Godly living is conducive to healthiness of mind and body

Godly living is conducive to healthiness of mind and body, and other things being equal that will be one of its bi-products. By “other things being equal” we mean: as in the case of one who is not suffering for the sins of his father; who did not ruin his constitution by debauchery before conversion; and who exercises ordinary common sense in attending to the elementary rules of hygiene. One who is “temperate in all things” (1 Corinthians 9:25) will escape many or all of those ills which is the price which has to be paid for intemperance. Scripture does not require us to be either Spartans or Epicureans but to “let our moderation be known unto all” (Philippians 4:5). God

 

“giveth richly all things to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17),

 

yet not to abuse.

 

“Every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused” (1 Timothy 4:4)

 

providing it is used aright, but His choicest creatures p rove harmful if used to excess. God has provided great variety in nature, and each one has to learn for himself what best suits him and deny himself of that which disagrees.

 

Arthur W. Pink-Divine Healing-Is It Scriptural?

Keeping the Sabbath aides one’s health

One of the basic laws of health is the Sabbatic statute.

 

“The Sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27),

 

for his good, because he needed it. It was made for man that he might be a man, something more than a beast of burden or a human treadmill. His body needs it as truly as does his soul. This has been unmistakably demonstrated in this country. When France collapsed and the British Isles faced the most desperate crisis of their long history, the government foolishly ordered that those in the coal mines and munitions factories must work seven days a week, but they soon learned that the workmen produced less than they did in six days—they could not stand up to the additional strain.

By resting from manual toil on the Sabbath man is enabled to recuperate his strength for the labors of the week lying ahead, yet that cannot be accomplished by attending one meeting after another on that day, nor by exhausting one’s strength through lengthy walks to and from the services—moving the tent nearer the altar is the remedy—still less by profaning the Sabbath in carnal “recreation.” Another Divine precept which promotes health is, “he that believeth shall not make haste” (Isaiah 28:16). Side by side with the speeding tempo of modern life we behold the multiplying nervous disorders, and those who are murdered or maimed on the highway. For many years we have avoided motor cars, buses and trains whenever the distance to be covered was not too great to walk, not using them more than two or three times in a twelve-month. Rushing around, hurrying and scurrying hither and thither, is not only injurious but a violation of the Divine rule:

 

“He that hasteth with his feet sinneth” (Proverbs 19:2) —which means exactly what it says.

“Take therefore no anxious thought for the morrow” (Matthew 6:34).

 

How good health is promoted by obedience to this precept scarcely needs pointing out. It is carking care and worry which disturbs the mind, affects circulation, impairs digestion, and prevents restful sleep. If the Christian would cast all his care on the Lord (1 Peter 5:7) what freedom from anxiety would be his.

 

“The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10)

 

—physically as well as spiritually. What a tome to a wearied body and tired mind it is to delight ourselves in the Lord:

 

“a merry heart doeth good like a medicine” (Proverbs 17: 22).

 

“My son, attend to My words… for they are life unto those that find them and health to all his flesh” (Proverbs 4:20, 22):

 

do we really believe this?

 

“Fear the Lord and depart from evil: it shall be health to thy navel and marrow to thy bones” (Proverbs 3:7, 8).

 

Arthur W. Pink-Divine Healing-Is It Scriptural?

Christians, at times, ought to be healthier than unbelievers

Now surely, other things being equal, the Christian ought to enjoy better health than the non-Christian. Why so? Why, because if his walk be regulated by God’s Word he will at least be preserved from those diseases which are the fruit of certain transgressions. The English word “holiness” means wholeness, soundness. The more we are kept from sinning the more shall we escape its consequences.

 

“Godliness is profitable unto all things (the body as well as the soul), having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come” (1 Timothy 4:8).

 

Arthur W. Pink-Divine Healing-Is It Scriptural?

If we have our health it is due alone to the goodness and kindness of God

Now it seems to us that we should begin with the subject of health, for prevention is better than cure. O what a priceless boon is a sound body and good health: a boon which is denied to some from birth, and which few really appreciate till it be taken from them. It has long impressed the writer what a remarkable thing it is that any of us enjoy any health at all, seeing that we have six thousand years of sinful heredity behind us! It is due alone to the goodness and kindness of God that the great majority enter this world with more or less sound bodies and reach youth in the bloom of health. But sin and folly then take heavy toll and the constitutions of millions are wrecked before middle life is reached. Nor is it always brought about by wicked intemperance and dissipation. Often it is the outcome of ignorance, through failure to heed some of the most elementary laws of hygiene. Alas the majority of people will learn in no other school than that of hard and bitter experience and consequently most of them only discover how to live when the time comes for them to die. True we cannot put old heads on young shoulders, yet if the inexperienced are too proud to heed the counsels of the mature then they must reap the consequences.

Arthur W. Pink-Divine Healing-Is It Scriptural?

Because Ministers fail to preach on certain subjects, many fall victim to religious fads

Having exposed the cardinal errors promulgated by the “Divine healing” cults, we turn now to the positive side of the subject. And there is pressing need to do so, for the pulpit has failed grievously here as in so many other directions. Of old God complained,

 

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6),

 

and history has repeated itself. It was prophesied,

 

“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11),

 

and that fearful prediction is now in course of fulfillment. In the vast majority of places rank error rather than the Truth is being given out, and even in the few remaining centers of orthodoxy the preacher confines himself to such a narrow compass that his people are scarcely any better indoctrinated at the end of the year than they were at the beginning: there is no longer a bringing forth of “things new” as well as “things old” (Matthew 13:52). How many of our readers, we wonder, ever heard a sermon on their duties and privileges in connection with sickness! Very, very few we fear. Little wonder that so many ill-informed members of “evangelical churches” fall such easy victims to modern religious fads.

It is no sufficient reply for preachers to say, We have far weightier and more essential themes to expound. True, the salvation of the soul is immeasurably greater than the healing of the body, nevertheless the Scriptures have much to say concerning the body, and it is to our very great loss if we ignore or remain ignorant about the same. Is it of no moment at all whether the Christian be healthy or sickly? Has our loving heavenly Father left His children without any instruction concerning the laws of health? And when they fall ill is their situation no better than that of the unbelieving world? Must they too lean upon the arm of flesh when sickness overtakes them, and seek the help of a doctor—often an infidel? The Lord is “a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1): does that mean nothing more than that the saint must, in every instance, seek grace from Him to patiently endure his afflictions? God has promised to supply “all the need” of His people (Philippians 4:19): does that include nothing better than drugs and medicines, such as the Christ-rejector has access to, when I am ill? These are not questions to be lightly dismissed, but prayerfully pondered in the light of Holy Writ.

If the Divine healing cults have gone to one extreme, that of unbalanced fanaticism, have not most of the Lord’s people in this matter gone to the opposite extreme—that of unbelieving stoicism or fatalistic inertia? Is not the attitude of only too many something like this? O well, man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward, so as I cannot expect immunity from physical sufferings, hence I must take what remedies I can for relief, and then make the best of a bad job; or, since this be my appointed lot, I must endeavor to bear it as patiently as I can. Of course when pain is acute they cry unto the Lord and beg Him to ease their anguish, just as Pharaoh did when God’s sore plagues were upon his land. And when Christians pray for recovery, how many of them really do so with the expectation of its being granted? how many know where to turn for a pertinent promise and then plead the same prevailingly? Yet some of them feel they are living beneath their privileges as sons and daughters of the Almighty, and when they hear or read what is advanced by the “faith healing” people wonder how much of it is true and how much false.

Arthur W. Pink-Divine Healing-Is It Scriptural?

Are Tongues Real Languages?

Here is an outstanding article that explains what the gifts of tongues actually consisted of and was believed to be: by the Early Church, the Reformers, and the founders of the modern Pentecostal movement. All affirmed that this gift was the ability to speak in other languages, of which the speaker had never learned. The founders of the modern Pentecostal movement also confessed that this is what the gift of tongues consisted of, until they began to speak in utterances and realized that none of them had actually spoken a foreign language. The founders of the modern Pentecostal movement, then came up with a new doctrine, in which they taught, that some tongues are unintelligible prayer languages. This false view of tongues is not found anywhere in scripture. Here is a portion of the article:

 

We begin today’s post with a question: In New Testament times, did the gift of tongues produce authentic foreign languages only, or did it also result in non-cognitive speech (like the private prayer languages of modern charismatics)? The answer is of critical importance to the contemporary continuationist/cessationist debate regarding the gift of tongues.

From the outset, it is important to note that the gift of tongues was, in reality, the gift of languages. I agree with continuationist author Wayne Grudem when he writes:

It should be said at the outset that the Greek word glossa, translated “tongue,” is not used only to mean the physical tongue in a person’s mouth, but also to mean “language.” In the New Testament passages where speaking in tongues is discussed, the meaning “languages” is certainly in view. It is unfortunate, therefore, that English translations have continued to use the phrase “speaking in tongues,” which is an expression not otherwise used in ordinary English and which gives the impression of a strange experience, something completely foreign to ordinary human life. But if English translations were to use the expression “speaking in languages,” it would not seem nearly as strange, and would give the reader a sense much closer to what first century Greek speaking readers would have heard in the phrase when they read it in Acts or 1 Corinthians. (Systematic Theology, 1069).

But what are we to think about the gift of languages?

If we consider the history of the church, we find that the gift of languages was universally considered to be the supernatural ability to speak authentic foreign languages that the speaker had not learned.

 

Read the entire article here.

The normal way God heals is through natural means

Those who hold that Christ made atonement for our sicknesses as well as for our sins are quite consistent in maintaining that deliverance from the former must be obtained in precisely the same way as salvation from the latter: that the sole means must be the exercise of faith, without the introduction or addition of any works or doings of our own. Thus the “Divine healing” cults teach that the service of a physician or the aid of drugs is as much a setting aside of the finished work of Christ as reliance upon baptism or deeds of charity for the securing of pardon would be. The untenability of this logical inference will at once show that while in some cases God was pleased to cure the sick without means, yet in other instances He both appointed and blessed the use of means. For the healing of the bitter waters of Marah, Moses was instructed to cast into them a tree which “the Lord showed him” (Exodus 15:25). When God promised to heal Hezekiah who was sick unto death, Isaiah bade the king

 

“take a lump of figs” and we are told “they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered” (2 Kings 20:7). So with Timothy in 1 Timothy 5:23.

 

We are certainly not prepared to hold any brief in defense of the present day medical fraternity as a whole. The greed for gold, the love of novelty (experimentation), the deterioration of moral character in all walks of life, fails to inspire confidence in any class or clique, and the writer for one would prefer to suffer pain than place himself at the mercy of the average surgeon. Yet this does not mean that we regard all medical practitioners as either charlatans or knaves, still less do we believe with “Faith-healing” fanatics that they are the special emissaries of Satan. The Holy Spirit would never have termed Luke “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14) had he been employed in the service of the Devil.

Arthur W. Pink-Divine Healing-Is It Scriptural?

Sickness finds its cause in Eden, not necessarily a result of one’s transgressions

If it were true that Christ made atonement for our sicknesses as well as our sins, then it would follow that all bodily disorders are the immediate consequence of some iniquity. We say, “immediate consequence,” for of course it is readily granted that all the ills which man is heir to are so many effects and results of the great transgression of our first parents. It is only reasonable to conclude that had sin never entered this world suffering in any form had been unknown here, for we know that in Heaven the absence of the former ensures the absence of the latter. Thus there is a vital difference between saying that a physical disorder which occasions great discomfort and pain finds its remote cause in the tragedy of Eden, and affirming that it is the direct result of the person’s own wrong doing, as most of the “Divine healing” cults insist. Our Lord’s reply to His disciples in John 9:2, 3 expressly forbids any such sweeping conclusion. There is much suffering, especially among children, which is due to ignorant and innocent breaking of natural laws rather than to violation of the Moral Law. Moreover, if this contention of “Divine healing” were valid, we should be obliged to conclude that every sickness severed the soul from communion with God, which is falsified by the experiences of many of the saintliest persons who ever trod this earth.

Arthur W. Pink-Divine Healing-Is It Scriptural?

Confessions of a Former Charismatic, Part 1: Me and Benny Hinn

The venue was the NationalExhibitionCenter in Birmingham, England, the largest exhibition center in the UK. Five of us squeezed into a small car and drove the sixty-plus miles from Hereford to what we thought at the time was the biggest spiritual event of the year. Christ for All Nations, evangelist Reinhard Bonnke’s ministry, was hosting a conference, and one of the main attractions was Benny Hinn.

This was the late 80s—1988, I believe—and for most of the British population, television consisted of four stations. And none of them was TBN. This meant the only way we would ever hear the cream of American televangelists was on video or audio cassette tapes obtained either by mail-order subscription, or at conferences. The friend who drove us to Birmingham had obtained by one of these means a video of Benny Hinn, which he had shared with our church youth group some months previously. The presentation on the tape consisted of about thirty minutes of teaching—mainly Hinn recounting how his “Holy Spirit ministry” started, and then talking about how to relate to the Holy Spirit. He’s a gentleman, Hinn taught, and won’t come unless you ask. And don’t grieve the Spirit, otherwise He’s like a child, and you’ll lose His trust. There was no trace, as I recall, of his wackier teachings that I would later be made aware of. After the talk, there followed a solid hour or more of “slaying in the Spirit,” and people getting out of wheelchairs. Although four of us in the car were students of theology (two just starting University, and my best friend and I in our last year of A-Levels), we were all charismatic in our pneumatology, and Arminian in our soteriology. Within those parameters, we found a home for Hinn. More on that later.

The auditorium was at least two-thirds full. I don’t recall who the first speaker was that morning, or what he spoke about. I do remember a refreshment break, and then hurrying back to our seats to be sure we didn’t miss any of Benny Hinn’s presentation. He came out, he taught—I don’t remember any details of his teaching, though I daresay it was largely what we’d already heard on the video—and then the show started. The organ played, he set the mood, and then started with the “words of knowledge.” A lady over there being healed of something. A man somewhere at the back has been suffering with X and the Lord wants him to know he’ll be well before he leaves. Then he began calling people up on stage. People reported healings, people were in tears, and all of them were slain in the Spirit at the touch of Hinn’s hand.

 

Read the entire article here. Read Pt 2 here

Nowhere in scripture are we told that Christ died for our sicknesses

One error leads to another: most of those who teach that Divine healing is in the Atonement argue that therefore it must constitute an essential element in and part of the Gospel, and thus their favorite slogan is: “Christ our Savior, Christ our Sanctifier, Christ our Healer, Christ our Coming King,” and hence “the Fourfold Gospel” is the leading caption of most of them. But such a contention will not bear the light of Holy Writ. In the book of Acts we find the apostles preaching the Gospel of God both to Jews and Gentiles, yet, though in the course of their ministry miracles of healing were performed by them (to authenticate their mission, for none of the N. T. had then been written), yet nowhere did the removal of physical maladies form part of their message. In 1 Corinthians 15:1-3 a brief summary of the Gospel is given, namely, that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day”—mark the omission of His dying for our sicknesses! In Romans we are furnished with a systematic and full unfolding of “the Gospel of God” (see 1:1), yet “healing” of bodily ills is never referred to.

Arthur W. Pink-Divine Healing-Is It Scriptural?