Surprised by the Power of the Spirit

Rating:
Summary: What Flawed Logic?? Is this same book?
Review: I don't know where or what Paul is referring to in his review of Deere's so-called "Flawed Logic." There is NO mention of failed or incomplete healings. Jack Deere was on the phone with Dr. White giving him reasons why he did not believe in healings. And during the coversation Dr. White asked him if he believed that the Bible listed every healing that took place by Jesus or if Jesus healed everyone He came in to contact with. The answer was no. And Bible scripture is listed where if you look it up it clearly shows that Jesus healed a man while others were there that also needed healing and they were not. There are many thought provoking truths realized when reading this book. I'm sure that as a graduate of Dallas seminary those associated with the school have a hard time with this since they teach their students that Tongues ceased and so did healings and what not.

Rating:
Summary: What Flawed Logic?? Is this same book?
Review: I don't know where or what Paul is referring to in his review of Deere's so-called "Flawed Logic." There is NO mention of failed or incomplete healings. Jack Deere was on the phone with Dr. White giving him reasons why he did not believe in healings. And during the coversation Dr. White asked him if he believed that the Bible listed every healing that took place by Jesus or if Jesus healed everyone He came in to contact with. The answer was no. And Bible scripture is listed where if you look it up it clearly shows that Jesus healed a man while others were there that also needed healing and they were not. There are many thought provoking truths realized when reading this book. I'm sure that as a graduate of Dallas seminary those associated with the school have a hard time with this since they teach their students that Tongues ceased and so did healings and what not.

Rating:
Summary: A Balanced Defence of Signs and Wonders
Review: I found Jack Deere's book really helpful. It is a balanced defence of the Signs and Wonders movement. I am a Pentecostal, so I don't completely identify with the cessationist aspects of Deere's past, but I have always been openly suspicious of the self styled prophets who suppose to give a word from the Lord. I am also totally within the Sola Scriptura camp. Deere takes seriously concerns about subjectivity, manipulation and false prophecy. He writes in an easy to read narrative style. I highly recommend this book and I intend to read others.

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Summary: It Made a Difference in My Life
Review: I read this book back in 1994 just after my wife and I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Our personal experience of the Holy Spirit had made believers out of us; a pesky quarter-sized "mosaic" verruca that my wife had tried to rid herself of for years withered away two weeks after she had received prayer to receive the fullness of the Spirit. I experienced an unusual number of opportunities in the following days to give some kind of Christian witness or other. So we were ready to learn more.

And learn we did! Jack Deere's book answered intellectually what we already know was true experientially. Deere begins with his personal journey from his professorship at Dallas Theological Seminary, a bastion of cessationism, through some rather amazing experiences, to understanding that the baptism and filling of the Holy Spirit are still for today. In the latter part of his work, he shifts his approach and turns to the intellectual issues. He forcefully demolishes the cessationist position of John MacArthur, one of the leading proponents of that view, and answers in a very satisfactory way the objections raised by its advocates. (By the way, the reader should not ignore the footnotes/endnotes, especially in the later chapters of the book. Some of Deere's most powerful insights are found in the fine print.)

In my opinion, the most valuable quality of Surprised by the Power of the Spirit is the void that it fills within charismatic/pentecostal literature. For far too long, charismatics and pentecostals have been treated by other traditions within Christianity with a degree of supercilious diffidence. Indeed, many have emphasized emotionalism at the expense of sound biblical exegesis. Jack Deere brings to the charismatic/pentecostal camp a brilliant, penetrating mind that will be of great value in presenting a scholarly, intellectual apologetic for the continued existence and operation of the gifts of the Spirit.

Rating:
Summary: It Made a Difference in My Life
Review: I read this book back in 1994 just after my wife and I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Our personal experience of the Holy Spirit had made believers out of us; a pesky quarter-sized "mosaic" verruca that my wife had tried to rid herself of for years withered away two weeks after she had received prayer to receive the fullness of the Spirit. I experienced an unusual number of opportunities in the following days to give some kind of Christian witness or other. So we were ready to learn more.

And learn we did! Jack Deere's book answered intellectually what we already know was true experientially. Deere begins with his personal journey from his professorship at Dallas Theological Seminary, a bastion of cessationism, through some rather amazing experiences, to understanding that the baptism and filling of the Holy Spirit are still for today. In the latter part of his work, he shifts his approach and turns to the intellectual issues. He forcefully demolishes the cessationist position of John MacArthur, one of the leading proponents of that view, and answers in a very satisfactory way the objections raised by its advocates. (By the way, the reader should not ignore the footnotes/endnotes, especially in the later chapters of the book. Some of Deere's most powerful insights are found in the fine print.)

In my opinion, the most valuable quality of Surprised by the Power of the Spirit is the void that it fills within charismatic/pentecostal literature. For far too long, charismatics and pentecostals have been treated by other traditions within Christianity with a degree of supercilious diffidence. Indeed, many have emphasized emotionalism at the expense of sound biblical exegesis. Jack Deere brings to the charismatic/pentecostal camp a brilliant, penetrating mind that will be of great value in presenting a scholarly, intellectual apologetic for the continued existence and operation of the gifts of the Spirit.

Rating:
Summary: excellant
Review: I really enjoyed this book, it is fresh,warm and candid. Dr. Deere simply discovered that God is still God, and that he operates the same today as ever before, he challenges the view that some of the New Testament revelation has ceased to be relevant. His points are clear and entirely scriptural, there is nothing sensational or unorthodox in the book. A must read for serious Bible students.

Rating:
Summary: A good primer to the subject
Review: I recommend this book to skeptics of the coninuation of the sign gifts, but not to skeptics who will only be convinced by an exhaustive doctrinal argument. Read the book to be open-minded to the interpretation of a respected former cessationist. Then study the Bible yourself to see what it says. Don't judge the truth by the ability of another man to argue the truth. If it's true, it's defensible on its own merits and not on the merits of a scholar. If you met an apologist of religion A and an apologist of religion B, it would be dangerous to choose your faith based largely on the merits of the more skillful apologist. I digress.... The book is honest and the insights into the popular criticism of the charismatic movement helps to uncover unhealthy biases. Personally, I would be pleased if I never heard anyone speak in tongues because of the abuse I associate with it, but I refuse to disqualify myself from the other gifts--which would be very useful to the body if properly administered--by disregarding them altogether in response to much abuse of one. Don't expect to prophesy any time soon if you don't believe in it--it's used in proportion to your faith (Rom. 12:6)

Rating:
Summary: Ignores the real issues!
Review: I was extremely disappointed with this book. His treatment of his opponents is extremely unfair, and he regularly uses tactics such as ad hominem attacks (he spends an entire chapter arguing that the only reason that cessationists disagree with him is their lack of experience, an ad hominem-related logical fallacy that C. S. Lewis named "Bulverism"), straw-man arguments, etc. His use of tactics such as straw-man, ad hominem, and bulversim illustrate the basic difference between Deere and his opponents; while John MacArthur ("Charismatic Chaos") is very careful not to "paint all charismatics with same brush," and goes out of his way to point out that not all charismatics hold to many of the extreme beliefs or practices that he illustrates, Jack Deere is not careful about that at all (read Deere's chapter on the "real reason that people believe in cessationism.")

This is a big problem with his work, but perhapse a bigger problem is the fact that Deere consistently ignores the real issues. He ignores the real weaknesses in his position as well as his opponents' real arguments. He fails to answer many of the questions that he raises; although many of his answers appear to be answers, if you break them down they often do not answer the question, and when they do they often do not go nearly far enough in answering the question. He tends to rely pretty heavily on anecdotal evidence (which is fundimentally circular in nature); he only deals with Biblical evidence on whether or not the gifts cease in one chapter and the two appendices. In the other chapters, he frequently goes off on tangents which weaken his argument and make it a very frusterating book to read.

He does not deal with many of his opponents' arguments, including many of their stronger ones, even though he claims to be trying to refute B. B. Warfield's book "Counterfeit Miracles."

I think Deere could have done SO much better than he did, especially having a Ph.D., this book could be so much more accurate to the Bible and to the real issues in his position.

Rating:
Summary: A Plea for Fairness
Review: I was surprised by the favourable recommendations on the cover of this book (particularly R. T. Kendall's comment - perhaps only on the UK edition - that Deere's thesis is 'irrefutable'). Many of his arguments for the continuance of spiritual gifts are valid, biblical arguments, and he deals well with a number of texts. I, personally, being a continuationist, would support his conclusions.

However, I have recently experienced something of an epiphany: I have realised that, just as cessationists like to caricature all charismatics and paint pictures of them as extremists, so do charismatics like to perpetrate many myths about cessationists, and Deere does not escape this. He represents cessationists as dry, spiritually-dead traditionalists, and makes the mistake of projecting his own (former) image onto other cessationists. He has no right to do so, and I fear that in his portrayal of cessationists he has set up something of a straw man. His own journey was one from deadness to liveliness, from spiritual barrenness to intense passion, from a largely cereberal faith to a real heart-faith. His error is to assume that his experience is the experience of other cessationists. He is surely not going to win any friends on the opposite side of the debate with such an attitude!

His treatment of the 'three periods of miracles' argument is rather unfair, and I fear he misrepresents John MacArthur's position. The Old Testament examples he provides to 'prove' that miracles were commonplace are almost exclusively miracles that took place APART from human agency, which completely misses the point of what cessationists are arguing. He does eventually acknowledge this, but it is almost in passing, and the reader who is unaware of MacArthur's original argument could easily miss it.

Charismatics will really have to do better than this if they want to gain a fair hearing and be taken seriously. Deere's approach will only alienate those who aren't predisposed to the continuationist position.

Rating:
Summary: synopsis
Review: If a person were to ask former Dallas Theological Seminary professor Jack Deere about experiencing physical healing by the power of the Spirit eight years ago, he would have been given a stern and disdainful reaction. Along with his other theological counterparts, he held to the teaching that the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit had ceased with the last of the Apostles. Deere's firm conviction that healing, speaking in tongues, and other miracles cannot happen today changed, however, when Jack received a phone call in January 1986 that completely changed his life. Surprised by the Power of the Spirit is a personal account of Jack Deere's journey away from a skeptical view of spiritual gifts into a fuller experience of the Spirit. Deere explains how he soon discovered that the Bible provides no defense for his view that miraculous gifts have ceased, the position he held as professor of Old Testament. He tells the story of how, after being compelled to study the New Testament again, this time without the interpretational assistance of his personal prejudices, he discovered the weakness of his former opinions. "My study of Scripture convinced me that God would heal and that healing ought to be a significant part of the church's ministry. I was also convinced that the Bible did not teach that the gifts of the Spirit had passed away," says Deere. Written in a popular style-with the care of a scholar but the passion of personal experience, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit lays a strong biblical foundation for the Spirit's speaking and healing ministries today. It also includes sound advice for using spiritual gifts in the church, discussion of charismatic and anti-charismatic abuses, reasons why God heals and refrains from healing, and more