It is my prayer that every believer would come to know the fulness of the Holy Spirit’s power. Every believer has the Holy Spirit, but that doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit has every believer. As I see it, those who reject the spiritual gifts are simply choosing to settle; they’re choosing to do things the hard way.
Though I prefer to avoid labels, traditionally speaking, some- one who believes that the spiritual gifts are no longer in operation is called a “cessationist”; the belief that the spiritual gifts have ceased to be operational is called “cessationism.”
Ultimately, it’s very difficult to debate a cessationist with Scripture, because they really don’t have anything even closely resembling a scriptural basis for their belief. They simply just assert their belief.
Now to properly weigh in on the discussion, I would need to write an entire separate book. But I at least want to give you a few very basic thoughts on the matter so that you might be loosed from the intellectual chains that hold you back from speaking in tongues. Whenever you hear a cessationist speak of why they believe the gifts have ceased, I want you to listen very closely. Generally speaking, they will use one of the three following lines of logic:
#1 Speculation
The cessationist can offer many points of speculation but never any portion of Scripture that clearly teaches that the gifts of the Holy Spirit have ceased.
Example 1: Only the early epistles mention the spiritual gifts, but the later ones make no mention of them. So the gifts must have ceased.
Example 2: Paul the apostle had poor eyesight; because God didn’t heal him, that demonstrates that the gift of healing (and the other gifts along with it) has ceased.
Here’s the issue with that sort of reasoning: In order to demonstrate biblically that the spiritual gifts have ceased, you have to be able to point to the Bible verse that tells us so. Otherwise, you’re just left with speculation. The biblical evidence is overwhelmingly supportive of the spiritual gifts; it’s not even close. The entire New Testament is fundamentally supernatural. If someone wants you to believe cessationism, they need to do better than offering unfounded inference and wishful speculation.
#2 Arguments from History
Another line of logic followed by the cessationist is the historical one.
Example 1: Some of the early church fathers believed that the gifts had ceased, and, therefore, we should believe the same.
Though we honor our early church fathers, we get our truth directly from the Scripture. Even if it can be proven (and that’s a key “if”) that most of the early church fathers believed the gifts had ceased, all that proves is that we had cessationists in the early church too. The question is not, “What did the early church fathers believe?” or “What does the history of the church record?” The question is, “What does the Bible teach?” We mustn’t put people on pedestals, not even the early church fathers. They were men, not gods. We have to be humble in our assessment of ourselves; we are only human. We must stick with just the Word of God, period.
Example 2: Church history records a decline in the use of the spiritual gifts.
Just because something isn’t properly recorded in history doesn’t mean it didn’t occur. There are several things you do each day that won’t be preserved in history’s record. The cessationist is being pre- sumptuous when he claims that generations of believers didn’t pray in tongues. How on earth could the cessationist know what didn’t happen in the early Church? To know that, one would have to have a complete record of every life of every believer—a record detailing even daily activity. We don’t have that. In fact, to make the claim that a certain Christian figure or group of people certainly didn’t pray in tongues, we would need a record of them telling us just that. So anyone who tells you that the early Church didn’t pray in tongues is making a big assumption. In fact, it’s presumptive to make that claim about any believer in history’s timeline.
#3 Poor Biblical Interpretation
Unfortunately for the cessationist, the burden of proof rests on those who claim that the gifts have ceased. From Genesis to Revelation, we see our powerful God performing miracle after miracle, involving Himself in the lives of His children. And we’re supposed to believe that God just suddenly stopped? Out of nowhere, His tangible interaction with mankind just ceased? It’s unreasonable to think that we’re supposed to just insert some imaginary marker on the timeline of all of history and say, “Right here is where God stopped.”
Here, the cessationist might interject, “We believe that God still moves. God still does miracles. We just don’t believe that God gives power, such as healing the sick, to individuals anymore.” Or they might say, “We believe God still moves; we just don’t believe men can heal the sick by their own will anymore.” But who actually believes that the power to perform the miraculous ever came from human beings in the first place? Who actually believes that men ever healed according to the exercising of their own will or power? Who believes that man on his own ever wielded the power to heal the sick? I sure don’t.
Going back to even the Old Testament, where cessationists admit that God was moving miraculously, we see Moses, supposedly given power of his own, unable to immediately heal the sick through prayer.
So Moses cried out to the Lord, “O God, I beg you, please heal her!” But the Lord said to Moses, “If her father had done nothing more than spit in her face, wouldn’t she be defiled for seven days? So keep her outside the camp for seven days, and after that she may be accepted back” (Numbers 12:13-14).
That God left the prayers of Moses unanswered does not mean that He stopped working miraculously through people—the rest of the Bible is proof of that. So why would anyone’s unanswered prayer today indicate that God no longer moves? If cessationists were there with Moses, they might have suggested that God was done moving in Israel.
King David was likewise unable to heal the sick through prayer:
Yet when they were ill, I grieved for them. I denied myself by fasting for them, but my prayers returned unanswered (Psalm 35:13).
But we all know that God continued to do miracles long after King David left the earth. It’s been God all along, and He works through people.
I don’t believe Peter carried his own power to heal the sick; it was sourced by the Holy Spirit. I don’t believe that Elijah or Moses had any ability, apart from God’s empowering presence, to perform miraculous displays of authority over creation. It was always God.
It’s simple: just as God moved according to His will through people in the Old and New Testament, so God moves according to His will through people now. There’s never any indication in the teaching of Scripture that states otherwise.
It’s all semantics, word play. Either you believe God still works among us or you don’t. This middle ground doctrine of “God still moves but not like He used to” is a dodge on the part of the cessationist. Truthfully, the best a cessationist can offer is a misapplication of this portion of Scripture:
Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless (1 Corinthians 13:8-10).
Obviously, we won’t always need the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I can’t imagine the need for the gift of healing in Heaven where there is no sickness, the need for the gift of prophecy in eternity where there is no time, or the need for the gift of faith in Heaven where God can be seen. The day will come when the gifts of the Holy Spirit will cease.
So when will the gifts cease? Let’s look at what the Bible says in the very next two verses:
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely (1 Corinthians 13:11-12).
We are given two clues. The gifts of the Holy Spirit will cease when we see everything with perfect clarity and when we know everything completely (just as God knows us completely).
Do we see everything with perfect clarity now? Some sincere cessationists might believe so. Cessationists argue that the time of perfection was fulfilled when the Bible was completed. However, even though we have the Word of God, I don’t know a single living human who knows “everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.”
Of course, in my spirit I know God, but only Heaven will fully manifest what is known in my spirit—without the trouble of the flesh.
So clearly, First Corinthians 13 is describing eternity, not the here and now. So the gifts will cease when we are all face to face with God, as the King James Version puts it.
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 child- ish things. 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 (1 Corinthians 13:11-12, KJV). =
Furthermore, it cannot possibly be that the gifts will cease before the end of time, because Jesus promised that those who believe in Him will do greater works.
I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father (John 14:12).
He didn’t say that a select few before a certain dispensation would do greater works. He didn’t say that greater works would be accomplished for just another couple of generations. He promised that “anyone” who believed in Him would do greater works.
So cessationism fails miserably as a biblical doctrine. Yes, when we know “everything completely,” the gifts will cease. Until then, flow in the gifts, especially the gift of tongues.
Excerpt from “Praying in the Holy Spirit” by David Diga Hernandez.