First, I want to express my sorrow for those tragic incidents you mention that have occurred in your own church family.
In terms of your argument, though, I’m not sure who this is directed at. I can’t see anyone here doing the things you mention. This is entirely about the case for cessationist and whether it is a good one. It’s a straw man to suggest that all non-cessationists (a) want continuationism to be true and selectively choose evidence to fit the conclusion and (b) elevate healing and miracles above other activities in the church.
Neither of these claims remotely fit my position (in fact it would be much easier for me if cessationism did have a good case) or Jacob’s, and as far as I can see we’re the only ones who aren’t cessationists here.
What I read from you and Jacob is a sort of folding of the arms regarding any Biblical data being presented as to the place of the gifts in the Church and how it was oeprative in one epoch that may not be the case today. Jacob, for instance, is epseically poor at offering any exegesis of his own on 1 Cor 14 (in contrast to Bruce) and saying: "It says it's for edification".
The purpose of my post was to outline the broad concern of the Church, even in the time of the Apostles. Though signs and wonders were present in the time of Christ and even in the days of the Apostles it wasn't as if their days were full of miracles or people receiving words of wisdom as to whether or not to go places. Some were healed in power while other Saints died. Nobody debated whether to resurrect James or Stephen or wringed their hands at whether they had faith or that healing had failed if someone sick they were praying for didn't recover. Even during the time of the Apostles people still got sick and died.
I read Poythress' article and find it interesting, but it rather misses the mark as to what the primary issues are.
I rather think that the problem you might have is that you don't really even understand what the Westminster position is and imaginge that "cessationism" (or whatever word you want to attach to it) means that a Church thinks that God doesn't heal people anymore or that unexplained and amazing things cease to happen.
The reason why Poythress' article is interesting is that he stort of argues as if what differentiates Charismatics from the Reformed is that one believes in the continuation of charismatic gifts and the other doesn't.
It's sort of how you are approaching the issue. It's as if the operative issue is that you don't like the arguments for something and then think it is weak because you hear of and talk to others who are experiencing these phenomena.
Full discolsure, I was both a Charismatic Catholic and Protestant and so I know of the claims as well as the mindset of much Charismatic thinking.
What changed in me from moving to Charismatic to Reformed was not that I stopped praying for people to be healed or doubted that God can do extraordinary things but that my central focus changed. I'd like to say I was balanced at that point but it's taken a few decades of maturity to make me more serious about the project of Christian formation in the congregation and that the most needful thing in any Church is just living ordinary, day-to-day life in the midst of suffering and drudgery.
When I see Charismatic people focused all the time on the charismatic gifts it is not merely that they believe in the continuation of the gifts but it underlines a profoundly different view of the Church and what it looks like to live life under the Cross. My children attend a local Christian Schoool where many different denominations attend and what marks Prentecostal and Charismatic kids is how infantile their prayers are. I say this with sadness and not with judgment. They are not maturely formed. They have no vocabulary or establishment in the faith. They have expereince. If you want to use Poythress' terms then everything is non-discursive for them. A "testimony" for them is that they had one leg longer than the other and someone prayed and they now have legs of the same length. Many of them will end up as my nephew and neice have - in apostasy - because their prayers never matured form the time they were 3 to the time they were 18 and when suffering and life hits a lot of peole experience is not enough.
It's not as if I'm arguing for some sort of cold, detached, intellectual Reformed orthodoxy. Such doesn't actually exist Confessionally. It may exist among those who call themselves Reformed but good orthodoxy ought to make one passionate and concerned for the Church. That's one of the reasons I get furstrated when arguments devolved to arm-folding as if the issue is one of some sort of abstract, logical issue of whether the Canon is still closed or whether one has made the open and shut case from a single text as to whether we ought to expect a "Prophet" or a "Healer" today. It's as if the issue exists in some sort of vacuum as opposed to the living Church of Christ. As an Elder I have to ask myself what "edifying" function a "Prophet" or a "Healer" would perform. The issue for me isn't whether or not God acts in extraordinary ways. I can even imaging and not argue with the idea that dreams occur or amazing things occur that we cannot explain. I think Poythress does a good job of not only showing these are extraoridnary Providences and non-dscursive things ubt he dodes so in the context of what is pretty much what the Reformed think. Nobody brough charges against Scottish preachers who spoke in such terms in the past because they didn't think of themselves as arguing that the time of the Apostles was non-distinct and that they were fulfilling the role of a Prophet.
So I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm not unconcerned about the question but I'm not sure what I'm Church is missing where we are not doing what Charismatic Churches are doing every Sunday and allowing "prophets" to stand up and say weird things (like I experienced). I'm not sure we're missing anyhthing because we don't have healders come in. I hear the same stories about claims of healing but I'm less worried about whether or not someone was healed than that they are either severely impoverished in their Christian growth or are learning downright heresy from some of these communions. "Yay, they are healed!" is what some think and I'm more concenred to think about how are they being formed in Christ by that communion. Having been in them I'd rather live my life as a cripple than go back to the view of justification and santification I learned from the run-of-the-mill Charismatic Churches I attended. The experience is that same for a couple in our Church who came out of the Prentecostal Church and feel no loos but only gain.
I'm not much interested in the debate over what constitutes a miracle vs an extraordinary Providence. I am concerned with what forms the organizing focus of the Church around the Scrptures and then how it lives life together in the Spirit on the basis. Insofar as God does things extraordinary in the ways Poythress describes then I'm cool with that. It's just that those things are extraordinary and we don't life our *ordinary* life together as if what is at the center of our existence is waiting for God to do something extraordinary. Life is lived in the ordinary and that's where ministry and ofcus is.