We are all affected by the traditions and cultures of our church. Depending on our denominational or ecclesiastical background, we will have different concepts of miracles. This is unavoidable because not all of us study the Bible for ourselves. Most of the time, we rely on our elders, Bible teachers, and godly leaders to show us what the Bible says. We make the assumption that they are more knowledgeable than we are, so we simply trust what they have taught.

Our church traditions have their positive aspects, but some of them are producing negative results. Therefore, it is not a question of whether my church tradition is better than yours or vice versa. The key is to find out which aspects of our traditions are in line with what the Bible actually teaches and which are not. It is dangerous to simply take things for granted.

Through the Elijah Challenge ministry, we have taught many Anonymous and Anonymous believers from both mainstream Evangelical and Pentecostal/Charismatic churches. We thank God that many of these mainstream evangelical churches are receptive to divine healing and the practice of healing the sick.

There are some churches that believe that miracles have already ceased and therefore cannot occur today. Through their teachings, essays, and books, many of these church leaders have buried divine healings and miracles in the grave of cessation. Despite the many modern evidences of healing miracles, they try to justify their belief by rejecting them as counterfeits.

The cessation theory espoused by Benjamin B. Warfield, professor at Princeton Seminary from 1887 to 1921, continues to plague many churches. Echoing Warfield, these Christians claim that God only permitted great miracles in three periods of history, namely, from the time of Moses to Joshua, Elijah, and Elisha. The third period was from the time of Jesus to the Apostles. The final time when miracles will become rampant would be the time of the Antichrist and the great Tribulation.

Churches that adhere to the professor’s assumptions and arguments finally put on theological blinders: God will no longer perform any miracles outside of these periods. According to them, all claims of healing miracles in the Pentecostal and charismatic movements are therefore forgeries or false miracles.

Like many modern cessationists, Warfield was not anti-supernatural. He believed that all the supernatural activities found in the Bible were true. However, he firmly believed that all biblical spiritual gifts and miracles had ceased since the time of the Apostles. Signs and wonders cannot happen in our age simply because God apparently has no reason to make them happen.

I studied an 18-page transcript of a class lesson given by a popular advocate of cessationism. This famous Bible teacher begins with the story of Hobart Edward Freeman, professor of Hebrew, Old Testament Studies, Philosophy, and Ethics, who was later influenced by the Word of Faith movement. Freeman later became very extreme in his teaching. about healing and created firestorms of controversy by disparaging medical institutions, doctors and medicine. His faith formula theology has led him to teach that God is obligated to heal all sickness and disease if the believer responds with genuine faith. He believed that if someone who claimed to be healed still continued to take the medicine, the person would not be expressing his faith with a corresponding action.

Freeman was later charged by the government with ‘negligent homicide’ when members of his congregation died due to lack of medical care. The women were told to give birth at home, assisted by midwives approved by Freeman’s church. Dead babies were prayed to rise on the altar. Apparently, about 90 parishioners died during Freeman’s tenure. Two weeks before his court appearance, Freeman passed away.

The Bible teacher then listed his own choice of so-called extreme faith healers ranging from AA Allen, Kathyrn Kuhlman to John Wimber. In a carefully calculated sneer, he says, “Now, it seems obvious, at least a curiosity to all of us that so many leading advocates of faith healing are sick!” He is careful to point out that many of these healers also died of chronic illnesses.

After presenting a host of strange and ridiculous events that were considered miraculous by the naive, the Bible teacher hopes to convince his audience that people who experience or believe in modern miracles belong to a similar category of naive people. Sounding benevolent, he warns that false signs and false miracles are Satan’s main tool in the end times.

This cessationist claims that he believes that God can still perform miracles because God’s power has not diminished even in modern times. As soon as he finishes that, he quickly emphasizes that none, absolutely none, of the so-called miracles experienced today are on a biblical level. He then reiterates his persuasion that both history and Scripture support his belief that the gift of miracles, as mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12, has ceased to operate today. He challenges the charismatics to produce at least one person who rises from the dead. Most healing miracles, according to this master, are partial, gradual, temporary, and sometimes reversed. They are impossible to verify and it seems that the only instant miracles are those that have to do with psychosomatic illnesses.

With great derision, this teacher says that even if the Holy Spirit wants to release His power to heal, why does He choose to release it on people who are teaching bad theology? In a true self-righteous approach, he declares that surely if the Holy Spirit wanted to authenticate someone with miracles, he would have chosen people like the cessationists because according to the teacher, they were supposed to be the most skilled and taught the truest, the purest, the most deep and the deepest. biblical form of theology. The arrogance of his theological prowess is evident, but it is good for us to note that when Jesus first came, he did not approach so-called skillful Torah teachers to share the Good News. Instead, he called out those who had no theological training, such as fishermen, tax collectors, and even former prostitutes.

In a conversation with a miracle cessation advocate, I asked him if the miracles we are experiencing in our ministry are from God or the devil. He hesitated to answer because he observed that people were instantly healed after ordinary believers took authority in the name of Jesus and healed the sick. This man knew the danger of blaspheming the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31).

Since most cessationists cannot refute the reality of current miracles, they say that even if there were miracles, they are not normative. According to them, these are extremely rare events. If that were the case, then cessationists cannot consider themselves true cessationists. All his arguments about miracles that could only occur in the three periods of history have failed to hold up.

All that is needed to prove the cessationists wrong is a modern day miracle occurring in the name of Jesus. To be proven accurate, cessationists, on the other hand, must prove that all modern miracles are fake. The truth cannot be both ways. It has to be that God-given miracles are still in operation today or there are none at all. To allow one’s theology to box God in is ultimately to deny God his true sovereignty and power.