The preachers on television, the radio, at healing crusades, and also those who just walk among the general public telling people that they can be healed here if they will only comply with their instructions are surely frauds who are deceiving people.

The people who are doing such activity in Jesus’ name are typically Pentecostals or heavily influenced by Pentecostalism.  It should be no surprise then that they often (maybe always) also believe in other false teachings and practices related to Pentecostalism and the various movements begotten thereby.  Faith healers therefore often act like showmen, scream inappropriately, practice emotionalism in other ways, believe that nonsense tongues are the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and work with and justify women pastors (these are other fraudulent beliefs and practices covered in several of our other studies).

We see in the New Testament how the Lord might chasten a straying Christian through bodily illness.  This is the specific, limited context in which Christians with bodily infirmities are exhorted to seek healing with confidence (in the context of judging themselves by confessing and forsaking the sins which led to their chastening).  

This situation does not even apply to the vast majority of cases of people afflicted with illness and/or injury.  On the other hand, faith healers promise healing to general audiences of people whom they don’t even know and whose circumstances they are unfamiliar with.  

The faith healers turn their alleged healings into a show as they twist the Bible.  The common faith healer methods of getting mildly and moderately ill and disabled people to briefly think they have been healed through hypnosis, other psychological techniques, and subtle tricks have been well documented.  

The faith healers have their own variations of claims about why people are promised healing, how they are supposed to receive it, and different explanations about why it doesn’t happen to those who heed them (and why the healing that seemed to happen didn’t stick).  

However, they all have a lack of accountability in common.  The one most likely to get blamed when things don’t go as promised is the person who is still sick or injured (even though they totally heeded the faith healer).  The faith healers are then more likely to blame Jesus for the failure than they are to blame themselves (along with their false healing doctrines and practices).

Though Jesus healed on earth to demonstrate His true identity as the Son of God, He also never promised that everyone who truly believes in Him will be in good health.  

2 Timothy 4:20: “Erastus abode at Corinth: but Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.”

It sounds like the Apostle Paul considered sickness a normal thing, as if Christians (even genuine, faithful ones who believe and follow what the Bible actually teaches) are actually still subject to the pains, toil, and hardships of life.  That is because they are.

Aaron’s email is: [email protected]

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