Devils working miracles are speaking to Christendom today with new and compelling power: signs, wonders, healings, and tongues, experienced by participants in the charismatic movement and claimed to be of God, may be utter fraud. The neo-Pentecostal movement, which has sprung so quickly to prominence, crossing all denominational and social barriers, poses serious questions for the Adventist ministry.
In Parts I and II the author made three of four observations concerning neo-Pentecostalism:
1. The charismatic movement owes its growth to churches that have failed and are failing their people.
2. Miracles, healings, unknown tongues, psychic phenomena—these are no sure sign of God's working.
3. Speaking in tongues does not necessarily ac company baptism of the Holy Spirit, nor does its absence indicate that the believer is not possessed by the Holy Spirit.
I TURN now to the healing ministry, prominent in charismatic meetings, to observe that:
4. Not all who pray for healing are healed and not all who are healed are healed by God.
Faith healers almost unanimously believe that God will heal all who call on Him in faith. Says one: "When two agree together in this way in giving any trouble or illness completely into the hands of the Father, He always takes it away." 22
Says another:
"The greatest barrier to the faith of many seeking bodily healing in our day is the uncertainty in their minds as to its being the will of God to heal all."23
Others declare that to pray "Thy will be done," constitutes lack of faith and is abhorrent to God.24
Perhaps it is this fallacious theology that accounts for the fantasy represented as fact by many faith healers. For example: The case of a one-eyed Oklahoma boy who, after being prayed for by a faith healer, found he could see through his plastic eye, and see whether it was in or out.25 Or the case of a young lady who died and went to heaven, where she was healed inside and out. She is still telling her story at faith-healer meetings.26
Neither Mountain nor Soapbox Car
Let us note three points:
A. God always answers prayer for healing. But He does not always say Yes. You will recall that when Paul beseeched
God that his "thorn in the flesh" (bad eyes) be taken away, he was told, "My grace is sufficient for thee" (2 Cor. 12:9).
In support of their presumption many faith healers quote Mark 11:24: "What ever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours" (N.E.B.).* I tried this as a 12-year-old, pleading that the mountain behind our house be removed. It did seem a big project, but the Bible said faith as large as a pinhead could manage it. It didn't. And so I prayed for a soapbox car—with lawn mower engine. And neither my father on earth nor my Father in heaven saw fit to give it to me. And in the end I didn't believe.
Wrote John: "If we ask anything according to his will he hears us. ... we know that we have obtained the requests made of him'' (1 John 5:14, 15, R.S.V.).
How did our Example pray? Jesus did not hesitate to make known His human desire to escape pain and death. But He then added, "Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Matt. 26:39).
B. We note that education and reform were linked with healing in Christ's minis try. "When Christ healed disease, He warned many of the afflicted ones, 'Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee' (John 5:14). Thus He taught that they had brought disease upon themselves by transgressing the laws of God, and that health could be preserved only by obedience."27
If God were to work a miracle and restore persons to health who have brought disease upon themselves by impurity, self-indulgence, and disregard of the laws of health, "He would be encouraging sin." 28 Those healed would "pursue the same course of heedless transgression of God's natural and spiritual laws, reasoning that if God heals them in answer to prayer, they are at liberty to continue their unhealthful practices and to indulge perverted appetite without restraint." 29
Don't Sell Our Medical School
There is a reason, you see, why we do not sell our medical school, and with the money realized buy a thousand circus tents, totally unsubsidized by Government, and hit the healing trail. There is a reason, I say, why we do not just pray for the sick. And that reason must be understood if we are to appraise correctly the charismatic healing services. I emphasize it again: Education and reform are vital elements in the healing ministry of Christ. Thus our sanitariums were established as places where the sick might "find relief from dis ease by treatment and right habits of living, and . . . [where they might] learn how to avoid sickness." 30 Ellen G. White mentions a few practices that need remedying: intemperate eating, the use of tea, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, flesh foods, and so forth, and then she adds, "A reform must take place before treatment will effect cure."31
C. Brethren, beware of healers, whoever they are, wherever they minister, whatever their degree, who make light of God's laws:
Many make great pretensions to holiness, and boast of the wonders they perform in healing the sick, when they do not regard this great standard of righteousness [God's law]. But through whose power are these cures wrought? Are the eyes of either party opened to their transgressions of the law? and do they take their stand as humble, obedient children, ready to obey all of God's requirements? John testifies of the professed children of God: "He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." ... If those through whom cures are performed are disposed, on account of these manifestations, to excuse their neglect of the law of God, and continue in disobedience, though they have power to any and every extent, it does not follow that they have the great power of God. On the contrary, it is the miracle-working power of the great deceiver. . . . We must beware of the pretended holiness that permits transgression of the law of God. Those cannot be sanctified who trample that law under their feet, and judge themselves by a standard of their own devising.33
In evaluating the charismatic movement and its attendant phenomena, keep in mind the four observations I have made: (1) The movement owes its growth to churches that have failed—and are failing —their people (thus your evaluation will ever be tinctured with humility and charity). (2) Miracles, healings, unknown tongues, physical phenomena—these are no sure signs of God's working. (3) Speaking in tongues does not necessarily accompany baptism of the Holy Spirit, nor does its absence indicate that the believer is not possessed by the Holy Spirit. (4) Not all who pray for healing are healed and not all who are healed are healed by God.
I conclude with a few minutes of prognostication.
Looking Ahead
If I understand correctly the sure word of prophecy, in the days immediately ahead, we shall see an increasing disregard for the written Word and an increased dependence on signs and wonders. We shall see an accelerated merging of Spiritism, Protestantism, and Catholicism. And we shall see at last that almost overwhelming deception, that, if it were possible, should deceive the very elect.
I do not look for them to appear again in Portland, Maine, but rather in one of our college or university centers, among men of ivory tower scholarship, who will present their new experience as evidence of the Holy Spirit's entrance onto campus.
Significantly, in the Catholic neo-Pentecostal movement, as the Evangelical Press Service has observed, "it is not the uneducated but the intellectuals, not the undiscerning but the critical exegetes, not the frustrated Puritans but quite normal Christians who take part in these meetings."
Worthy of note, as we look to the future, is Oral Roberts' account of a revelation he received on the occasion of his first healing service:
I heard myself saying things that I had never dreamed were possible for any man to say. The spirit of prophecy came to me and I began prophesying what God was going to do in the last days, how He was going to raise up men and give them His power to set humanity free from one end of the earth to the other, that He was going to pour out the nine gifts of the spirit to heal the sick body of the bride, and that Jesus was coming soon. The words that flowed from my mouth were by the spirit of prophecy. I told the people that this last worldwide revival would be a revival of signs and wonders and that it would be characterized by a great wave of healing power coming down from heaven upon the sick bodies of mankind.33
Hear now another upon whom the prophetic gift rested:
Satan himself . . . will appear in the character of an angel of light. . . . Miracles will be wrought, the sick will be healed, and many undeniable wonders will be performed. And as the spirits will profess faith in the Bible, and manifest respect for the institutions of the church, their work will be accepted as a manifestation of divine power.34
By departing from the plain precepts and commandments of God, and giving heed to fables, the minds of many are preparing to receive these lying wonders.35 (Italics supplied.)
Is, then, the charismatic movement the spiritistically empowered forerunner of the last deception?
If we keep close to Christ and make the principles of His Word the principles of our life, I'm sure this question will be answered soon. Indeed, it must be answered! And not by a spoon-fed job from the pulpit.
For whatever this movement is, what ever it portends, I say again, the challenge to us is equally compelling, for in either case only a living experience with Jesus Christ will suffice to save us.
We must all now seek to arm ourselves for the contest in which we must soon engage. Faith in God's word, prayerfully studied and practically applied, will be our shield from Satan's power and will bring us off conquerors through the blood of Christ.36
REFERENCES
22. Glen Clark, "How to Find Health Through Prayer," New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940, p. 72.
23. F. F. Bosworth, Christ, the Healer, New York: Christian Alliance, pub., 1924, p. 33.
24. Carrol Stegal, Jr., and Carl C. Harwood, The Modern Tongues and Healing Movement, p. 30, and Wade H. Boggs, Jr., Faith Healing and the Christian Faith, Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1956. p. 122.
25. "The Boy Who Sees," The Voice of Healing, publication of the Last-Day Sign Gift Ministries, The Voice of Healing, Inc., February, 1954, p. 6.
26. Modern Tongues and Healing Mouement, pp. 25, 26. (The incident has been published by Oral Roberts under the title, "The Betty Baxter Story," The Western Bible Institute, P. O. Box 4032, South Denver Sta., Denver 9, Colo.)
27. Ministry of Healing, p. 113.
28. Ibid., p. 227.
29. Ibid., p. 227.
30. Testimonies, vol. 1, p. 561.
31. Ibid., vol. 4, p. 582.
32. The SDA Bible Commentary, Ellen G. White comments, vol. 5, p. 1099.
33. Oral Roberts, Life Story, p. 93.
34. The Great Controversy, p. 588.
35. Testimonies, vol. 1, p. 302.
36. Ibid.
