Miracles, we see them in the Bible, a book which spans 4000 years of recorded history. From the very first book of the Bible where God healed Abimelech in response to Abraham’s prayer in Genesis 20:17 all the way through to the leaves of healing from the Tree of Life in Revelation 22: 2, we see God’s desire for man to be ‘every bit whole.’ Yet there are those who say it’s all in the past. That the age of miracles has ceased. That God waited until the death of the last apostle and then removed His miracle hand from the earth because now we have His Word. Or, at least that’s the theory of it. This ideology has a name. It is called cessationism. Cessationists believe that when the Old Testament canon closed at Malachi, for the next 400 years until John the Baptist, the gifts had ceased. Similarly, when the New Testament canon closed the gifts ceased.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessationism] Well if God doesn’t do miracles any more, than that’s bad news. But, I’m here to tell you today that the good news is, the bad news was wrong. That’s what we’re talking about on this week’s Light on Life.

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You can view a basic transcript of this podcast at the bottom of this section.

Accept the Challenge

Each week’s podcast contains a call to action. The Word of God will not produce in your life unless you put into operation.
This week’s call is:

The age of miracles has not passed away. The Cessassionist’s were wrong. Tell someone. Spread the news. Jesus is still in the healing and in the miracle-working business.

Join the Conversation

Each week’s podcast also contains a question designed to encourage testimony. Testimony is vital to a believer’s life. We overcome by it (Rev. 12:11).
This week’s question is:

Question: Have you received a miracle from God? Would you please share your testimony in the comments section below?

Episode Resources:

For more information on revivals and God’s miracle-working power, please see the following:

1. #S4-022: Breakthrough Revivals: Important Spirit Lessons We Can Learn [Podcast]
2. #S4-021: What Is Revival and Why Is It Fatal to the Kingdom of Darkness [Podcast]

About Emery

Emery committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ over 40 years ago and has served as both a full-time pastor and an itinerant minister. Both he and his wife Sharon of 35 years emphasize personal growth and development through the Word of God. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is both the focus and the hallmark of their mission. Read more about them here.

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If you enjoyed the podcast, please rate it on Stitcher Radio and leave a review. If you have a suggestion for a Bible topic you would like to see taught, or if you have a question, please e-mail me at emery@emeryhorvath.com

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Podcast Notes

George Fox and the Apostle Paul

• Do you remember from a previous podcast, the testimony of George Fox of the Quakers?
• How he had a miracle just like the Apostle Paul at Lystra?

Acts 14:19-20 (ESV) 19 But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. 20 But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe.

• The jealous Jews stoned Paul, left him for dead, and the power of God came on him and raised him up.
• George Fox had a similar experience.
• Someone forget to tell old George Fox that the age of miracles is past.
• Because God’s power did come upon him and did raise him up supernaturally.
• What happened with Paul, is what happened with George back in the 17th century.
• According to the Cessasionists, this shouldn’t have happened.
• Was this just a blip on the radar screen?
• A move of God’s grace which happens every once in a while?
• Every hundred years or so?
• Well, let’s look at the record.
• Let’s gaze at the historical account, not from the Bible but from recorded history.
• The writings of the early church fathers show that the age of miracles did not pass with the death of the last apostle.

Healing in the Second Century

Justin Martyr

• Justin Martyr lived from the year 100 to the year 165 AD.
• So, the second century.
• Jesus, the twelve disciples, the one-hundred-twenty disciples on the day of Pentecost, the five-hundred who saw Jesus after He was resurrected, the writers of the New Testament and the early church were all first-century believers.
• Justin Martyr was a second-century Christian apologist.
• Do you know what an apologist is?
• It is a defender of the faith.

1 Peter 3:15 (ESV) — 15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect

2 Timothy 2:24–25 (ESV) — 24 And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, 25 correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth,

• At the age of thirty-two, Justin was converted to Christianity.
• In a book he authored, in the year 153, called the Second Apology, Justin, wrote concerning the exorcism and healing of the demonized:

‘For numberless demoniacs throughout the whole world, and in your city, many of our Christian men exorcising them in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, have healed and do heal, rendering helpless and driving the possessing devils out of the men, though they could not be cured by all the other exorcists, and those who used incantations and drugs.’¹

• Per Justin Martyr, Christians were casting out devils and healing the sick in the second century.

Healing in the Third Century

Tertullian

• Tertullian came to Jesus in the year 206 AD.
• He was a prolific writer.
• In his work entitled ‘To Scapula’, in chapter five of that book, Tertillian gives this account of expelling demons and healing:

‘The clerk of one of them who was liable to be thrown upon the ground by an evil spirit, was set free from his affliction; and was also the relative of another, and the little boy of a third. How many men of rank (to say nothing of common people) have been delivered from devils, and healed of diseases! Even Severus himself, the father of Antonine, was graciously mindful of the Christians; for he sought out the Christian Proculus, surnamed Torpacion, the steward of Euhodias, and in gratitude for his having once cured him by anointing, he kept him in his palace till the day of his death.’

• This legal clerk had an evil spirit that threw him to the floor and, by the power of God, he was delivered and set free.
• Tertullian said many men of rank were delivered from devils and healed.
• This was in the third century.
• Healing couldn’t have stopped with the death of the last apostle because it was happening here in the third century.
• The good news is the bad news was wrong.

Origen

• Origen was born in Egypt in the year 185 which makes him by the time he got over into his ministry a third-century man.
• He was raised by Christian parents.
• His father died as a martyr for his faith when Origen was 17 years old.
• Origen, in his writings, made several references to the gifts of the Spirit.
• He talked about the “Word of Knowledge” and the Gift of Faith.
• Sounds like First Corinthians twelve.
• Origen said that these gifts were bestowed on them by the Spirit.
• Why would Origen be talking about supernatural Holy Spirit gifts if they had all passed away?
• In a written work entitled “Against Celsus”, Origen notes that traces of Signs and Wonders are still preserved among those who regulate their lives by the precepts of the gospel.
• In that same book, He states that Christians were still expelling demons from those “persons possessed with them.”
• Origen died in 254 AD.

Hippolytus

• We don’t know when Hippolytus was born but we do have a record of when he died.
• He passed on to glory in the year 236 AD.
• So, he was a third-century man too.
• Hippolytus was a teacher in the Church at Rome.
• In his book “The Apostolic Tradition”, he writes these words in the section called “Of a Gift of Healing”:

“If any one among the laity appear to have received a gift of healing by revelation, hands shall not be laid on him because the matter is manifest.”

• In other words, you don’t have to lay hands on someone to receive the gift if they already have the gift.
• Concerning casting out devils, Hippolytus had much instruction to share.
• Of which are these words:

“But if there be one who has a devil, let him not hear the word from the teacher until he has been cleansed… And laying his hand on them he shall exorcise every evil spirit to flee away from them and never to return to them [henceforward].” * I’m telling you they were healing the sick and casting out devils in the third century.

Novatian

• Novation of Rome, who was born in AD 210.
• He died in 280 AD.
• he is the man who gave the Western Church its first full-length treatment of the Trinity. In Chapter 29 of the manuscript entitled “Treatise Concerning the Trinity” he writes:

This is He who places prophets in the Church, instructs teachers, directs tongues, gives powers and healings, does wonderful works, offers discrimination of spirits, affords powers of government, suggests counsels, and orders and arranges whatever other gifts there are of charismata; and thus make the Lord’s Church everywhere, and in all, perfected and completed.”

• So, how is it that people can say that healing has been done away with when we have all of these historical records from the Church Fathers saying otherwise?

Gregory Thaumaturgus

• Now we have Bishop Gregory of Neo-Caesaria.
• He was a pupil of Origen in the first half of the 3rd century (213 – 270).
• He had a successful ministry, both numerically and supernaturally.
• Gregory was nicknamed by his contemporaries as the wonder-worker.
• One writer, a man named Basil, said concerning him:

He too by Christ’s mighty name commanded even rivers to change their course, and caused a lake, which afforded a ground of quarrel to some covetous brethren, to dry up. Moreover his predictions of things to come were such as in no wise to fall short of those of the great prophets. To recount all his wonderful works in detail would be too long a task. By the superabundance of gifts, wrought in him by the Spirit, in all power and in signs and in marvels, he was styled a second Moses by the very enemies of the Church. Thus in all that he through grace accomplished, alike by word and deed, a light seemed ever to be shining, token of the heavenly power from the unseen which followed him. To this day he is a great object of admiration to the people of his own neighborhood, and his memory, established in the churches ever fresh and green, is not dulled by length of time.”

• So, you see in Gregory’s life, the prophetic gifts as well as the working of miracles.