The teaching that healing, prophecy and tongues ended with the apostles, stated at its strongest, traced through church history, and answered from Scripture.
Cessationism is the teaching that the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as healing, prophecy, tongues and miracles, ceased with the apostles and the completion of the New Testament. We believe it is wrong.
Every gift of the Spirit is active today, and none of the texts cessationists rely on sets an end date. The correction cuts the other way too. A church that fakes power is no better off than a church that stopped asking for it.
Plenty of faithful, Jesus-loving believers hold this view. We are disagreeing with an argument, not with anybody's love for God.
Preaching on 1 Corinthians 12, John Chrysostom admits the chapter is difficult, and says the difficulty comes from “our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation”.
On the tongues of Acts, in his homilies on 1 John: “That thing was done for a betokening, and it passed away.”
Late in life, in The City of God, the same man opens a chapter with “For even now miracles are wrought in the name of Christ” and lists healings from his own region. Many are tied to relics, which we do not share.
In the final edition of his Institutes, arguing against anointing the sick as a sacrament, Calvin says of the miraculous powers, “They were only for a time.” He was answering the miracle claims used to prop up Rome.
B.B. Warfield of Princeton publishes Counterfeit Miracles. The gifts, he argues, were the credentials of the apostles. “Their function thus confined them to distinctively the Apostolic Church, and they necessarily passed away with it.”
The fathers were describing their own quieter churches. Warfield turned that observation into a rule, and most modern cessationism rests on his version. Meanwhile Augustine spent his last years writing down healings.
Nobody here denies that God answers prayer. Does the Spirit still give the gifts Paul lists in 1 Corinthians 12 to ordinary believers?
Tongues, interpretation, prophecy, healing and miracles ended with the apostolic generation. God may heal in answer to prayer, but nobody carries a gift of healing.
The gifts are not normal church life, yet God is free to act, perhaps on a mission field. Open in theory, closed in practice.
Nothing in Scripture says the gifts ended, but every claim is met with suspicion. Many churches sit here without a label.
All the gifts continue and are meant to be desired, used and tested in the church. This is where Sound of Heaven stands.
Everyone agrees the Twelve were unique eyewitnesses and nobody today writes Scripture. We look at that question in are apostles still for today.
Cessationists are not saying God stopped working. They are saying He stopped giving certain gifts to people. That is the claim we disagree with.
If we are going to disagree with our brothers and sisters, we owe it to them to state their case the way they would. It rests on five pillars.
“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.”
1 Corinthians 13:8 to 10Older translations say “when that which is perfect is come.” Many cessationists read the perfect as the finished New Testament. Once it was written, the partial gifts were done.
Ephesians 2:20 says the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. You lay a foundation once. If prophets belong to the foundation, prophecy belongs to the first generation.
Hebrews 2:3 and 4 says the salvation first announced by the Lord was confirmed by those who heard Him, while God testified by signs, wonders, miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit. That sounds like a finished, first generation event. I unpack the line If love fails it was never love in its own study.
If God still gives prophecy, prophecy is revelation, and revelation would bind the church the way Scripture does. The canon is closed, so prophecy must have closed with it.
Miracles in Scripture cluster around Moses, Elijah, and Jesus with the apostles. Afterwards the reports thin out.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Complete, mature, full-grown. Something that has reached its goal. Not a book, and not a date.
Paul pairs it with seeing “face to face” and knowing “fully, even as I am fully known” (13:12). That is the language of knowing a Person, not owning a finished collection of letters.
The other pillars share the problem. Each reads a limit into a text that states none.
Two chapters later Paul lists apostles and prophets among the gifts Christ gave “until we all reach unity in the faith” (4:13). The first witnesses laid the foundation once. The gift of prophecy, speaking “for their strengthening, encouraging and comfort” (1 Corinthians 14:3), is a different function.
The verse says what the signs did, not that they stopped. Paul says the Spirit is given to each person “for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7), and the common good did not end in the first century.
New Testament prophecy was always weighed (1 Corinthians 14:29, 1 Thessalonians 5:20 and 21). A word that has to be tested cannot compete with the Word that does the testing.
Fewer reports is not no reports, and this pillar is an argument from silence. A church that stops expecting gifts sees fewer of them.
The Bible tells us what the gifts are for and how to test them. It never tells us when to stop. For how signs function across Scripture, see miracles in the Bible.
This version comes from people who share our reading of the first century. Paul said the partial would pass when completeness came. The end of the age arrived with the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. So, the argument goes, completeness came in AD 70 and the gifts went with it.
We think that is wrong, as we said in our study on the power of the Holy Spirit.
The end of the old covenant age was the arrival of the perfect. The gifts were scaffolding for the transition and came down when the building was finished.
It closed the old covenant order and left the Kingdom standing in full. Jesus announced that Kingdom with healing and power. Finishing the transition did not switch that off.
Three things settle it. First, Peter said the promise of the Spirit was “for you and your children and for all who are far off” (Acts 2:39). That is not one generation.
Second, Joel's promise, which Peter quotes in the same sermon, is God saying “I will pour out my Spirit on all people” (Acts 2:17). The outpouring is the mark of the new age, and the new age came to stay. The Kingdom did not arrive in fullness and lose its signs the same day.
Third, 1 Corinthians 13 is not a countdown. Paul wrote to a church using gifts without love, and he was correcting how they used them, not announcing when they would be taken away.
The gifts were never scaffolding for the old covenant. They belong to the new one, and the new one did not end.
There are two ways to get this wrong. One says the gifts went quiet nineteen centuries ago. The other turns them into a show.
Words nobody is allowed to test. Healings announced before anyone checks. Pressure to fall, shout or speak on cue. Prophecy used to steer people's money or loyalty.
“Eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy” (1 Corinthians 14:1). “Everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way” (14:40). Let love run the room.
Every gift of the Spirit is active today. Healing, prophecy, tongues, words of knowledge, discernment and miracles did not end with the apostles, and they did not end in AD 70. At Sound of Heaven we pray for the sick expecting God to move. Cessationism is wrong, and we say so with respect for those who hold it. See what we believe.
The fivefold gifts are functions in the body, not titles. Every prophetic word gets weighed against Scripture and the character of Jesus. Nobody is ever told they stayed sick because their faith was too small.
And we will not fake it. Exaggerated testimonies and staged moments are the real counterfeit, and they teach honest people to give up on the genuine thing.
Some of you were told your illness was a faith problem, or handed a “word” that was really someone's opinion with a microphone. Others were taught the gifts were dangerous and learned to hide what God had done.
None of that was the Spirit's doing. He is gentle and He is not in a hurry. You can come back to this slowly, and you can ask us to pray with you.
In 1 Corinthians 13, what does Paul say outlasts every spiritual gift?
Faith, hope and love remain, and the greatest of these is love (13:13). The chapter is about the priority of love, not a timer on the gifts.
The whole debate comes back to one question. What is Jesus like, and is He still like that?
In the Gospels He heals, restores, and sends His friends out to do the same. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). The gifts are how the risen Jesus keeps doing through His body what He did in Galilee. They were never about the platform.
For related reading, see praying in tongues, whether there are prophets today, spiritual gifts, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the day of Pentecost, by His stripes we are healed and discernment in the Bible. If you want to see the gifts handled with care, come and visit us.
Cessationism says the gifts ended with the apostles, but no text sets that date, the AD 70 version misreads what the covenant transition opened, and the answer to hype is tested, loving, honest use of every gift rather than silence.
If you have questions about the gifts, or you want prayer for healing, send it in and someone at Sound of Heaven will pray and write back.
Cessationism is the belief that the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as tongues, prophecy, healing and miracles, ended with the apostles and the completion of the New Testament. Its best known modern form comes from B.B. Warfield's Counterfeit Miracles in 1918. Cessationists still believe God answers prayer and can heal. What they deny is that the Spirit still gives those gifts to believers. We believe it is wrong and that every gift is active today.
Cessationism says the miraculous gifts stopped after the apostolic generation. Continuationism says all the gifts of the Spirit continue and should be desired, used and tested in the church today. Both sides agree the Twelve had a unique eyewitness role and that no one writes new Scripture. The disagreement is whether the rest of the gifts Paul lists in 1 Corinthians 12 are still being given.
The Greek word is teleios, meaning complete, mature or full grown. Some cessationists read it as the finished New Testament. But Paul links completeness to seeing face to face and knowing fully, even as we are fully known, which describes knowing God rather than owning a book. The Corinthians had no concept of a New Testament canon, and the chapter's real point is that love outlasts every gift.
Some who hold fulfilled eschatology argue that completeness arrived with the end of the age in AD 70 and the gifts ended then. We disagree. Peter said the promise of the Spirit was for his hearers, their children and all who are far off. The outpouring of the Spirit is the mark of the new covenant age, and that age was established in AD 70, not ended. The transition cleared the ground for the Kingdom rather than switching off its gifts.
No. Being a cessationist does not make anyone less saved or less sincere, and many cessationists love Jesus deeply and pray faithfully for the sick. We believe the view is mistaken because Scripture never sets an end date for the gifts. The right response is respectful conversation. The opposite error, where gifts are hyped, faked or used to control people, misses Paul's teaching just as badly.