I am not sure why you feel offended by our testimony or a need to come against it.
I'm sure it seems a puzzlement to you... why indeed would other Christians be offended by the idea of faith healing ONLY... and the attitude that anyone who seeks out doctors or goes on medication isn't trusting Jesus or having faith.
Why do some see a need to come against it?
Well....
A: Because it's unscriptural.
B: Because it's bad theology.
C: Because, as Reba has tried to point out to you, and I can add to her testimony in this... It causes people to have shipwreck of faith.
Any one of these reasons is good enough to take a stand against this kind of attitude. To me, the third reason is the most compelling though, because I've seen good people lose faith entirely, all because some one became ill and didn't recover through prayer alone.
Lesjude, I don't have any issue with your own spiritual walk in which you have decided that you will only pray and go to a funeral if necessary. If that is your walk, that is your walk.
The problem comes when you call into question another's faith for not walking the way you do.
I've read through the thread, folks have given you clear scriptural reasons to understand that the texts you are sharing about healing, don't mean exactly what you think they do. You are taking what Christ meant for a sign for the unbelievers to know that the Apostles and disciples were from God and created a burdensome yoke for believers...
I used this example in another thread yesterday, but it goes very well here:
Paul was certainly full of the Spirit and healed many people. As a matter of fact, when he was in Ephesus preaching and showing signs to validate his preachings, folks would bring handkerchiefs and aprons, touch him with them and bring them back to the sick and the sick would be healed. The whole city knew of the God Paul served via his healings.
Yet, when the pastor at Ephesus had some kind of chronic illness causing him to be frequently ill, did Paul lay hands upon Timothy and heal him?
Nope... he told him to take wine for his stomach.
Ironic.... the pastor of the church in a city abuzz with miraculous healings not only had frequent illnesses... he wasn't healed via the laying on of hands or having a handkerchief carried to Paul or whatever.
Now we know that Timothy was hardly a man of little or no faith.
But, it wasn't God's intention that Timothy be healed via a miracle. Paul simply recommended that he drink some wine for his stomach ailments.
Interestingly enough, it is now known to medical science that many ulcers are caused by a bacteria Helicobacter pylori. It's also been found that drinking wine can kill this bacteria and help heal the stomach of the ulcers caused by it.
There we have it, Paul recommending that Timothy take a medication.
Frankly, that should be 'nuff said, but I know it won't be.
Reba wasn't engaging in some kind of witchcraft (and shame on you for even suggesting such a thing)... she was trying to impress upon you the fact that this teaching you're promoting here causes real problems with folks. She's been around Pentecostalism and faith healing preaching for a long, long time and has seen first hand the damage it can do.
I haven't been as exposed to it as Reba, but I worked for 12 years for an Assembly of God and was working there when a dynamic preacher decided faith healing was the only means for the "faithful".... and that caused some damage as well.
I saw good people's faith being called into question because they chose to go to doctor's for medical issues. I also saw some agonize and feel that their own faith was useless when they prayed for healing and it wasn't forthcoming.
I know of some who eventually fell away from faith altogether because of it.
It's not surprising... it's a common result of false teaching and false prophets. Satan uses the false teachers and prophets to create unscriptural and false expectations in people, and then when the expectations fail, as they so often do, the people fall away believing that either God or their own faith is at fault, when the problem was that they exchanged the truth for a lie.
The lie here isn't that God sometimes uses miracles to heal people of things...He does. The lies is that He ALWAYS works this way and if you don't trust Him to miraculously heal you, your faith is at fault.
It's a lie, an insidious one, a damaging one, and one well worth standing against.
