Cessationism (the notion that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit "went away with the death of the Apostles")

[Pavel Mosko]

I wrote this little statement clarifying my position to a Seventh Day Adventist I was disagreeing with two years ago on this board.



Position on the Gifts of the Spirit and New Testament Prophetic ministries
I am not a Cessationist. I do not believe there is an iron clad case to be made that the gift of prophecy and other supernatural signs and wonders etc. have passed away. In fact, I can point to good reasons and Bible verses why that is or should not be the case. However, this is also a far cry from supporting the claims of the many modern groups like many "prophets" of the modern charismatic movement and related movements, as well as people like Ellen White, Joseph Smith and so on. There still are many tests, as far as judging prophets and their prophecy before one should accept such things!

Besides this, I will also note based on the New Testament, when the scripture talks about the Church built "on the foundation of prophets and apostles" (Ephesians 2:20), on the prophet side of things it is more referring to the Old Testament prophets than folks like Agabus, saint John Divine, the itinerant ministers of the Didache etc. This is because the Old Testament prophets wrote "the Bible" that the Church used for the first 4 centuries! (The time it took to agree on the Common Received New Testament canon we now have and enjoy today). Until then the Church was doing the saint Paul / Justin Martyr thing of preaching Christ from the Old Testament Types and Shadows and using books like the Septuagint and original (OT only) Peshitta/ Peshitto as their reference (besides the older one-off ancient scrolls and papyri lying around).


I will note some ironies on the topic of Cessationism.

1) It did not formally exist until the Days of the Reformation, where Calvin made it a formal theory, considered to be an out right fact by some people like the Lutheran Church I was raised in and Catechized in. (Calvin took a tentative hypothesis of saint Augustine, and strengthened it to get off the hot seat that two different Catholic Apologists were trying to put him on for his lack of miracles unlike the major figurers of the Bible who had signs and wonders to prove that God was on their side).


2) Much of Charismatic Protestant Theology is built on the notions of Cessationism coming from the Latter Rain movement. This is especially true for the "New Apostolic Reformation" aka NAR, coming from seminal works by Bill Hamon on what was originally termed "The Prophetic Movement".


I don't really care for both extremes of Cessationism or what has happened with the excesses of NAR. I was active in the Charismatic movement in the 90s and early 2000s but there was a lot of things wrong with it. I think I benefitted by it, but I sympathize with its famous critics who often point out legitimate problems.

 

[sondring7]

I wrote this little statement clarifying my position to a Seventh Day Adventist I was disagreeing with two years ago on this board.



Position on the Gifts of the Spirit and New Testament Prophetic ministries
I am not a Cessationist. I do not believe there is an iron clad case to be made that the gift of prophecy and other supernatural signs and wonders etc. have passed away. In fact, I can point to good reasons and Bible verses why that is or should not be the case. However, this is also a far cry from supporting the claims of the many modern groups like many "prophets" of the modern charismatic movement and related movements, as well as people like Ellen White, Joseph Smith and so on. There still are many tests, as far as judging prophets and their prophecy before one should accept such things!

Besides this, I will also note based on the New Testament, when the scripture talks about the Church built "on the foundation of prophets and apostles" (Ephesians 2:20), on the prophet side of things it is more referring to the Old Testament prophets than folks like Agabus, saint John Divine, the itinerant ministers of the Didache etc. This is because the Old Testament prophets wrote "the Bible" that the Church used for the first 4 centuries! (The time it took to agree on the Common Received New Testament canon we now have and enjoy today). Until then the Church was doing the saint Paul / Justin Martyr thing of preaching Christ from the Old Testament Types and Shadows and using books like the Septuagint and original (OT only) Peshitta/ Peshitto as their reference (besides the older one-off ancient scrolls and papyri lying around).


I will note some ironies on the topic of Cessationism.

1) It did not formally exist until the Days of the Reformation, where Calvin made it a formal theory, considered to be an out right fact by some people like the Lutheran Church I was raised in and Catechized in. (Calvin took a tentative hypothesis of saint Augustine, and strengthened it to get off the hot seat that two different Catholic Apologists were trying to put him on for his lack of miracles unlike the major figurers of the Bible who had signs and wonders to prove that God was on their side).


2) Much of Charismatic Protestant Theology is built on the notions of Cessationism coming from the Latter Rain movement. This is especially true for the "New Apostolic Reformation" aka NAR, coming from seminal works by Bill Hamon on what was originally termed "The Prophetic Movement".


I don't really care for both extremes of Cessationism or what has happened with the excesses of NAR. I was active in the Charismatic movement in the 90s and early 2000s but there was a lot of things wrong with it. I think I benefitted by it, but I sympathize with its famous critics who often point out legitimate problems.

++++++++++ It did not formally exist until the Days of the Reformation,
Why was Paul no longer able to heal if the gifts' were still going ?

 

[Pavel Mosko]

++++++++++ It did not formally exist until the Days of the Reformation,
Why was Paul no longer able to heal if the gifts' were still going ?

Are we talking about "The Thorn in the Flesh"? If so that passage gives the reason. I got to say on other passages talking about taking wine for your stomach etc. there is a lot of Hasty Generalization going on.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Well, a more complete answer.
A more complete answer on cessationism
The popular slogan is that the miraculous gifts “went away with the death of the Apostles.” That is a neat historical theory. It is not an explicit teaching of the New Testament.
I am not a cessationist. I also am not a blank-check continuationist. Those are not the only two options.

1. “Why couldn’t Paul heal anymore?” does not prove the gifts died
The usual proof-texts are that Paul left Trophimus sick at Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20), that Epaphroditus nearly died (Philippians 2:25–27), that Timothy still needed wine for his stomach (1 Timothy 5:23), and that Paul himself had a “thorn in the flesh” the Lord would not remove (2 Corinthians 12:7–10).
Those passages do not say, “the gift of healing has now expired.” They say something more modest and more biblical: even in the apostolic age, healing was never a vending machine. Jesus did not heal every sick person in Nazareth. Paul did not heal every coworker. God sometimes refused to remove an affliction because His power is made perfect in weakness.
If the mere existence of unhealed Christians proved the gifts had ceased, then the gifts had already “ceased” while the apostles were still alive. That collapses the whole argument.
The thorn in the flesh is especially a poor proof of cessation. Paul says the thorn was given so that he would not become conceited because of the abundance of revelations. The passage explains why Paul was not delivered. It does not announce a new dispensation in which the Spirit stopped distributing gifts to the churches.
2. Scripture never dates the gifts to “the last apostle’s funeral”
Cessationism usually leans on three claims:

• 1 Corinthians 13:8–10 (“when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away”)
• the gifts were “signs of an apostle” (2 Corinthians 12:12; Hebrews 2:3–4)
• the church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets” (Ephesians 2:20)

None of those texts says the gifts die when John dies.
On 1 Corinthians 13, Paul contrasts partial knowledge now with seeing “face to face” and knowing “fully, even as I have been fully known.” That is the language of the age to come, not the language of a closed leather Bible on a shelf. The completed canon is a good and necessary doctrine. It is not what Paul is describing in 1 Corinthians 13:12. Even many careful cessationist scholars have admitted that this verse is a weak load-bearing wall for their system.
Paul also told the Corinthians they were “not lacking in any gift” as they waited for “the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:7). Ephesians 4:11–13 says Christ gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers until we all attain to the unity of the faith and to mature manhood. That maturity is not “A.D. 96.”
So the New Testament’s own time-marker for the end of partial gifts is the Lord’s appearing, not the death of the Twelve.
3. Apostleship can be unique without making every gift apostolic property
Here the cessationist has a real point, and it should be granted.
There is a unique apostolic office: eyewitnesses of the risen Christ, personally commissioned by Him, who laid down the once-for-all apostolic testimony. Paul calls himself last in that line (1 Corinthians 15:8). James is killed in Acts 12 and is not replaced as one of the Twelve. In that strict sense there are no apostles today like Peter and Paul. I have no interest in NAR “apostles” who talk as if they are writing a sequel to Scripture.
But that is not the same claim as “therefore tongues, prophecy, healings, and miracles belonged only to those men and vanished when they died.”
The book of Acts will not let that equation stand. Stephen, who was not one of the Twelve, “was doing great wonders and signs among the people” (Acts 6:8). Philip the evangelist preached in Samaria with signs, healings, and exorcisms (Acts 8:6–7). Ananias in Damascus is just “a disciple,” yet the Lord sends him to lay hands on Saul (Acts 9:10–17). Agabus prophesies, and so do others who are not apostles (Acts 11:27–28; 21:10–11). The household in Caesarea and the disciples in Ephesus speak in tongues (Acts 10:44–46; 19:6). The Corinthian congregation is told that the Spirit distributes gifts “to each one individually as He wills” (1 Corinthians 12:11), and they are commanded to desire prophecy and not forbid tongues (1 Corinthians 14:1, 39).
2 Corinthians 12:12 says there were “signs of an apostle.” That means apostles were publicly authenticated by signs. It does not mean that only apostles ever worked them. Hebrews 2:3–4 says God bore witness to the original proclamation with signs and gifts of the Spirit. That is a statement about how the gospel was confirmed at the beginning. It is not a ban on the Spirit ever doing such things again.
4. Ephesians 2:20 and the “foundation”
When Paul says the household of God is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone,” he is talking about the church’s once-laid foundation, not about the Spirit’s ongoing work of edifying already-built walls.
On the prophet side of that verse I still think the weight falls more on the prophetic Scriptures that the church actually lived from for generations — the Law and the Prophets through which the apostles preached Christ — than on every itinerant prophet in the Didache. The church did not wait until Athanasius’s festal letter to have a Bible. It preached Jesus from Moses and the Prophets, from the Septuagint and the churches’ received writings, long before the later formal settlement of the New Testament list.
A foundation is laid once. That is true. It does not follow that after the foundation is laid the building never again needs light, repair, warning, healing, or consolation. Paul himself distinguishes foundational revelation from congregational prophecy that is to be weighed by others (1 Corinthians 14:29–33). Those are not the same thing.
5. History is messier than both slogans
Two historical ironies still matter.
First, “the gifts died with the apostles” is not the unanimous voice of the first three centuries. Justin Martyr says the prophetic gifts remain in the church and that Christians still drive out demons in Jesus’ name. Irenaeus, writing late in the second century, describes brethren who prophesy, discern spirits, heal by the laying on of hands, and he even claims some have been raised and lived on among them. Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian speak of exorcism and healing as present realities. That is well after John.
What you do find later, especially in Chrysostom and in some of Augustine’s earlier comments, is the observation that such things had become rarer in their own circles. That is a historical report, not a verse. And Augustine himself later collected contemporary miracle accounts in City of God Book 22, which is an awkward fact for anyone who wants to make him a clean cessationist.
Second, Protestant cessationism as a system is largely a Reformation-era construction. Calvin and others were being pressed by Catholic controversialists who treated miracles, relics, and wonders as marks of the true church. One Protestant reply was: those authenticating signs belonged to the age of new public revelation, and that age is over. That reply had an apologetic job to do. It is understandable. It is not therefore the plain teaching of Paul.
The other irony is the one I mentioned before. A great deal of modern charismatic and especially NAR theology is not simply “Acts 2 forever.” It is a counter-theory built against cessationism: if the Reformers said the gifts and offices stopped, then we will restore apostles, prophets, and a new foundational era. Bill Hamon and the older Latter Rain stream are explicit about that. So the two extremes feed each other. Hard cessationism creates a vacuum. Restorationist movements rush in and fill it with new apostles.
I do not want either extreme.
6. Continuation is not credulity
Saying the New Testament does not teach a hard cutoff is not the same as blessing Ellen White, Joseph Smith, or the current marketplace of “prophetic words.”
Scripture is not shy about tests:

• Does the word lead people after other gods? (Deuteronomy 13)
• Does the thing spoken in the Lord’s name fail? (Deuteronomy 18:20–22)
• Does it confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh? (1 John 4:1–3)
• Is it submitted to the church to be weighed? (1 Corinthians 14:29)
• Do we test everything and hold fast what is good? (1 Thessalonians 5:19–21)

A true concern for the Spirit includes those tests. Quenching the Spirit and swallowing every “thus saith the Lord” are both disobedience. The New Testament commands both: do not despise prophecies, and do not believe every spirit.
That is why I can reject cessationism without accepting the modern prophetic industry. The Spirit is not bound to A.D. 96. The canon is closed. Those two statements can both be true.
7. What I am actually claiming
I am claiming this:

• God still heals, still warns, still comforts, still distributes gifts as He wills.
• The unique apostolic office that wrote and authenticated the New Testament is not a repeating office.
• “When the last apostle died, the Spirit’s miraculous gifts automatically shut off” is an inference, not a verse.
• The presence of unhealed saints, including Paul, never proved the gift had vanished.
• Modern claims still have to stand in the light of Scripture, the confession of Christ, fruit, and the church’s testing.
• The safest place is not “nothing supernatural after John” and not “new apostles are laying a new foundation.” It is the older Christian instinct: the Spirit has not retired, Scripture remains the rule, and every claim is to be judged.

 

[sondring7]

Are we talking about "The Thorn in the Flesh"? If so that passage gives the reason. I got to say on other passages talking about taking wine for your stomach etc. there is a lot of Hasty Generalization going on.

Earlier Paul would have been able to heal Timothy's stomach but now could only offer wine.
Why is that if the healing gifts had not ceased ?

 

[David Lamb]

Earlier Paul would have been able to heal Timothy's stomach but now could only offer wine.
Why is that if the healing gifts had not ceased ?

God sometimes healed people through Paul, as He did through Peter and others of the apostles. I imagine that Paul would have said as Peter did:

Act 3:11 Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch which is called Solomon's, greatly amazed.
Act 3:12 So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people: "Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Or why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk?

Paul didn't heal people; God did.

 

[Hepzibah]

I was in a cessationist church for a number of years, and was one myself.

We believed (and they still do no doubt), that what ceased were the 'sign gifts' which were tongue speaking and the gift of healing. They were given for a specific time.

The rest continued including healing from God directly when He grants it. This was a Reformed church with a strong Puritan background (via Martin Lloyd Jones)

 

[rebuilder 454]

Earlier Paul would have been able to heal Timothy's stomach but now could only offer wine.
Why is that if the healing gifts had not ceased ?

Paul was used of God for miracles.
Did you not know that?

 

[rebuilder 454]

Heaven ceased?
God went on vacation?
God is not a healer?
Miracles signs and wonders ceased?

Huh?
I thought all believers walked in the miraculous.

Mark 16:17
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;

I believe.
The cessationist quit.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Earlier Paul would have been able to heal Timothy's stomach but now could only offer wine.
Why is that if the healing gifts had not ceased ?

Why do you keep assuming the gifts have ceased when it is not explicitly in the Bible? God could have easily had this be formal doctrine in Christianity with just a little verse being in Revelation, the end of the book of Acts, one of the Pauline epistles but didn't. Lots of people try to twist the passage of 1st Corinthians 13: 8+ into that, but with many problems.

1 Corinthians 13
8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

 

[rebuilder 454]

++++++++++ It did not formally exist until the Days of the Reformation,
Why was Paul no longer able to heal if the gifts' were still going ?

Paul said:
1 cor 12
9 To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit;
10 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:

You were sayin?

 

[JimKnox]

Tongues are for a sign to the unbelievers.
The Jews seek for a sign.

"You were saying?"

 

[sondring7]

God sometimes healed people through Paul, as He did through Peter and others of the apostles. I imagine that Paul would have said as Peter did:

Act 3:11 Now as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch which is called Solomon's, greatly amazed.
Act 3:12 So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people: "Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Or why look so intently at us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made this man walk?

Paul didn't heal people; God did.

+++Paul didn't heal people; God did.
Acts 19.
11And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul:
12So that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.
Acts 9.
40But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

Point ?
Those miracles later ceased, eg GOD via Paul chose to no longer heal
1 Tim 5.
23Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.
Conclusion :-
Those 'gifts' through men have ceased

 

[sondring7]

Paul said:
1 cor 12
9 To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit;
10 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:

You were sayin?

+++You were sayin?
and the following happens where today ? :)

Acts 19.
11And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul:
12So that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.
Acts 9.
40But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

 

[rebuilder 454]

+++You were sayin?
and the following happens where today ? :)

Acts 19.
11And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul:
12So that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.
Acts 9.
40But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

You are hanging around the wrong people.

 

[rebuilder 454]

Paul said:
1 cor 12
9 To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit;
10 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:

You were sayin?

1 cor 14
2 For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries.

3 But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort.

4 He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church.

5 I would that ye all spake with tongues but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying.

 

[sondring7]

You are hanging around the wrong people.

List

You are hanging around the wrong people.

Please supply just a link that confirms a 'gifter' today has raised someone from the dead as Peter did with Tabitha.
Dead for days at room temperature

Acts 19.
11And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul:
12So that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.
Acts 9.
40But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

 

[rebuilder 454]

1 cor 14
14 For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful.

15 What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.

16 Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest?

17 For thou verily givest thanks well, but the other is not edified.

18 I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all:

Yep.
God is still alive and working miracles signs and wonders.

I can hang with cessationist or with Gods generals.

 

[sondring7]

1 cor 14
14 For if I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful.

15 What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.

16 Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest?

17 For thou verily givest thanks well, but the other is not edified.

18 I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than ye all:

Yep.
God is still alive and working miracles signs and wonders.

I can hang with cessationist or with Gods generals.

+++God is still alive and working miracles signs and wonders.
Then list an occasion today where a 'gifter' has raised someone from the dead as Peter did in Acts 9
40But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

 

[rebuilder 454]

List

View attachment 90960
Please supply just a link that confirms a 'gifter' today has raised someone from the dead as Peter did with Tabitha.
Dead for days at room temperature

Acts 19.
11And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul:
12So that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them.
Acts 9.
40But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.

I am Not here to convince you.
You would not be convinced if it happened right in front of you.

You do not investigate because you are too busy being skeptical.

David Hogan has many videos , FROM MEXICO. Over 200 raised from the dead.
ALL the miracles are happening there.
...because they believe.
They don't have hospitals and morgues or even doctors were David Hogan goes.
When someone gets sick or if someone dies, they say "go get the man of God".
If you get sick or you die, you go to the doctor, the hospital, or the morgue.
You do not depend on God, or need God in a crisis.
Your insurance, your doctors, your hospitals, All that gets taken care of.
With money.