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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Can
Man Heal His Own Sick Body? My
answer to the above question presupposes my Christian mindset that is
based on as literal of an interpretation of the Bible as is possible.
I've been a student of the Bible for 40 plus years.
I've often listened to both sides of many issues, have seriously
studied these issues for myself, and have reached my own conclusion. I
am not the type of person who merely accepts what he is taught. To
begin, I almost died at the age of 5.
I was in Sick Children's Hospital, in There
was no doubt that I had Diabetes. I
still have a letter from the doctor stating so. I
was in and out of that hospital a number of times until one last time
after my mother's friends prayed that Jesus would make my sick body
better. Upon
being examined by the doctors in Toronto
after the above time of prayer, they concluded, I had no trace of
Juvenile Diabetes. The head
doctor of the hospital, and I remember that hospital too, concluded this
was a miracle. I'm not sure
the doctors attributed this miracle to Jesus, but my dad did.
He was at that prayer meeting.
My dad subsequently gave his life to Jesus.
I
think it's only logical to conclude that this miracle was performed by
Jesus. I clearly had no
ability to heal myself at the age of 5.
I see no conclusive evidence of anyone else having such ability.
Those praying for me weren't claiming any such ability.
They were simple people asking Jesus for a supernatural healing.
Many
Christians claim they have been healed.
I'm not convinced that all such claimed healings are real.
I have known of many Christians who "claim healing by
faith". In the process
of saying they are healed, they claim to be healed, even though the
physical evidence proves otherwise.
I also know that Christians at times claim supernatural healing
out of pure enthusiasm.
That however, does not negate the facts that others are truly
healed as a result of praying to Jesus. Personally
speaking, I have seen few healings that one could call "really
supernatural'. This too does
not negate the fact that Jesus can't heal.
Other than my own healing, the next biggest healing I saw Jesus
perform was in a friend who had been given weeks to live.
She had abdominal cancer so bad that she looked 9 months
pregnant. After much prayer
by many, the cancer supernaturally left her.
That was in 1974 and she is still alive today in 2011.
Logic tells me that after praying in the name of Jesus, Jesus
indeed healed her. On her
own, she had little mental ability at the time to heal herself.
There is no evidence that positive thinking, or any kind of
psychic activity, made that cancer disappear.
In
both my healing and my friends healing, we prayed that Jesus would be
the source of healing. That
being said, why would we conclude that He wasn't the source of the
healing. I
don't have to quote Scripture for this.
Everyone knows the Bible claims that Jesus can heal, if it is His
desire to do so. Such
healing as I have described above could only be classified as
"supernatural" in my thinking. There is of course natural
healing of certain illnesses through modern medicine.
I don't discount that. You
have a headache; you take a pill; the pain goes away.
Logic doesn't suggest that Jesus took the headache away, although
some Christians suggest that Jesus gave the doctors and the scientists
the ability to produce the pill. This
would be based on the fact that God created us in His likeness and
image, (Genesis 1:26) meaning, we are creative beings like Himself.
If
God created us in His likeness and image, then some might suggest we
have the ability in ourselves to heal ourselves.
If you accept the premise that there is a God, and that He did
create us in His likeness and image, then you must accept the Genesis
account that states we fell from that state in which God originally
crated us. Mankind's fall
from what he once was makes it impossible for us to attain any kind of
supernatural ability that is beyond human ability to heal ourselves.
Our
fallen bodies do have the capacity to heal certain things.
If you have a cut in your finger, your body will take care of
that. What our bodies can't
take care of is removing a massive ball of cancer, or taking away a
disease like Juvenile Diabetes.
The
Bible states that we have two sources of entering into the sphere of the
supernatural, where supernatural healing can be found.
We enter through God or the devil. The devil, although being a
created being, lives in a sphere of the supernatural that we do not live
in. I
have personally seen supernatural activity in people that was motivated
by demons. How do I know
this activity was demonic? Those
in whom the activity took place was completely out of self control, and
they weren't on drugs. Also,
the nature of the activity made it clear that Jesus wasn't causing the
activity. If it wasn't Jesus
or the person causing the activity, only demons are left as the source. There
is Biblical evidence that satan and demons can influence or even control
humans. The apostle Paul
tells us that the anti-Christ will perform deceiving miracles. (2 Thess.
2:9) The NIV uses the
term "counterfeit" miracles in this verse.
The KJV uses the words "lying wonders".
Although some might suggest that satan or demons can't perform
miracles, I suggest they can. I
suggest that the miracles performed by the "man of sin" as
stated by Paul in 2 Thess. 2 are real, and meant to deceive.
Remember,
the perspective in which I am writing is a Biblical based perspective.
There is no Biblical evidence that a human can heal himself by
simply thinking healing into existence as modern new age thinkers and
mystics suggest. Besides,
knowing the Bible simply speaks of two sources of physical healing,
Jesus and the devil, I have personally seen no one who has healed
himself. I cannot personally
know that claims of healing that I see on TV or the internet are
actually valid, whether New Age or Christian.
So, if a non-Christian tells me that he has healed himself
through some kind of psychic experience, I can only conclude such
healing is demonic. I
realize that what I have said will change no one's mind who doesn't want
his mind to be changed. The
term "closed minded" is often used for people like me.
But those who refuse to think seriously about what I have just
said are just as closed minded. That
being said, I see no real problem with being closed minded after one has
seriously thought the issue through.
Once finding what I believe is the truth, why would I want to
change my mind. Such
vacillating suggests a lack of serious thought. I
am open to hearing other view points.
I do however have the intellectual good sense to screen what
comes into my mind. I filter
all I hear through Biblical truth because the Bible and Jesus have
proved themselves sufficiently to me that both are the filter by which
all issues are processed in my thinking.
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