The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Is all revelation found in scripture

Link writes:

The Bible tells us that Jesus would send forth prophets, and says that the Spirit gives the gift of prophecy to some in the church. The Spirit also gives gifts like working of miracles, healing, words of knowledge, and words of wisdom. This is what I see in the Bible. Why is this not considered valid, if it is in the Bible? Where is the verse of scripture that says that when the canon was completed these things would cease? And why did they continue after Revelation was written in church history? Why do some early church documents refer to these things occuring?

And why didn't the early church believe in cessationism?

There is, of course, a deeper principle recognizable here, of which the actual attachment of the charismata of the Apostolic Church to the mission of the Apostles is but an illustration. This deeper principle may be reached by us through the perception, more broadly, of the inseparable connection of miracles with revelation, as its mark and credential; or, more narrowly, of the summing up of all revelation, finally, in Jesus Christ. Miracles do not appear on the page of Scripture vagrantly, here, there, and elsewhere indifferently, without assignable reason. They belong to revelation periods, and appear only when God is speaking to His people through accredited messengers, declaring His gracious purposes. Their abundant display in the Apostolic Church is the mark of the richness of the Apostolic age in revelation; and when this revelation period closed, the period of miracle-working had passed by also, as a mere matter of course. It might, indeed, be a priori conceivable that God should deal with men atomistically, and reveal Himself and His will to each individual, throughout the whole course of history, in the penetralium of his own consciousness. This is the mystic’s dream. It has not, however, been God’s way. He has chosen rather to deal with the race in its entirety, and to give to this race His complete revelation of Himself in an organic whole. And when this historic process of organic revelation had reached its completeness, and when the whole knowledge of God designed for the saving health of the world had been incorporated into the living body of the world’s thought — there remained, of course, no further revelation to be made, and there has been, accordingly no further revelation made. God the Holy Spirit has made it His subsequent work, not to introduce new and unneeded revelations into the world, but to diffuse this one complete revelation through the world and to bring mankind into the saving knowledge of it.