‘Will God heal me?’
Ronald Dunn’s tells the following story in his excellent book, ‘Will God heal me?’ It poses some very important questions.
“A friend of mine and his wife, who suffered from severe migraine headaches, attended a Bible conference led by two well known ministers. Talking to them one evening after the session she happened to mention her headaches. The two preachers questioned her at length about her background, her parents and grandparents. They concluded that her headaches were the result of a curse passed on from her mother who played with a ‘ouija board’ as a child, which gave the devil a point of entry, which curse apparently had not been broken by her mother.
After praying for her healing, rebuking the devil and renouncing the curse, the preachers advised her to stop taking the medication her doctor had prescribed . . . This they said would be an act of faith, her positive confession, which is how I got involved. Her doctor warned her, from the start, that a sudden withdrawal of the medicine could trigger a heart attack. She asked me what I thought about that. I told her that I did not think very much of it! I would stay on the medication. The conference leaders had based their actions on the passages in Deuteronomy 25 and 28 which talk about curses. (If you do this we will curse you. If you do this we will bless you – one of the blessings is healing).
What grieves me most about this is the careless theology that endangered the life of my friend. Only those teachings in the Old Testament that are reiterated either in form or in theology in the New Testament apply to us today.”
Then follows a quotation from Warren Wiersby,
“God promised healing and prosperity to Israel but he never gave these promises to the New Testament church. They were in the infancy of their nationhood and like all children had to learn primarily through rewards and punishments. But there comes a time when children must learn to obey not because obedience is profitable but because it is right. People today who urge suffering believers to have more faith or get right with God are unconsciously agreeing with Satan or Job’s friends. They are asking us to regress into childhood, rather than grow into maturity.”
In my early days as a junior doctor at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, I admitted a young man who was a Pentecostal church minister. Several years before he had been diagnosed as having ulcerative colitis, a chronic inflammation of the large bowel which causes diarrhoea and intermittent bleeding.. This only partially responded to medical therapy. He mentioned his problem to some colleagues and they met up to pray for him. Afterwards they were very confident that God would answer their prayers and that he should consider himself healed. In spite of the fact that his bowel symptoms continued he continued in the belief that he had been healed. It was only a couple of years later when his symptoms became intolerable that he sought further medical help. It was too late. He had already developed cancer of the large bowel which had spread to the liver. Clearly he had not been healed. His mistake was to believe the words of his friends and not to give his persistent symptoms the significance they require. A tragedy such as this demand that the teaching of those who claim they have the gift of being Christian healers should be questioned.
Science is not opposed to faith but can be used to test claims of pseudo-faith. The television psychologist Darren Brown became very concerned about the abuses he saw going on in some so called Christian healing services. He noted that financial contributions were regularly asked for and many of the so-called healers lived very affluent lifestyles on the proceeds. He concluded that public faith healing was “a highly dangerous scam” and decided to do an experiment. He selected a suitable person to act as a spiritual healer. His appointee, Daren, had previously been a scuba diver. For six months he was trained in all the needed techniques including emotional preaching. He went out on the streets in the United States and many people claimed to have the relief of painful symptoms – transiently at least. It does appear that an adrenaline rush associated with emotional support is a powerful analgesic. He then led a healing revival meeting in which people were supposedly healed and were ‘slain in the spirit’. At the end of the meeting Darren, now Pastor James Collins (note the initials J.C.) told the audience that this was a scam but many had been helped. The result was shown in a television programme in April 2011 on Channel 4 titled “Miracles for Sale”. This clearly demonstrated how many of the techniques used were either psychological tricks or fraudulent and were not the work of the Holy Spirit.
God does heal now but has promised to heal then
Throughout the Bible God is described as being a healing God. We all know this to be true. When you develop an infection such as flu, Covid or chicken-pox God heals the vast majority of us. He has built into our make-up an immune mechanism that is very effective.
The following verse that is often quotedit is often misunderstood and misapplied.
“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5
The word translated “healed” can mean either spiritual or physical healing. However, the context of Isaiah 53 makes it clear that this passage is speaking of spiritual healing. Peter refers to this passage in his first letter,
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed” 1 Peter 2:24
Peter is talking about sin and righteousness, not sickness and disease. Therefore, being “healed” in both these verses is speaking of being forgiven and saved, not physically healed.
The Bible does not specifically link physical healing with spiritual healing. Sometimes people are physically healed when they place their faith in Christ, but this is not always the case. Sometimes it is God’s will to heal, but sometimes it is not. The apostle John gives us the proper perspective:
“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of Him” 1 John 5:14-15
God still performs miracles, where he breaks his own laws of nature, occasionally. God still heals people. However, sickness, disease, pain, and death are very much realities in this world. Unless the Lord returns, everyone alive today will die, and the vast majority of them (Christians included) will die as the result of a physical problem (disease, sickness, injury). It is not obviously always God’s will to heal us physically. Christians are certainly not exempted from this fate.
Ultimately, our full physical healing awaits us in heaven, then:
“There will be no more death, mourning, crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Revelation 21:4
We need to focus on pleasing the God who can take us to heaven where we will no longer have to deal with physical problems. We should therefore be less preoccupied with our physical condition in this world and a lot more concerned with our spiritual condition. In the West many are obsessed with their wealth and physical health but have forgotten what really matters:
“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:1-2
