“Until then, prophecy, healing, and all kinds of signs and wonders will never cease, but they are meant to increase, expand, and multiply as God’s people transition toward that state of transformation and glorification in Christ.” — Vincent Cheung
When we trace the history of miracles and the work of the Spirit, a strange pattern emerges. The early church operated in raw spiritual power, but without the neat categories and complex systems that later generations would invent. Faith and the Spirit were the driving forces behind miracles. Lists like Paul’s in 1 Corinthians 12 were recognized for what they were, illustrative examples, not exhaustive catalogs or doctrinal frameworks. However, each generation afterward, instead of preserving this freedom, invented systems that distorted, restrained, or replaced the original power.
By the time of the fourth century, as institutional Christianity hardened, miracles were increasingly tied to relics, saints, and sacraments. Faith was replaced with superstition. The Reformation rightly broke from Catholic corruption, but also sterilized supernatural expectations. Miracles were viewed as belonging to a bygone apostolic era. Faith was reduced to a dead claim of belief, not the living assent that Scripture demands. By the seventeenth century, cessationism had become entrenched as orthodoxy, despite its defiance of Scripture.
In the early twentieth century, the Pentecostal revival reignited belief in miracles and spiritual gifts. Yet it did not restore biblical theology. Instead, leaders like Howard Carter created artificial systems such as what Vincent Cheung calls the three-by-nine matrix of spiritual gifts. This scheme divided the gifts into categories of revelation, power, and utterance, a human invention that imposed unnatural limits on spiritual life. Charismatic movements spread this matrix globally, creating a new tradition only slightly less rigid and misleading as the old.
Today, most debates about miracles are trapped inside these defective frameworks. Cessationists argue against gifts that are misdefined. Charismatics defend gifts they scarcely understand. The true biblical pattern is almost forgotten: faith in God, Christ’s promises, the living Spirit, and the unstoppable force of prayer. Gifts exist, but they were never meant to define, regulate, or restrict the entire spectrum of supernatural ministry.
The restoration of authentic orthodoxy is underway. Miracles are not confined to human limits but flow from an ever-expanding relationship with the living God. They will not diminish but increase, until they are swallowed up by the glorified powers of the children of God. True orthodoxy is prehistoric, far more ancient than the historic orthodoxy of man. It began with God himself and will continue past the end of history. The Spirit was never caged by human matrices. Faith was never meant to be boxed by unbiblical categories. The kingdom is breaking out again, not as an echo of tradition but as a return to the primal design.