Do Cessationists believe that the Holy Spirit still speaks specific messages or instructions to Christians today?
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This is from an article in Tabletalk magazine, which is produced by Ligonier Ministries. It is written by Robert Rothwell and supposses to be the voice of Reformed Christianity on the topic of cessationism. There is much in the article describing the purpose of audible contact from the HS to the individual and why those purposes are expired.
We cessationists do not believe that the Spirit is unable to speak through prophets today, but only that He has chosen not to. We cessationists believe that the Spirit can and often does heal people in unexpected ways when we pray for them. We believe that the Holy Spirit speaks to us through the sound exposition of His Word. We believe that He opens and closes doors for us and even arranges providential “coincidences” in our lives. In fact, I contend that traditional Reformed cessationism has a higher view of the Spirit’s power and freedom than traditional continuationism. This is because we confess that the Spirit must bring dead souls to life in order for us to believe; that He must do so without our asking, for in our spiritually dead state outside of Christ we will not ask for new life; and that He does so for only those whom He freely chooses and at the moment of His own choosing.
It appears as though, for the cessationist, communication of the Spirit to the individual believer is limited to "sound exposition of the Word" rather than a voice which tells us to "go here" or "do this".
*Note: I do not hold this position by doctrine nor by experience.
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Strict cessationists do not believe that God works outside of the verbal propositional content of Scripture. They would hold to a view that God stimulates through Scripture the reasoning process to strive make right choices in life.
As to a prior post, I'm not sure if Rothwell is being consistent with holding to a strict cessationist worldview. The usual cessationist argument is that the core apostles were needed to "authenticate" a miracle. But if he is claiming God is healing today, than he is working with a simple inductive testimonial authentication process. The whole theology of how to discern God's guidance is problematic for strict cessationists. Their epistemology is to demand greater certainty than what is realistic. If they held to the same standard of certainty in discerning inner vocational calls to go into full time church work, no one would dare do it. It would be presumptuous to say that they believer they were led to study for the ministry.
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