W.P. Jolly
Of all the modern systems of deception, there is none quite so mean and plain crooked as the so-called “healing” campaigns. Please consider the following:
In New Testament times all healing that was done was accomplished at once, without delay. Such is not true of the modern “healers” today. People are asked, “Don’t you feel a little better than you did?” or questions of like nature. Some people have even been known to throw away their crutches one day and then be found using them again the next. They simply are not healed.
If these men have power to heal they ought to heal everybody that asks to be healed, including the totally deaf and the totally blind. This ought to be performed in a moment of time, immediately, even as it was done by the apostles of Christ. It certainly should not require hours of crying, praying and general hysteria in order to get the job done. If these self-styled “healers” can’t do these things then they ought to quit making such broad claims and thus eliminate all the public confusion which they have wrought.
If these men fail and then cast the blame upon the sick person for his “lack of faith” they are really saying in effect that they have nothing to do with it after all and that the healing is actually accomplished by the faith of the afflicted one. Now if this be true, of what use is the “healer”? If the cure depends upon the sick man’s faith, then for what purpose are these “healers” going about the country anyway? The sick man could bring about his own cure by faith, in the privacy of his own home. And in addition to this, he would not need to spend money on the “faith healer.” The truth is friends that this sort of thing is a dirty, low-down, devilish, deceptive fraud.
Listen: When the disciples of the Lord failed to heal a man on one occasion, they asked the Lord why they couldn’t heal him. Here is the Bible record: “And Jesus said unto them, because of your unbelief” (Matt. 17:20). Yes, it was because of their unbelief. The sick man’s faith or lack of faith had nothing to do with it. It is not one bit harder for God to raise the dead than it is for Him to work a miraculous cure on a sore toe. Show men one dead person that has been raised in one of these “healing” campaigns. Show me one cork leg that has been replaced with one of flesh and bone. Show me one glass eye that has been replaced by a real human eye. Don’t be deceived, for “Many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).
The miracles of the New Testament days were for a special purpose and that purpose was to confirm the word. “And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. (Mark 16:20). The word was confirmed, or proven to be of God by the performing of miracles. When the word was firmly established and confirmed, the need for further confirmation ceased. A thing once confirmed is forever confirmed. Consider the fact that the Apostle Paul brought a dead man back to life (Acts 20:9-10). The same apostle left one of his co-laborers in the gospel at Miletum sick. (2 Tim. 4:20) If Paul could raise the dead, why did he leave Trophimus at Miletum sick? He did it simply because he could not abuse the power which God wrought through him. This power was to be used on special occasions to prove to a skeptical world that his words were the words of the true and living God. His mission was to preach the gospel, not to heal the sick. His beloved son in the faith Timothy was burdened with his “often infirmities” but we find no record of Paul ever going to him and healing him. Paul could not even remove his own “thorn in the flesh” though he prayed that it be taken away.
The divine record testified that miracles were to cease. Hear the New Testament:
Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophesies, 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 that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away (1 Cor. 13:8-10).
We now have that perfect revelation of God to man, the New Testament scriptures. Hear the claim:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” (2 Tim. 3:16-17)
What else could the Christian want or need?
