Does God Heal People Today?

Sovereignty of God Versus Word of Faith Teaching

So you've got Andrew Womack on one side saying the greatest danger, the greatest offense against the Church in our time is the idea of the sovereignty of God. Let me quote C. H. Spurgeon, who's on the other side of the aisle, on the subject of sovereignty.

He says this, or he did, "...there is no attribute of God more comforting to his children than the doctrine of divine sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe troubles, they believe that sovereignty hath ordained their afflictions, that sovereignty overrules them, and that sovereignty will sanctify them all.

There is nothing for which the children of God ought more earnestly to contend than the dominion of their Master over all creation, the kingship of God over all the works of his own hands, the throne of God, and his right to sit upon that throne.

On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldlings...". Worldlings there he's referring to not only people of the world who are non-believers, but worldly saints who have not been taught by God.

"...there is no doctrine more hated by worldlings, no truth of which they have made such a football...". "...as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain doctrine of the sovereignty of the Infinite, Jehovah.

Men will allow God to be everywhere except on his throne. They'll allow him to be in his workshop to fashion worlds and to make stars. They'll allow him to be in his almonery to dispense his alms and bestow his bounties.

They'll allow him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean. But when God ascends his throne, his creatures then gnash their teeth.

And when we proclaim and enthrone God and his right to do as he wills with his own, to dispose of his creatures as he thinks well, without consulting them in the matter, then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us.

For God is on his throne. For God on his throne is not the God they love. They love him anywhere better than they do when he sits with his scepter in his hand and his crown upon his head. But it is God upon the throne that we love to preach.

It is God upon his throne whom we trust.". Here's what I'm saying with all that. An analogy would be this. I've got a buttoned shirt on, and if I get the wrong button in the top hole, it doesn't matter what else I do, it's going to be wrong all the way down.

And that's the truth with God's sovereignty. Get it right, and our doctrines will be right all the way down, or at least they'll have the tendency for it to be right doctrine all the way down. But get it wrong here, we're wrong all the way down.

Every false teaching elevates man and denigrates God. That's true in the cults. They cannot handle the true God, the true God of Scripture. They devalue the Lord Jesus Christ. They don't honor him as the Son in the same way that they honor the Father, as John 5 makes clear.

Jesus says, you must. We are to honor the Son even as we honor the Father, John 5, verse 22. Man's religions will never be able to do that. And the Word of Faith movement is man's religion. We need to get it right at the top on God's sovereignty.

Turning on the Light of Scripture

What I want to do is put the light on. When darkness is in a room, we don't need a vacuum cleaner to get rid of darkness. Just turn the light on. And while I'm very grateful for all the ministries that expose the darkness of the Word of Faith, I think there's a great place for all of it, not in any way undervaluing that.

What I want to do in this time together is just turn the light on. Let's see what Scripture says. And I want to ask you, are you hungry for truth? What is the passion of my heart is to know God as he really is, and the gospel as it.

Really is.

And there's not one without the other. We must get God right from the Bible and the gospel right from the Bible. Light dispels darkness. I wrote a book called The Five Solas. After darkness, light are the first words.

The entrance of thy words giveth light. It giveth understanding unto the simple, Psalm 119, verse 130. That's from the King James Version. Here's what I wrote in the first paragraph. Light dispels darkness.

When the light of God's Word shines into places of spiritual and cultural darkness, it transforms people, families, and nations. It does not matter how long the darkness has persisted. When light appears, darkness, like a hostile renegade usurper to the throne, must submit, bow its head, and walk away in shame.

Again, light dispels darkness. The entrance of God's Word brings light. And darkness is the shared experience of a people without light. And such was the case before the Protestant Reformation. The Bible wasn't known.

In its place, religious superstition, tradition, and falsehood reigned. The Reformation brought God's Word and the gospel back into the hands of the masses. That same principle applies in this case as well.

Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, and the Appeal of Word of Faith

In our day, people have been impacted greatly by the Kenneth Hagin and the Kenneth Copeland. Although Kenneth Hagin died, I believe it's 2003, Kenneth Copeland is now in his 80s. And outside of the fact that now he's in league with the Pope and embraces him as a brother, it's the false teaching of Copeland himself that has caused many to be in bondage.

But it has a certain appeal. His message has a certain appeal because if people have been bounced around in the game of life, so to speak, the word of faith says you can change that. You can put laws into operation if you learn them and apply them, whereby your future will be very different from your past.

Learn the laws, get hold of them, speak them out of your mouth, you'll have what you say. In our day, a new generation have arisen in terms of the teachers out there, the NAR, the New Apostolic Reformation led by men like Bill Johnson of Bethel Church in Redding, California.

Jesus Culture is a big music proponent of that same teaching. And that's something that is addressed and I'll give you some resources at the end of our time together that I think you'll be interested in if you want to discover more.

Personal Experience with Benny Hinn Crusades

But I want to go to God's word and talk about it. My own experience was as a pastor, I was deeply involved, not only teaching it myself, but attending crusades and teaching and preaching crusades myself around the world, India, other places.

I was on stage as one of the pastors with Benny Hinn, who is, again, a proponent of the word of faith, shook his hand and was thrilled to see what I saw. Looking back, again, I wince because the claims that were made, very different from what actually takes place in those services.

Music is a massive factor for at least an hour and a half, perhaps even two hours. People are singing as the atmosphere in the meeting is progressively becoming more and more intense. And two hours before Brother Big Shot, Brother Benny comes on stage and does what he does.

And here's what I understand now, looking back, the really sick people, I mean, the really sick people are never seen. Let that sink in the quadriplegics, the people that are unable to move in their beds, but they've come because a family member is believing that God will give them a miracle.

They're in some other room. They're in a backstage place because the organizers of the event know if people see the really sick people, it will dampen people's faith. And let me tell you this, if even one of them over the years and over the decades was healed, it'd be national news.

But it's not happening. But the claims are made over and over again about God wants you well, God wants you free from sickness. And the bondage of that, when for some their healing is not going to be seen, this side of glory, the bondage is massive.

Christ Bore Sin, Sickness, and the Curse

Here's what I know. I believe Jesus did go to the cross for sin, for sickness, for the curse, for every malady of man, for everything we could ever experience on the earth that is crushing that which is of the curse.

And I believe in heaven there will be no trace of sickness, none at all. And Jesus purchased that for his people. He bore our sins in his body on the tree and he bore sickness and disease and the curse.

He became the curse for us. So I'm not denying the very scriptures that I used to stand on decades ago. I believe all of what the Bible says. But I do believe that God is sovereign over when those healings take place.

And I continue to see divine healing because God is very merciful. I see just as much healing now as I did then. God was merciful to me then as he is now. And he is merciful to people then as he is now.

But he's Lord over healing. And he, for his own reasons, can say, I have gone to the cross, the Lord Jesus gone to the cross, but for healing, for deliverance, for freedom, for all of the things that we will experience in heaven.

But he's Lord over when that takes place. And for some, they're not getting out of the wheelchair, this side of glory. And God gives grace for that just as he gives miraculous healing in terms of I've seen many, many times great, horrendous sicknesses healed by the power of the Lord, but not in every case.

The Boy Who Survived the Fall and the Girl Named Faith

Two things happened within the space of a week in the 90s and began to make me think. And one was a little boy of three who was playing in an apartment complex here in the Phoenix area. And the railings on the third floor of this apartment were not tight enough.

Do you know what I mean by that? He could actually fit through the railings and fell through and fell down three flights, three stories to the ground below solid concrete. The father who was trying to grab hold of the son, let me let me get all the details right if I can.

In fact, I think it was an uncle who was looking after him. Anyway, every all the all the adults ran down and found the little boy not breathing, didn't look good. Paramedics were called and I was called and the church got praying and we rushed to the hospital, found out which hospital it was, rushed to the hospital.

And the father there was just pacing up and down. The the uncle was beside himself, felt very responsible for what happened. And after about three hours, a surgeon came out of the operating room and said, where's the father?

And was was able to meet the father. And he says, I've got amazing news for you. Not only is your little boy alive, we can find nothing wrong with him. I would put that down to great, miraculous power from the Lord.

I use the word miracle with a little hesitation, but certainly a dramatic, dramatic answer to prayer. We were rejoicing, absolutely rejoicing. This little boy is alive and well today. That's the last time I heard.

I think the family moved out of the area of lost touch, but so thrilled to hear great news and no further ramifications. The father was told we're going to keep the boy in overnight, but that's all they did.

There was no other issue. And the boy is doing just tremendously well. But within a week, there was another incident of a young girl, engaged 12, her name was Faith, and she was in a horse riding accident and fell off the horse.

But her feet, one of her feet were caught in the reins of the horse and her head was dragged on the floor as the the horse just bolted. And very, very sadly, she died at the scene and didn't recover. And we prayed as a church just as earnestly, just as passionately, just with the same amount of faith as previously before.

In fact, our faith was encouraged by what had just happened with the little boys within a week of this. But this this girl, Faith, didn't recover. And my first funeral as a pastor in the United States was the funeral of this young girl.

Deuteronomy 29:29 and the Secret Things of God

And it was a sad time, because especially in the light of what had just happened in that movement, everyone looked at the family as to what they did to let the devil in and what they didn't do to get the laws of faith to work.

Imagine the bondage of that. Imagine the bondage of that. It's legalistic bondage. And that's where the rubber meets the road, because in the magazines, you know what they'll do? They'll talk about the little boy.

They won't talk about Faith, the girl whose name is Faith. And I look back and think I wasn't able to help that family. I remember going to the pulpit at that funeral. It was the hardest time trying to bring comfort.

And I quoted Deuteronomy 29, 29. The secret things belong to the Lord our God. But the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever. And I still believe that verse. But my interpretation of the verse at that time was this.

God has his secrets and he doesn't always reveal to us why something didn't happen. Obviously, we didn't understand something and we didn't do what we should have done and we didn't work the laws and all of that.

But we'll find out in heaven what went wrong. It's a secret now. Then it won't be a secret. And we trust him in the meantime. And let's go back and preach God's word, the uncompromised word. And that's exactly what I did.

Looking back, I wasn't able to help that family at all. And I have much regret. The Lord is so good and he's forgiving. And he has brought me out of that mess, theological mess as it is.