Position · 1906

Continuationism

The view that all the gifts of the Spirit described in the New Testament, including tongues, prophecy and healing, continue in the church today.

Holders argue that the New Testament expects the gifts to last until Christ returns. The view became the core of the Pentecostal movement after the Azusa Street Revival (1906) and spread into older churches through the Charismatic renewal from c. 1960. In the 1980s John Wimber and the Vineyard movement, called the “Third Wave”, brought it to evangelicals who did not identify as Pentecostal or charismatic. Wayne Grudem gave an influential account of modern prophecy. Critics, including cessationists, object that modern gifts do not match the New Testament ones and can undercut the sufficiency of Scripture.