This requires a belief that we are in a different "dispensation" than the early Church. Yet in that time, there have been no new covenants, no new doctrines, and no change in the way that God deals with men. We are in the same "dispensation" now as the people in the book of Acts, whether we take advantage of it or not. The Bible nowhere indicates that miracles would cease "when the last apostle died," as is commonly said today.

Those who make this argument claim that God changed the way he dealt with men after the last apostle died. Supposedly, the signs and wonders were to convince men that Jesus was the Messiah, but now we supposedly don't need these proofs because we have the New Testament. The hobbyhorse verse quoted in connection with this is 1 Cor 13:8-10: "Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when the perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away." This is often used to explain away the gifts of the Spirit (technically the manifestations of the Spirit) for our day.


Well, let's see what else will happen when the perfect comes. See verse 12: "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." Do you know everything now? Is everything clear to you? If so, I'd like to meet you, because I've never met anyone who knows as well as God knows him. If we do not know even as we also are known, the perfect has not come yet. And if the perfect has not yet come, prophecies, tongues, words of knowledge, miracles, healings, and so on, are still for us today.

Also, please note Paul's words in verse 12: "Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known." Paul said he would know fully when the perfect had come! (He was known perfectly by God, so to know even as he was known means to know perfectly.) Although Paul wrote a little under a third of the New Testament, even he did not know perfectly! If Paul's writings of the New Testament were the "perfect" coming, Paul should have known most things, if not everything, since he wrote so much of it! So Paul was saying that even he knew imperfectly.


Since Paul said that he would know fully when the perfect came in verse 12, we cannot set the date of the "perfect" coming with the settling of the New Testament canon, which did not take place during Paul's lifetime! That alone proves that Paul could not have meant the completion of the New Testament and agreement upon its constituent books. Paul had to have been referring to a future time in glory and not his present lifetime. That should completely settle this matter right there!

The fact that Paul did not know fully doesn't mean that anything he wrote is wrong. It just means that there are things that he didn't know that we won't know until the perfect comes. Paul talks of a man who went to heaven and heard things that it is not lawful for a man to utter. We don't know what things these are, so we can't know perfectly in this lifetime. If we could, we would know these things that are not lawful for a man to utter, too. But how can you know them if no one can say them?


A man with some Greek skills stated that Paul could not have been talking about Christ's coming because "the perfect" is a neuter construction instead of a masculine one. He said that if Christ had been the subject, a masculine construction would have been used. I agree with that, but disagree that Christ is the subject. The subject is "the perfect" or perfect things, not Christ himself, and "the perfect" would also be correctly written as a neuter construction in Greek. You cannot prove any distinction from it. You can tell that to anyone who gets Greeky on you about these verses.

It is nowhere stated in the Bible that anything would change when the last apostle died. That is a pure fabrication of men, the sort that the Pharisees made up, that makes the Word of God void by man's tradition.


To say that divine healing is not for today is to slice the Great Commission in half. The Great Commission becomes only "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." The part about "They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover" becomes the Great Omission. This means that Jesus wants you to preach to the unsaved under tougher conditions than the apostles, since you won't have any signs following you. It takes more faith to believe that the Great Commission could be bisected than it does to believe for healing!

If divine healing is not for today, how will you explain the many documented healings that are still going on today? Incurable diseases are still being healed through faith in Jesus Christ. How are these sick being healed if this is not available today? How are they getting from God something that he no longer offers in this dispensation?

It is just plain wrong to assert that miracles stopped with the last apostle. There are accounts of large numbers of healings and people being raised from the dead from the time of Christ up through the 400's, and from the 1700's on. They did not stop with the last apostle. The history books alone disprove this claim. Besides, the last apostle isn't dead yet, because God is still commissioning apostles today, although not in the sense of the 12 original apostles of the Lamb, a group to which even the miracle-working Paul did not belong. (If you don't believe that, read Ephesians 4:11 and the verses that follow and see the purpose of apostles and other ministry gifts. Since their goals have not been accomplished yet, they are still necessary. Paul mentions other apostles who were not part of the original 12 either. There are still apostles today!)


I read a secular historian's account of the things that happened during the Great Awakening here in New England. Everywhere, people were contracting a new "disease" called "the jerks" -- shaking uncontrollably and usually falling over when the gospel was preached with power by heaven-commissioned evangelists. This historian noted that the most violent opponents of the gospel were often the first to contract this condition! Psychologists invented explanations for it, but it was the power of God!

To say that healing is not for our day is to accuse both God and Jesus of changing -- something neither can do (Malachi 3:6, Heb:13:8, James 1:17). God has always been willing to heal his people, and Jesus did only the will of God on the earth. If they have not changed, their ability and willingness to heal have not changed.


Many of the healings in the New Testament occurred because of a person's faith, not because of the gifts of the Spirit. For proof, read the discussion, According to YOUR FAITH be it unto you! Gal 3:5-6 says that God does miracles through the hearing of faith. If healing and miracles are not for today, we must conclude that faith is not for today, since faith produces healing and miracles.

Jesus said in Matthew 7:21-23 that men could cast out devils and do works in his name without even knowing him personally! There is no indication that this statement applies only to a certain generation back then.

The claim that we are in a different, harder-to-be-healed-in dispensation is the raving of ivory-tower theologians who don't read their Bibles. You will not find one Scripture to support this absurd idea.