Quotes from Craig Keener

Those who look down on other Christians because they lack a particular gift or experience, or those who despise a particular gift and look down on Christians who have it, are not demonstrating spiritual maturity.

That Jesus is popular in Mark 2:2, however, is not a general model for Christian ministry; the rest of Mark itself shows that eventually crowds denounced Jesus (15:13—14). From these narratives we might learn to use any popularity for good at the moment but not to count on it enduring.

the early church fathers provide abundant evidence that gifts such as prophecy and miracles continued in their own time, even if not as abundantly as in the first century. Christians in the medieval and modern periods continued to embrace these activities of the Spirit. It is, in fact, cessationism that is not well documented in earlier history; it seems no coincidence that it arose only in a culture dominated by anti-supernaturalism.

So pervasively has Enlightenment culture's anti-supernaturalism affected the Western church, especially educated European and North American Christians, that most of us are suspicious of anything supernatural.

He does miracles when we need them—not for our entertainment or to make us feel "spiritual.

Spiritual giftedness does not guarantee that we hear from God rightly on every point.

Granted, God is sovereign and can speak as he pleases—through a proof text, a poem, or Balaam's donkey. But we do not regularly seek out donkeys to tell us how to live.

Revelation addresses many issues that have not changed because human nature and God's character have remained constant. It

Only by depending on God's power can we offer worship truly worthy of his honor.

The book of Revelation is a book of worship that summons us to recognize the awesome majesty of our Lord.

If the early Christian accounts of dramatic signs make these works seem foreign and foreboding to segments of modern Western academia, they are nevertheless welcome in many of the dynamic churches of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, which believe that they share their experiences.

God alone is God, and he alone merits first place—beyond every other love, every other anxiety, every other fear that consumes us.