but there are no scientific studies that show this. Newsflash — Viruses are not filtered out by a mask.

Some people want to say that masks stop the stuff spewed forth through the coughs and sneezes of sick person. However, a sick person coughing and sneezing inside a mask is still spreading viral sickness to those around them. As such sick people should stay home and yes, if they absolutely must go out –mask up. However, healthy people have no need to mask up, because they are healthy.

A little secret that all the fear-mongering hasn’t told is that virus can escape through masks, just as mosquitoes can fly through chain links fences raised by morons who think that chain link fences might stop mosquitoes from getting on their property. Just as cauldron can stop your macaroni but can’t stop the water so a mask can stop bacteria but it can’t stop viruses. Am I going to fast here?

In short a virus will escape through patriotic super-man mask with the result that those who knew they were safe because Christians were loving their neighbors by wearing their dumb-ass masks can still get sick. Just imagine these morons with a 104 temp moaning … “But I wasn’t anywhere where people were not wearing masks.”

Now, for those like my former brother-in-law who used to carry around with him, wherever he went, a can of Lysol to disinfect the silverware at the restaurant we might be eating at, if you’re really concerned about the virus give up on the doublespeak and do the following.

Good hand-washing and hygiene are what you should be obsessive compulsive focusing on. If you are that concerned about the virus that you think everyone should wear a mask then there are things you should be doing to protect yourself. You should completely shower your whole body and launder your clothes every single time you are out in public. Wipe down your cell phone, your purse, and everything you brought home. Wipe down the seat of your car that you sat in after going in and out of stores. Then put on a hazmat suit as you view the latest episode of “No Brains Here.”

Further, masks should not be touched or handled. They should be trashed or laundered every time they are removed and should be removed by handling only the earpiece. If you touch the face part of it (whether when wearing it or taking it off or storing it) you have just contaminated yourself and if you don’t wash your hands you contaminate everything you touch. At that point, you the mask wearer, become the vector for disease spread. Hand-washing after removal of a mask is imperative.

So you see dumb-ass mask wearer the mask is not saving the day. The mask is not preventing you from getting sick. The mask is not saving the life of your 80 year old Granny. However, none of what I have told you matters does it? No, you’ve convinced yourself by your constant quaffing of the propaganda that you are being both patriotic and the kind of Christian that Jeebuz loves.

The mention of “Christian” reminds me that you’re also being told by your clergy to “mask up” because in such a way you can prove you love Jesus and your neighbor. Of course that’s just more dumbassery with an ecclesiastical twist. Speaking, as someone with inside information on the relation between dumbassery and clergy I can tell you after being around the clergy all my life in the closest of settings that most clergy are the pace setters when it comes to being a dumbass. If you love your souls don’t believe your clergy on much of anything. These are people who have one very narrow field of knowledge and even in that one very narrow field they only know what they know by way of the abstract. Their ability to concretely apply what they know in the abstract is close enough to nill to not bother to notice the difference.

As it pertains to you dumbass mask wearers — not that you care — but all the the masking mandates do is condition you to accept the coming vaccine and the contact tracing regimen. Let me spell this out for all those who are yelling at me and mine to put on their masks; all you are doing is making the next transition to the next Governmental imposition easier. One will soon hear from you dumbass sheep who are embracing this masquerade as you bleat and yell at those who don’t speak double-speak “just get the damned shot” and “take the tracking tattoo.”

Honestly, I couldn’t care less if warning after warning you decide to be assimilated, however, at the very least you could quit yelling your dumb-ass masking shibboleths at me and mine.

Maybe if I try some of my own double-speak on you it might work. “Not wearing the masks, is wearing the masks,” or, “the grosser the mask the better it works,” or, “the stupid are not in danger of getting sick.”