Can the Truth Be Spread with Lies?

What is this page about?

Christians have always prayed for sick people, and they should. God can heal anyone, at any time, with doctors or without them. This page does not question that.

The question is about something newer. It is healing that is promised before it happens, done on a stage, and paid for by the crowd. And people who stay sick are told that their faith was too weak.

What does the Bible really tell?

Count every healing of one person in the whole Bible, from Genesis to Acts. You get about forty.

Most of them happened at once. About ten did not. Naaman had to wash seven times. Ten men with a skin disease were healed while they were walking away. And one blind man was healed in two steps. After the first touch he said: “I see men; for I see them like trees walking.” (Mark 8:24) He needed a second touch.

Three things are true of every one of them.

1. No healing was half done and then announced.
2. No healing stopped working later.
3. No healing was planned, advertised or promised before it happened.

Many sick people asked Jesus for help. Some shouted for it, and he welcomed them. But nobody could book a healing, promise one, or sell one.

Healings are also rare in the Bible. Almost three out of four happen in about thirty years: the time of Jesus and the first apostles. For hundreds of years the Bible tells of none at all. This includes the time of King David and King Solomon. Jesus himself said:

There were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed, except Naaman, the Syrian.

Luke 4:27 · World English Bible

In simple words: In the time of the prophet Elisha there were many people in Israel with the skin disease called leprosy. Not one of them was healed. Only Naaman was healed, and he was from Syria.

The faithful people who were not healed

Suppose that healing is promised to everyone with enough faith. Then the apostles would be the healthiest people in the New Testament. But look:

• Paul prayed three times that his “thorn in the flesh” would go away. God said: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9) In simple words: my grace is enough for you. My power shows best when you are weak.
• Timothy was often ill. Paul told him to take a little wine for his stomach. That was a medicine of the time (1 Timothy 5:23).
• Trophimus. Paul writes: “I left Trophimus at Miletus sick.” (2 Timothy 4:20)
• Elisha was the greatest healer of the Old Testament. But he “became sick with the illness of which he died” (2 Kings 13:14).

Nobody blames their faith.

Once the disciples saw a blind man and asked whose sin had made him blind. Jesus said: “This man didn’t sin, nor did his parents” (John 9:3).

And the Gospels tell one story where a healing failed. It was the disciples who could not do it. The boy’s father said to Jesus: “I believe. Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) His faith was weak, and he said so. Jesus healed the boy all the same.

“By his wounds we are healed”

People often quote these words from Isaiah 53:5. How does the New Testament use them?

• Matthew says that Isaiah’s words came true when Jesus healed sick people one evening in the town of Capernaum (Matthew 8:16-17).
• Peter uses them about sin (1 Peter 2:24).
• Paul says that our bodies will be made completely well at the resurrection (Romans 8:23).

Nobody in the New Testament uses them to promise that every Christian can be healed now.

Whose faith?

People are often told, “You were not healed because you did not believe enough.” Look at some healings in the Bible. Whose faith does the text speak of?

So in the Bible, healing does not depend on the amount of faith in the sick person.

What happened when someone checked?

Studies of prayer. Several large medical studies tested a question. Do heart patients get well faster when people pray for them? They did not. The largest study was in 2006, with 1,802 patients. Some patients were told that people were praying for them. Those patients had a few more problems than the others. A review of ten studies, with more than 7,600 patients, found no difference.

Lourdes. Lourdes is a Catholic holy place in France. Doctors there have examined healing claims since 1883. Since 1858, more than 7,000 cures have been reported. The Church has accepted 72 of them as complete, lasting, and without a medical explanation.

A doctor checks. In the early 1970s, a surgeon named Dr William Nolen went to a famous healing service. He took the names of 23 people who were announced as healed. Later he visited them. Not one had been cured of a disease of the body. One woman was told that she was healed of cancer in her backbone. She took off her back support and ran across the stage. The next day her backbone broke down. She died four months later.

People really do feel better at these meetings. Excitement makes pain smaller for a time. Many illnesses come and go without any help. And the people who come onto the stage are chosen before, away from the stage. This is why the check afterwards is so important.

“God is showing me someone with back pain”

A speaker says to a large crowd: “God is showing me that someone here has pain in the back.” Think about it. In a room of a thousand people, very many have back pain. Some of them will always stand up. Nobody can know such a thing about one person in advance. But anyone can say it about a crowd, and it will always be true.

No prophet or apostle in the Bible advertised a healing before it happened.

A hundred years of promised healing

John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) taught that Christians should never use doctors or medicine. In Chicago he had “healing homes”. After people died in them, he had to answer about a hundred charges in court in 1895. He built his own town, called Zion, in the state of Illinois. Doctors and medicine shops were not allowed there. In 1901 he said that he was the prophet Elijah. The town lost all its money. His own church removed him in 1906. He died in 1907.

The healing preachers after him were very different from each other. But one pattern comes again and again:

• healing is promised;
• it is done on a stage;
• nobody checks afterwards;
• when it fails, the sick person is blamed;
• there is a lot of money;
• and in the end there is a scandal.

William Branham was one of them. A man who worked in his meetings said later that the part of the healings that “stood up after investigation was embarrassingly low.” In simple words: when people checked, very few healings were real, and this was a shame.

Jack Coe told the parents of a boy of three, who had the disease polio, to take the supports off his legs. The boy was not healed. Coe himself died of polio in 1956.

The cost. A medical study of 1998 found 172 children in the United States who died in twenty years because their parents chose faith healing and no doctor. For 140 of these children, ordinary treatment works more than nine times in ten.

“But people were saved”

This is the hardest question. Suppose that the healings were made bigger than they were. But someone came to Christ at the meeting. Was it not worth it?

The Bible answers directly.

Some people said that Paul taught this:

Let’s do evil, that good may come

Romans 3:8 · World English Bible

In simple words: Let us do evil, so that good will come from it.

Paul said that this was a lie about him.

Paul also said what we are if we claim that God did something he did not do: “false witnesses of God” (1 Corinthians 15:15). We are people who say false things about God.

About the year 420, someone had an idea. Christians could pretend to belong to a false group, to find out its secrets. Augustine refused:

How then by a lie shall I rightly be able to prosecute lies?

Augustine, about 420

In simple words: How can I rightly fight against lies by telling a lie?

God can bring good out of anything. That is his work. It is not a method for us.

And a false healing does harm outside the room too. If healings can be arranged like a show, a person who doubts will ask: could the resurrection of Jesus be arranged too?

Check a healing story

Think of a healing story that you heard in a meeting, on television or from a friend. Ask eight questions.

1. Was the healing announced before anyone could know if it had happened?
2. Was the illness something that can be seen or measured, like a broken bone or blindness? Or was it something that only the person feels, and that comes and goes, like pain?
3. Did a doctor write down the illness before the healing?
4. Was the person also getting medical treatment?
5. Did someone from outside check afterwards?
6. Did the healing last?
7. If it failed, was this told honestly? Or was it explained by the devil, by doubt, or by “losing the healing”?
8. Was money asked for, and connected to “your miracle”?

A strong story looks like this. It was reported afterwards. The illness could be measured. A doctor had written it down. Someone from outside checked. It lasted. It was told honestly. And it was not sold. Such a story may be a true answer to prayer. Give thanks to God for it.

Many honest stories are weaker than that. Thank God for anything good, and hold the claim lightly until someone can check it.

What is really proved?

Check it yourself

1. Read Mark 1:40-45 and Acts 3:1-10 with 4:13-22. Ten minutes. Two healings that were examined.
2. Read 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, 1 Timothy 5:23 and 2 Timothy 4:20. Five minutes. Faithful people who stayed sick.
3. Read John 9. Ten minutes. A healing, a wrong idea about sin, and a careful check.
4. Read Matthew 8:14-17 and 1 Peter 2:21-25. Five minutes. How the New Testament uses Isaiah 53.
5. Use the eight questions. The next time you hear a healing story, ask them, kindly.