Does God Promise Health and Wealth- John MacArthur

John MacArthur deals with the idea that some prosperity folks teach that we are gods and that we can pretty much demand that we have health and wealth. DB

The subject tonight in our study of the Charismatic Chaos is the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel. We can title this message with a question; does God promise health and wealth?

When I was in the Soviet Union a couple of weeks ago they said to me, "We want you to preach on the health and wealth gospel." I was talking to hundreds of pastors, and PastorDuKhanchenko who heads up the Church there in the Ukraine said, "I want you to preach on the health, wealth gospel." I said, "You're not telling me that that's a problem here?" How could anybody go to the Soviet Union and promise people wealth? A whole nation in poverty he said, "It's here."

He said, "Recently, outside of Kiev, a man came from America and he called the people in the city together, and he said he represented Jesus Christ, and he was going to preach, and a great crowd of non-Christian people came to hear him, and he promised them that God wanted them healthy and wealthy, and he said if they came back the next night, the power of God would fall and they would all be healed, and so they came. He said a large crowd came and nobody got healed and they spit on the man, they spit on the man.

The kind of foolish promises that are being made that cannot be fulfilled bring a terrible reproach to the name of Christ. One of the most unusual legacies of World War II has been what are known as the cargo cults of the South Pacific, anybody who lives in Australia or New Zealand knows about them. Many Aboriginal Island people ranging from northern Australia to Indonesia were first exposed to modern civilization through the allied armed forces during World War II.

The American military, in particular, often used these remote islands in the South Pacific as sites for temporary landing strips and supply depots. Those of you who remember the scenario of World War II, personally I have absolutely no memory of any of it because I was so small, but I've read and I know what occurred, some of you will even remember, and some of you will remember your history books and be reminded of the fact that we were all over the South Pacific on remote little islands with our landing strips and our supply depots so that we could keep our men in the air particularly. So when Americans and other allies came to these little islands and met these Aboriginal Island people they came bringing cargo. They flew in there, created these airstrips so they could fly larger equipment in there, and then they brought in huge warehouses full of cargo and they left as quickly as they came when the war ended. The tribal people had absolutely no opportunity to learn the ways of civilization, but for a brief moment they saw high technology up close. Cargo planes would swoop in from the sky, they would land, they would unload their payload and then takeoff.

Natives who lived in the bush all of a sudden saw cigarette lighters that produced fire instantly and they believed it to be miraculous. They saw large machines come in and push trees down. They went all the way from not even having a wheel or a cart to seeing a Jeep, modern weaponry, refrigerators, radios, talking boxes, power tools, and many varieties of food in all kinds of cans and jars. They were fascinated by all of that and many of those tribal people concluded that the white men were gods. When the war was over and the troops were gone tribesmen built shrines to the cargo gods. Their tabernacles were perfect replicas of cargo planes, control towers and airplane hangers; they made them out of bamboo and woven material. These structures looked remarkably like the control towers and the plane hangers and the planes themselves, but they were really nonfunctional; all they were was shrines or temples to the cargo gods.

On some of those remote islands today the cargo cults still thrive. Some have personified all Americans in one deity and they call that deity Tom Navy. They pray for holy cargo from every airplane that flies over. They venerate religious relics like Zippo lighters, cameras, eyeglasses, ballpoint pens, nuts and bolts, and so on. As civilization has begun to penetrate some of these cultures their fascination for cargo has not diminished. In fact, missionaries that have been sent to these areas where cargo cults have flourished receive a warm reception at first because the cargo cultist's view their arrival as the second coming of the cargo god, but they're looking for cargo not Gospel, and missionaries say they find it very difficult to penetrate the materialism that is the essence of the cargo cults.

In recent years the Charismatic movement has spawned its own variety of cargo cult. It is called the word faith movement; known otherwise as the faith Movement, known as the faith formula, known as the word of faith, hyperfaith, positive confession, name it and claim it, health, wealth, and prosperity teaching, all of those titles.

This subdivision of the Charismatic movement, listen, is easily as superstitious and materialistic as the cargo cults of the South Pacific. The Leaders of this word faith movement, including Kenneth Hagan, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, Robert Tilton, Fred Price, and Charles Capps promise each believer financial prosperity and perfect health; anything less, they argue, is not God's will. There are many people who chime in with this, in fact, as I understand, last week there was a great, great convocation at the church of Fred Price, which espouses this, attended by many, not only Charismatics and Pentecostals but even a leading Presbyterian pastor in our area, they were all there. The tentacles of this kind of theology has reached out far and wide. They have sought mainstream acceptance and they have managed to build relationships with people, who because of those relationships will not speak the truth against them, and so the thing flourishes like a wildfire. Of course it appeals to people because it demands nothing but faith; it doesn't demand holiness, it doesn't demand devotion or dedication, it only demands faith and it promises that if you have enough you'll get rich and healthy, that's a popular message.

I suppose we could say that virtually every false religion ever spawned by man worships a god whose function it is to deliver some kind of cargo, that is, human religion invariably invents gods for utilitarian reasons. They invent gods that give them what they want. They invent deities to serve them rather than the other way around. The word faith theology has turned Christianity into a system that is no different from the lowest human religions. It is a form of voodoo where God can be coerced, cajoled, manipulated, controlled, and exploited for the Christian's own ends.

I received a mailing sent out by one rather extreme word faith teacher named David Eppley. A brochure was included with a bar of prayer blessed soap, "We are going to wash away all bad luck, sickness, misfortunes, and evil. Yes, even that evil person you want out of your life. Jesus helped a man wash blindness from his eyes; I want to help you concerning hexes, vexes, home problems, love, happiness, and joy," the brochure said.

Inside the brochure were testimonies from people who had been blessed by that ministry. "Door opens to new job," said one. "An $80,000 dream comes true," said another. "Couldn't use my hand for 12 years," said another. Also inside was a personal letter from the pastor closing with a full page of instruction on how to use the soap. If you used it right it would bring you healing and money. "Now after you wash the poverty from your hands take out the largest bill or check you have. That $100, $50, or $20 bill, hold it in your clean hands and say, 'In Jesus' name I dedicate this gift to God's work and expect a miracle return of money,'" and of course, your largest bill or check must be sent to David Eppley.

The last paragraph said, "Through this gift of discernment, I see someone sending a $25 offering and God is showing me a large check coming to them in the next short while I mean large; it looks like over $1,000. I know this sounds strange but you know me well enough to know that I have to obey God when He speaks." I'll be here waiting for your answer.

Frankly, that sounds more like Black Magic. Certainly a more outrageous example than most, but still it reflects a style that is typical of nearly all word faith ministries. If it was just plain hucksterism that would be bad enough. I guess I could tell you honestly, I can take Reverend Ike, I can take Reverend Ike because - I don't know if you know who he is, but if you don't, don't worry about it, but I can take Reverend Ike because he uses the same gimmick, but he doesn't make it Christian. What corrupts so devastatingly is to tie this kind of con game into Christ.

Word faith teachers have corrupted the heart of New Testament Christianity. They have moved the believers' focus off sound doctrine, worship, service, sacrifice, and ministry; and they've shifted it instead to promised physical, financial, and material blessings. Those blessings are the cargo that God is supposed to deliver to those who know and follow the word faith formula.

Word faith writings, there are myriad of these, you can't even keep up with them. I got a new one this week that somebody sent me to try to help me to see the truth. It's a thick book and it's all about all of these word faith teachers. It has all their pictures on the front. There's almost no end to the proliferation of literature, but there - many trees are dying in this operation to be used for pulp and paper. Word faith articles carry titles like, "How to Write Your Own Ticket with God," "Godliness is Profitable," "The Laws of Prosperity," "God's Creative Power Will Work for You," "Releasing the Ability of God Through Prayer," "God's Formula for Success and Prosperity," "God's Master Key to Prosperity," and "Living in Divine Prosperity," and so it goes.

In word faith religion the believer uses God, whereas, the truth of Biblical Christianity is God uses the believer. Word faith theology sees the Holy Spirit as a power to be put to use for whatever the believer wants. The Bible teaches, however, that the Holy Spirit is a person who enables the believer to do whatever God wants. It is absolutely the opposite of Scripture. Many word faith teachers claim that Jesus was Born Again so that we might become little gods. Scripture, however, teaches that Jesus is God and it is we who must be born again.

Frankly, I have little or no tolerance for these deceptions, these corruptions of Scriptures and false claims of the word faith movement. I have absolutely no constraints on me to speak to this issue because I believe I am literally bound by my obligation as one called to minister the truth of God to so speak, because this defies everything I understand to be true about Scripture.

The movement closely resembles some of the destructive greed sects that ravaged the early church. Paul and other Apostles were not accommodating too or conciliatory with the false teachers who propagated ideas like that in their day. They identified them as dangerous false teachers and urged Christians to avoid them. Paul warned Timothy, for example, about "Men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain." This isn't anything new; Paul was dealing with those who thought godliness was a ticket for money.

Paul further said to Timothy, "But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith, and pierced themselves with many a pang but flee from these things."

These cults are generated; know this, out of a love for money. They develop a religion to accommodate their lust. Jude wrote of the greed mongers of his day, "Woe to them, for they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. These men are those who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves, clouds without water carried along by wind, autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up their own shame like foam, wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever. They are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts, they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage."

There is nothing I could say that would be as strong as that, and that's out of God's Word. Peter wrote, "But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves and many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned and in their greed they will exploit you with false words."

Peter went on to say, "Their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by sensuality, that is, they entice you by the things you lust for, and they entice those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption, for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved."

You show me a person who preaches the money gospel, the money Message, the wealth message; I'll show you a person who has been corrupted by the love of money, that's what Peter's saying. Paul said covetousness is idolatry and Paul forbade the Ephesians to be partakers with anyone who brought either a message of immorality or a message of covetousness, Ephesians 5:5-7.

Now the question is how closely do modern word faith teachers resemble the greedy false teachers that the Apostles described? Is it fair to write the movement off as heretical? As sub-Christian? Well, I want us to look at that, and let's find out. In some ways I hesitate to label the word faith movement as a cult only because its boundaries are as yet, somewhat hazy. Many sincere Christians hover around the periphery of the word faith teaching. It isn't a sort of bordered, identifiable cult, it's somewhat amorphous and it floats in an almost undefined way and bumps in and out of all kinds of groups of Christians, and so while on the one hand we can't say that everybody that it touches is cultic, all of the elements within it are cultic.

It has a distorted Christology that is a warped view of Christ. It has a distorted view of man, an exalted view of man. It has a theology built on human works. It has a process of sanctification that justifies greed. It has a belief that new revelation from within the group is unlocking secrets that have been hidden from the church for years. It believes that extra biblical human writings are inspired and authoritative, and it has an exclusivity that compels its adherents to shun any and every criticism of the movement. In fact, as you know, Benny Hinn said if anybody criticizes him he wants to get a Holy Ghost machine gun and blow their head off.

Without some exacting corrections in the movement's doctrinal foundations it will become a clearly identifiable cult, if it is not already so. It certainly is the closest thing on earth to the greed cults of the New Testament era which the apostles bluntly labeled heresy. Now I know that is a serious verdict, but I think there's ample evidence to bear it out. At almost every turn the word faith movement has tainted, twisted, garbled, misunderstood, corrupted, or obliterated the crucial doctrines of Christian faith. Let me help you with that by looking at some of them.

First of all, the word faith movement has the wrong god, it has the wrong god. I believe that it is fair to say that the god of the word faith movement is not the God of the Bible. Word faith teaching, in effect, listen to this, sets the individual believer, are you ready for this, above God, and turns God into Santa Claus, or a genie, or a valet who is there to do whatever the Christian tells Him. See, these word faith teachers are their own supreme authority.

Kenneth Hagan, who is patriarchal in this movement, wrote this booklet called, "How To Write Your Own Ticket With God." He tells about seeing a vision of Jesus and he says to Him, "Dear Lord, I have two sermons I preach concerning the woman who touched Your clothes and was healed when You were on earth. I received both of these sermons by inspiration." I am quoting him. Later on he quotes what Jesus told him in reply, Jesus said, "You're correct, My Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is endeavored to get another sermon into your spirit but you failed to pick it up. While I'm here I will do what you ask, I will give you that sermon outline, now get your pencil and paper and write it down.
That's what Jesus said to him, he says. Hagan claims to have received numerous visions as well as eight personal visitations from Jesus. Hagan has written, "The Lord Himself taught me about prosperity. I never read about it in a book, I got it directly from heaven." That claim is a lie, outright; I'll show you why a little later. You see they believe or they want every body else to believe that God is giving this information to them. Do you understand beloved that if you do not have a closed cannon, and if Scripture did not end with the Book of Revelation, if you believe that God is still giving revelation there is no way to stop the flood.

Everybody is claiming God speaks to them. Fortunately, for the word faith people, God is telling them exactly what they want Him to say. They've created God in the image that they want Him to be. For example, they have no concept of God as sovereign. Scripture says in Psalm 103:19, "The Lord has established His throne in the heavens; and His sovereignty rules over all." What that simply means is, God's in charge of everybody and everything. God is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, 1 Timothy 6:15, yet in the volumes of word faith material that I have read, I have not found one reference to the sovereignty of God, not one. The reason is clear; they don't believe He's sovereign.

Jesus, according to word faith teaching, has no authority on earth; it is all delegated to the church. Kenneth Hagan says this in his book entitled, "The Authority of the Believer," which by the way, has long sections which were taken verbatim from other books written by other people and he says he got them from God; it's just not true, but he says Jesus has no authority, He delegated it all to the church; we're in charge of God and we're in charge of Jesus.

Furthermore, word faith theology teaches that God is bound by spiritual laws that govern health and prosperity. God is bound by some laws, some principles. If we say the right words, or if we have the right faith, God is forced to respond however we determine. Robert Tilton claims that God has already committed to take His part in a covenant relationship with us. We can make whatever commitment or promise to Him we want, says Tilton, "Then we can tell God, on the authority of His Word, what we would like Him to do. That's right; you can actually tell God what you would like His part in the covenant to be."

In the word faith system God is not Lord of all, He can't work unless we release Him to work, He is dependent on human instruments, He is dependent on human faith, and above all, He has to act in response to human words to get His work done. Charles Capps has written, "It is in your power to release the ability of God." In other words, "God is stuck until we speak His orders," on the other hand, according to Charles Capps, "Fear activates the devil." If you succumb to fear, even doubting a little, he says, "You've moved God out of it. You have stopped God's ability immediately." Maybe it was just about to come into manifestation, but now you have established Satan's word in the earth, "That it is not getting any better, it is getting worse. You have established his word."

What he is saying is, if you have fear, you release the devil to work, if you have faith, you release God to work. So if you're afraid of Satan, you've bottled God and set Satan loose, my you're a powerful person. According to Charles Capps, in his book, "The Tongue A Creative Force," God has turned over His sovereignty, including, listen to this, His creative authority, to people.

Capps has written, "In August of 1973 the Word of the Lord came unto me saying," just that's frightening and this is a quote, this is the Lord speaking to Charles Capps, "If men would believe me, long prayers are not necessary. Just speaking the Word will bring you what you desire. My creative power is given to man in word form. I have ceased for a time, from My work and have given man the book of My creative power. For it to be effective man must speak it in faith Jesus spoke it when He was on earth and as it worked then, so it shall work now, but it must be spoken by the body. Man must rise up and have dominion over the power of evil by My words. It is my greatest desire that My people create a better life by the spoken word, for My word has not lost its power just because it has been spoken once. It is still equally as powerful today as when I said, 'Let there be light,' but for My word to be effective, men must speak it and that creative power will come forth performing that which is spoken in faith."

Simply saying, in other words, what he is stating is this; you have the ability, if you have enough faith, to create with your words. You want money? Create it with your faith filled words. You want healing? Create it with your faith filled words. It escapes me how one of these popular word faith teachers could possibly be $5 million dollars in debt; can't he just speak it into existence? Then on the other hand, why pray at all if your words have so much creative force? Why pray? What's there to ask for? You really come up with a denial that you need to seek anything from God; after all, God has given the sovereignty to you, He's yielded up His creative power to you, it's not His word anymore, it was His word the first time, it's your word now. Speak it into existence, you don't need Him, you're sovereign.

Another of their teachers, Norville Hayes, says it is better to talk to your checkbook, talk to your disease, or talk to whatever predicament you're in than to turn to God in prayer. I'm quoting, "You aren't supposed to talk to Jesus about it, you're supposed to talk directly to the mountain in Jesus' Name, whatever the mountain is in your life. Stop talking to Jesus about it, stop talking to anybody else about it, speak to the mountain itself in Jesus' Name. Don't say, "Oh God, help me, remove this sickness from me," say, "Flu, I'm not going to let you come into my body. Go from me in the name of Jesus. Nose, I tell you, stop running. Cough, I tell you to leave in Jesus' name." Say, "Cancer, you can't kill me, I will never die of cancer in Jesus' name." I'm quoting him further, "Do you have a financial mountain in your life? Start talking to your money. Tell your checkbook to line up with God's word. Talk to your business, command customers to come into your business and spend their money there. Talk to the mountain."

You laugh at this, and I understand that, but there are a lot of people who don't laugh at this, they're believing this. Norville Hayes has several publications and one of them titled "Putting Your Angels to Work," which indicates that you're not only sovereign over this world but you're sovereign over the angelic world as well. Hayes also teaches that believers can exercise dominion over the angels, "Since angels are ministering spirits sent to minister to and for Christians," he reasons, "We can learn how to put them into action on our behalf. We believers ought to be keeping those angelic creatures busy. We ought to have them working for us all of the time."

So I think it's fair to say that word faith theology denies the sovereignty of God, removes the need to pray to God for any relief from burdens or needs and gives the Christian himself both dominion and creative power. In my judgment it is human pride at its ugliest. Worse, it is idolatry and the new idol is self, and God is dethroned. To follow this wrong God concept a little further, the word faith movement teaches that when you become a Christian you become part of a race of little gods. Kenneth Copeland has explicitly stated what many word faith teachers more subtly imply.

This is what Kenneth Copeland writes, "He imparted in you, when you were born again," Peter said it just as plain he said; "We are partakers of the divine nature. That nature is life eternal in absolute perfection, and that was imparted, injected into your spiritman and you have that imparted into you by God just the same as you imparted into your child the nature of humanity. That child wasn't born a whale, he was born a human, isn't that true? Well now, you don't have a human do you? You are one. And you don't have a god in you, you are one."

Copeland teaches that Adam was created in the god class; that is, Adam was a reproduction of God. Listen to what he says, "He was not subordinate to God, Adam was walking as a god. What he said went, what he did counted, and when he bowed his knee to Satan and put Satan up above him then there wasn't anything God could do about it because a god had placed Satan there. Adam, remember, was created in the god class, but when he committed high treason he fell below the god class."
On the cross, according to Copeland, Jesus won the right for believers to be born again back into the god class. Adam was created, not subordinate to God, but as a god, he lost it, and in Christ we are taken back to the god class. In saying that, Copeland believes that Jesus, "Won healing, He won deliverance; He won financial prosperity, mental prosperity, physical prosperity, family prosperity. He said He'd meet my needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus, and I'm walking around and saying, 'yes, my needs are met according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.' Glory to God, I'm coveting to the need meter, I'm coveting to the I AM, Hallelujah, and I say this with all respect so that it don't upset you too bad, but I say it anyway; when I read in the Bible where He says I am I just smile and say yes, I am too."

That is so blasphemous it ought to make every true child of God cringe, yet it is typical of word faith teaching. For any human being to call himself the I am, Yahweh, the eternal saving sovereign God is blasphemy. In the face of criticism for some of his statements about the deity of the believer, Copeland appeared with Paul and Jan Crouch on Trinity Broadcasting Network's program "Praise the Lord!" and he was there to defend his teaching.

This is the following conversation that ensued, Paul Crouch said; God doesn't even draw a distinction between Himself and us. Kenneth Copeland said, never, never, you never can do that in a covenant relationship. Paul Crouch, do you know what else that has settled then tonight? This hue and cry and controversy that has been spawned by the devil to try and bring dissension within the Body of Christ that we are gods, I am a little god. Kenneth Copeland, yes, yes. Jan Crouch, absolutely, He gave us His name. Kenneth Copeland, the reason we are. Paul Crouch, I have His name, I'm one with Him, I'm in covenant relations, I am a little god, critics be gone. Kenneth Copeland, you are anything that He is. Paul Crouch, yes.

Paul Crouch, head and on air host of Trinity Broadcasting Network and therefore one of the most powerful influential people in the religious broadcasting today, has reaffirmed repeatedly his commitment to the little gods doctrine of word faith, quoting him,
"That new creation that comes in new birth is created in His image. It is joined then with Jesus Christ. Is that correct? So in that sense, I saw this many years ago, whatever that union is that unites Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, He says, 'Father, I want them to be one with Me, even as You and I are one in us,' so apparently what He does He opens up that union of the very Godhead and brings us into it."

We become part of the Trinity in that view. Other word faith teachers have reiterated the heresy. Charles Capps writes, "I have heard people say, those who confess God's Word and say the promises of God over and over are just trying to act like God." Yes, that's exactly what we are trying to do, act as God would in a similar situation. What did He do? He spoke the thing desired.

Or O'Palk, another of them wrote, "Until we comprehend that we are little gods and we begin to act like little gods, we cannot manifest the Kingdom of God." Robert Tilton also calls the believer, "A god kind of creature designed to be as a god in this world. Designed and created by God to be the god of this world." Other of their popular preachers, Maurice Serullo had this televised conversation with Dwight Thompson, you see him on Channel 40 frequently, Maurice Serullo said, see when God created us in His image He didn't put any strings on us, did He? He didn't make us puppets. Dwight Thompson, no not at all. Maurice Serullo, He didn't say, Maurice, raise your hand, raise your, you know, and then here we are. We have no absolute, no control over us. Dwight Thompson, no, no, no. Maurice Serullo, He made Dwight Thompson, he made Maurice Serullo a small miniature god. Of course. The Bible says we're created in the image of God, His likeness. Where is that godlikeness? He gave us power, He gave us authority, He gave us dominion, He didn't tell us to act like a man, He told us to act like a god."

Benny Hinn adds, "The new creation is created after God in righteousness and true holiness. The new man is after God, like God, godlike, complete in Jesus Christ. The new creation is just like God. May I say it like this, 'You are a little god on earth running around.'"

And then Hinn responded to criticism of such teaching this way, he said, "Now are you ready for some real revelation knowledge? Ok, now watch this. He laid aside His divine form so one day I would be clothed on earth with the divine form. Kenneth Hagan has a teaching; a lot of people have problems with it, yet it is absolute truth. Kenneth Copeland has a teaching, many Christians have put holes in it, but it's divine truth. Hagan and Copeland say, "You are god, you are gods." "Oh, I can't be God! Hold it!" Let's bring balance to this teaching. The balance is being taught by Hagan; it's those who repeat him that mess it up. The balance is being taught by Copeland, who's my dear friend, but it's those who repeat what he says that are messing it up. You see there brother, when Jesus was on earth, the Bible says "He first disrobed Himself of the divine form. He, the limitless God, became a man that we men may become as He is."

You'll notice in this that they land on the verses that indicate that we enter in and participate in some of the things that are true about God, but they take it to the extreme where we become God. We do participate in the love of God, don't we? In the righteousness of God, and enjoy the grace of God, but are not God. Hagan says, "If we ever wake up and realize who we are we'll start doing the work that we're supposed to do, because the church hasn't realized yet that they are Christ, that's who they are, they are Christ."

Now we're not only God, we're Christ. Thus, have the word faith teachers agreed to depose God and put us in His place. From that basic error flow all the fallacies. Why do they teach that health and prosperity are every Christian's divine right? Because we're God, we deserve it. Right? If I'm God I deserve prosperity. Why do they teach that a believer's words have creative and determinative force? Because in their system we're God, and God could speak things into creation, and we're God so we can speak them into creation. They have bought Satan's original lie. The serpent said to the woman, "You surely shall not die, for God knows that in the day you eat from this fruit, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God." That was a lie. Man will never be like God. We will be a glorified man, not God. The idea that man can be like God is and always has been the satanic lie. It was the very lie - listen to this, brought the devil himself down. He said, "I will be like God."

Two proof texts are often used by the word faith teachers to support their teaching. In Psalm, you need to listen to this; this is their case here, in Psalm 82:6 God says to the rulers of earth, "You are gods and all of you are sons of the Most High." They quote that all of the time, Psalm 82:6, you might want to turn to it, and we'll close with just a look at the two texts they use, and we're going to take it up next week. Psalm 82:6, God says to the rulers of earth, "You are gods; and all of you are sons of the Most High," and so they say, "See, God says we're gods!"

A simple reading of the Psalm however, says something very, very, different than that. If you look at the Psalm it will reveal to you that those words were spoken to ungodly rulers, who were on the brink of judgment, ungodly rulers on the brink of judgment. Look at verse 7, they never want to read verse 7, "Nevertheless, you will die like men; and fall like any one of the princes. Arise, O God, judge the earth." What is this? There's a note of irony. God looks at these rulers and they have been rendering unjust judgments.

Back in verse 2 they have been judging unjustly, they have been showing partiality to the wicked. They have been, rather, doing injustice than justice and he says, "Look, in your own eyes you think you're gods, but you're going to die like," what? "Men." How could you ever rip that sixth verse out of that context and make it an affirmation that a Christian has become a god? Far from confirming their godhood, God is condemning them for thinking they were gods.

Word faith teachers will immediately turn to their other favorite proof text, John 10:33-34. Guess what? This is where Jesus quotes Psalm 82:6, so if you understand Psalm 82:6 you don't have a problem understanding John 10. The Jews answered Him, "For a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy and because you being a man make yourself out to be God." Then Jesus answered them, "Has it not been written in your law, I said you are gods." Don't fail to notice Jesus' purpose for choosing that verse. It would have been a very familiar one to the Scribes and Pharisees. They would have understood that that verse was an condemnation of wicked rulers, and Jesus is simply echoing the irony of the original Psalm.

Walter Martin wrote an excellent comment on this, he said, "Jesus mocks the people as if to say, 'You all think you're gods yourselves. What's one more god among you?'" Oh, the irony. You're going to stone me for claiming to be God, you're all claiming the same thing, what's one more god? The sarcasm.

Walter Martin says, "Irony is used to provoke us, not to inform us. It is not a basis for building a theology." Further he says, "It is also pertinent to an understanding of John 10 that we remember that Satan is called the 'ruler of this world' by no less an authority than the Lord Jesus Christ, and Paul reinforces this by calling the 'god of this age.' We can make a god out of anything money, power, status, position, sex, patriotism, family, or as in Lucifer's case, an angel. We can be our own god; but to call something deity or to worship it, or to treat it as divine is quite another thing, then it's being by nature and in essence deity. Jesus is not calling them 'God' in the true sense; He is saying you have made a god out of yourselves just like the people in Psalm 82 who felt the blast of God's judgment. God said to the rebellious Israelites in Isaiah 29:16, 'You turn things around.' Shall the potter be considered equal with the clay,'" Isaiah 29:16. Does the clay think it is equal to the potter? According to the word faith movement what's the answer? Yes, if not superior. They have the wrong god.

Well, they have some other things that are wrong and I'll tell you what they are next Sunday night and we'll start with the fact that they have the wrong Jesus.

Father, even as we talk about these things we are thrown almost into disbelief, not because we're not used to error but we're not used to error being received by people who say they belong to the truth. We are shocked that so many Christians who would affirm their belief in the truth will identify with the terrible heresies of this movement. We feel like Evangelical Christianity has become absolutely undefinable, it is so amorphous it has no boundaries, it is inexplicable. We almost feel like we have to pull out of the whole thing and start all over again. Lord, so many are confused, so many led astray, we just pray that somehow Your truth will reach them and that they will worship You as the sovereign God and not turn You into their valet, but fall on their face in Your presence and plead for the privilege to suffer if need be for Your sake, sickness, poverty, or death, if You so will. That like the Apostle Paul they would rejoice to suffer, they would be thankful for persecutions, distresses, deprivation, if it's Your will because You are sovereign.

Father, help us to know that we are at best men and no more. Men who have been touched with the transforming grace of Christ. Men in whom the Holy Spirit lives, but we are men and no more, redeemed men and as men we must be humbled before God. We grieve Father, that You have been so dishonored, so humiliated that such a terrible reproach has come on Your Holy Name from those who teach and believe such foolish things, and we ask that You would be exalted and bring a halt to this degrading teaching for the Savior's sake we ask, Amen.

Does God Still Heal?- John MacArthur

Now in closing, I simply say, I want to reiterate that I believe God can heal, God can do anything He wants to do. I do not believe the gift of healing is for today because it was to authenticate the Biblical message and messenger. That is in place; it needs no more authentication then the authentication given to it by the Spirit of God to the heart of the reader, but I do believe that God may in His grace chose to heal, and we have every right to pray for that, at the same time seek the finest medical help that we can because the Lord desires us to do that as well.- Pastor John MacArthur

I agree with MacArthur that the gift of healing, as practiced in the NT, is not what we see claimed by the faith healers or many charismatics. One of the most persuasive question MacArthur has asked is something to the effect of: "If these guys are healing people in the same manner as in the NT, why are they not teaming up together and roaming the halls of the hospital, a cancer ward, an intensive care unit?"  John's response? Because they do not have any gift of healing.
Well as you know, we are involved in a study of the Charismatic movement, the contemporary movement, and tonight we come to a section entitled, "Does God Still Heal?" Now in the messages that I have been giving we have intersected with the thoughts about healing, and we have said some things about that in some of our prior studies and we're not going to repeat those things, but there is much more that needs to be said tonight as we evaluate a movement that advocates healing. In fact, if there is anything that would be typically Charismatic or typically characteristic of the modern Pentecostal movement, third wave movement, or Charismatic movement, it would be a major emphasis on healing, and we need to understand that.

Let me begin with some illustrations that set the scene for us. A familiar name to anybody who studies the Charismatic movement and delves into the issues of healing is the name of a man, Hobart Freeman, a very interesting man, at one time a professor of Old Testament at Grace Theological Seminary, from which our own Dick Mahue graduated, and when he was a professor there in Old Testament, he was considered to be the finest communicator, the finest teacher there. In fact, Hobart Freeman wrote a very significant book entitled, "An Introduction to the Old Testament Prophets," which in 1969, was published and printed by the Moody Bible Institute. So he was considered by everybody to be a mainline evangelical professor, one who not only understood but could adroitly teach the truth of Scripture.

Somewhere along the line he changed. Hobart Freeman believed that God had healed him from Polio. Nonetheless, one of Freeman's legs was so much shorter than the other that he had to wear corrective shoes and walked with great difficulty. Freeman became a pastor. He began his ministry as a Baptist and after he had written and taught for some years, in the mid-60's became very fascinated with faith healing, and it moved him into the Charismatic movement, and then it moved him further and further towards the fringes of that movement. He started his own church in Claypool, Indiana; it was known as Faith Assembly and it grew to more than 2,000 members. Meetings were held in a building which he called the glory barn and church services were closed to non-members.

So it was kind of a secretive and cultic association. Freeman and the Faith Assembly congregation utterly disdained all medical treatment. He believed that modern medicine was an extension of ancient witchcraft and black magic. To submit to a doctor's remedies, Freeman believed, was to expose oneself to demonic influence. Expectant mothers in Freeman's congregation were told that they must give birth at home with the help only of a church sponsored midwife rather than go to a hospital delivery room or to be treated by a doctor. By the way, obedience to that teaching cost a number of mothers and infants their lives. In fact, over the years, at least 90 church members died as a result of ailments that would have been easily treatable. No one really knows what the actual death toll would be if nationwide figures could be compiled on all the other people who followed Hobart Freeman's teaching.

After a 15 year old girl whose parents belonged to Faith Assembly died of a medically treatable malady, the parents were convicted of negligent homicide and sentenced to ten years in prison. Freeman himself was charged with aiding and inducing reckless homicide in the case. Shortly afterward, on December 8, 1984, Freeman himself died, interestingly enough of pneumonia and heart failure complicated by a severely ulcerated leg.

Hobart Freeman's theology did not allow him to acknowledge that Polio had left one of his legs disfigured and lame. He said, "I have my healing," and that's all he would say when anyone pointed out the rather conspicuous inconsistency between his physical disabilities and his theology. Ultimately, his refusal to acknowledge his infirmities cost him his life. He had dutifully, according to his own theology, refused all medical treatment for the maladies that were killing him, and medical science could easily have prolonged his life, but in the end he was a victim of his own teaching.

Now Hobart Freeman is a very familiar name to those who are involved in faith healing, but he's not the only one. There is another one who succumbed to ailments and that is a man by the name of William Brannom, and if you study anything about the healing movement you're going to come across the name of William Brannom. He would be the father of the post World War II healing revival. He was a man reputed to have been instrumental in some of the most spectacular healings that the Pentecostals have ever seen. He died, however, in 1965 at age 56, after suffering for six days from injuries received in an automobile accident. His theology was unbiblical and heretical, and of course when applied to himself his theology of healing had no effect whatsoever, though his followers right to the end, were confident God was going to raise him up, and even after he died they believed that God would raise him from the dead.

As a boy, I was brought to become aware of another faith healer who became very, very famous, a man by the name of A.A.Allen. And A.A. Allen, about whom I read and whom I followed with curiosity, was a famed Tent Evangelist; he took his healing meeting from place to place in a tent. Interestingly enough, A.A. Allen claimed thousands upon thousands of healings, and himself died of sclerosis of the liver in 1967, having secretly been involved with alcohol for many years while supposedly being able to heal everybody else.

Perhaps a more familiar name in the healing movement would be the name of one who is elevated almost to the status of the Roman Catholic elevation of Mary, and that's a woman by the name of Kathryn Kuhlman. Kathryn Kuhlman died of heart failure in 1976, curiously enough. She had battled heart disease for nearly 20 years, and that statement is made by Jamie Buckingham who would have been one of her disciples.

Another one that comes to mind, Ruth Carter Stapleton, was the faith healing sister of former United States President JimmyCarter, refused medical treatment for cancer because of her belief in faith healing, she died of the disease in 1983, and even John Wimber, who would be probably the most prominent modern contemporary third wave healer, struggles with chronic angina and heart problems. He begins his book on Power Healing with a personal note. This is what it says; quoting John Wimber, he says, "I had what doctors later suspected were a series of coronary attacks. When we returned home a series of medical tests confirmed my worst fears, I had a damaged heart, possibly seriously damaged. Tests indicated that my heart was not functioning properly, a condition complicated and possibly caused by high blood pressure. These problems combined with my being overweight and overworked meant that I could die at any time."

Wimber writes that he sought God and he says God told him that in the same way Abraham waited for his child, I was to wait for my healing. In the meantime, he says, "He told me to follow my doctor's orders." Wimber writes, "I wish I could write that at this time I am completely healed, that I no longer have physical problems, but if I did it would not be true." Now it seems obvious, at least a curiosity of all of us, that so many leading advocates of faith healing are sick.

Annette Capps, the daughter of faith healer Charles Capps, and herself a faith healer, raised that question in her book; her book is entitled "Reverse the Curse in Your Body and Emotions." This is what she writes, "People have stumbled over the fact that the so called, healing minister, later became ill or died, they say, I don't understand this. If the Power of God came into operation and all those people were healed, why did the evangelist get sick? Why did he or she die? The reason is because healings that take place in meetings like that are a special manifestation of the Holy Spirit. This is different from using your own faith. The Evangelist, who is being used by God in the gifts of healings, is still required to use his own faith in the Word of God to receive divine health and divine healing for his own body. Why? Because the gifts of healings are not manifested for the individual who is ministering, they are for the benefit of the people."

Now that double talk basically means that somebody could have faith for somebody else's healing but not enough faith for their own healing. So, sometimes without faith for their own healing they die, while they have enough faith for other people's healings who live. She goes on to say, "Over the years I have seen various manifestations of the gifts of healing in my own ministry, but I have always had to use my own faith in God's word for my healing. There have been times that I have been attacked with illness in my body but as I ministered many were healed even though I did not feel well. I had to receive my healing through faith and acting on God's word."

Thus, she astonishingly concludes that if a faith healer gets sick, it is because his or her personal faith is somehow deficient when applied to his or herself. Now to take that a step further, you must understand that these people go so far as to say, "That even Jesus Himself sometimes did not have the faith required for people to be healed."

Perspectives on faith healing often seem as varied as the number of faith healers around. Some say God wants to heal all sickness; others come close to conceding that God's purposes may sometimes be fulfilled in our illness and infirmity. Some equate sickness with sin, others stop short of that, but still find it hard to explain why spiritually strong people get sick. Some people just flat out blame the devil, and they think if they can tie the devil up in a knot and send him off to Tibet or something everybody'll get well.

Some claim to have the gifts of Healing, others say they have no unusual healing abilities; they simply are used of God to show people the way of faith. A lot of people used to say they had the gift of healing but the chicanery they were using has for so many years been exposed that nobody today can get away with that stuff anymore, so now they just claim they don't have the gift of Healing, and they just sort of pray and have faith and God does what He wants. Some will say they heal with a physical touch, some will say you heal through anointing with oil, others say they can speak forth a healing, that they can speak it into existence, some people say they can only pray for a healing, and so forth and so on. There are healers who just keep changing from one approach to another as the chicanery and the charlatanism of the healing movement becomes exposed and they have to change their methodology.

Always a faith healer, the well known Oral Roberts used to claim that he could heal. He claimed great powers of healing; he no longer claims that. Oral Roberts claimed God had called him, in fact, to build a massive hospital, and He said this massive hospital would blend conventional medicine with faith healing. If you visit the city of Tulsa, as I did this summer, you are absolutely astonished at this facility. It is mind boggling to see a 60 story building rising out of a weed patch outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, and next to it a 30 story building rising as well, now completely vacant and most of it unfinished on the inside. In the face of huge financial losses apparently God changed His mind and declared that the whole thing should be closed down. It is a monument to the unfulfilled promises of faith healing. Nonetheless, in spite of these bizarre claims that never come to pass, faith healing and the Charismatic movement keep growing.

Charles Fox Parham who is the father of the contemporary Pentecostal movement, came to the conviction originally, this is way back, the turn of the century when Charismatic movement was then known as Pentecostalism and just starting, he claimed that God desired all believers to have complete healing and he developed that into an entire Pentecostal system, and then it began to flow through the leaders. Amy Simple McPherson, who founded the Foursquare Church, at Angelus Temple, E.W. Kenyon, William Brannom, Kathryn Kuhlman, Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagan, Kenneth Copeland, Fredrick Price, Jerry Seville, Charles Capps, Norville Hayes, Robert Tilton, Benny Hinn, Larry Lee, and on and on it goes. They have all headlined their public meetings with healing.

There are even Catholic Charismatics such as Father John Bertolucci, and Francis McNutt who have followed suit seeing the Charismatic healing emphasis is a natural extension of Roman Catholic tradition, and then in the last phase of this called The Third Wave, which we talked about leaders like John Wimber and others, Paul Kane and the Kansas City Prophets, et al., have made healing a central element in their repertoire. The claims and methods of these faith healers range frankly from the eccentric to the grotesque.

A few years ago I received - I receive everything in the mail. If they don't send it to me, somebody who wants me to see it does, and I have received bottles of healing oil and healing water and all kinds of things - but I received a miracle prayer cloth, and in it the message said, and I am quoting, "Take this special miracle prayer cloth and put it under your pillow and sleep on it tonight. Or you may want to place it on your body or on a loved one. Use it as a release point wherever you hurt. First thing in the morning send it back to me in the green envelope. Do not keep this prayer cloth, return it to me. I will take it, pray over it all night. Miracle power will flow like a river. God has something better for you, a special miracle to meet your needs."

Now these are the kinds of things that go on all the time, and of course in the green envelope you not only send the cloth but you send some green money as well. The green being a good reminder of what color they'd like to see. Interestingly enough, the sender of the prayer cloth feels he has biblical support for doing this.

While Paul was in Ephesus, you remember God performed extraordinary miracles through him, according to Acts 19, it says, "Handkerchiefs or aprons were carried from his body to the sick and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them." As we have been seeing in the series, however, Paul and the other apostles had been given unique power, and we talked about apostolic power as unique power; certainly nothing in the New Testament suggests that anybody could send out handkerchiefs and they are going to produce miracles.

Kenneth Hagan tells of one faith healer he heard of who used a method that I have never personally witnessed. Kenneth Hagen writes, "He'd always spit on them, every single one of them. He'd spit in his hand and rub it on them. That's the way he ministered. If there was something wrong with your head, he'd spit in his hand and rub it on your forehead. If you had stomach trouble, he'd spit in his hand and rub it on your clothes and on your stomach. If you had something wrong with your knee, he'd spit in his hand and rub it on your knee, and all the people would get healed," Kenneth Hagan.

Other gimmicks, not quite that uncouth, but every bit as outlandish, also can be visualized everyday as you watch your television set, some ask for seed faith money. Oral Roberts often says that if you donate money to him that is in effect a down payment on your own personal healing.

Robert Tilton regularly devises simple ploys, pledges special healings and financial miracles to people who send him money, the larger the gift, the better the miracle. "It's in direct proportion to how much money you send," he says. Pat Robertson will peer into the camera and as if he can see into people's living rooms describe people who are being healed that very moment.

Benny Hinn recently healed fellow faith healer and talk show host Paul Crouch. He healed him on the live broadcast of the Trinity Network. After Hinn had released his anointing to a roomful of people, Crouch stepped forward to testify that he'd been miraculously cured of a persistent ringing in the ears he had been suffering from for years and on and on it goes, this list of fantastic claims, incredible stories of healings grow at a frantic pace, but real evidence of genuine miracles is conspicuously absent.

Everywhere you go people are asking questions about this, from all sides comes confusion, questions, contradictions. Now as we study the Scripture, we find there are three categories of spiritual gifts, if we want to call them that. First would be the category we could say are gifted men like apostles, prophets, evangelists, teaching pastors. These are the men themselves given as gifts from Christ to the church. Then we could say there are the permanent edifying gifts and the temporary sign gifts, the other two categories. Permanent edifying gifts would be gifts related to knowledge, and wisdom, and preaching, and teaching, and exhortation, and faith, and discernment, and showing mercy, and giving, and administration, and helps, and those things that have an ongoing ministry in the church.

Then there are those temporary sign gifts, in other words, divine enablements given by the Holy Spirit for a temporary period of time as a sign for a very special purpose. These are listed for us in Scripture; they are miracles, healings, tongues, or languages, and the interpretation or translation of those languages.

Now we have noted in our study that such sign gifts had a unique purpose. Very simple, they were to identify the authentic spokesman for God. First of all, Jesus did miracles, Jesus cast out demons. He did miracles that fall into three categories. Miracles of physical healing, miracles of demonic deliverance, and miracles of natural phenomena, like walking on water, or stilling the sea, feeding people by multiplying bread and fish, and those miracles were to demonstrate to people that Jesus was not a mere man, but that He was the Messiah of God. It should be very clear to everyone who saw Him that this was not a man, because no man could do what He did.

So Christ had unique capability to do supernatural things in order to draw attention to the fact that He was unique. In fact, you need to remember that up until the time of Jesus Christ, there was nobody who could just go around healing people. There were some healings in the Old Testament, and there were some miracles of nature, and there were some powerful exhibitions of God's supernatural work in creation, and the flood, and many other supernatural powerful things, but as far as a miracle, which is a subcategory of the supernatural.

Sometimes people say, "Well, you people always say there are only three eras of miracles," and that would be the time of Moses, and then Elijah and Elisha, and then Christ and the Apostles, and those are the only three periods of miracles. Then they will say, "Well, that's not true, because creation was a miracle, and the flood was a miracle," and they will go right on through and, "Jacob wrestled an angel and that was a miracle, and God was always doing supernatural things." But they fail to make the clear distinction that miracle is a technical term, it is a subcategory for the supernatural.

God is always acting in a supernatural way, even today, every time someone is saved that is a supernatural work. But miracle is a technical term to describe an act of God which He does through a human agency, and they're very rare. Even when you go back into the Old Testament and you find miracles where God acts through a human instrumentation to authenticate His messenger and the message, they are rare and nothing like the healing ministry of Jesus. No one ever just roamed everywhere, healing everybody.

So what you have in the case of Jesus you have never seen before. Nothing like this has ever happened before in the history of the world, so this is a very unique thing, and to assume that it never happened before, to know that by Old Testament revelation, and it happened at the time of Christ, uniquely, and then it faded out in the end of the New Testament era, and now for some strange reason it's all come back at the same level as once it did and we're supposed to have this massive kind of healing going on as it did in the day of Christ, is to demonstrate an imbalance and an unsound perspective of the purpose of the miracle ministry of Jesus. It was to authenticate His Messiahship, and it is therefore irreproducible and unrepeatable.

So Jesus did unique things which were unique to His own ministry. Now it is true that Jesus passed on to the Apostles power in two of the three categories. Remember now, He healed diseases, He had power over demons, and He did miracles of nature, natural phenomenon. The first two he gave the Apostles, they never did any miracles of nature, they never did any. But "Peter," you say, "Walked on water." Yes, but that was a miracle Christ was performing and that occurred only in His presence. They never did anything like, "Feed the 5,000" or "Walk on water" after that or "Still a storm" or anything like that. The only two things they were given power to do were cast out demons and heal the sick, including raising the dead.

But in their case, again, these were to point to them, to point to them as the messengers of God. There was no printed New Testament and it was very essential that among all of the people who were saying they spoke for God somebody be able to tell who was real, and you could tell because they had power over demons and power over disease, so they were given that ability to do those things, and the Apostles could do them, and those closely associated with the Apostles could do them.

Go back into Matthew 10:1, "Having summoned His twelve disciples, He gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out," and that by the way is the gift of miracles. Miracle is dunamispower, power over the forces of demons, "and He gave them the power to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness," and that was granted to the Twelve. Later on you find out that that group was expanded and it included the 70. Remember when He sent the 70, two by two and gave them the same power? So it was a very small group. "These were the signs," says Paul, of a true Apostle. "Signs and wonders and miracles," 2 Corinthians 12:12. They were limited in scope, only casting out demons and healing diseases, and they were limited in terms of who received them, only the Apostles and the 70 commissioned directly by Jesus, those who worked alongside the Apostles. It never went beyond that.

It never became common for anybody and everybody in the church to do this. There's no indication that the Evangelists, that the prophets, with a few exceptions, Barnabas, Philip, Stephen, those very early men, never an indication that teaching pastors could do this, and certainly no indication that members of the church, the Body of Christ, could do this. These were unique apostolic gifts. When you study the epistles of Paul, and Paul is very clear about the fact that if you have problems with Satan and demons you don't find somebody who can chase them away, you put on your armor, right? "We have spiritual weapons to battle against those forces," he said.

Now if false teachers want credibility it's very obvious that they can sure draw a crowd and gain creditability if they can heal, and so that's always a kind of ploy that is used by false teachers. It has been so in history, whether you're talking about tribal witch doctors in Shamanism, in Animism, and in Paganism, or whether you are talking about occultic kinds of healing, or New Age kind of mind healings, or whether you're talking about the charlatans and the frauds who parade themselves even as Christian healers. It's a great way to draw a crowd, why? Because the number one human anxiety is illness and death.

Since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden disease has been a terrible reality, and for millennia the search for cures to alleviate illness and suffering has consumed mankind. I'll tell you that if I could choose one gift, if God would give me one gift that I don't have and I could ask Him for it and get it, I'd ask Him for the gift of healing. I mean, if it was available to me. Can you imagine what you could accomplish with it?

There are many occasions when I have wished I could heal. I've stood in a room in a hospital watching a precious child die of Leukemia while the parents wept. I prayed with a dear friend as inoperable cancer ate at his insides. I have stood by helplessly as a young person fought for life in an intensive care unit, the result of a motorcycle or an automobile accident. I've seen teenagers crushed through those kinds of things. I've watched their parents in agony.

I've seen people in the hospital on the edge of death with a gunshot wound. I've watched people lie comatose while machines try to keep their vital signs alive, at least on a screen, if not in reality. I watched a close friend weaken and die after an unsuccessful heart transplant. I've seen friends in terrible pain from surgery. I know people who are permanently disabled with sickness and injury. I see babies born with heart breaking deformities. I've helped people learn to cope with amputations and other tragic losses. I've been there when a mother was holding to her arms, in the bedroom, a dead baby who had died of crib death.

If I could wish for anything, I could certainly wish that I could do that, heal all those people. Think how thrilling it would be. Think how rewarding it would be to have that gift. Think of what it would be like to go into a hospital among the sick and the dying, walk up and down the hall, touch people and heal them like Jesus did. Wouldn't it be wonderful to go into the cancer ward and the heart disease ward and the Aids ward, and all the other places and just heal everybody? Somewhere along the line you want to ask these Charismatic healers why they don't assemble all of themselves and go down to that place and let's see if they have the power to heal. Opportunities to heal the sick are unlimited, and if, as Charismatic's claim, such miracles are signs and wonders, listen carefully, they say this, if they are signs and wonders designed to convince unbelievers that the Gospel is true, then wouldn't that be the way to really convince them?
But strangely, the healers rarely, if ever, come out of their tents, rarely ever come out of their buildings; rarely ever come out of their television studios. I have never seen them in a hospital. I have never seen them walking down a ward with a camera following them. They always seem to exercise their gift in an environment which they totally control, staged their way, run according to their schedule. Why don't we see them moving out?

Paul Kane, with whom I met recently, personally, who is sort of the main prophet in this new movement, has prophetically seen this, and I quote one writing about him, Kane describes his vision "Of an army of children that will parade down the streets healing whole hospital wards. He foresees news broadcasts where the anchors report no bad news because everyone is in sports arenas hearing the Gospel. Over a billion will be saved, the dead will be raised, limbs will be restored, those with handicaps will jump from their wheelchairs and crutches will be cast aside, and those in the stadiums will go for days without food or water and never notice."

Now I don't know what kind of a world that is or how they're going to make it happen but I think it is time to start if they have that ability. Is this happening? No, because those who claim to have the gift of healing and the power of healing, and claim to be able to tap into that power really don't have it. The gift of healing was a temporary sign gift for the authenticating of those who wrote the Scripture and those who preached the message in that first century. Once the Scripture was completed and that authenticity was established, the gift of healing ceased, it is not anything new to claim it. The original claimants were the Roman Catholics.

If you read some of Roman Catholic history you will be amazed probably. They boasted of healing people with the bones of John the Baptist, healing people with the bones of Peter, healing people with pieces of the cross, and somebody said, there's enough pieces of the cross around to build a two story building. They have said that they, "Have healed people with the vials of Mary's breast milk." There is a place that you know about in France called Lourdes, a Catholic shrine that has supposedly been the sight of countless miraculous healings. I have been to the largest Catholic cathedral in the Western Hemisphere in Montreal, San Josef, where people climb 450 stairs on their knees and they go in and they kiss a little box that has the heart of a little friar in it, and all along the walls and everywhere are crutches, all over the place.

Supposedly countless tens of thousands have been healed there, and now in Mejagorie in Yugoslavia, you have been reading about it more than 15,000,000 million people have gone in less than a decade. Why? They're in search of a miracle from the Virgin Mary who appeared in 1981 to six little children. If you read carefully about that it is bizarre.

It is very much like the occultic kind of healings you hear about in pagan parts of the world. You have the oriental psychic healers who say they can do bloodless surgery. They wave their hands over afflicted organs and say incantations and claim people are cured; witch doctors, Shamans, claim to raise the dead, occultist use black magic and lying wonders to do their thing.

Mary Baker Eddy, remember, founded Christian Science, claimed to have healed people through telepathy, and she had buried with her in her casket a telephone because she was going to come to life and call somebody and tell them to come and get her. You see Satan has always captivated people's hearts through the promise of healing. Even today the people who promised that health, wealth, prosperity gospel are hooking people on this tremendous human desire for physical healing and the fear of disease and death.

This goes on and on and on. One pastor on a popular Charismatic television show explained that his gift of healing works this way, "In the morning services the Lord tells me what healings are available." The Lord will say, "I've got three cancers available, I've got one bad back, I've got two headache healings," this is a quote, "I announce that to the congregation and tell them that anyone who comes at night, with faith, can claim those that are available for that evening."

Now if you take a closer look at these healings you find some very interesting things. The only documented cases that you can find, the only actually documented cases you can find, are cases of people who didn't get healed. The cases of supposed people who do get healed, you can't find any documentation.

One of the most telling studies of this was done by a medical doctor by the name of William Nolan who decided that he would look into the healing ministry of really the prototype of all of it. Kathryn Kuhlman when she was still going strong before her death, and he wrote a book after studying her, called "Healing, a Doctor in Search of a Miracle," and he went beyond Kathryn Kuhlman, but the major section of interest to me was the section on Kathryn Kuhlman. He made the point in his book that Ms. Kuhlman did not understand psychogenic disease, that she did not understand, that is, disease related to the mind. In simple terms a functional disease might be a sore arm, an organic disease would be a withered arm or no arm at all.

Now Katherine would heal a sore arm but not give somebody one who didn't have one. A psychogenic disease would be thinking your arm was sore and Kathryn could make you think your arm wasn't sore. Nolan wrote, "Search the literature as I have and you will find no documented cures by healers of gallstones, heart disease, cancer, or any other serious organic disease. Certainly you'll find patients temporarily relieved of their upset stomach, their chest pain, their breathing problems. You'll find healers and believers who will interpret this interruption of symptoms as evidence that the disease is cured, but when you track the patient down and find out what happened later you will always find the cure to have been purely symptomatic and transient. The underlying disease remains."

I remember one of A.A. Allen's cures; a man threw away his crutches and a horrible result came from it, and he was sued by a family for the severe injury that occurred to that man, when under the emotion of the moment, he was able to sort of prop himself momentarily and brought great harm to himself. When faith healers try to treat serious organic diseases they're very often responsible for very serious anguish and unhappiness, and sometimes even life threatening things.

Dr. Nolan had Ms.Kuhlman herself send him a list of the cancer victims she had seen cured, and this is what the doctor discovered, "I wrote to all the cancer victims on her list and the only one who offered cooperation was a man who claimed he had been cured of cancer by Ms. Kuhlman. He sent me a complete report of his case. He had prostatic cancer which is frequently responsive to hormone therapy; if it spreads it is also highly responsive to radiation therapy. This man had had that and he had also had extensive treatment with surgery, radiation, and hormones. He had also dealt with Kathryn Kuhlman.

He chose to attribute his cure or remission, as the case may be, to Ms. Kuhlman. But anyone who read his report, layman or doctor, would see immediately that it is impossible to tell which kind of treatment had actually done most to prolong his life. If Ms. Kuhlman had to rely on this case to prove the Holy Spirit cured cancer through her, she would be in very desperate straits. Dr. Nolan did further work on 82 cases of Kathryn Kuhlman's healings using names that she herself supplied. His conclusion at the end of the entire investigation was that not one of the so called healings was legitimate, not one.

More recently, a very interesting man by the name of JamesRandy, have you heard that? He's called the amazing Randy, he gave himself that name, he is a professional magician. As a professional magician he has written a book in which he examines the claims of faith healers, why? Because he knows all the gimmicks. He is the man who exposed television Evangelist Peter Popoff's fakery in 1986 on the Tonight Show. You remember that Peter Popoff was one of the healers claimed to get words of knowledge. He would stand there and he would say, "Jesus is telling me this about you," and the truth was he had a little earphone and his wife was giving him all this information because everybody who came to the meeting had to fill out a card.

I don't know if you know about how that works but healers throughout the years have always had the pre-service meeting, when everybody who wants to be cured and get in the healing line fills out a very full card. There is a very simple way, by staggering the cards, that the guy can be holding up a card to his head and telling you all you need to know about yourself, to convince you that this man speaks for God. In the case of PeterPopoff he was repeating information his wife was putting in his ear, from the crib sheets assembled in the pre-meeting.

Now the amazing Randy is really not so amazing, he's just a magician, but he is openly antagonistic to Christianity. His antagonism is fed, I think, continually by what he finds out. But nevertheless, he seems to have done his investigation thoroughly. He asks scores of faith healers to supply him with direct, examinable evidence of true healings. He said, "I've been willing to accept just one case of a miracle cure, so that I might say in this book that at least on one occasion a miracle occurred." But not one faith healer anywhere has given him a single case of medically confirmed healing that couldn't be explained as natural convalescence, psychosomatic improvement or outright fakery.

What is Randy's conclusion? I quote, "Reduced to its basics, faith healing today, as it always has been, is simply magic. Though the preachers vehemently deny any connection with the practice, their activities meet all the requirements for the definition; all of the elements are present and the intent is identical," he said.

Well, I don't want to just be ungracious, that's not my intention, but it is very important that you know the truth and that you be warned. If the Apostle John would even speak the name of Diotrephesjust because he loved to have the preeminence in the church, and that posed a threat, then how important it is for us to identify these people who pose an even more severe threat, as they say they represent the very voice of God and can prove it by the fact they can do miracles.

I had a meeting with a man who is a very bright, a very intelligent, a very academically trained, a very intellectual man who understands the Bible, and he said to me, "The reason that I am in this movement is because one of these prophets stood up in a meeting and looked at me and told me the name of my mother, my mother's maiden name. Not only that he was able to tell me my father's real name, and my father goes by a nickname and I knew that he could only know that by direct revelation."

Now how utterly gullible can a man be? If I could find a full fledged, bona fide theologian, first ranked, teaching in one of the most respected seminaries of the world, and if I could convince him of my being a prophet of God by just finding out the name of his mother and his father's real name, that wouldn't be too tough if that's all it took, especially if I had been plying that kind of trade for years. It's amazing how gullible people are. We hear about these healings, but there's never any evidence.

Not one of today's self styled healers has produced irrefutable proof of the miracles they claimed to have wrought. Many of them are transparently fraudulent, and the healings in many cases aren't healings at all. Many things can occur by the power of suggestion, like people falling over backwards and so forth, but that can do the opposite of healing you as we noted a few weeks ago when we reminded you that one lady fell over in a Benny Hinn meeting and killed the lady she fell on, and now he's being sued.

Now we all know that desperation accompanies disease. Sickness drives people to do frantic, extreme things they normally wouldn't do. People who are clear minded and balanced become irrational. Remember, Satan knows this, that's why he said in Job 2:4, "Skin for skin, yes, all that a man has will he give for his life." The most desperate, heartbreaking cases involve people, who are incurably organically ill, others aren't really sick at all. You know, if I may be very personal, one of the real joys of our church is the dear precious people that come here every Sunday in wheelchairs. I can't tell you how many of those people have told me that people have said to them, "If you had enough faith, or if you went to another church, other than Grace Church, you could get out of that wheelchair."

Somebody asked me recently if we get a lot of people here coming out of healing churches? I say, "Yes, we get the people who go and don't get healed, no question about it." What a tragic thing; multitudes go away shattered, disconsolate, feeling either they have failed God or God has failed them. Now let me say this, people are going to say, "Well, are you saying God doesn't heal?" No, I'm not saying that, if God wants to heal, He can heal. That's completely, obviously within His power, and if it's in his purpose He can heal. He may heal as a result of prayer. He may heal through simple processes, through medical assistance, or he may heal in a way that we can't explain medically. God may speed up the recovery mechanism and restore a person to health in a way that medicine can't even explain. Sometimes He may overrule a medical prognosis and allow someone to recover from a normally debilitating disease.

Healings like that may come, He may do them; He may do them in response to prayer, He may do them just because He wants to do them. But the gift of healing, and the ability to heal, and special anointings for healing, and healings that can be claimed and therefore realized, and all the typical faith healing technique billed on the idea that God wants everybody well all the time, has no Biblical sanction whatsoever in the post-apostolic era.

Now backing off a minute, if we just said, "Let's look at Jesus, and if anybody is healing today, and if Jesus' healings is the pattern, and if the Apostles is the pattern, how did they heal?" I'll simply remind you of it. We'll make a comparison and see if today it works like that. First, Jesus healed with a word or a touch. That's all it took. He Touched, He spoke, they were healed.

Secondly, Jesus healed instantaneously. Never in all His healings does the Bible say He healed somebody and they started getting better. No, there was never a process, because if there was a process the point wasn't made. Right? Because if there was a process then it could be explained another way, it was instantaneous. "The Centurion's servant was healed," I love it, Matthew 8:13, "That very hour." The woman with the bleeding problem, it went away immediately. Jesus healed ten lepers instantaneously. The crippled man at the Pool of Bethesda immediately became well.

Thirdly, Jesus healed totally, totally. When someone was healed they were totally and completely healed. The only kind of healing Jesus ever did, He didn't partially heal, He healed totally.

Fourthly, he healed anybody, he healed anybody. He didn't have to have a long line of people filling out cards, and He certainly didn't have a whole group of people who came into the meeting in wheelchairs and left in wheelchairs, if they had wheelchairs, or crutches, or whatever. Luke 4:40 says, "While the Sun was setting, all who had any sick with various diseases brought them to Him; and laying His hands on everyone of them, He was healing them." It's an incredible thing, He healed everybody, He healed everybody instantaneously. He healed everybody totally and He healed everybody with a word. There wasn't some falderal it's just a word.

Fifthly, he healed organic disease. He didn't just go around Palestine healing lower back pain, heart palpitations, headaches, and other things like that. He healed the most obvious organic disease; crippled bent legs, withered hands, blind eyes, paralysis.

Sixthly, He raised the dead, He raised the dead. He came upon a funeral and he raised the dead. You remember that? Here comes the funeral procession; the widow is going to bury her son and Jesus stops the procession, touches the casket and says, "Young man, arise!" and the dead man sat up and began to speak.
Now I'll tell you something, people who tout the gift of healing today don't spend a lot of time in funeral processions; the reason is obvious. You need to note, by the way, that Jesus did virtually all His healings and raising the dead in public before vast crowds of people. Why? Because the gift of healing was real and it was an authenticating gift. He used it to confirm the claim that He was the Son of God in a way that displayed His power and compassion.

Then we ask the question, how did the disciples or apostles heal? How did they heal? How did the Twelve, and the 70, and others who worked with them, like Barnabas, and Philip, and Stephen? Those are the only ones; it didn't just run rampant through everybody in the church, but those people who had that gift, how did they heal? How did they do it? Well, same way they healed with a word or a touch. We see that in the Book of Acts, they healed instantaneously, immediately.

Remember the temple gate with Peter and John? The man immediately went to his feet, started leaping, walking, praising God, they healed totally, not partial, total. They healed everybody. In fact, people who got under Peter's shadow got healed. They healed organic disease, not just functional, psychosomatic, symptomatic problems, and the Apostles even raised the dead. Now nobody is exhibiting those six traits in a healing ministry today, so if this is supposed to be the recapturing of the apostolic era it is really out of sync with that.

A final note; according to Scripture, those who possess those abilities to heal could use their gift at will. That's not true of the contemporary healers because they don't have that gift. They play games with people's minds, the power of suggestion. They prey upon people making them believe things that aren't really true and they use deception. Look at the Apostle Paul; in Philippians 2 he mentions his good friend Epaphroditus was very sick. Now Paul had previously displayed the ability to heal, but he doesn't heal Epaphroditus. It's fair to say maybe that gift was passing out operation, but it's sure fair to say that the gift of healing was never, listen carefully, was never intended to keep Christians happy and healthy.

In fact, you look through the New Testament; find out how many healings occurred to believers, absolutely rare. Peter's wife's mother, Dorcas, masses of unbelievers, masses of people who may or may not have believed anything about Christ or the Apostles; but it surely wasn't given to keep everybody in the church healthy and yet today it's being portrayed as something that's supposed to be done for believers to keep them healthy, to show them that in the atonement is their healing, totally foreign to Scripture.

2 Timothy 4:20, Paul mentioned that he left Trophimus sick at Miletus; why leave a good friend sick? Why did he leave his Christian friend sick? Why didn't he heal him? Well, maybe he didn't have that ability as the time passed on out of the apostolic era, but for sure he recognized that healing was not something you run around doing for your Christian friends. It was never intended as a permanent way to keep the church healthy, yet today Charismatics teach that God wants every Christian well all the time. If that's true, then why did He let them get sick to start with? It seems a basic question. God didn't give you an HMO in your salvation, a sort of supernatural HMO that works automatically. God heals when He wants and when He wishes, but that's up to Him.

Has God promised to heal everybody who has faith? He doesn't promise He'll always heal, but I think the Christian can look to heaven for healing. Now I want to turn the table a little bit as I close in the next couple of minutes. I think that we can go to the Lord for healing. I think we can pray to Him for deliverance from disease, and I do believe there are times when God touches us. Sometimes He heals through medicine, sometimes He heals through surgery, sometimes He heals through natural process working in the body. The body is an amazing self-healing thing, sometimes He may just heal supernaturally because it's His will, and we can look to heaven for that. We can cry out to God in our sickness and ask for His healing, and I would suggest that there are three reasons why we could expect that God might heal.

One, He might heal because of His person. You remember his Old Testament name? That wonderful name, it's really Yahweh Rapecca, the Lord that Heals, God heals because of His person. "I the Lord am your healer," He told the Israelites. The very fact that when Jesus came into the world He could have done a lot of different miracles. I mean if He wanted to convince people about His Messiahship He could have just flown around, and He could have said, "See, I can do this, and who else can do this?" Or He could have jumped a building at a single bound, or flown faster than a speeding bullet, or He could have put on a Superman show and everybody would have been in awe of that. But why did he choose to heal people? Because He was demonstrating His compassion, and a compassionate God has a heart to heal, and I think we've experienced that at times in our life; God raises up someone from sickness.

Secondly, I think God heals because of His promise. He says, "Whatever we ask in His name, believing and according to His will, He will do it," and there must be times when He'll do that. There certainly is a description in James 5 of a broken, shattered, devastated person, who goes in for prayer. The elders gather around that individual and while the pain of that situation is spiritual and has tremendous physical ramifications, and through prayer that person is restored. The effectual fervent prayer avails much. If in God's will He has designed that He'll do that because of His promise.

Thirdly, God heals because that's His pattern. It is true that in the atonement God bore our diseases, Matthew 8 says it. Matthew 8 says, "He Himself took our infirmities, and carried away our diseases." Now we've already discussed 1 Peter 2:24 and I won't do it again; it doesn't mean that healing for every sickness is in the atonement for now, but healing for every sickness is in the atonement for some day, isn't it? Someday He'll remove all of those diseases. Ultimately, eternally, we'll be delivered from sickness and infirmity. It may just be that He would chose because of that pattern of providing a salvation that ultimately delivers us from bodily infirmity when we get a glorified body, that maybe He'll give us a taste of Glory Divine.

God may heal. That poses the final question, should a Christian go to the doctor? We come all the way back to HobartFreeman again. We would never advocate such idiocy. You say, "Well does the Bible say anything about this?" Sure, read Isaiah 38, not now. I knew you'd do that; your heads just go right down, that's good, Pavlov's dogs, just instant response. That's not derogatory by the way, that's trained response. But anyway, in Isaiah 38, King Hezekiah was deathly ill, and you remember the king was crying, and he was crying tears, and then he was crying to the Lord, and God answered his request and He says this, "Let them take a cake of figs and apply it to the boil, that he may recover." Isn't that good? That's what we used to call a poultice. Right? Now God is saying, "Do the medical thing." In Matthew 9:12, Jesus confirmed the same idea when He said this, "It's not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick." So the Lord has given us that instruction also.

Now in closing, I simply say, I want to reiterate that I believe God can heal, God can do anything He wants to do. I do not believe the gift of healing is for today because it was to authenticate the Biblical message and messenger. That is in place; it needs no more authentication then the authentication given to it by the Spirit of God to the heart of the reader, but I do believe that God may in His grace chose to heal, and we have every right to pray for that, at the same time seek the finest medical help that we can because the Lord desires us to do that as well.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for letting us cover all of this tonight, our minds are full of these considerations. Lord, we would not at all be ungracious to the many people who are victims of these kinds of things, and even Lord, there may be some in these movements who are well meaning and well intentioned, who for some reason or other believe that these things really are happening.
Lord, we would pray for those who have a true and a pure intention, and who are genuinely believing that this is true, that You would show them the truth of Your word and help them to see the light. Then Lord, for those who are just playing with the hearts and minds and the wallets of people that You would cause them to be struck with the truth of what they're doing, to be literally stopped in their tracks by the fear of God, as they would misrepresent You.

We pray for Your church to be discerning, clear minded, and then Lord, even as we close tonight, we would remember to pray for those in our congregation who have physical illness, disability, physical pain and suffering, some with even the diagnosis of a fatal disease, that Lord, You would be gracious to them. We know that You are going to heal them someday, and if it would suit Your glorious purpose and bring honor to the name of Jesus Christ, we would ask that You heal them now; that You might receive glory for that, but if not, that You might give them the grace to acknowledge Your perfect will. Help us to know Lord that it is not through these kinds of miraculous things that people are going to believe the truth. It is through hearing about Jesus Christ and reading the Scripture and having it presented to them, not only on the page but through the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, that they shall come to the truth, so may we faithfully proclaim this word, which can authenticate itself by the Holy Spirit to the heart of one who hears.

Thank You again Father for the clear word that You do care and that there is a day of healing coming for us all. We rejoice in anticipation of it, in Christ's name, Amen.