- by Carrie Shaw
- on July 17, 2026
I read an article recently accusing cessationists of denying the ongoing ministry of the Holy Spirit, describing them as “heartless and misguided exegetes”, “affronted by miracles and healing.”
That seems a little uncharitable. That’s certainly not the impression I have of fellow cessationists. By and large, most* readily affirm their belief in miracles and healing and agree that the Holy Spirit is still at work today. But perhaps the writer hasn’t spent much time in conversation with those on the other side of the fence.
“It’s a callous person,” he goes on to say, “who insists that God no longer supernaturally heals and that the gifts of God’s Spirit have had their day.”
I agree.
The continuationists agree.
The cessationists agree.
It’s a brave man (or woman) who would claim that the Christian life isn’t one that is led by the Spirit (Romans 8:14, Galatians 5:16-25), that transformation is entirely a matter of willpower and grit, or that Jesus isn’t still intimately involved with his church through the work of the Spirit (John 14: 16-18, John 16:7-15).
Cessationists don’t believe that the Holy Spirit is on ice, despite the writer’s claim, nor that miracles no longer occur or that healing can’t happen today. They do, however, believe that certain gifts from the apostolic era, often called sign gifts, were given for a particular time and purpose, and are now no longer normative or expected for the church today.
What Did The Historical Church Think?
This isn’t a new position, or even a particularly radical one. While the early record is more complex than either side sometimes admits, the view that the sign gifts were no longer normative became the broadly held position of the church for many centuries. Some early writers testify to extraordinary gifts continuing for a time after the apostles, but by the late fourth and fifth centuries major voices in the church were already speaking of certain gifts, especially tongues, as belonging to an earlier period.
And the argument isn’t really whether these particular gifts were intended to be temporary or not. Paul says they would only continue “until the perfect comes” (1 Corinthians 13:8–12). So the question isn’t whether they would cease, but when, and what Paul means by “the perfect.”
John Chrysostom, a fourth-century church father (AD 349-407), notes that 1 Corinthians 12 (the passage about spiritual gifts) is an obscure passage, made more so “by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place.” Augustine of Hippo (AD 354-430) affirmed in his work, The City of God, that God was still performing miracles at that present time but suggested that tongues had belonged to the apostolic age. Theodoret of Cyrus (AD 393-458) also speaks about tongues as something belonging to an earlier period.
However, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian, who all lived more than 200 years before Chrysostom, Augustine, and Theodoret, make mention of prophecy, healings, tongues, and exorcisms as still occurring in their day.
So while there is historical evidence that these miraculous sign gifts continued for possibly at least a couple of centuries after the time of the apostles, by the late fourth and early fifth centuries, prophecy, tongues, and identifiable ministries of miraculous healing were increasingly described as rare, absent, or belonging to an earlier period.
The clearest picture from history is that these sign gifts had indeed faded from the church landscape by the late fourth and early fifth centuries. From the time of Chrysostom to the medieval Catholic church, to many of the Reformers and much of Protestant orthodoxy, the majority position was that the sign gifts associated with the apostles and their ‘foundational age’ were no longer normative or expected for the church.
What Are The Sign Gifts?
Can God still do miracles today? Of course He can. The question is whether Scripture presents certain miracle-working gifts as normative for every generation of the church, or only as signs attached to foundational moments of revelation.
Cessationists often designate prophecy, tongues, interpretation, healings, and extraordinary miracles of the first century as ‘sign gifts’ as they were closely associated with divine revelation and its authentication. They confirmed that God was acting, that the apostolic gospel carried His authority, and that those commissioned to proclaim it were speaking on His behalf.
We sometimes think this kind of miraculous authentication was new and fresh for New Testament times, but it’s actually the way God has acted in the past. The first great concentration of miracles recorded in Scripture was around Moses, the man God chose as prophet and deliverer of the nation of Israel. We’re probably so familiar with the 10 plagues that we almost stop thinking of them as miracles. But these were supernatural events that validated both Moses and, later, the covenant he delivered. Moses spoke authoritatively on behalf of God, as mediator of the covenant and as deliverer of God’s people out of Egypt (Deuteronomy 34:10-12).
After Moses, there is a long period of relatively few recorded miracles. Some 500-ish years pass before God raises up Elijah and Elisha, whose ministries were marked by extraordinary signs. We read about the multiplication of bread, healings, fire from heaven, and even resurrections (sound familiar?), all miraculous signs that authenticated Elijah and Elisha as prophets speaking authoritatively on God’s behalf (1 Kings 18:36-39, 2 Kings 1:9-15). Their ministries were calls to repentance and return for Israel – appeals to the nation to abandon its apostasy and idol worship and return to the one true God.
Between Elijah and the time of the New Testament, miraculous events still occurred, but they were occasional rather than normative, and there was a noticeable difference. While men like Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and later Jesus and the apostles are portrayed as people through whom miracles repeatedly occur, prophets throughout Old Testament times aren’t presented as regularly performing signs and wonders.
It’s not unreasonable to conclude that concentrated miracle-working ministries were relatively rare and accompanied major moments of redemptive history and revelation. We see this with Moses and the Exodus, we see this with the ministry of Elijah and Elisha, in calling the nation to repentance, and we see it in the New Testament, with the inauguration of the New Covenant, centred around Christ.
It’s interesting that the expectation of the Jewish people at the time of Jesus was for the arrival of a prophet like Elijah, and one who was to be ‘the new Moses’. There had been no major prophet for centuries, and certainly not one whose ministry had been accompanied by the authoritative signs that declared him to be a messenger of God.
This explains why the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus created such excitement and expectation. The Jews had a very legitimate expectation that the God who had acted in history would act again in their present time and that this moment would be marked by miraculous signs and wonders (Malachi 4:5-6, Deuteronomy 18:15).
God’s Final And Greatest Revelation
And that’s exactly what happened. God, who in times past and in various ways had spoken through His prophets, now speaks finally and definitely through His Son, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1-2). Accompanying Jesus’ ministry and those whom he authoritatively commissioned to preach the gospel on his behalf were miracles and signs – healings, exorcisms, resurrections, the gift of languages and accompanying interpretation, and prophecy, marking a new day in an old story (Acts 14:3, Romans 15:18-19, Hebrews 2:3-4, 2 Corinthians 12:12).
Historically, the church has taught that Jesus Christ is God’s final and climactic revelation, authoritatively witnessed and interpreted by the apostles he commissioned. The apostolic period that followed the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, beginning on the day of Pentecost and extending through the early, difficult days of persecution, dispersion, and missionary activity, was marked by all the miraculous signs one might expect based on how God had previously acted in history.
There was something new however, not seen before. This was the gift of languages and the interpretation of them. It seems that the gift of languages marked the international scope of the gospel and served as a sign that the good news of Christ was now going out beyond one nation to every tribe and tongue.
It’s a fascinating little side-trail to contemplate the great reversal that seems to be happening at Pentecost: from the confusion of language at Babel that resulted in the scattering of people throughout the globe, to the miraculous way in which ‘every tribe and every tongue’ were suddenly united in hearing the gospel at Pentecost. It’s hard to miss that Pentecost marked a definitive turning point in redemptive history and in God’s interaction with the human race.
The good news about Jesus Christ was first proclaimed through living eyewitnesses and was then preserved by the Spirit in the gospels and apostolic writings. These writings bear authoritative witness to God’s final revelation in his Son for the many who would come after, who, “having not seen, would still believe.”
We call this the New Testament: a closed canon containing the gospels, letters, and apostolic writings that carry the authority of those whom Christ chose to bear witness to him (John 14:26, John 16:13, Ephesians 2:20). With the arrival of Jesus, the final period of divine revelation, marked by miracles, healings, and supernatural occurrences, had come to completion.
That’s not to say, of course, that the sign gifts immediately ceased with the death of the last apostle. That’s not the cleanest reading of the historical evidence, and, as we’ll see in part 2, the close of the apostolic era is only one of the main explanations offered for what Paul might have meant by “the perfect.”
And it isn’t a conclusive argument in itself that such sign gifts no longer exist today. It does, however, show the pattern established by God of revealing and authenticating His messengers and marking the great periods of redemptive history and revelation through miraculous signs and wonders.
So What’s The Deal Today?
For many centuries, tongues and prophecy weren’t recognised as normal features of mainstream church life in the way they are in modern Pentecostal and charismatic circles today.
Christians still prayed, preached, evangelised, and trusted God for miracles. The Holy Spirit was still at work, shaping individuals and transforming communities. His fruit was evident in peace, joy, patience, kindness, holiness, and faithful witness. The message of Jesus continued to spread, despite persecution, pressure, and, at times, the church’s own pursuit of power and privilege.
The church grew and matured, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20). But, at a certain point, the apostolic-age sign gifts were no longer recognised as a normal feature of church life.
Why was that? Had “the perfect” that Paul referred to come and gone? And if, for centuries, tongues and prophecy were no longer considered normative for church life, how do we explain their modern reappearance? Was God doing something new?
Or were they never really gone to begin with? Is modern Pentecostalism a restoration of gifts long neglected by the church?
These are all really important questions that those on either side need to wrestle with, including the wider implications of where the answers may lead. We’ll get into that in part 2…
