Most will say that they think he was an all around good guy who did some good stuff. They are cool with Jesus. But have they understood his claims? Most have not.
Don’t let them say that he is a good guy. He is NOT a “good guy”. Good guys don’t say things like "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me". Roll that one around in your brain for a bit.
...let's bin this sad, misguided self-loathing on the polemic front. We must repent where necessary, where we have crossed the line; but, just as necessary, we must fight where we see the truth is at stake. We should be grateful for the truth that polemics have preserved so that we have a gospel to proclaim; and we should not allow a misguided commitment to being nice to allow us, in effect, to dump huge problems on the next generation by running up a massive theological and moral deficit in the church of the present.
One of Deere's main lines of defense against critics of the charismatic movement is his insistence that modern charismatic gifts are actually lesser gifts than those available in the apostolic era, and therefore, he suggests, they should not be held to apostolic standards.Trouble is, these "lesser gifts" are nowhere described in Scripture. It seems to me the issue is not cessationism or continuationism, the issue is consistency. If I'm going to claim that a gift described in scripture is still applicable today, I must also claim that it works today the same way it did in the first century - or show from scripture, why that is not the case. Charismatic proponents often point out that there is no verse we can cite to definitively say the sign gifts have ceased. That's true. However, I would point out there's also no verse we can cite that says they changed form either.
