Too Holy for Medicine (You). Not Too Holy for a Rolex (Me).
“Real believers don’t take medicine.” Where does the rule stop?
A mother and her two sons, aged 23 and 19, stand at the grave of their father. He was 64. He had been told that real believers do not take medicine, and he stopped treating his blood pressure. The Spider believes the teaching that told him so is a rule made by men, kept selectively, and paid for by other people.
A short dossier, and an opinion piece, written by the Spider: the church member from Dossiers 68 and 69, the one who asks the questions. About ten minutes if you engage with it; two if you read only the boxes. The full case on healing is in Dossier 44, and is not repeated here.
The story in Part I is true and known to the Spider. Nobody in it is named, and the details are kept general on purpose. The criticism on this page is of a teaching and its teachers, never of the man who believed them.
The whole argument, in eight boxes — for anyone skimming
1 · A true story
A widow and two sons, 23 and 19, at the grave of a 64-year-old man who was told real believers don’t take medicine.
2 · Not one verse
The New Testament never tells a Christian to refuse medicine. Paul prescribed wine for Timothy’s stomach. Luke was a physician.
3 · The selective rule
Clothes, cooked food, shoes, cars and watches are fine. Only the pills are unbelief.
4 · Tempting God
Jesus had the promise and still would not jump (Matthew 4:7). Refusing treatment so God must heal is the same test.
5 · Forbidding what God made
“Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4).
6 · The Church built the hospitals
The churches he was told were void built hospitals. The new teaching told him not to use one.
7 · Not a victimless crime
The teachers were not at the grave.
8 · Stand fast
“Be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1).
A two-minute checkDo not take the Spider’s word for it
Ask Google, Claude or ChatGPT these five questions, and compare the answers with this page.
Does the New Testament forbid Christians from taking medicine or seeing doctors?
Part III
What does 1 Timothy 5:23 say, and why did Paul say it?
Part III
What does 2 Chronicles 16:12 say about King Asa and physicians, and what was his fault?
Part II
What does Matthew 4:7 mean by “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God”?
One true story, and the teaching behind it. The Spider knows the family. No name, place, date, church, preacher or book is given, and none should be guessed.
The question, in a form that can be checked
Does the New Testament anywhere tell Christians to refuse medicine or physicians? What did Paul tell Timothy about his stomach (1 Timothy 5:23)? Why is Luke called “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14)? Is refusing available treatment an act of faith, or is it “tempting the Lord thy God” (Matthew 4:7)? If medicine is a test of faith, why are clothes, cooked food, shoes, cars and watches not? What does 1 Timothy 4:1–5 say about teachers who forbid what God created “to be received with thanksgiving”? Who bears responsibility when a teaching like this kills someone? And what does Galatians 5:1 say to a Christian who has been put under rules Christ never gave?
Before you read: does the New Testament tell Christians to refuse medicine?
Your answer stays on this page. You will be asked again at the end.
What the Spider holds, stated up front
Not one verse in the New Testament tells a Christian to refuse medicine. Several assume he will use it. Part III.
The rule is applied selectively. Every other thing God provides through human skill is allowed. Only the one that keeps people alive is called unbelief. Parts IV–V.
Refusing available treatment so that God must heal is putting God to the test, which Jesus refused to do. Part VI.
Teachers who forbid what God made, and call the forbidding true faith, are the kind Paul warned about. Part VII.
The churches he was told were void are the churches that built the hospitals.Part VIII.
The medicine rule did not come alone. It was the last link in a chain. Part IX.
Others paid for it. Scripture says who will answer. Part X.
Where this page standsThis page takes a side. The Spider believes the teaching that “real believers don’t take medicine” has no ground in the New Testament, contradicts it, and does real harm. The father in the story acted in good faith on what he was taught. Nothing here questions his faith, and nothing here judges the faith, sincerity or standing before God of any teacher. The page judges a teaching by Scripture and by what it did.
A note on scope and method. No family member, preacher, church, place, book or date is named or identifiable on this page. The family’s details are deliberately general. Scripture is quoted from the Authorised Version, and Ecclesiasticus from the Authorised Version’s Apocrypha. Every quotation was checked against a published source; the checks that changed the brief are listed under the prompt. This page is about a teaching, and gives no medical advice.
Reproducibility
The prompt behind this page
This page was produced by giving the following brief to a frontier language model with web search, which assembled and checked the sources. It is published so you can run it yourself, change it, or reverse it. Two experiments are worth trying. Reverse it: ask for the strongest case that a Christian should refuse medicine and trust God alone, written by someone who holds that view, and see what it does with 1 Timothy 5:23 and Matthew 4:7. Neutralise it: remove the story and keep only the texts, and see whether the argument in Parts III to VII still stands on its own.
Write a short, source-first, interactive opinion article, in
British English, for a general reader. Quote Scripture from the
Authorised Version. Verify every quotation, date and reference
against a reliable published source, and anything marked
"verify"; where an item does not hold up, drop it or soften it,
and say so. Do not invent quotes.
TITLE. Working title: "Too Holy for Medicine. Not Too Holy for
a Rolex." Alternatives: "Faith Enough for a Mercedes. Not
Enough for a Pill.", "Cooked Food, Yes. Medicine, No?", "Real
Believers Don't Take Medicine. They Just Wear Nice Watches."
Confirm the title with me.
FORM. A short dossier, a fraction of the length of a full one,
and an opinion piece, written in the voice of the Spider, the
church member from 68 (Kill the Spider?) and 69 (Educate the
Spiders, Maybe?), the one who asks the questions. Mark it
clearly at the top as "The Spider's opinion." It does not set
out both sides and leave the verdict open. It tells one true
story, says plainly what the Spider thinks of the teaching
behind it, and gives the reasons in brief. The full case on
healing, Asa, Timothy's wine, Luke the physician, John
Alexander Dowie and the human cost of healing-without-medicine
is already made in 44 (Can the Truth Be Spread with Lies?). Do
not repeat it; link to it.
THESIS. Nowhere does the New Testament tell a Christian to
refuse medicine. The teaching that "real believers don't take
medicine" is not a higher faith. It is a rule invented by men,
applied selectively, and paid for by other people. The same
teachers who call medicine a test of faith wear tailored
clothes, eat cooked food, drive good cars and wear expensive
watches, and none of those count as a lack of faith. Only the
one provision that keeps people alive does. That is not faith.
It is putting God to the test, which Jesus himself refused to
do. And when it goes wrong, the teachers are not the ones
standing at the grave.
SCOPE. The story is true and known to the Spider. No names,
places, dates, churches or preachers are given, and none
should be supplied or guessed. Keep the family's details
general enough that they cannot be identified. Never criticise
the father or his family. He acted in good faith on what he
was taught. The criticism is of the teaching and the teachers.
THE STORY. Tell it first, plainly, as an account and not a
sermon illustration. A mother and her two sons, aged 23 and
19, stand at the grave of their father. He was 64. He had been
in good health, with one manageable problem: high blood
pressure. He had access to excellent medical care. He had
held a senior government position and taken voluntary
retirement early to spend more time with his family. He found
the slower pace hard, and was drawn to a modern church. He had
been raised in a creedal church and baptised as an infant. He
was told this was all void, and that he had to "find God
again." He was given books that said the world would end in
the year 2000, among other predictions. None came true. He was
baptised again. He was told that real believers do not take
medicine, and that God heals without it. He stopped treating
his blood pressure. It killed him years before his time. Then
one line, boxed: This was not a victimless teaching.
QUESTION TO TEST. Does the New Testament anywhere tell
Christians to refuse medicine or physicians? What did Paul tell
Timothy about his stomach (1 Tim 5:23)? Why is Luke called "the
beloved physician" (Col 4:14)? Is refusing available treatment
an act of faith, or is it "tempting the Lord thy God" (Mt
4:7)? If medicine is a test of faith, why are clothes, cooked
food, shoes, cars and watches not? What does 1 Tim 4:1-5 say
about teachers who forbid what God created "to be received
with thanksgiving"? Who bears responsibility when a teaching
like this kills someone? What does Gal 5:1 say to a Christian
put under rules Christ never gave?
SUPPORTING ARGUMENTS.
1. The other side its due, in two or three sentences: they
believe they honour God; Ex 15:26; the healings in the
Gospels and Acts; James 5:14-15; Asa (2 Chr 16:12).
Concede that God heals, that Christians should pray for
the sick, and that trusting a doctor instead of God is a
real sin. Answer in one line: Asa was faulted for leaving
God out, not for seeing a doctor. Link 44.
2. Where does it say that? 1 Tim 5:23 (his stomach and
frequent illnesses, not a cold); Col 4:14; Luke 10:34, 37;
Mt 9:12; Isa 38:21 and 2 Kgs 20:7. Box: Not one verse
tells a Christian to refuse medicine. Several assume they
will use it.
3. The selective rule. The sharpest point; make it prominent
and caustic. If using what God provides through human
skill shows a lack of faith, so do clothes, cooked food,
shoes, glasses, air-conditioning, cars and watches. Why
does the rule stop at the pharmacy door and never reach
the car park?
4. "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God" (Mt 4:5-7; Deut
6:16). Jesus had the promise and would not force God to
keep it. Refusing treatment so God must heal is the same
move. Box it.
5. Teachers who forbid what God created (1 Tim 4:1-5). The
passage is about foods and marriage, not medicine; say so
honestly. The principle is the same. Verify how
commentators across traditions apply it.
6. The Church built the hospitals: Basil's Basileias (c. 369;
verify); the mission hospitals of India, including Arthur
Margoschis' hospital at Nazareth (link 07) and Christian
Medical College, Vellore, founded by Ida Scudder (1900;
verify). The churches he was told were void built
hospitals. The teaching that replaced them told him not to
use one.
7. The pattern, not one bad idea, one line each: infant
baptism declared void (link 21, 76); "find God again"
(link 29); books whose predictions failed (link 03; do not
name the books); baptised again; told real believers
don't take medicine. Each step asked him to trust the new
teachers over his upbringing, his doctors and his own
judgement, and each was presented as deeper faith. The
last was fatal. Deut 18:22.
8. Not a victimless crime. Say plainly who paid: a widow and
two young men. Mt 18:6; James 3:1; Mt 7:15-16; Acts
20:29. Link 82 and 68. Make this very prominent.
9. Close with freedom, not a recap. Gal 5:1. Pray for
healing; ask the elders to pray and anoint (James 5:14);
and take the medicine, with thanks. End with one line from
the Spider: Do not let anyone put you under a yoke Christ
never laid on you.
A TWO-MINUTE CHECK, boxed near the top: five questions a
reader can put to Google, Claude or ChatGPT. Link 79.
INTERACTIVE. "Where does the rule stop?" Twelve things God
provides through human skill (blood-pressure tablets, insulin,
spectacles, cooked food, clothes, shoes, a car, a wristwatch, a
hearing aid, surgery, clean water, a mobile phone). The reader
marks each "Faith" or "Lack of faith" under the rule. Then
reveal: "Which of these did your teacher give up?"
PROMINENT BOXES, strong and clearly bordered, so a reader who
skims only the title, the boxes and the closing line gets the
full argument: The Spider's opinion; A true story; Not one
verse; The selective rule; Tempting God; The Church built the
hospitals; Not a victimless crime; Stand fast. Include near
the end: "Nothing here is medical advice. If you are ill, see
a doctor, and pray as well."
LANGUAGE. Write like a sharp human writer. No AI or
devotional cliches (delve, journey, profound, tapestry, "at
its core", "in conclusion"), no automatic groups of three,
few em dashes, no rhetorical-question openers, no bold in
running text, no both-sides hedging, no recap at the end.
Caustic toward the teaching and the teachers in the selective
rule and the cost; gentle toward the family throughout.
EARLIER ARTICLES. Link rather than repeat: 44 (main link), 68,
69, 82, 21, 76, 29, 03, 07, 16, 42, 79.
OUTPUT: a single self-contained interactive HTML page, professional
and readable, light theme by default with a dark switch, stating the
question at the top and publishing this prompt in full. Also a
plain-English quick version and a Simple English version.
The page you are reading is the output of that brief after the sources were checked. The title used is the author’s own revision of the working title. Everything marked “verify” was checked. Nine things corrected, qualified or extended the brief, and each is marked where it arises.
Where the evidence corrects, qualifies or extends the brief
1. Basil’s Basileias: “c. 369” widened to “the early 370s.” Basil organised relief during a famine around 369, but the land for the complex appears to have been given by the emperor Valens in 372, Basil’s own letters of 372–373 describe it as built and working, and its staff included physicians. Whether it was the first hospital is debated; it is the first for which good evidence survives. Part VIII.
2. Margoschis’ hospital: made exact. The dispensary at Nazareth was founded in 1870 by Dr J. M. Strachan. Margoschis ran it, built the main hospital block, and on St Luke’s Day, 18 October 1892, named it St Luke’s Hospital, after the beloved physician of Colossians 4:14. It is still open. Part VIII, and Dossier 07.
3. Ida Scudder and Vellore: confirmed. She opened a one-bed clinic for women in Vellore in 1900, a forty-bed hospital in 1902, and a medical school for women in 1918; the Christian Medical College dates its founding to 1900. Part VIII.
4. 1 Timothy 4:1–5: the commentators read it of food and marriage, and none of those checked applies it to medicine. Calvin, Wesley, Clarke and Gill all take “every creature of God is good” of food, and Calvin ties it to conscience. The page therefore applies the passage by analogy, and says so. It adds two older Christian texts that make the medical point directly: Ecclesiasticus 38:4 and Luther’s plague letter of 1527. Part VII.
5. Matthew 4:7: two witnesses added. The brief’s reading is not new. Luther (1527) called refusing medicine, on the ground that God can protect without it, “not trusting God but tempting him.” John Gill, the eighteenth-century Baptist commentator, wrote on this verse that neglecting the ordinary means of safety and expecting God to preserve without them “is a tempting him.” Part VI.
6. The selective rule: Luther made it first. In the same letter Luther argued that by the reasoning of those who refuse medicine, a man might as well refuse food, drink, clothing and shelter, and that this would be suicide. The Spider’s sharpest point is nearly five hundred years old. Part IV.
7. Hezekiah’s figs: wording corrected, and the point extended. The Authorised Version says “plaister,” not “poultice” (Isaiah 38:21). And in 2 Kings 20 God first says “I will heal thee” (20:5), and then Isaiah orders the figs (20:7). The promise of healing and the remedy came together. Part III.
8. Luke: “a quarter of the New Testament” made exact. By Greek word count, Luke and Acts together are about 27 per cent of the New Testament, more than Paul’s letters. That both books are Luke’s is the Church’s ancient tradition. Part III.
9. Galatians 5:1 and Deuteronomy 18:22: context noted. Paul’s “yoke of bondage” is the law of Moses imposed on Gentile Christians; the page applies it to a man-made rule, and adds Colossians 2:20–23, which speaks of “the commandments and doctrines of men” and of “neglecting of the body.” Deuteronomy 18:22 is said of a prophet speaking in the LORD’s name; the page applies it to predictions presented as God’s word. Parts VII, IX and XI.
Contents
What follows
Part I
A true story
An account
A mother and her two sons, aged 23 and 19, stand at the grave of their father. He was 64.
He had been in good health, with one manageable problem: high blood pressure. He had access to excellent medical care.
He had held a senior post in government service, and took voluntary retirement early to spend more time with his family. He found the slower pace of life hard. He was drawn to a modern church.
He had been raised in a creedal church and baptised as an infant. He was told that this was all void, and that he had to “find God again.”
He was given books to read. They said the world would end in the year 2000, and made other predictions. None came true.
He was baptised again.
He was told that real believers do not take medicine, and that God heals without it.
He stopped treating his blood pressure. It killed him years before his time.
He did what he was told because he believed it. He wanted to be the kind of Christian his teachers said a real Christian was, and he paid for it with the years he had retired early to give his family. Nothing on this page is a criticism of him.
This was not a victimless teaching.
Part II · Fair to the other side
The other side, given its due
People who teach healing without medicine usually believe they are honouring God, not harming anyone. They point to God’s promise, “I am the LORD that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26), to the healings in the Gospels and Acts, to James 5:14–15, and to King Asa, who “in his disease … sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians” (2 Chronicles 16:12). The Spider concedes that God heals, that Christians should pray for the sick, and that trusting a doctor instead of God is a real sin.
The answer, in one line
Asa was faulted for leaving God out, not for seeing a doctor.
The passage is read in full in Dossier 44, with every healing in the Bible, the believers who were not healed, and the record of the healing movements that forbade medicine. The Spider does not repeat it.
Part III
Where does it say that?
It does not. The New Testament never tells a believer to refuse medicine. It says the opposite, in passing, as if no one would think otherwise.
“Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.”1 Timothy 5:23His stomach, and his frequent illnesses: a recurring condition, not a cold. The apostle through whom God healed others (Acts 19:11–12) prescribed a remedy for his own spiritual son.
“Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.”Colossians 4:14Luke and Acts are about 27 per cent of the New Testament by word count. Paul calls their author by his trade, and does not tell him to find another one.
“And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine …” — “Go, and do thou likewise.”Luke 10:34, 37Oil and wine were the first aid of the day. Jesus holds up the man who used them as the example to follow.
“They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.”Matthew 9:12Jesus uses the physician as a picture of himself. He does not treat the physician as a rival.
“I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee” … “And Isaiah said, Take a lump of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered.”2 Kings 20:5, 7; Isaiah 38:21God promised to heal Hezekiah, and his prophet still ordered a plaister of figs. The promise and the remedy came together.
Not one verse
Not one verse tells a Christian to refuse medicine. Several assume they will use it.
Paul prescribed wine for Timothy’s stomach. Luke was a physician. God’s own prophet ordered the figs.
Part IV · The Spider’s sharpest point
The selective rule
Follow the teaching to its own end. If using what God provides through human skill shows a lack of faith, then so do clothes. So does cooked food: fire is a technology, and so is the oven. So do shoes, spectacles, air-conditioning, a car and a watch. Every one of them is something God created, worked into shape by human skill, and received by people who could, in principle, have trusted God to keep them warm, fed, shod, sighted, cool, carried and on time.
The teachers who forbid medicine use all of these. Often they use the expensive versions. The suit is tailored. The car is good. The watch is not cheap. None of this, apparently, is unbelief.
Somehow the only provision that counts as a lack of faith is the one that keeps the congregation alive. The tablet that holds a man’s blood pressure down is a test of faith. The car that brings the preacher to the pulpit is not. The rule stops at the pharmacy door, and it never reaches the car park.
The selective rule
Clothes, cooked food, shoes, cars and watches are fine. Only the pills are unbelief.
If faith means refusing God’s provision, why does the rule stop at the pharmacy door and never reach the car park?
This is not a new objection. When plague came to Wittenberg in 1527, Luther wrote about Christians who refused medicine because God could protect them without it. He called it tempting God, not trusting him (Part VI), and pointed out that by the same reasoning a man could refuse food, drink, clothing and shelter and call that faith too. Luther thought that would be suicide (Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague, Luther’s Works vol. 43).
Ask yourself
Where exactly does the rule draw its line, and who drew it?
Which side of the line does the teacher’s own life fall on?
Part V · Interactive
Where does the rule stop?
Twelve things God provides through human skill. Mark each one as the rule would have it. Nothing you choose leaves this page.
Part VI
“Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God”
Satan took Jesus to a pinnacle of the temple and told him to throw himself down, and quoted the promise: “He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up” (Matthew 4:6, from Psalm 91:11–12). Jesus had the promise. He did not jump. “Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Matthew 4:7, quoting Deuteronomy 6:16).
He would not put himself in danger to make God keep his word. Refusing available treatment so that God must heal is the same move. It puts God on trial: it sets him a test and dares him to pass it. That is not faith. Scripture calls it tempting God.
“For a person to neglect the ordinary means of safety, and to expect, that as God can, so he will, preserve without the use of such means, is a tempting him.”John Gill, Exposition of the New Testament, on Matthew 4:7Gill was a Baptist. This is not one tradition’s reading against another’s.
“This is not trusting God but tempting him.”Luther, 1527, of those who refuse medicineThe same verdict, two centuries earlier, from the other end of the Reformation.
Tempting God
Jesus had the promise and still would not jump (Matthew 4:7). Refusing treatment so God must heal is the same test.
Part VII
Teachers who forbid what God created
Paul warned Timothy about teachers to come.
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith … Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.”1 Timothy 4:1–5
The passage is about foods and marriage, not medicine. The commentators of every tradition read it that way: Calvin, Wesley, Adam Clarke and John Gill all take “every creature of God” of food. The Spider says so plainly. But the principle is the same. A teacher who forbids what God made, and makes the forbidding a mark of true faith, is the kind of teacher Paul warned about. Medicine received with thanks and prayer is “sanctified by the word of God and prayer” as surely as bread is.
Paul names the source of rules like these in another letter: “Touch not; taste not; handle not … after the commandments and doctrines of men … in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body” (Colossians 2:21–23). And the older Church said the medical point outright. Ecclesiasticus, read in churches for centuries, tells the sick man to pray and then “give place to the physician, for the Lord hath created him”: “The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; and he that is wise will not abhor them” (Ecclesiasticus 38:4, 12).
Forbidding what God made
“Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4).
Said of food. True of the tablet too: received with thanks, it is “sanctified by the word of God and prayer.”
Part VIII
The Church built the hospitals
Christians have built hospitals since the fourth century. In the early 370s Basil, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, built a complex outside the city for the sick and the poor, with physicians on its staff; Gregory of Nazianzus called it a new city. In India the mission hospitals followed the same instinct. At Nazareth in Tirunelveli, Arthur Margoschis took over a small dispensary and in 1892 built and named St Luke’s Hospital, after the beloved physician (Dossier 07). At Vellore in 1900 Ida Scudder opened a one-bed clinic for women that became the Christian Medical College. None of them thought medicine and faith were rivals.
The churches this father was taught to call void were the churches that built those hospitals. The teaching that replaced them told him not to use one. The longer history is in Dossier 44.
The Church built the hospitals
The churches he was told were void built hospitals. The new teaching told him not to use one.
Part IX
The pattern, not one bad idea
The medicine rule did not arrive alone. Set the steps out one by one.
Each step asked him to trust the new teachers over the faith he was raised in, then over his doctors, and in the end over his own judgement. Each step was presented as a deeper faith. The last one was fatal.
Scripture gives a test for predictions that fail: “When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken … thou shalt not be afraid of him” (Deuteronomy 18:22). The year 2000 was a public test, and the prediction failed it. A teaching that failed on the end of the world was still trusted on a matter of life and death. The Spider asks why.
Part X · Who paid
Not a victimless crime
Say plainly who paid. Not the teachers. A widow paid, and two young men, and they will keep paying for every year he should have had with them: the years he retired early to give them.
And a teaching like this has an answer ready when it fails. If the sick man dies, his faith was too small. Scripture refuses that verdict on the sick, as 16 · Job’s Friends Were Sure Too and 42 · Heads I Win, Tails You Lose show. The fault lies with the rule, and with the people who taught it.
“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”Matthew 18:6
“My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation.”James 3:1“Masters” here means teachers. They are judged more strictly, not less.
“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.”Matthew 7:15–16
“For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.”Acts 20:29
“Ye shall know them by their fruits.” This fruit has a grave. Another family at another bedside, and what a pulpit said afterwards, is in 82 · A Tale of Two Eldest Sons. What a pulpit wishes on those who ask questions about it is in 68 · Kill the Spider?
Not a victimless crime
The teachers were not at the grave.
A widow and two sons, 23 and 19, were. “Be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation” (James 3:1).
Part XI · Closing
Stand fast
“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1). Christ did not set anyone free from the law of Moses so that they could be bound by a pastor’s rule against blood-pressure tablets. The apostles asked the same question of the first teachers who added rules: “why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples?” (Acts 15:10).
Pray for healing. Ask the elders to pray over you and anoint you, as James says (5:14). And take the medicine, with thanks to the God who made it possible.
Not medical adviceNothing here is medical advice. If you are ill, see a doctor, and pray as well.
Now, after reading: does the New Testament tell Christians to refuse medicine?
Stand fast
“Be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1).
From the Spider
Do not let anyone put you under a yoke Christ never laid on you.
Part XII
Check it yourself
This page is short because the case on healing is published elsewhere. If you read only one thing more, read Dossier 44.
1.1 Timothy 5:23; Colossians 4:14; Luke 10:30–37; Matthew 9:12; 2 Kings 20:1–7. Ten minutes. Medicine in Scripture, mentioned in passing.
2.Matthew 4:1–11, with Psalm 91 and Deuteronomy 6:16. Five minutes. The promise, and why Jesus would not test it.
3.1 Timothy 4:1–5 and Colossians 2:20–23. Rules that forbid what God made.
4.2 Chronicles 14–16. Asa’s whole reign, so that 16:12 is read in its setting.
5.Luther, Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague (1527).Luther’s Works, American Edition, vol. 43 (Fortress, 1968).
6.John Gill, Exposition of the New Testament (1746–48), on Matthew 4:7. Online at studylight.org and biblestudytools.com.
7.Commentators on 1 Timothy 4:4. Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy (Calvin Translation Society); Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament; Adam Clarke, Commentary. Online at ccel.org and studylight.org.
8.Ecclesiasticus 38:1–15. In the Apocrypha of the Authorised Version, and in the Catholic and Orthodox Old Testament.
9.Basil’s Basileias. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 43; Basil, Letter 94; Thomas Heyne, “Reconstructing the world’s first hospital: the Basiliad,” Hektoen International (2017).
10.Christian Medical College, Vellore. The college’s own history at cmch-vellore.edu.
No family member, preacher, church, place, book or date is named or identifiable on this page. The story is told with the details kept general on purpose. This page states an opinion about a teaching and those who teach it; it does not judge any person’s faith, sincerity or standing before God, and it gives no medical advice.
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