I watch a lot of Christian television. I see a lot of Pentecostal preachers on there, teaching that Christ procured our healing in the atonement. They say that we are alreday healed but that we have to receive or take that healing. One precaher in particular says that we should nit talk to God about our sickness but rather talk to our sickness about God. In other words, don't ask God to heal us because He has already done that through Jesus' atonement. Rather, we must command our sickness to leave us, like Jesus' words 'be removed and cast into the sea', and if it doesn't, that's not on God because it is we who are either doing something wrong or not doing something right which is preventing the manifesting of our healing.
To me, this teaching could potentially do more harm than good.
On the contrary, the cessationist doctrine that the so-called “sign gifts” have been mysteriously discontinued when the first apostles died, and we cannot minister gifts of miracle healings to our brothers and sisters makes Christians feel helpless when sickness attacks them.
“By His stripes ye were healed” is absolute truth in the physical realm. But we have been so oppressed into resignation when something like cancer strikes, we cannot fully exhibit how healing is indeed included in the atonement. To compound this disaster, charlatans on Christian TV, like Benny Hinn, who supports the bizarre Toronto Blessing nonsense, muddy the waters with their shenanigans.
People see the fake faith healers and think the whole divine healing concept is not to be trusted. So they merely hope God will decide to heal their bodies, but have no confidence. They do not understand how it is always God’s will to heal.
So let’s look at Jesus. He healed everybody, constantly. He did more healings than sermons. Entire towns would bring all their diseased, crippled, and mentally ill to Jesus, rivers of sick folk, all getting delivered.
Our Jesus does more than save our souls from sin and hell. Jesus is the Healing God. He hates cancer, leprosy, heart failure, diabetes, schizophrenia, and all the forces of darkness that attack our minds and bodies.
We have trouble manifesting “by His stripes ye were healed” because our pastors and seminary professors lack faith in healing and tell us it is rare. That is where the real trouble lies.
