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Transcript 557A — Divine Healing
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Hello. I have a question about healing. On a program which we watch on TV they do a great deal of healing, and they always give all the credit to Christ and God. And I'd like to hear what you feel about that healing, and how the Bible relates to it.
HC: The question has to do with so called divine healing. We know from the Bible that God heals. God upholds the universe by His power. He upholds His creation. And any time you receive an injury, or if you're operated, or if you have the flu, or whatever, you are healed by God, who provides His healing mercies And normally this takes some time. It may be a short period of time or a long period of time. But there is healing.
Sometimes this healing is very dramatic. Sometimes the doctors may conclude that there is no hope, and yet you become well again. This is because doctors have a limited knowledge of the body and the way God cares for our bodies. And if it's God's program, even a person who is very very ill and who has been given up as having no hope can become well again if it is God's will.
The question at issue today is the question of so called miraculous healing. Now miraculous healing has to do with a situation where the ordinary rules by which God governs the universe are set aside. If, for example, I broke my arm and then someone prayed over me and instantaneously my arm would be whole again, that would be miraculous. None of the normal healing processes were included in that. It was just an instantaneous healing.
If I, for example, was born without a hand, or with a crippled hand of some kind so that it was very atrophied, and then someone prayed over me and suddenly I had a whole hand, that would be a miraculous healing. Now this kind of healing is not going on today. That's not possible. The only miracle that God wants us to look at is the miracle of the cross. The Jews came to Jesus seeking for a miracle, and Jesus said, "An evil and an adulterous generation seeketh for a miracle. The only miracle I will give you is the miracle of the prophet Jonah (or the sign of the prophet Jonah), who was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. So the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."
However, there is a tremendous interest in physical well-being. The world of course is exceedingly interested in this. You can understand this, because the unsaved people, for them this is all that they have to go for. And so they're very interested in this. They would do anything they can in order to have whole bodies. Many people who call themselves Christians also become tremendously interested in this, and think that this really is the great thing that we have to look for. And so this is very highly featured.
Then they begin to talk about miracles. And of course if you look long enough for a miracle, then you will see a miracle. That doesn't mean a miracle really has occurred, but our minds are very deceptive, and so we think that we have seen a miracle.
CALLER: Well, how do you compare this with I Corinthians 12:9, where it says, "To another gifts of healing by the one Spirit."
HC: The question is, what about I Corinthians 12:9, where it talks about the fact that within the church God has given various gifts? Now first of all, we have to look at the church in its total expanse. The church has existed for 13,000 years. There have always been a body of believers on this earth someplace. And when we look at the Biblical statement of the church for the first 11,000 years, we find that virtually nobody had the gift of healing. There was one leper cured in 11,000 years, God indicates. There was only one leper cured in the Old Testament, or in Israel, and that was the leper Naaman. Elisha was the one who commanded him to wash in the River Jordan, and he was healed. But there just was no miraculous healing going on of any kind, except just with two or three exceptions of this nature. And yet the church existed. The congregation of Israel was the church just as much as the Baptist Church is the church, or any other congregation is the church. And yet there was no healing going on.
Now Jesus came on the scene, and for three and a half years there was a tremendous amount of healing going on by Christ. I mean miraculous healing, where He healed the ten lepers, He raised Lazarus from the dead, He did acts of healing that were absolutely beyond man's mind to get hold of. The twelve apostles did acts of healing, possibly the seventy who were sent out did acts of healing, and so very briefly the church did have those in it who did do acts of healing.
Well, then Christ went to the cross, and the Holy Spirit was poured out, And we search the Bible, and we find that in the early church for a little while, perhaps six of the apostles and one of the deacons did do acts of healing, for a little while. But no one else did; not another soul.
And then God indicates, when we begin to approach the end of time, when He speaks of signs and wonders, that this is by the activity of Satan. And so we would not expect to find any miracles today. So even though the Bible says that within the church there may be those who do healing or miracles, God nowhere infers that this is going to be a constant or a continuing thing, or something that we could expect at any time in the history of the church. No, that is not normative in any way at all. It is not a bit normative.
CALLER: Is it too strong to say that it's your conclusion that if some group practices healing, or apparently practices healing, that is evidence that they're not good?
HC: Oh, I would not make a judgment of any group. I would only say this, that if I am going to preach the Gospel, then I want to stick to the Bible. Now if someone else wants to preach a gospel and they want to include healing in it, and anything else they want to include in it, that's their business. I can't make a judgment of them. But all I know is that I want to stick with the Bible. And the Bible nowhere infers that God guarantees whole bodies for us. The fact is, the Bible teaches exactly the opposite, that our bodies will wear away, will waste away, and finally we will die. This is the nature of mankind. The Bible teaches that. And the Bible rather teaches us that Christ went to the cross to heal us of our sin-sick souls. For we were straying like sheep. By His stripes we are healed. In other words, Christ went to the cross to give us something infinitely more important than physical healing.
Now if a group wants to speak about healing and make that a big thing in their gospel message, that's their business. And all I know is that there is no miraculous healing going on. I'm very convinced of this from everything I read in the Bible. I know that people see what they want to see, I know that there is a certain amount of chicanery, a certain amount of deceitfulness that's going on, and I know that there's a certain amount of psychosomatic illness, so that when a person places his trust in anything at all then the result of his tension, which might be a real disease, will also disappear. And so it will look like a miraculous healing. And beyond that I do not believe that there is miraculous healing going on.
CALLER: Thank you for your time
HC: Thank you for calling. Good night.