Poster | Thread | DirkW Member
Joined: 2007/11/16 Posts: 88 Netherlands
| all will be healed? | | Dear ones,
Some people around me believe everybody will get healed if we believe and pray. How do we interpreted this from scripture? In the gospels I see nobody didn't get healed, only people who stayed sick sometimes because of the unbelief in the area etc. What's a good way to look at healing? Does everybody get healed? And even if some get not healed...is that something that has to do with us as people (unbelief? sin? etc.) or what's God will in all of this? Is it Gods will to heal? A lot of questions but I hope you guys can help me. I'm investigating this also because there is sickness in my wife's family. And some people start to listen to preachers like andrew wommack etc. and they believe him about that everybody should get healed etc. But I want the biblical basis for healing.
Anyone? _________________ Dirk
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| 2008/8/23 7:10 | Profile | sojourner7 Member
Joined: 2007/6/27 Posts: 1573 Omaha, NE
| Re: all will be healed? | | Healing is a sovereign matter of God's will and mercy. We must be mindful of the depths and greatness of God's mercies. Sometimes He will afflict us when it is necessary for discipline. We must first suffer with Him; if we would share in His glory!! In all that God does; He does with intent and with purpose. If we seek His heart and His will; we will find purpose even in trials and sufferings!!
_________________ Martin G. Smith
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| 2008/8/23 10:23 | Profile | PaulWest Member
Joined: 2006/6/28 Posts: 3405 Dallas, Texas
| Re: all will be healed? | | Quote:
And some people start to listen to preachers like andrew wommack etc. and they believe him about that everybody should get healed etc. But I want the biblical basis for healing.
According to scripture, we already have been healed: "...that we being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: [b]by whose stripes ye were healed[/b]." (I Peter 2:24)
Of course, the healing here - when taken in context - is the healing from sin, from the root of the disease that contaminates all children born in Adam. Many times, preachers relegate healing in the atonement to the mere physical aspect of it, and promptly charge God to heal the afflicted with tangible results, irrespective of the will of God in the matter - after all, it is in the atonement and the unalienable right of all believers. They [i]obligate[/i] God to legally heal upon demand. This is the result of an improper understanding of the New Covenant and a failure to read the Bible carefully.
Now, while I believe that God does heal in the physical under the New Covenant, I do not believe it is by virtue of atonement legality. We see that God healed physically in the OT - He even healed pagans like Naaman who didn't fall under the atonement required by the law given to Moses. You must then wonder if physical healing can even fall under covenental obligation.
If a person today is healed in the physical, it is one thing, but if God heals a person in the spiritual, i.e. nails the fatal disease of "Sin" to the cross - we must attribute this to Christ's atonement. This and this alone is the healing promised under the New Covenant. Otherwise, we wouldn't have the aberrations mentioned in the NT where physical healing clearly did not take place even among God's elite in the faith.
God did not heal Paul of the thorn in his flesh, though Paul could have pled the atonement and required it of God - but Paul had a proper understanding of what exactly he had [i]already been healed from[/i]. Timothy was not instructed by Paul to lay hold of healing for his stomach by virtue of the stripes of Christ, and we also know that Paul left a dear sick missionary brother named Trophimus behind at Miletus.
It must be sovereignly accepted that God is not required to physically and legally heal all who get sick (even those ingrafted into Christ), and when taken in context you can see that the Word of God does not guarantee physical healing in cookie-cutter fashion as part of the grace under the New Covenant. The healing that is guaranteed is the healing of the disease of [b]sin,[/b] which the Blood from Jesus' stripes [i]has already taken down to judgment and eradicated[/i] for those who by faith continue to look to Him.
_________________ Paul Frederick West
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| 2008/8/23 12:07 | Profile | DirkW Member
Joined: 2007/11/16 Posts: 88 Netherlands
| Re: | | Thanks people for the reply. Brother Paul, if healing isn't part of the atonement who is it then that God calls Himsels I am the Lord, your Healer in the old testament and how is it then that Jesus healed all people who He met? And He even sends the disciples into the world to do the same. Then what is Gods will in physical healing? It looks like a lot of people are getting healed in the bible. So we believe in healing (also physical) but how do we apply this? How can this be applied? The Lord commands us to lay hands on the sick and they will heal. Sometimes they do, sometimes not...but the Lord says...they will be healed. How our we to walk and move within the boarders of Gods will concerning healing? Is it Gods will always to pray for sick people? Keep on praying for them for healing? What about the gift of healing? Praying for the sick by the elders? etc.
So where is healing part of? Is it a right of our salvation (hebrew/greek < don't know > means soso > deliverance, healing, salvation i thought). Is healing of the body a promise? Is it Gods will to heal? I've got so many questions.
Some background information. People in my church are very busy with this at the moment and they believe everybody should heal and if it doesn't happen they haven't got enough faith because God wants to. This is short said what's the big issue at the moment. But I really want to know what does Gods word say, what would Jesus do (what did He do?), what did the disciples do in His name, what are we today to do in His name? Is it unbelief? Sin? Other things? That stand in the way of psysical healing? etc.
There are a question or 20 in this post, but I truly hope you can lead me in this brothers.
God bless you. _________________ Dirk
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| 2008/8/24 16:38 | Profile | PaulWest Member
Joined: 2006/6/28 Posts: 3405 Dallas, Texas
| Re: | | Quote:
Brother Paul, if healing isn't part of the atonement who is it then that God calls Himsels I am the Lord, your Healer in the old testament and how is it then that Jesus healed all people who He met? And He even sends the disciples into the world to do the same.
The gifts of healing are mentioned in the Word of God, grouped along with other kinds of gifts, allocated to each man sovereignly and with deliberate intention by the Spirit - but I can't find anywhere in the Word where it teaches that God is somehow legally obligated to physically heal a person on account of the atonement - or to even dispense the gifts and miracles of healing regardless of His will. But this is just what some people teach and believe, pleading the blood like a charm or magic formula, calling on their atonement rights...and in the end many never get healed in the way that they would like to testify. So be honest with yourself. Does this mean their "faith" was not sufficient? Or maybe they didn't plead the blood ardently enough? Isn't healing from cancer and AIDS and whatever else ours legally to claim by virtue of the cross? Jesus healed people of sickness before the cross, before the stripes. The Isaiah 53 healing that is promised by the stripes is the unpopular, unattractive, unfleshly, unearthly, unflashy healing of [i]sin[/i]: [i]"By His stripes we are healed"[/i]. When we look at it like this, as the healing of unseen but fatal spiritual matter, it loses all of its luster and pizazz, and there goes your tent meeting. This is why people will take great offense if you even hint that the proper exegesis of healing in the proof texts is spiritual rather than physical. Thank God, though, that there are [i]gifts[/i] of physical healing, and our God still heals our bodies by the sovereignity of His Spirit.
My point is that God has no covenantal obligation to heal us physically (that is, we cannot hold Him to it with demand), as much as we can't hold him to doing a miracle on demand. It is the "prayer of faith" that heals, according to James, and not the anointing oil, and not the blood of Jesus. People were healed physically before He shed His blood, but the spiritual sickness of the root of "sin" in the children of Adam was not healed until He uttered, "It is finished" and died. _________________ Paul Frederick West
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| 2008/8/24 16:48 | Profile | DirkW Member
Joined: 2007/11/16 Posts: 88 Netherlands
| Re: | | Okay, I understand that text in his context it has to do with the matter of sin and a lot of people pull this text out of his context. But before that verse it talks about sickness right or not? (verse 4) But there are also other texts and stories in the bible about healing. Jesus healed, the disciples healed people etc. When we look at the new testament...Paul and the disciples did exceeding great miracles (also healings), I see them healing the sick as Jesus send them out as His disciples. Also when the Holy Spirit came, I see them moving out, walking past the gate, raising one up, healing people etc. Jesus never denied healing someone etc?
Then what is the doctrine of healing? As a child of God am I supposed to pray for the sick by the laying on of hands? And then believe God that He acts on this faith, He acts on obedience in this matter? I mean there is healing, there are gifts, there is power of the Holy Spirit...so there must be healing. He sends us to heal the sick in His Name...aren't we suppose to give ear to that?
And if it doesn't happen, we continue praying for the sick person? I've seen people who just didn't get healed, but as people kept on praying they got healed and still healed today.
How do you see all of this brother?
PS. And what's the difference between Jesus healing before the cross and the disciples after the cross? _________________ Dirk
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| 2008/8/25 6:22 | Profile | PaulWest Member
Joined: 2006/6/28 Posts: 3405 Dallas, Texas
| Re: | | Quote:
And if it doesn't happen, we continue praying for the sick person? I've seen people who just didn't get healed, but as people kept on praying they got healed and still healed today.
Good morning. You're asking some great questions. I too have known people who get healed through persistent prayer, but I must be fair and say I've also known a greater amount that do not get healed through persistent prayer. People with pronounced physical disabilities, the elderly with hearing loss, poor eyesight, cataracts, diabetes, heart disease, children with Down's syndrome, autism, etc. Multitudes like these have been prayed for - and are regularly prayed for - but you very, very rarely see a miracle in these areas. Amputees, deformities, the dead raised. You would think that if it were God's will that all physical aberrations, mental aberrations, and even somatic death be reversed and/or healed by virtue of His unanimous will, that we would at least see these things happening [i]sometimes[/i] (note, I am being very generous here), or with a fair regularity and not just purported on TV by men of questionable repute and who in the very next breath will ask for your money.
When you come to the painful realization that God is under no covenantal obligation to do a specific miracle for us, whether it be physical healing or some other miracle like raising the dead, you will come to the blessed rest in only seeking God's will in the matter, whatever it is or how dire and impossible the situation may be. You won't have to [i]try and try[/i] to pump up your faith to some undetermined level in order to effectuate a healing in Jesus' Name; and you won't be crestfallen when the person you earnestly pray for never sees the miracle healing you want to see - or even dies (as this happens very often). Brother, when we can learn to pray for miracles in the mindset of [i]not my will, Lord, but Thy will be done[/i], and if what we seek will bring glory to the Name of God and accomplish His will and purpose [b]in the life of that person,[/b] then we will have rest in our spirits notwithstandng the outcome of the prayer. Like the Apostle Paul, it may not be in God's perfect will to remove the thorn right now...or maybe ever. We dont know; only God knows, and so we seek to align our will with God's and pray out of it. Once, I actually heard a Pentecostal preacher tell the congregation to be careful not fall into the "trap" (yes, he said trap) of saying [i]"If it be your will, Lord"[/i] when praying for a miracle healing.
We also seem to forget that God heals through modern medicine and on operating tables. This is the equivalent of Him speaking to us in a soft, still voice rather than by fire or a thunder clasp. Both methods are miracles! It is ironic that the godless and heathen will call a sucessfull surgery a "miracle", yet God's own children will sit down, cross their arms and pout because they were not answered by fire. _________________ Paul Frederick West
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| 2008/8/25 7:08 | Profile | crsschk Member
Joined: 2003/6/11 Posts: 9192 Santa Clara, CA
| Re: all will be healed? | | Quote:
Then what is the doctrine of healing?
Hi brother. Maybe there is much to consider just in the way you phrased this ... not you personally but as it is taught or understood in our day. Is it a doctrine at all or something made into a doctrine?
I cannot tell you how appreciative I am for what Paul has stated throughout, coming from where I once was and where you have mentioned that of your own church's slant on all this ... This is one area that can give a great rise to indignation over the abuse of the scriptures. Starting with the stripes of Isaiah that were put to the back of our Saviour, the flesh ripping stripes, the undeserving stripes- somehow made, actually belittled into this said doctrine right on out to all kinds of foolish notions.
It is likely dangerous to say so but I would posit that some of those things the disciples did under the Lords instruction, at that time, in those circumstances may not have been set into granite 'for all time'. At the very least it might be put to our consideration that this is a very distinct possibility. I am thinking of the first, short missionary journey in the one instance amongst others.
That being said I do understand the difficulty that you have and that I would also to some extent. Indeed what are we to do with James praying for the sick and the anointing oil - and even the faith issue? ... The faith matter is probably the first that I would pull down the heaping coals upon some heads for their unspeakable abuse, this idea that it is [i]your fault[/i] and [i]your failure[/i] that someone did not get 'healed'.
It is the [i]manner[/i] of how this is put that it guilts people, manipulates them - contorts and in far too many cases actually sells indulgences of a long ago similarity in return - That is cold hard cash to the charlatans in exchange for their supposed giftings and your or your loved ones deliverance. The Lord had some very strong words about stumbling and milestones that are applicable.
Faith that He is able or faith He [i]will[/i] seems to be the condition. You can believe till your eyes pop out, you can have the faith of a mustard seed I recall - Is this the precondition, the arm twisting as it were that brings forth the results? Faith and unbelief are very important matters and maybe someone else could take this up and elaborate further.
What I did want to offer was some alternate perspective. One is just to peel back the recent years ideas and look to the old path wanderers that we are fond of. Something I have been chewing on for a few days and attached to;
[url=https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=14907&post_id=194887&order=1&viewmode=flat&pid=193276&forum=45#194887]Death awaits[/url]
From Richard Baxter, an excerpt;
[i]Misunderstand not sickness, as if it were a greater evil than it is; but observe how great a mercy it is, that death has so suitable a harbinger or forerunner: that God should do so much before he takes us hence, to wean us from the world, and make us willing to be gone; that the unwilling flesh has the help of pain; and that the senses and appetite languish and decay, which did draw the mind to earthly things: and that we have so loud a call, and so great a help to true repentance and serious preparation! I know to those that have walked very close with God, and are always ready, a sudden death may be a mercy; as we have lately known divers holy ministers and others, that have died either after a sacrament, or in the evening of the Lord's day, or in the midst of some holy exercise, with so little pain, that none about them perceived when they died. But ordinarily it is a mercy to have the flesh brought down and weakened by painful sickness, to help to conquer our natural unwillingness to die.[/i]
All this is just a piece of consideration. Hebrews speaks of 'others' not being delivered and while that may not be 'healing' precisely it does show forth what Paul is stating - Whose will is it and what will is ours to be seeking.
For my own sake and from my own observation I keep in the back of my mind reading scripture the thought of incident or precedent, principle or character - What I want to say is this age seems very bent on premise based applications. Whole ministries based on narrow understandings of select sections; Prophecy. Healing. End times. Prosperity. Right on out to whole denominational prospects built out of and around their own exegeted or esiegeted passages, they start with a premise and force everything to fit into it. It is the wrong way around the whole council of God's word.
Suffering comes into play just as well - what is taking up a cross but an instrument of suffering and death? Something we are to do daily.
Not physical we might say but what was the end of the disciples? Somehow this all gets lost in the 'doctrine' of healing as does sickness and death, that sequence which most of us will inevitably meet as these tents breakdown and we draw closer to the blessed end of this temporal dwelling.
[i]And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country.[/i] Luk 4:23
[i]Save thyself, and come down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priests mocking said among themselves with the scribes, He saved others; himself he cannot save.[/i] Mar 15:30,31
_________________ Mike Balog
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| 2008/8/25 9:37 | Profile | PaulWest Member
Joined: 2006/6/28 Posts: 3405 Dallas, Texas
| Re: | | I thought I would add this very short video excerpt by Zac Poonen into the discussion. In it, he talks about the unhealthy affection and the wide-scale falling away of the church over physical healing, prosperity, and miracles at the expense of the real healing and deliverance from personal sin. He packs some great truths and sobriety into a mere 3:47, and even explains the means by which God gave him light on these truths. Take a few minutes to view it; you'll gain much.
[url=http://video.aol.com/video-detail/being-protected-from-deception-by-zac-poonen-clip-2/4197896830?icid=acvsv1]Zac Poonen 3 Minute Video[/url] _________________ Paul Frederick West
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| 2008/8/25 10:10 | Profile | DirkW Member
Joined: 2007/11/16 Posts: 88 Netherlands
| Re: | | Dear brothers, thanks for your explanation and wisdom in these things. I understand that nowadays a lot of people are following health/wealth preachers etc. and that a lot of deception is going on. But when it comes to my own life, when it comes to looking at healing from scripture, acting on Gods word then what is Gods truth in that?
For example
a while ago someone had really pain in his left wrist for a few months. Immediately I said, lets pray for this that God would touch it and take the pain away. So we prayed together and the day after he send me a message and said, the pain is gone
hallelujah!
Now I think
when I see someone who is sick, or has pain
I just pray for them in Jesus Name and believe them to get healed because I believe God will hear my prayer and will work through that prayer and the laying on of hands. Sometimes He heals, sometimes he doesnt. But when He doesnt we pray again. And we search His will concerning healing and the person. Is that biblical? Is that Gods will concerning healing? That we pray if there are sick among us. Because this is how I stand in all of this. I believe God can heal, I believe His Spirit lives within me and I believe when we lay hands on the sick they do get healed. And sometimes not but I dont know how that comes. But never I see its Gods will not to heal. I understand there are cases that people wont get healed because of His higher will, are old or God calls them home, God wants to teach them something (can someone give some scriptural examples for this?) etc. but maybe there is more possible then we believe or pray nowadays? (without any pressure) Im not talking about charlatans etc. at the moment, but Im talking about how we apply praying for sick people in our own life. I understand that the main focus is live or die I am Christ and my days are in His hands. But I also do believe God wants us to pray in our needs and we can receive from Him. Correct me if Im wrong in all of this.
So the give a summary
- when someone is sick
- they go to the elders and get prayed for - when no elders in the neighborhood they get prayed for by a child of God - the Christian prays in Jesus Name with laying on of hands for healing - God will hear this prayer (healing / no healing / continue to pray for healing / pray for other things as the time goes by and He reveals His will).
Is this biblical / a godly view on this matter?
PS Sorry for my English sometimes (dutch people )
_________________ Dirk
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| 2008/8/25 13:52 | Profile |
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