INSIDER: Hyper-Cessationism, Sixth Sense, And Explanations of Psychic Phenomena

JD Hall

Stepping through the Walmart grocery-side entrance in Kennett, Missouri circa 2004, my head whipped to the left to find something. I stopped in my tracks and gazed around, not knowing what I was looking for, but knew it was something. Within seconds I had triangulated the source of an almost-immediate vexing.

At the other end of the store, at the other entrance, a man was staring at me, and gesturing toward me with his head, speaking to a woman who looked to be his wife or girlfriend. We made brief eye contact before I turned to Mandy and said, “You see that man? He’s demon possessed.”

How did I know? No idea. But I knew. At the same time, he was clearly pointing me out to his female companion.

A half-hour later, we turned the aisle and ran into the couple. The man, who was about 40 years old with an impressive beard and standing at my height, was nose-to-nose with me.

The moment of startled silence, in which both of us seemed startled, was broken by his question.

“You Phil’s boy?” he asked.

That’s my dad’s name, and he wasn’t from the boot hill, and never spent much time there. And furthermore, I hadn’t been there for long, either. I pastored a church a few miles away, across the Arkansas line. Other than that, we had no connections to the community.

“I am,” I told him, before asking, “Are you a demon?”

“I am,” he responded matter-of-factly. He then added, “How about you leave me alone, and I leave you alone?”

I nodded approval and uttered, “Fair enough.”

And just like that, the two couples moved past each other, going about their shopping. Mandy inquired how I knew from the moment I saw him and how it seemed that his interest in me was as immediate as my interest in him. I opined that perhaps demons talk, that perhaps that’s how he knew me. After all, on several occasions, I encountered demoniacs in the pastorate. Surely they’re aware of people they should steer clear of.

In terms of how I knew him, or how I felt a confrontation ensuing from the other end of the store as soon as we walked in, I don’t know. And I still don’t. But that experience has been duplicated a half-dozen times since.

CESSATIONISM

In 2017, I debated the topic of Cessationism at the Judge Not Conference with Ante Pavkovic, a Pentecostal preacher who I believe hailed from North Carolina. He was a good fellow, and the last I heard tale of him, he had been at the capitol protest on January 6. For all I know he’s in the gulag, not sure.

Anyway, we debated whether or not Cessationism is a Biblical proposition, and I took the position that Cessationism is Biblical. Being Pentecostal, Pavkovic obviously took the other side, as some of those guys speak in tongues three times before breakfast.

If you’re interested in a more thorough discussion as to the agency and work of the Holy Ghost today, you can watch it below (or just skip down below for a summary).

The term “Cessationism” refers to the historic Christian belief that the Apostolic Sign Gifts have ceased. That concept, of “Apostolic Sign Gifts,” is taken from 2 Corinthians 12:12…

The signs of a true apostle were performed among you in all patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.

The general summary, which is explained more fully in the debate above, is that prior to the closing of the Scriptural canon, those who were delivering Sacred Writ in real-time and those establishing the first-century church needed credibility that what they were laying out, really was from God. And so, in a temporary fashion, God the Holy Ghost bestowed upon them the ability to work “signs, wonders, and mighty deeds” to establish their words as authoritative.

It’s important to note that the notion of “Apostolic Sign Gifts” is a bit of a misnomer. The belief isn’t that only Apostles had these abilities, but that it also extended to those who the Apostles personally laid hands upon (but that gift was not transferable onward).

We see these gifts in the pages of the New Testament. They healed people by touch or proclamation, performed impressive miracles, and prophesied under inspiration of the Holy Ghost. It was all quite impressive.

We also see Cessationism begin in the pages of the New Testament, and the so-called sign gifts start to wane. As the gospel went forth, it was supported by signs that the Apostles were legit messengers of God, just spouts of miracles occurred when God gave the law (during the days of Moses) and when God gave the prophets (in the days of Elijah and Elisha) but other than then, they were almost unheard of in the Biblical timeline.

But as the first century went on, the gifts appear to wane, with some – like Paul – who could heal at the beginning of his ministry, seem incapable toward the end. By the time John died at the turn of the second century, accounts of miracles had almost ceased entirely from early church history. By the time of the Patristic Church Fathers, they only referred to occasional rumors of these miraculous deeds – much like the miracles missionaries report in Africa at your church’s missions night activities – but they were almost universally skeptical of them.

To be clear, Cessationists don’t believe that the Holy Ghost has ceased to operate (or, at least, they aren’t supposed to). They hold that the Holy Ghost still works among men, chiefly in the following ways:

• Working regeneration in the hearts of unbelievers

• Convicting the world of sin, righteousness and judgment

• Producing in us spiritual fruit

• Passing out spiritual gifts at his discretion

Further, most Cessationists don’t deny that God works miracles today, although some are uneasy with the term “miracle,” instead preferring to call such acts, “marvelous acts of providence.” And frankly, it annoys me that a perfectly good term like “miracle” is verboten, just because charismatics abuse it. It’s like rejecting the term “sacraments” because it sounds too Catholic, despite it being synonymous with “ordinances.” I digress…

Cessationists, reject however, the notion that any specific human is endowed with the gift of healing, or another Apostolic Sign Gift, as though by the flailing of Benny Hinn’s coat someone can be healed of leprosy. And no doubt, the miracles of today’s charismatics compare to those of the Apostles, consisting of claims like filling cavities with miraculous golden fillings (because I guess He doesn’t use epoxy), leg lengthenings, and other age-old mentalism parlor tricks.

Likewise, Cessationists don’t believe that prophecy – as defined by the phrase “direct, divine revelation” – continues. If it did continue, we argue, it should be canonical, because if God said it, that surely settles it. Rather, when Beth Moore claimed that God told her to brush an old man’s hair at the airport, we presume she instead had an internal thought reminding her of kindness, and by the time she tells the tale, it was a direct order spoken to her by God Almighty.

I explained this more fully in my talk at NorCal Fire in 2017 (below).

Further, if someone was indeed giving prophetic revelation, they had better be exercising some impressive miracles – as the Apostles did – to prove to us they’re not just crazy. And that, of course, is always lacking.

Ultimately, we argue that if we’re open to the possibility of additional revelation, we are open to the possibility that the Scripture is not sufficient. And, of course, we believe that the Scripture is most certainly sufficient.

BUT HYPER-CESSATIONISM DEFINITELY EXISTS

What Cessationists are supposed to believe is not always what Cessationists believe. Perhaps because we have a tendency to “over correct the wheel” on issues, and are largely responding to charismatic lunacy – or perhaps because John MacArthur worked us all into a blood frenzy over the subject, with each of us trying to out-Cessationist the next guy – some have taken it too far and to unbiblical proportions.

While Cessationists typically have orthodox beliefs (and they’re eager to prove it), and almost all affirm the necessity of the Holy Ghost’s work in conversion, there is definitely a noticeable lack of emphasis on the Holy Ghost in their preaching and evangelism.

Despite clarifications that Cessationists affirm a full-body dependency on the Holy Ghost in their work, a quick trip to the typical Cessationist church will reveal little of the Holy Ghost’s work. And I’m not referring to the absence of Contemporary Christian Music, strobe lights, and fog machines. I’m referring to the absence of unction, as the Puritans called it, in the preaching. That’s the term Cessationists use to refer to an anointing, with which it is synonymous, but we boycott the term anointing because it sounds Pentecostal.

I always find that I can preach best when I can manage to lie a-soak in my text. I like to get a text, and find out its meaning and bearings, and so on; and then, after I have bathed in it, I delight to lie down in it, and let it soak into me. It softens me, or hardens me, or does whatever it ought to do to me, and then I can talk about it. You need not be very particular about the words and phrases if the spirit of the text has filled you; thoughts will leap out, and find raiment for themselves. Become saturated with spices, and you will smell of them; a sweet perfume will distill from you, and spread itself in every direction; — we call it unction. – Charles Spurgeon

And quite frankly, some men have unction and some men don’t. I can’t explain that, but I can feel that, just like I can feel a demoniac staring at me from across Walmart.

But it’s not only a lack of the Holy Ghost’s touch in certain Cessationist circles that’s concerning, but also misapplication of what is, and what is not, a Sign Gift.

The very moment I became concerned that some had gone to far, was when I sent a video of an exorcism I conducted to Justin Peters (the same video I posted at Insight to Incite several months ago), who promptly told me he didn’t believe in exorcism. I then suffered a lecture on “submitting our video evidence and personal experiences to the Word of God.”

Fleshing that out more with Peters over the phone, he acknowledged that demons do indeed still possess people. But, he argued, Christians don’t have the power of Christ’s name to cast them out. I thought that was a crappy scenario. Imagine the devil having all the power, and Jesus’ name having none. I don’t want anything to do with a religion that was neutered and powerless, and never did.

Arguing that exorcism predated the Spirit’s outpouring at Pentecost, and there being Scriptural evidence that those without the Apostles laying hands on them still successfully exorcising demons (Luke 9:45-49), had little effect. Peters insisted that simply wasn’t the Cessationist position.

I think that is the Cessationist position, but it’s not the hyper-Cessationist position, which rules anything considered “weird” as a deviation from the respectable position of theologians who often think regeneration is brought about by a really good lecture on the development of the Masoretic Text, or perhaps, which brand of ink Luther used to pen the 95 Theses.

Perhaps some Cessationists are driven to the hyper position because they so seldom see the miraculous work of the Holy Ghost in their own ministries, that they don’t recognize Him when He occasionally appears.

BUT MUCH OF SUPERNATURAL PSYCHIC PHENOMENA HAS NATURALISTIC EXPLANATIONS

The human body is wired in some incredible ways; we really are wonderfully and fearfully made.

Did you know, for example, that humans have 20/20 peripheral vision? In other words, we see out of the corner of our eye high-definition, just as when you look straight forward. But the HD vision from the eye technology God wired us with would quickly overwhelm the limited computing power of our brain, so God gave our mental hard-drive the capacity to process the bulk of that visual data subliminally (and only shows us a low-definition version) – much like a computer working in the background, in ways we can’t see.

Interestingly, U.S. Special Forces are trained on how to access this subliminal visual data, and to tap into their 20/20 peripheral vision so they can see out of the corner of their eye without moving their head, at times when motion can get you killed.

A DEER SIXTH SENSE?

But, God wired our eyes even more impressively than that. Peripheral vision is superior to central vision when ascertaining minute details of a person’s face. Faces are not only more recognizable out of the corner of our eye, but we more easily see facial cues, such as facial expressions. Evolutionists claim this is so one can tell if the person next to them means them harm, or to look at a potential mate to ascertain their mating cues without looking directly at them in a noticeable way. I prefer to think that feature exists because God is nifty.

The point is, all that visual processing is going on constantly in your head, but your brain doesn’t inform you of something unless it thinks you need to know.

The first time I noticed that my mind was processing images without my permission, was when I figured out that the reason I can routinely spot a deer in sage brush, laying down at 500 yards, from a vehicle moving at 60mph, out of the corner of my eye – but only in deer season, despite me not even actively looking for deer – is because on some level my brain knows what I’m interested in during the month of November. Pretty wild, right?

Because I believe in supernatural things, I thought for quite awhile that God had given me a deer sixth sense, but then discovered the science behind it. It’s pretty crazy ability God has given us.

SOMETHING’S NOT RIGHT

We’ve all heard tale of the woman who came home alone from work, laid her keys on the counter, and just “felt” like something’s not right. Upon calling the police, they find a guy hiding in the closet upstairs. Was that psychic premonition? As the tale is usually told, yes.

But was it?

Laying aside the possibility that her subliminal conscience might have OCD, and like the detective, Monk, picked up on an object that was slightly moved, or something out of place, it was likely a sixth, seventh, eighth or 23rd sense.

What I mean by that is the notion of “five senses” (taste, touch, sight, sound, smell) is incomplete by a large margin. God has wired our bodies to sense far, far more.

There’s eqilibroception, that allows us to stay upright despite not having access to the convention five senses. It’s something we just know, because of the affect of gravity on our blood flow (scientists think, anyway). There’s proprioception, which allows us to know where our arms, legs, hands, and feet are despite not being able to see them, which gives us the ability to use a keyboard without looking at it (scientists have no idea how that works). There’s thermoception, which not only tells you when the thermostat needs to be turned up or down, but studies show it is sophisticated enough to detect body heat, allowing subjects in laboratory tests to determine what closet someone was in, without opening it. There’s chronoception, which is how we sense the passing of time (for example, I’ve never needed an alarm clock, because if I tell my brain to wake me up at 413AM, I will absolutely wake up at 413AM). There’s electroception, which allows us to feel electric fields (scientists only recently discovered that those with electro-sensitivity have an actual medical condition, and are not, as they previously thought, crazy). Magneto-reception is the ability to feel magnetic fields, which is how birds migrate, but it also exists to a lesser extent in humans (this is why certain geographical locations with magnetic geographical anomalies make some people feel sick).

My point is, it’s quite possible that much of psychic phenomena is perfectly explainable by our magnificent brains alerting us to red-flags it perceives while our head-computer is running background tasks.

And let me be candid, if most Cessationists knew this, they would be giddy with excitement at being able to explain the unexplainable, rather than having to acknowledge that God does, indeed, do supernatural things.

THE LIMITS OF NATURALISTIC EXPLANATIONS FOR PSYCHIC PHENOMENA

Please keep in mind that when I use the term “psychic phenomena” I don’t use it in a New Age sense, but a clinical one. The term is defined as “events that appear to contradict physical laws and suggest that mental processes may be causing them.”

In other words, is there something supernatural happening, inside us, that give us perceptions unexplainable by naturalistic explanations? You betcha. Let’s look at the Scriptures together so we can better understand where naturalistic explanations stop, and supernatural explanations begin.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF CLAYTON JENNINGS

“He’s a womanizer,” I told the guys in our private Facebook Messenger group (which we titled The Atomic Cockroach Combox, because the Pulpit & Pen gang had survived more evangelical nuclear wars than anyone, and we were still scurrying around).

“How do you know?” asked Seth Dunn, a longtime contributor.

“I don’t know, man. I just do.”

There was something about Jennings that didn’t sit right with me. It was the first – and last – time that I put out a blanket accusation without any evidence to support it. I published the post, “Clayton Jennings and Capturing Weak Women.” In it, I suggested he was a sexual predator.

And let me tell you, that was not an easy decision. I felt compelled to do it, but couldn’t quite put my finger on why I so firmly believed it was true.

But within a few months, a total of 17 women came forward to Pulpit & Pen and confessed that they had slept with him at one of his revival meetings, or elsewhere. At the time, Jennings was being promoted as “the next Billy Graham,” thanks to support from influential mentors like Winter Jam’s Tony Nolan. He was a good looking, charismatic, preacher. But something was off.

Some of the women were star-chasers, for sure. But some had been groomed, extensively. And some, tragically, we’re asked to come to his hotel room for “a private time of prayer,” which ended by him driving them to the pharmacy to pick up the Plan B abortion pill.

Despite an attempted bribe, I plowed forward with story after story until the hog got tied. Below is a screenshot of the Christian Post:

Regarding the above story, I texted him when he sent the bribe a Bible verse, “the Lord hates those who take a bribe,” and provided a screenshot of the exchange.

Eventually, he went into a time of restoration, at which point he biffed it, and even Tony Nolan denounced him, despite standing behind him at first. His church, that his dad happened to pastor, pulled his ministry credentials. The last I heard of Jennings he spiraled out of control, weaponized a million (literally) Instagram followers against me, and I had to get the FBI involved and have a security detail for several weeks until it died down. Jennings disappeared after that, and I hope he’s okay.

But I’ll be the first to tell you, most of that wasn’t supernatural. There were certain visual cues, such as the way he dressed to “peacock” himself. His lascivious dress that accented his better bodily features. The ratio of female and gay followers, compared to straight men. Some of the lyrics in his Spoken Word albums also raised a red flag.

I’m observant, but I had never felt so compelled to press the issue without facts. I had more than a hunch by visual cues or observations. I knew it.

I recently posted on X how I’m constantly teaching my kids to notice details, ranging from a car that’s out of place in the neighborhood to whether or not that lady has an Adam’s apple and a five o’clock shadow. Being aware of details is essential to discernment, which Hebrews 5:11 says can be “trained with constant practice.”

EXAMINING THE SUPERNATURAL GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST

But some discernment cannot be trained, because it’s not just a skill that can be honed, but it’s a gift given at the Holy Ghost’s discretion. It’s listed among the spiritual gifts in Paul’s epistle.

I should note disagreement on the meaning of “discerning of spirits” in 1 Corinthians 12.

And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues (1 Corinthians 12:6-10).

Some believe this is an intuition God the Holy Ghost gives some believers, just as though – at one time – he dispensed gifts like prophecy and tongues. And in particular, this is a gift for knowing an evil spirit when you see one. Justin Peters, for example holds this view, and so it’s peculiar someone who majors in “discernment ministry” doesn’t believe discernment is a gift of the Holy Ghost, but only a skill that can be learned.

The other view is that this passage is not necessarily a list of only Apostolic Sign Gifts. The first gift mentioned in the list, for example, is that of wisdom, or the word of wisdom, which is one who has a habit of finding wise words to say at essential times. And frankly, I don’t want to live in a world where God doesn’t gift some people the ability to find particularly wise things to say at essential times. Perhaps that’s why Cessationist preaching lacks power; they aren’t pleading that God give them words – not of divine revelation – but of wisdom, and to know how and when to speak those words of wisdom for it to bless the hearers (or to convict them of sin).

When the preacher asks God to “direct” his words, he’s not asking for at 67th book of the Bible, but he’s asking that God supernaturally bring to mind the words to say (not for new, previously unrevealed words).

Likewise, faith is a gift of the Spirit listed here. Likely, this isn’t referring to the gift of saving faith (which is equally as supernatural) explained in Ephesians 2, but a supernatural intensity and depth of faith that some people enjoy, regarding matters other than trusting in Christ’s resurrection. These people, I often say, “have enough faith for the both of us.”

My wife has this gift. While my faith in the resurrection has never wavered – and not long ago, that’s all the faith I could muster, as the rest of my certainties were ground to dust and had to be rebuilt – I regularly do not have enough faith in the other promises of God. Mandy sometimes drives me nuts, as I lay in bed at night worrying about tomorrow, and she sleeps like a baby without a single doubt that God will do this thing or that thing in accordance to his generous will. That woman has never had a doubt that God will work it out, no matter what “it” happens to be. Her gift of faith really has, quite often, been enough for the both of us.

So far as discerning spirits go, one wonders why – if demons aren’t on vacation – God would remove from his church the capacity to ascertain where they are.

My parents tell-tale of an evangelist at a revival, for which I was too young to remember, who stopped his sermon mid-breath to look at a demoniac in the audience, paused for a moment, and asked why the demon was there. And then it took a half-dozen men to pry the demoniac off the yellow line in the highway, after it screamed and ran outside in a demonic fit. Surely, this is the gift in action.

A word of knowledge, in ecclesiastical parlance, is knowing something about someone that you probably shouldn’t know if a naturalistic explanation was all that could offered. For example, intuitively knowing that someone was a swindler, or sexual deviant, or even worse.

Once, without a discernible reason, I believed a man frequenting our church was a child molester, and asked him directly. He admitted that, indeed, he had those proclivities. I banned him from the property for the safety of our children, offered him private Bible studies alone, and warned him that if I ever saw him alone with a child I’d beat his face in with a bat. Not long after, he was arrested for molesting numerous children in his apartment complex.

It is, of course, a sticky point of contention for the Cessationist to admit that also included in this passage are gifts we believe to be Apostolic, including tongues and their interpretation, and prophecy. But for that, our dogmatism needs to rest in the tough work of Biblical exegesis, using the full counsel of God’s Word as our guide. But that’s also a reason not be terribly dogmatic about it.

The fact is, even if tongues continued today, if the Biblical guidelines for tongues were followed (an actual language, no more than one at a time and no more than a few in succession, and a mandatory interpreter), I don’t think there would ever be a recorded or documented incident of it happening. The same is true for prophecy, that even if prophecy continued today, the requirement of flawless accuracy under the threat of stoning (Deuteronomy 18:20), few if any would make the claim.

CESSATIONISM MUST REMAIN SUPERNATURALISTIC

I remain an advocate for Cessationism, because I believe the Biblical arguments are compelling, and having been doing discernment ministry for so long, see the absolute carnage that occurs from unbridled charismaticism.

However, I remain – to an even higher order – an avid supernaturalist. Simply put, God does amazing, supernatural things. After all, if he can raise a sinner to the newness of life by taking his heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh, he can (and does) do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, whether or not it can be explained.

And while many naturalistic explanations exist for psychic phenomena, there is no naturalistic explanation for some it. And that’s okay, because Christians aren’t naturalists; we’re supernaturalists. We don’t always need an explanation, other than “God did that.”

This article first appeared at Insight to Incite behind their paywall, but has been republished free at Protestia, exclusively for Insiders.