I think you guys will get a kick out of this

Surprised by the Power of the Spirit
Jack Deere
Jack Deere graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary with his Doctorate in Theology in 1976, when he was subsequently invited to teach at the same seminary. For his undergraduate work, Deere attended Texas Christian University in Fort Worth Texas where he studied Philosophy. In 1974 he married Lessa and now has two grown children, Stephen and Alese. Dr. Deere has been associated with Paul Cain and John Wimber since his conversation with Dr. John White in 1986 caused him to rethink his views on the role of miraculous gifts in the modern context. He went to Southern California and was the assistant pastor to Wimber in the Vineyard Church in Anaheim. Dr. Deere has since ended his formal association with the Vineyard Church and he presently writes and serves as pastor of Wellspring Church in Texas.[1]
Jack Deere’s purpose in this book may be found on page 54. Deere asserts here that, “If you were to lock a brand-new Christian in a room with a Bible and tell him to study what Scripture has to say about healing and miracles, he would never come out of the room a cessationist.”[2] Although not a proper thesis because of his wide scope throughout this book, this statement sums up the change in Dr. Deere’s life which he writes of in the following pages. He really is out to disprove to those who claim, as he once did, that miraculous gifts ceased with the death of the Apostles. As a former professor at the not-so-subtle Dallas Theological Seminary, Dr. Deere is very familiar with the views of the cessationists. His real task and aim in this book becomes not an establishment of the validity of any view of his own, but instead a systematic dismantling of the system that assumes miraculous gifts to be in a bygone era. Deere’s book is sectioned under three headings. The first thirty-three pages deal almost exclusively with the change in his life from cessationist belief and teaching to his charismatic understanding of the Christian life. The second section is the meat, the theological framework that Deere understands in dealing with the issue of God speaking extra-biblically in a contemporary context. The third section deals with the practical outworking of Deere’s understanding of spiritual gifts.
As to the question of sources, Deere has an interesting mix within his book. He makes the claim (and expounds upon it for an entire chapter) that “(W)e often tow our brains around behind us to justify what we already believe.”[3] Deere accuses cessationists of arguing from silence numerous times[4] and subsequently argues from the same silence.[5] Dr. Deere uses a significant amount of Scripture to support what he is saying, and namely to point out the lack of biblical evidence supporting a cessationist argument (which, again, is an argument from silence). Finally, this book is replete with first, second and third-hand accounts of contemporary miracles.
This book has caused me to do a great deal of thinking on a personal level. As one that has been associated with cessationist Churches, I have come to agree with what is, essentially the thesis of this book. I believe that the question, biblically, should be ‘why don’t miracles happen more?’. Far from giving me a direction that I am comfortable taking, this book has a bevy of statements that worry me. First, on page 73, Deere constructs an indestructible opponent to his case. In correctly citing the necessity of cessationists proving historically that Church History proves an absence of the common miraculous, Dr. Deere says, “Historical research is an imperfect science. Who really knows history that well?”[6] As a student who minored in History in college, I must say that I cannot write in this paper the words that come to my mind when I read a ridiculous statement like this one. The absolute rejection of the objective here is what should concern the average reader.
Dr. Deere also alarms me when he says: “If you want to be used by the Lord in a significant way when you pray for the sick, cultivate a desire to see the Son of God glorified.”[7] The priorities here cannot be further skewed in this reviewer’s opinion. The Christian does not, I repeat, does not cultivate a desire for the glorification of Jesus so that he will be a useful important person. We speak highly of Christ because Christ is to be spoken highly of, not because I want to be a useful person. This is a completely crucial mistake that, in this reviewer’s opinion, Deere is consistently guilty of, namely, a God-belittling, man-centered theology.

[1] Biographical Data is compiled from Deere’s own work in this book, as well as his personal website at:
www.JackDeere.com.
[2] Deere, pg. 54.
[3] Deere, pg. 46.
[4] Pp. 55, 56, 58.
[5] Cf. pp. 55, 59, 60.
[6] Deere, pg. 73.
[7] Ibid, pg. 125.