First of all, why do you think Benny Hinn is a nut ?
Bible Evidence For Healing
Are there any good Biblical reasons to believe God still heals today?
There is no valid Scriptural reason to suppose that Christ ever withdrew his healing gifts from the church, or that the Biblical promises concerning physical healing have been abrograted by God. This means that all the promises and instructions relating to divine healing are for today, since the Scripture is the final authority in matters of faith and practice (2 Timothy 3:16).
However, there is every reason to suppose that, just as in Bible times, unbelief limits the hand of God. "Now He [Jesus] could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He marvelled because of their unbelief." (Mark 6:5,6).
Some try to invoke 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 or Matthew 7:21-23 to deny the validity of the ministry of divine healing today. The first passage refers to the second coming of Christ and says nothing about healing miracles. Here are more details on the subject. The second merely demonstrates that the existence of sign gifts in a person's life does not guarantee them a status of being right with God. It was lawless activity and not the casting out of demons which Christ condemned. After all, the early church leaders cast out demons and healed the sick in Jesus' name. And this was not just limited to the apostles (see Acts 8:5-8).
Besides the testimonial evidence, there are a number of very powerful Biblical reasons to believe that Jesus Christ still heals today. Taken together, they provide a formidable case for the validity of this kind of ministry.
Reason Number One: The Unchanging Nature of Jesus Christ
The Bible declares that, "Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). Our God is a living God - full of power, full of love and ready to hear the cry of the afflicted. Jesus loves people today as much as He did then. He regards sickness as a work of the devil now just as He did then (see Luke 13:16; Acts 10:38). He is full of the same compassion and mercy NOW (Hebrews 2:17) which moved Him to heal all who came to Him THEN (Mark 1:41). In fact, He is referred to as our Compassionate High Priest. If Jesus healed his enemies THEN (Luke 22:51), will He not heal His worshippers NOW?
If Jesus Christ is truly the same, we can expect Him to respond to faith now in the same way as He did as in the first century. Therefore, divine healing is available to those who come to God through faith in Christ.
Reason Number Two: The Bible reveals sickness to be a work of the devil
"how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him" (Acts 10:38)
This Scriptures plainly reveals that sickness is a work of the devil. When Jesus cast out demons and healed the sick, it was a manifestation of the Kingdom of God. The coming of that Kingdom, even in part, meant a defeat for the powers of darkness. When God effectively rules, and His will is done, things are in order. In the physical realm, this means good health.
Many times the Scripture declares that an evil spirit was behind the sickness or infirmity that Jesus cured. The story of the hunchbacked woman in Luke 13 was one such example. It is the desire of the devil to humiliate and crush humankind - and sickness is one of his tools to do this. Jesus wanted us to know that He has come with a greater power than the power of Satan in order to set us free from such oppression. The demonstration that Jesus can do this in the physical realm is a powerful incentive to believe that He can do it in the spiritual and psychological realms as well.
In Luke 9:42 Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed a boy of epilepsy. Epilepsy is generally caused by an unclean spirit. This in itself says nothing about the moral character of epilepsy sufferers. Demons attack us in different realms, but Jesus in us is more than enough to overcome them, if we remain in Him.
Another example is found in Matthew 9:32-34. "And as they were going out, behold, a dumb man, demon-possessed, was brought to Him.And after the demon was cast out, the dumb man spoke; and the multitudes marveled, saying, "Nothing like this was ever seen in Israel." But the Pharisees were saying, "He casts out the demons by the ruler of the demons."
The translation "demon-possessed" from the Greek is unjustified. All it means is that the man had a demon which affected him. The degree of demonisation in people varies from none at all (rare) to total possession by the powers of darkness. The word 'possessed' is misleading because it leads us to think that Scriptures like this are not generally applicable to the cases we find in life, when in fact, they are.
Jesus healed "to destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8; Acts 10:38). Demons are still active in defiling mankind today. Their attacks are directed not only against the spirit and soul of mankind, but also against his body. Armed with this knowledge, we have powerful motives to understand God's opposition to sickness and disease and to have faith that He really does want to heal. By entering into the conflict with this conviction, we enter into conflict with demons, which we must overcome by means of the spiritual weapons which God gave us.
Reason number 3 - The Generosity and Goodness of God
He [God] who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32).
God is a good father. No good father ever wilfully made his child sick. If they did they would be a child abuser. God wants to give us all good things. Healing and health is a good thing - it is a blessing of the covenant. Therefore God is willing to freely give us healing. Any difficulty in receiving is not due to God's unwillingness, but rather due to satanic opposition OR a lack of faith. These are bold statements which fly in the face of many outworn traditional excuses of theologians for the lack of power in the church, but they are true none the less. See the answer to the later question "But what about Paul's thorn?"
The whole thrust of New Testament teaching is to encourage us to believe that we will get answers to prayer from God. "Ask and you shall receive" (Matthew 7:7). "Whatever things you desire when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them" (Mark 11:24). "Ask and you shall receive, that your joy may be full" (John 16:24). These statements of Jesus are bulit upon the foundation of the knowledge of God's goodness. "If you, being evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him." (Matthew 7:11).
Reason Number Four - The Scope of the Atonement of Christ
The apostle Peter knew something about divine healing. In his first letter to Christians, he said concerning the sacrifice of Jesus, "who Himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness - by whose stripes you were healed." (1 Peter 2:24). Here the Scripture explicitly states that we were healed through the stripes of Jesus. That this Scripture refers to physical healing and not just spiritual healing or healing of the soul can be seen from the context in which it is quoted in Matthew 8:17, where it refers to the healing ministry of Christ.
"And He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: 'He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses' " (Matthew 8:16,17).
These two verses from 1 Peter and Matthew respectively, quote Isaiah 53:4,5, which reads as follows:
Surely He has borne our sicknesses [Heb. choli] and carried our pains [Heb. makob]. Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed".
This Scripture refers prophetically to the work of Jesus at the cross. At the cross, Jesus took the curse, that we might receive the blessings of God. These Scriptures refer to the provision of healing which is available to all who believe, just as spiritual salvation is available for all who believe. Both provisions were made through the work of Jesus at the cross.
The blessings of the atonement are not received automatically. It requires a living faith, specifically directed towards the relevant promise, in order to receive what God has provided. It may require the co-operation of someone in the Body of Christ. So even if the Scriptures say "we were healed" it is does not mean that true Christians are never sick. Christians have a legal status of being healed, just as we have a legal status of being perfectly righteous before God. To appropriate and experience the benefits of our legal status requires the kind of faith that contacts God Himself through the Holy Spirit.
Usually, but not always, God chooses to use others to minister the blessing of healing to sick ones in Jesus' name, through the laying on of hands, anointing with oil or by other means. However, the basis for all divine healing is not in the individual through whom it comes, but rather in the sufferings of Jesus which were endured for our benefit.
Reason Number Five - The Covenants of Healing
"Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases." (Psalm 103:1-3).
David here states the fact that the Lord heals all his diseases. This is because of the healing covenant God made with his people shortly after they left Egypt.
"If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in His sight, give ear to his commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you." (Exodus 15:26)
Some may object that these promises no longer apply to us under the New Covenant, but such objections seriously misunderstand the guiding principle of interpretation concerning Old Testament promises which Paul gives in the New Testament:
"For all the promises of God in Him are Yea, and in Him Amen to the glory of God through us."
(2 Corinthians 1:20)
This Scripture means that if we are in Christ, then all the promises in Scripture are valid to us. God gets glory when we receive the promises. Just as people gave glory to God for the healings done by Jesus, so people will give glory to God when we receive the manifestations of healing that we need, which Christ has provided for us. All the promises of God, including the covenants of healing in the Old Testament, are applicable to us today. In fact, the New Covenant is a better covenant, with better promises than were contained in the Old Covenant. Now that we as Christians can have Jesus the Healer living in us (which Old Covenant believers could not have), so much more is God willing to fulfil His covenant when we meet the conditions, overcome the roadblocks created by traditional teaching on the subject, and get a hold of God for ourselves.
Reason Number Six - The Instructions and Promises of the New Testament
We can see it is God's will to heal through the instructions, promises and declarations contained in the New Testament. For example, James says in his epistle:
"Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save (Gk: sosei) the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." (James 5:14-16)
This Scripture teaches any and all sick Christians, including those who are bedfast, that they should call for the elders of the church to minister to them as this passage describes. Elders are supposed to be able to pray the prayer of faith. The Scripture promises that the prayer of faith will have great effect and save [heal] the sick, raising him or her up.
Jesus Christ also said, "These signs will follow those who believe, in my name ... they will lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover" (Mark 16:17,18). This Scripture makes a definite promise concerning those who believe according to God's definition of faith. The sick they lay hand on in Jesus' name [in Jesus' place, authority, cause] SHALL recover.
These Scriptures prove that it is God's will to heal the sick.
Reason Number Seven - The Greek Word for 'Healing' and 'Salvation' is identical.
The word for 'save' in Greek is 'sozo' and is used for both physical and spiritual restoration. The a form of the word 'sozo' is used in Mark 6:56:
"Wherever He entered, into villages, cities or the country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged Him that they might just touch the hem of His garment. And as many as touched Him were made well [Gk: sozo]."
Jesus said to the leper he healed on one occasion, "Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well [Gk: sozo]" (Luke 17:19).
The word 'sozo' in its various forms is translated 36 times in the New Testament (NASB version) as saves, and 50 times as 'saved'. Yet it clearly also refers to healing. James 5:15 quoted above is another example of this usage.
This is further evidence that healing is in fact part of the great salvation package which God offers mankind.
Reason Number Eight - Sickness is Part of the Curse which Jesus Redeemed Us From
Deuteronomy 28:15ff reveals a huge list of curses which would come upon the people of God who refused to obey God's law. Since the law makes no one perfect, it was inevitable that this curse would come into operation at times. All forms of sickness are included in the curses listed here (Read Deuteronomy 28:61). But part of the good news of the gospel is that Christ Redeemed Us from the Curse of the Law! Again this was through Christ's death in our place. We are legally placed by this sacrifice in a place where we can be free from all curses and we can receive the blessings that come through the Holy Spirit of God.
"Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree') that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (Galatians 3:13,14).
Jesus suffered to restore to mankind all that was lost through the fall. He became a curse for us that we might receive the blessings of righteousness, peace and health - and anything else that pertains to the Kingdom of God. These blessings are administered by the Holy Spirit, who is in us and with us today. There are multitudes today who, having learned to draw upon God's resources and provisions through the Holy Spirit, have received divine healing in our times. It is a promised blessing, an offered blessing and a relevant, up-to-date blessing because God has not changed. He still responds to faith.
We therefore see in the Bible strong reasons to believe that divine healing is for today. We see it in the unchanging nature of Jesus Christ, in the fact that sickness is called the oppression of Satan, in the goodness and generosity of God, in the Scriptures concerning the substitutionary atonement of Christ, in the covenants of healing and the associated promises, in the New Testament instructions concerning ministry to the sick, in the choice of language used by the Holy Spirit linking healing and salvation, and in the promise of redemption from the curse of the law.
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