Jesus Is Still the God Who Heals the Sick
JESUS WANTS YOU TO HEAL THE SICK
“14 Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. 15 And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
19 So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. 20 And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs.”
Cessationism Is Heretical & Anti-Biblical
Sometimes when Christians are governed by a certain level of faithlessness, they will move toward a faulty system of interpreting the Bible. The Bible is a pretty plaintext document. Yes, there is profound depth to the mysteries inherent within, yet these truths are stated plainly and directly. When people have an aversion to a certain truth therein, it is common to observe these people overcomplicating the scripture to fit their faithless narrative.
I will not pretend to be above this temptation to adjust the scriptures in my mind to better conform them to what I might rather or more easily believe (out of my own arrogance or ignorance). God actually convicted me of doing this myself when I was in a Bible college class going over the beginning of Genesis. As a fairly new Christian, I was not yet sure if I could truly believe the Genesis creation narrative, which bucked everything I had been taught in school my whole life. As I was inwardly seriously questioning the literality of the Bible, the Spirit of God filled the room I was in and spoke directly to me, convicting me of arrogance. Was I there when God created the Earth? No. Why do I think I know more than what’s in the Bible? Soon after, someone introduced me to a couple of documentaries on the topic of buried scientific evidence which demonstrates evolution’s impossibility (here is one of the documentaries).
I share this mini-example to show that it is easy to fall into heresy. In fact, it is as easy as not trusting the Bible completely. Fortunately again, around this same time when I still had lingering doubts, in a “divine appointment” sort-of fashion, I ran into a man in an airport bathroom who runs a creation museum up in Canada. We ended up discussing the science of creationism at length. There was a phrase he kept repeating to me throughout our conversation that I cannot forget. He told me repetitively, “You can trust every word of the Bible.” Of course he was right. Do you know how I know he was right? Because the Bible tells me so: 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
Now we can consider my issue with cessationism, which is that it is founded upon mistrust (a lack of perfect trust) in the Bible. Whether they admit it or not, cessationists believe that the Bible does not perfectly correlate with reality simply because their limited experience of reality is faithless regarding miracles. Cessationists deny much of the power and goodwill of God. They deny intimate knowledge of him. They render our faith a philosophy. They teach the “good idea” of Christianity, limiting it to the intellect as if to conform to the paradigm of ancient Athens in which ideas would compete on a rationally appealing basis alone. Yes, our faith is the most rational and it correlates to reality in a way no other belief system is capable of, yet it is the accompanying power of the Holy Spirit that demonstrates that this is true. The power of Jesus validates our message.
Cessationists distance themselves from the power of God, and without biblical grounds. Their faithlessness is anecdotal, not dissimilar to those lacking faith completely who go a step further to say things such as, “I know for a fact that Jesus never walked on water because I’ve never seen anyone else ever do that.” Cessationist teachers limit the faith of others because they have yet to experience what it is like to have that level of faith for themselves. For these teachers, it’s a matter of, “Well, I’ve never seen the sick healed,” or “I’ve never seen a demon inhabiting someone… It must merely be mental illness... Issues like that are all solely biological and are not spiritual.” These teachers arrogantly and ignorantly preach their own faithlessness, which is contradictory to the rest of the gospel.
The gospel is supernatural and is centered around supernatural faith! There is such a massive biblical disconnect for these teachers considering they do not deny the existence of miracles entirely. These people are almost equivalent to the Sadducees in Jesus’ day who, out of their faithlessness, denied the Old Testament prophecies of the resurrection. Cessationists are only one step away from being Sadducees! They drink from the same cup of unbelief, not fully trusting in the scriptures. Yet, every cessationist I’ve ever met (fortunately) will not go so far as to deny the resurrection from the dead, which is confusing to me. It confuses me because these people have enough faith to believe that the Holy Spirit will supernaturally resurrect their decayed bodies from the grave and raise them up to Christ in the air, but yet, they preach that this same Holy Spirit that inhabits Christians today and Who will reattach their ligaments, skin, etc. to their dried bones is incapable of also healing illnesses, casting out demons, prophesying, and doing all the other things the apostles instructed all Christians to do. Jesus gave us tremendous power in the Holy Spirit. All of these gifts, Paul wrote to the common people of the Church to do. It is as Paul meant when he said in 1 Corinthians 4:20, “The Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power.”
But that’s enough arguing for me. My mission is not to argue, but to tell you the truth. The truth is that Jesus is still the God who heals the sick. While some people aim to render the Kingdom of God into one of mere talk, I contend that the Kingdom is as portrayed plainly throughout the entirety of the scriptures: one of the power of God, empowered solely by His Holy Spirit. I bear witness to multiple supernatural healings in the name and power of Jesus. These miracles exist and can be found if sought (It’s not even hard! You can find some of them on YouTube!), and if you ask God for the faith to perform them in the name of Jesus, perhaps you will be used in such a capacity, to the glory of our almighty King.
“ Now eagerly desire the greater gifts”
The Story of My Very First Healing as a Brand New Christian
January 2018
[The following story took place at work between me and my friend whom I will call “Francine”. I was a busser at a busy hotel restaurant and she was a server. At the time, Francine had been succumbing to frequent panic attacks that were causing her to feel seriously unwell. While not the most shocking example, it showed me how the power of the Holy Spirit works.]
While I’m carrying a tray loaded with dirty dishes, I pass her at the kitchen doors. Francine’s hand is on her stomach as she walks limply back into the dining room.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
“My stomach hurts.” She sounds like she could cry.
I pass her at the double doors again. “My head aches,” she tells me, “Like, it’s really bad.”
I see her again in the server station. “My back hurts now too. I don’t know what I’m going to do, Felix. I feel like my body is broken. I can barely stand up. I think I’m going to go home.”
I pray for her within myself. God gifts my heart with the idea to lay hands on her and see supernatural healing as it happened in the Bible. I know that it isn’t my idea. I have wanted to see Him do this but have been afraid that it wouldn’t work, and so, haven’t tried. “God, please don’t let my lack of faith get in the way of You doing what You want to do.”
The breakfast shift ends and Francine heads down into the basement to punch out and go home early. I race through the last of my side work, then run after her into the basement of the resort. I spot her at her red plastic locker, removing her winter coat from it. “Francine wait!” I catch up to her. “I want to pray for you. I think God wants to heal you.”
She looks beaten down, but happy to see me. “I’m open to anything at this point,” she says.
“Okay, I’m going to lay my hands on you, is that fine?”
“Yes,” she agrees.
She stands still. I place my right hand on her upper back near her left shoulder and put the palm of my left hand to her forehead. I have no idea what to say, but I start praying out loud anyway hoping to receive the words from the Holy Spirit. A few people walk behind us in this little concrete hallway, but I know that shouldn’t stop this from happening. I ask her with authority, “Do you believe that Jesus is God, and that Jesus is the God who heals the sick?”
“Yes, I do.”
I can tell that the Spirit of God is smiling down upon me. I ask God to heal her of her bodily sickness. While I am praying for her healing, the Holy Spirit implants in my mind the following section of scripture in such a way that I grasp the message of the passage suddenly within a second:
Luke 8:43-48 (NIV)
43 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. 44 She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.
45 “Who touched me?” Jesus asked.
When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.”
46 But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.”
47 Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. 48 Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”
Immediately, power flows from my forearms through my wrists and hands and into Francine by faith. For several seconds the power flows through my arms like an ethereal stream of water’s shadow. I know that she is being healed because of the power going into her.
Not only do I feel it, but she does too. We are two sober witnesses not only of the resulting healing, but of the actual power itself.
“How do you feel?” I ask her.
She is giddy, “You healed me. I don’t know what else to say. You healed me.”
“I didn’t heal you, Jesus healed you. I prayed in His name. Remember when you said you believe Jesus is the God who heals the sick?”
“Well, whatever you just did worked,” she says.
“Like 100 percent?” I ask.
She smiles at me, “Yes, 100 percent. You healed me.”