"If these faith healers have the same ability as the apostles, why do they do their “healings” in church buildings, in front of people who already believe? Signs are given for unbelievers; Christians do not need to be convinced that Jesus is the Christ—they already believe.
Why don’t modern faith healers do what Christ and the apostles did and perform a public healing on someone that everyone knows is crippled? The answer is simple: they can’t.
If miraculous healings were still occurring today, it would be very easy to prove. Anyone could take a camcorder to the healing crusade and film the miracle for all to see. But why is this not happening?
If Charismatics were healing crippled legs, withered hands, cut-off ears, blind eyes, deaf ears, palsy, hemorrhages, etc., like Christ and the apostles, they would be on the nightly news, 60 Minutes and 20/20. Sadly, the only Charismatic faith healers who make the news are there because of fraud, adultery, theft, prostitution, and the like.
If Charismatic healers could raise the dead, like Christ and the apostles, then they could prove it by doing it in front of a large group of witnesses."
Brian M. Schwertley, The Charismatic Movement: A Biblical Critique, pg. 33, 34, 35, 36
I want to make another point about the "sign gifts"; most were only signs of an apostle (such as healing) and ONLY apostles had such authoritative signs because those signs were to authenticate them. There are no apostles today.
ReplyDeleteCan God heal through someone today? Yes, if He chooses to do so, but every single claim of healing by charismatics is just that -- a claim with no evidence. Can God give someone the gift of tongues today? Yes, but remember that tongues are a real language (not "angelic" or other gibberish) that the person never learned and would be used to reach unbelievers where the evangelist didn't know the native language.
Virtually very claim of "sign gifts" today is from the charismatics and never proven. Isn't if odd that God would only gift gives to charismatics?