Cessationism is the belief that the sign gifts God gave the church are no longer operational or valid for the church today — their purpose and function for authenticating the message of the apostles is no longer necessary because of the completion of the word of God. Among the things believed to have ceased are both miraculous gifts (speaking in tongues, prophecy, and miracles) and special offices (apostle and prophet).
Continuationists are those who believe that those gifts and offices are both operational and valid for today’s church.
Yet, as Phil Johnson has demonstrated so well, evangelical believers are all cessationists (whether they are willing to acknowledge it or not):
…modern charismatics have already adopted a cessationist position. When pressed on the issue, all honest charismatics are forced to admit that the “gifts” they receive today are of lesser quality than those of the apostolic era.
Contemporary tongues-speakers do not speak in understandable or translatable dialects, the way the apostles and their followers did at Pentecost. Charismatics who minister on the foreign mission-field are not typically able to preach the gospel miraculously in the tongues of their hearers. Charismatic missionaries have to go to language school like everyone else.
If all sides already acknowledge that there are no modern workers of signs and wonders who can really duplicate apostolic power, then we have no actual argument about the principle of cessationism, and therefore all the frantic demands for biblical and exegetical support for cessationism are superfluous. The real gist of our disagreement boils down only to a question of degree.
The entire article is helpful and definitely worth reading.
Words of Grace 