I think this is the sort of idea garee is trying to convey, but he doesn't explain it clearly enough for me to be sure. But it really surprises me how someone could go to church for years and presumably read the Bible, and think like this? How can you read the Gospels, Acts, and the epistles, or the Old Testament for that matter, and write such a thing.
Consider the Corinthians, and how their church meetings were like after Paul wrote I Corinthians if they actually followed what he said. And consider the Jerusalem church. There were individuals who would prophesy such things to believers to encourage them. Are you saying that early Christians no longer had to have faith? Does seeing miracles or prophecy do away with the need for faith?
Consider some of the experiences Paul had. Jesus spoke to him. He saw visions. The lame was healed in front of his very eyes, and the miracle was performed through him. He declared that a man would be blind and it happened. And regarding prophecies, the Spirit spoke to separate him and Barnabas to the work to which He had called them. In every city, the Spirit witnessed regarding bonds and imprisonment that awaited him in Jerusalem. Agabus prophesied that he would be bound. I could go on and on.
Since people had prophesied over him, did he need no more faith? This was the man who penned the words 'for we walk by faith and not by sight.' I think I've seen a TV show where some actor playing a Roman Catholic priest said that if we saw evidence for God, we wouldn't need faith. I remember thinking how dumb the comments they put in the priest's mouth were, and how unbiblical. What do most screen writers know about faith.
I wonder if you get these ideas of yours from watching scenes about religious characters in movies? Do you actually hear this kind of stuff in church? Maybe this is just a way cessationism contaminates the mind of some of its adherants, blinding them from what the text says.
Consider the nation of Israel when they came out of Egypt. They saw great wonders, the plagues of Egypt, which were prophesied beforehand. The Red Sea split and they walked acrosss on dry ground. They saw wonders in the desert. But when it came time to enter the promised land after 40 days of wondering, they did not believe.
We read in the book of Hebrews that they entered in because of their unbelief. Seeing Moses' fulfilled prophecies in the plagues did not do away with their need for faith. Hearing God speak does not do away from the need for faith. The Bible says Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. He believed God after the word of the Lord came to him. He believed a promise. Hearing a word from the Lord does not eliminate the need for faith. Hearing a prophecy does not do away with the need for faith. That makes no sense in light of the many scriptures on the subject.
So I would say here that your thinking on the matter is not Biblical. You are trying to define living by faith in a way that is contradictory to so much of what we see in scripture. If your Christianity is not the same Christianity as what we see in the Bible, isn't that a problem? If you think having the types of experiences that people who walked in faith in the Bible have is incompatible with faith, something is wrong with your thinking.
I'm not saying miracles are extremely common. I would not say that they could not be common. They seem to have come and gone in waves, and some people do a lot more of them than others. Most Christians do not do miracles, and that was probably the case in the first century. Probably more people were saved through the regular witness of other Christians back then without seeing a miracle, which is also the case today.
You could do a bit of reading on the role that signs and wonders has played in the spread of the Gospel in modern times. Have you had a look at the book by the scholar Craig Keener on Miracles?
Why would something like that have to happen somewhere way far off like the United States to be genuine. I don't live in the US, so you are closer if you want to do the research. I've bounced around as to where I live throughout my life. The healing wasn't instant, but it was a pretty big thing to be healed. You could look up Delia Knox for someone with a well-documented injury with the healing caught on video.
I don't know that much about this guy these days, but many years ago, I heard Mahesh Chavda say he had a death certificate of someone raised from the dead in one of his books. If you want to, you could go track down individual cases. It's not reasonable to expect me to drop my career and put my family on the back burner to fly around the world to the US and do some research for you.
I don't know much about the personal life of suspected Christian music star Michael W. Smith. I could probably name or sing two of his songs off the top of my head. I just looked up a web page typing in his name and the word wolf, and got about half-way through it, and the author seems to be throwing stones over nothing. He quotes something from Smith's testimony about lying on the floor in the kitchen and the God of the universe dealing with him, and condmens Smith for not mentioning Jesus in that particular quote. His other condemnation was that one of Smith's songs didn't teach as much doctrine as some Gospel song. I didn't both reading the other half of the article. Many of the accusations seemed to be more about the publicity people putting stuff on Smith's material than what he'd said himself. Some of the 'attack' web pages don't seem any better than the people they are attacking. If someone writes a page like this, I want to see the false doctrine that is promoted clearly pointed out, preferrably at the top of the article, so I don't have to read through a page of accusations that seem base and baseless.
Why not Bangladesh. It's a lot closer for me at the moment, but still terribly far away?
But Jerusalem 1950 years ago can be true in your opinon? I believe in these spiritual gifts because the Bible teaches them.
I Corinthians 12 teaches that the Spirit gives the gift of the working of miracles as He wills to individuals in the body of Christ. I believe that. Why don't you believe that? There is no scripture that rescinds or cancels this teaching. Nowhere are we taught that this gift is temporary. Why not just believe the Bible? If you did that, you'd be open to the idea of miracles occuring. That doesn't mean every claim is true. But at least you wouldn't be rejecting what the Bible teaches on the subject.
A Christian with the scripture and experience is not at the mercy of a Christian with nothing but his own opinions.
