We live in a highly deceptive world including in the spiritual realm. There is no lack of spiritual confusion and delusion in the last days. Over the past decades, renewed worldwide interest in healing has emerged in both secular and Christian circles. Belief in miraculous healings by international faith healers has adversely affected many people including sincere, well-meaning Christians. Sickness is common in any human society, and more are seeking non-traditional methods of healing. But for instant and quick cures, some have fallen prey to charlatans or gullible friends who think that they can heal others. Some unsound or half-true statements concerning healing are passed around among churches or Christians as if they were biblical truths.

The Defective Understanding of Sickness for Believers

God often allows afflictions in our lives to draw us to him or to nurture us in patience or a spiritual cause. When we fall ill, we need to humble ourselves and seek the Lord in much prayers with patience waiting upon Him.

The following are some examples of deceptive or defective understandings of the matter of sickness, as listed by Richard Mayhue in his latest book, The Healing Promise: Is It Always God’s Will to Heal? (BMH, 1997), 20–21.

1. Because God wills that Christians enjoy His blessings, sickness shows that you are out of His will.
2. Sin is the root cause of sickness; therefore you must resist sickness as you would sin.
3. Since Christ died for your sickness and your sin, you can be freed from both.
4. If you had enough faith, you would be healed.
5. What you confess is what you possess; so talk sickness and you will get sick; talk health and you will get well.
6. All adversity comes from Satan; so sickness, like Satan, should be rebuked.
7. If you only knew the secret fact of God’s healing power, you could be healed.
8. Since Christ and the apostles healed in their day, Christians can heal today.
9. Since sickness is from Satan, nothing good can come from sickness.
10. Since God wants you well, never pray, “Thy will be done” with regards to healing.
11. Since sin is the cause of sickness, if you are sick, then you have a pattern of sin in your life.
12. God has healed you, but the devil is not letting the symptoms leave.

Testimony of True Healing

In both the OT and NT, we see believers who are sick and there are those who are healed and others who are not (1 Tim 5:23). There was genuine supernatural healing brought about by God through the prophets, Christ, and the Apostles. Where it happened, these are the distinguishing marks which include:

1. It was immediate (instantaneous).
2. It was public (eyewitnesses).
3. It took place on an ordinary unplanned occasion (not healing rallies).
4. It included illnesses that were established as true sicknesses and some even considered untreatable by the medical community at that time (ie, organic sickness, not psychosomatic sickness).
5. It was complete and irreversible (sickness did not return).
6. It was undeniable even to detractors and sceptics (and proven beyond a shadow of a doubt). (See Mayhue, The Healing Promise, 34.)

False Notions of Healing

When we hear of modern day so-called faith healing services by some mega church pastors who are supposed to be faith healers, it is often unauthenticated and unsupported by medical evidence that a real total remedy has taken place. Often migraines, depression, “short legs” and other symptomatic illnesses are “healed” instead of organic sicknesses. (See Peter Masters, Healing Epidemic, 202–227, and Mayhue, The Healing Promise, 63–85.) (Read Prof Verna Wright, MD, FRCP, a world-renowned medical professor at Leeds University Medical School and a leading Rheumatologist, provides an objective medical assessment of modern miracle healers and some conclusions in the last chapter of the book, Peter Masters, Healing Epidemic, Metropolitan Tabernacle, Wakeman Trust 1988)

There is a popular US faith healer, Benny Hinn, who came to Singapore some years ago, and his doctrine and practice was characterised by the following, according to Dr Richard Mayhue of Masters Seminary (Mayhue, The Healing Promise, 33-34).

1. Benny Hinn does not pray “Lord, Thy will be done.” Jesus Christ did (Luke 22:42).
2. Hinn believes that God always intends for believers to be healed. In contrast, the Bible teaches that some of the greatest saints had physical infirmities from which they were never healed, including Jacob, Paul and Timothy.
3. Hinn teaches that believers should command God to heal. The Bible teaches we are to ask (1 John 5:14–15).
4. Hinn suggests that miraculous healing from God is gradual. Healing by Christ and the apostles occurred instantly.
5. Hinn teaches that faith on the part of the sick person is essential to healing. Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter could not have exercised faith when they were raised from the dead.
6. Hinn writes that we must do our part before God can heal. The Bible teaches that God is sovereign.
7. Hinn believes that Christians should not be sick. The Bible teaches that Christians can be sick and all will eventually die.
8. Benny Hinn implies that a person’s healing can be lost and that the healed person must do certain things to keep the healing. Nowhere in the Bible do we find such teaching.

So what then should believers do when they are ill? A proper study of James 5:16–20 is requisite to answer this pressing question.

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