I think the important thing that people miss about the book of Job is that it's fiction. It didn't really happen. As such the writer(s) are putting words in God's mouth. And unlike Job's comforters, they are admitting they don't know what God's purposes are, or why God allows suffering. And that claiming to know is, for those suffering, a royal pain in the ass and not at all welcome. God commends Job for not doing so, and condemns his comforters for claiming to know more than they do. In short, to use a word much loved of the Orthodox, human suffering is a mystery. The world is full of wonders, and we can't understand those, how do we expect to understand suffering?
I think we are lead astray if we think the purpose of the book of Job is to explain "why good people suffer." Even the devil in the first chapter is not to be taken literally -- it's a framing device for the story, not something that really happened or happens. If the book has a "point" it's that we don't know. Suffering is, if you will, just another mystery.
Actually, it is written as a play--one of the oldest plays we have intact. The first few verses of Job may be referring to an actual man who had tragedy befall him. From the point of Satan coming before God in the council of gods to the end where it says Job prospered once again, it is all a play--and a very good play at that.
I didn't mean nobody else would notice. I meant that it wouldn't matter beyond those immediately concerned.
So they do show up in the stats but they don't look like miracles but they really, really are and the people having them know they are despite their clinicians knowing that they are not?
I think the important thing that people miss about the book of Job is that it's fiction. It didn't really happen. As such the writer(s) are putting words in God's mouth. And unlike Job's comforters, they are admitting they don't know what God's purposes are, or why God allows suffering. And that claiming to know is, for those suffering, a royal pain in the ass and not at all welcome. God commends Job for not doing so, and condemns his comforters for claiming to know more than they do. In short, to use a word much loved of the Orthodox, human suffering is a mystery. The world is full of wonders, and we can't understand those, how do we expect to understand suffering?
I think we are lead astray if we think the purpose of the book of Job is to explain "why good people suffer." Even the devil in the first chapter is not to be taken literally -- it's a framing device for the story, not something that really happened or happens. If the book has a "point" it's that we don't know. Suffering is, if you will, just another mystery.
Actually, it is written as a play--one of the oldest plays we have intact. The first few verses of Job may be referring to an actual man who had tragedy befall him. From the point of Satan coming before God in the council of gods to the end where it says Job prospered once again, it is all a play--and a very good play at that.
True, although "play" and "fiction" are not mutually exclusive.
That's not quite right lilbuddha. The world is created to be what it is, without any semblance of divine intervention. It's how it is. Because it weren't that, then we'd have no free choice as to what to believe.
Free will is a rubbish argument. Omniscient and omnipotent forestall free will being a barrier to creating a world that is less fucked up than ours.
That's not quite right lilbuddha. The world is created to be what it is, without any semblance of divine intervention. It's how it is. Because it weren't that, then we'd have no free choice as to what to believe.
I literally never meet anybody who ever talks about God as something other than a kind of big man. I think God is a wondrous spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, but only interested in men as part of a giant creation which is pulsing with life.
People say, when a relative dies: "Oh, how could God have taken her away so young and with so much before her?" God doesn't give a bugger about how young she is. He probably isn't noticing particularly. That's just the way a lot of things happen. A lot gets spilled, you know, in nature. When you look at what's going on out there now, those trees are dropping seeds by literally the hundreds of thousands and millions, and one or two of them may take on. I think that that is the way that God functions. He doesn't care nearly as much about individuals and individual fates as we would like to suppose. But by trying to ally ourselves with the totality of things, we may get into Tao as they say in the East and be part of it, really take part in it, and not just regard ourselves as a kind of miraculous creation and the rest just sort of stage scenery against which we perform.
I understand his funeral had immense amounts of incense burning at Trinity College Chapel, University of Toronto.
In this way of thinking, "God" is just shorthand for "the totality of things" or "the way the universe operates." There's no actual supreme being as such.
I hope no one decides my totality is represented by one quote. Though I expect you've never heard of him before.
I haven't either. But that quote suggests to me that he squared the circle by deciding that God doesn't care about people (or sparrows, presumably). Logical, perhaps, but not Christian.
Kind of implied in believing the healing is divine
I fail to see how talking about belief implies proof.
As far as I'm concerned belief in God is a presupposition in this thread. For my part, I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm giving my attempt to make sense of what I see and hear about divine healing with that presupposition in mind and the assumption the Bible has something to say about what that God is like. Which is also an assumption for the purposes of this discussion as is clear from the OP.
I'm not fully intellectually convinced of the existence of God, the presence of divine healing, or the reliability of the Bible in either respect, but I find there's a lot more to who I am and my convictions than intellect alone (fortunately). Here I stand.
So they do show up in the stats but they don't look like miracles but they really, really are and the people having them know they are despite their clinicians knowing that they are not?
What are these stats of which you speak? Not every miracle is investigated by the Lourdes committee. I've been through the healings I've seen first-hand with you before. In my lifetime, I can think of two, which I'd think is statistically non-significant by most standards.
Nothing spectacular, but more than what I believe to be medically explainable (one of them was certainly acknowledged by the clinician in question). The very ordinary people in question were just grateful for them and got on with their lives.
They weren't looking for "proof" or aiming to start a TV ministry or trying to make a point about the advancing Kingdom, and I'm certainly not going to build such a theology on two healings per lifetime's experience (to date).
Largely just watching how the discussion plays our as my views are such a far outlier on this forum I would have to word what I say very carefully and I don't have enough time for that!
Among the Christians I know a large number like you Eutychus would be able to provide a story of a healing they have experienced or someone they have seen healed as well as lots of stories of praying for healing and not seeing it and also not praying and not seeing it!
Few of those stories would be seen as anything more than a quicker than expected or better than expected recovery/outcome by medical professionals but they are convincing to the people they happen to as they happen at the same time or shortly after prayer. The most recent example I have would be praying for a chap with lack of movement and pain in his shoulder after surgery on it. We prayed for him and he said the pain had gone immediately and he was able to lift his arm over his head which he couldn't really do before. Someone I know who was there told me they had see. Him again a week later he said his shoulder was still better. Obviously the point of the operation had been to repair the shoulder and presumably it would have healed anyway eventually but the shoulder was still painful at the time he was prayer for and
the restoration of movement and the pain going happened immediately after receiving prayer.
Part of the reason why I still think healing it is a sign of the kingdom is that Revelation sees the healing of the nations and wiping away every tear as part of the fullness of God's kingdom coming, Healings now are a partial foretaste of that future reality. The two thing are put together when Jesus taught his disciples...look at Luke 9: Jesus sent the 12 out to "preach the kingdom of God and heal the sick". In Luke 10 when Jesus sends out the 72 he instructs them "Heal the sick who are there and then tell them the kingdom of God is near you".
Apologies for typos in the above after saying I "needed to word carefully"...it was written on a phone rather than a computer. Hopefully the gist still makes some sense!
Among the Christians I know a large number like you Eutychus would be able to provide a story of a healing they have experienced or someone they have seen healed as well as lots of stories of praying for healing and not seeing it and also not praying and not seeing it!
And therein lies the whole problem with Kingdom Now theology, in which the expectation is unequivocally that as one progresses in "the ways of the Kingdom" or whatever this week's catchphrase is, one will see more healings. If one doesn't, the conclusion is either that God's Kingdom is not advancing (obviously beyond the pale)... or that one is not moving forward with God.
The latter conclusion either leads people to a sense of guilt and unworthiness or is, again, so unthinkable to them (are they not hungry for God, searching after him daily, etc.) that it creates a kind of feedback loop in which they become self-deluded and terminally arrogant to boot (consider your comments earlier about how all the other churches paid only lip service to the spiritual gifts they claimed to believe in, and the implications of that comment).
I've been a Christian for half a century. I don't think I'm much of a worse one than I was before, I've had enough of being put on guilt trips by allegedly super-spiritual people, I simply haven't seen more signs, wonders, and miracles over that time, and the more I investigate the more I'm convinced nobody else has either, whatever they might claim.
Him again a week later he said his shoulder was still better.
Great. I won't knock people getting better, if they really are better and haven't swapped physical ailments for psychological dependence. And that extends to include people apparently healed by folk healers, mesmerists, and whatever. I think actual healing can only be from God whatever the channel.
But you have to admit that this is hardly in the same register as NT healings. Nobody's coming back from the dead three days after being buried. Nobody with withered limbs is suddenly seeing them restored. Nobody blind from birth is suddenly seeing. They just aren't. But look back at the thread I referenced on the old Ship to see how keen Bethel are to seize on alleged testimonies of this happening, and how slow they are to acknowledge they didn't. So slow that they in fact never acknowledge that it never happened - the press release to prove it is still there nine years on:
16 people were raised from the dead! It is staggering—and we know—hard to believe. But if it is true, we can’t hide from it even if it is so wonderfully uncomfortable and “out of the box.”
Part of the reason why I still think healing it is a sign of the kingdom is that Revelation sees the healing of the nations and wiping away every tear as part of the fullness of God's kingdom coming, Healings now are a partial foretaste of that future reality.
Agreed, but this is not the whole story of what Kingdom Now theology teaches.
Kingdom Now theology teaches not just that such healings are a partial foretaste of a new heaven and a new earth, but also that they are the firstfruits of that eschatological reality.
It foresees a gradual increase in these firstfruits, performed by the body of Christ, until they equal or exceed those performed by Christ in his body when he himself was on earth, when Christ as the Head of his body can fittingly return and consummate the Kingdom in, effectively a seamless transition. That's what all that "Heaven on Earth" and "Changing the Atmosphere" talk is all about, and that is why this is so dangerous.
It's a form of millenarianism.
I believe healings are a foretaste, but they are a foretaste of another plane of reality entirely, not a gradual shift from this one. Bethel conflates the "now" and the "not yet" and delusion is the result.
The two thing are put together when Jesus taught his disciples...look at Luke 9: Jesus sent the 12 out to "preach the kingdom of God and heal the sick". In Luke 10 when Jesus sends out the 72 he instructs them "Heal the sick who are there and then tell them the kingdom of God is near you".
First off, we are no longer in the NT, and I don't believe every specific instruction given to the disciples is to be adopted literally by today's disciples. If that was the plan, we've failed by such a degree that we might as well give up now, and that includes Bethel and all its ilk. Was it out of modesty that you missed out the instruction to "raise the dead" (Mt 10:8)?
My takeaway from these instructions is that healings or no healings, Jesus taught his disciples to drive back evil and advance the cause of good. That I can get behind.
Also, @Bullfinch, my views are in many ways an outlier on this forum. That's why I come here. If my views can't stand up to scrutiny here, they can't be very robust.
True but the point I was making is that when you are speaking to people with broadly similar views you don't have to be careful in how you express yourself.....when your views are different more care is needed to not be misunderstood.
Indeed. Which is important here. I think Bethel are delusional and that Kingdom Now theology is too.
Untangling that - if you're serious about it - involves taking the time to sort out just what it is one is saying and doing so with those who think differently, not those with "broadly similar views".
Only "speaking to people with broadly similar views" is the most charitable explanation of how Bethel managed (and are still managing) to spin an obvious hoax as a validation of their belief in resurrections. Think about that for a while.
In my view the implications (in terms of whether it's correct or not, and the impact it has on a lot of people, including within mainstream christianity) are serious enough that time doing so is time well spent.
Again, I'd second what Eutychus has written. We both come from similar backgrounds theologically and experientially.
It is often said that many charismatic groups suffer from an 'over-realised eschatology' and that's what I think we are seeing here. Someone has a poorly shoulder and it gets better. Yayy! the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!
Yes, I believe in the immanence of God and for all Martin's comments, I retain a belief that God can and does heal in response to prayer - and no, I don't go round looking for stats to back that up. It's part of my belief system if you like, in the same way that I believe that there's 'something there' - or rather Someone there - when we pray, or gather in Christ's name or celebrate communion or walk in the hills or whatever else we do or don't do ...
Yes, we may be able to 'taste the powers of the age to come', but there is a gap between the 'now and the not yet'. We see 'as in a glass darkly', we know in part but one day will know fully, even as we are fully known.
Would I ask people to pray if one of my relatives were seriously ill? Yes, I would and have done. Would I take them to a charismatic meeting so they could go forward for prayer? Not on your Nelly.
A zealous vicar's wife once pursued my wife after a church service in an attempt to 'lay hands' on her in a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to pray for her cancer. Such an action fulfils more of a need in the pursuer than the recipient, it seems to me. My wife faced terminal illness with great fortitude, resilience and resolution - with resignation and acceptance. Yes, she feared death but she accepted its inevitability. I only hope I can be as brave when the time comes.
The latter conclusion either leads people to a sense of guilt and unworthiness or is, again, so unthinkable to them (are they not hungry for God, searching after him daily, etc.) that it creates a kind of feedback loop in which they become self-deluded and terminally arrogant to boot (consider your comments earlier about how all the other churches paid only lip service to the spiritual gifts they claimed to believe in, and the implications of that comment).
See above quote - my comment means that "all other churches paid only lip service to the spiritual gifts they claim to believe in" and at least an implication if not quite a direct statement that this is because I am terminally arrogant and self-deluded."
Now it may be true that I am arrogant and self-deluded (I hope I'm not but I can hardly prove I'm not self-deluded!) however below is what I actually said:
If you theology says that healing should occur and you are not seeing them it may put some pressure on some leaders to fake healings but I think this pressure should be possible to resist if they have integrity...truthfulness is a higher value in the kingdom. And many churches believe in all of the gifts of the spirit in theory and rarely use any of them in practice so they are certainly resisting the pressure of faking.
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My actual comment was a response to the point that believing healing is a sign of the kingdom inevitably results in faking....and was that firstly honesty was a higher more important value in the kingdom; and secondly that clearly believing something doesn't result in an irresistable urge to fakery given many (note I didn't say all or most!) churches believe in spiritual gifts in theory while rarely using them in practice.
Now in the context of our discussion I would certainly characterize my view as "kingdom now and not yet" rather than "kingdom now"....but i am also curious whether those who focus on the "now" see more miracles vs those who focus on explaining the "not yet"; or whether as you suggest they just do more faking.
@Eutychus - with regard to Luke 9 and 10. In the great commission Jesus told his disciples to make disciples and teach them to do all that He had taught them....does that make it more difficult to argue that some of Jesus's instructions to his disciples don't apply today and if some don't apply how do we identify which ones (or does is it just end up being the ones we don't like such as "you can't serve both God and money").
You mention me missing off the bit about raising the dead - but unlike healing we don't see much of that in the NT, only Peter once and Paul once and only three times even for Jesus; while healing seems more normative in Acts. I'm not saying it can't happen though; testimonies of it happening tend to be from the poorest nations though.
IMHO actual and outright fakery is rare but can and does happen in a range of traditions from Pentecostal to Orthodox.
What is more common is 'confirmation bias', people convincing themselves that there is a miraculous explanation for something that would happen anyway.
Looking back, I'm not sure that many of the apparent healings I saw or heard about - and anecdote was far more common than actual incidents I observed - during my time in full-on charismaticdom would bear a great deal of scrutiny.
You keep mentioning miracles that take place. In my experiences there was far more talk about these things than actual incidents or accounts that could be verified.
I do remember hearing some remarkable accounts from a missionary who was by no means a raving charismatic. I would be prepared to accept it from someone like him who was working in rough and difficult circumstances and not flying around in a private jet earning vast sums from healing crusades.
Very good point by GG there, that many healers are seeking something for themselves. Well, OK, in therapy training that's one of the first lessons, that like it or not, you are dealing with unmet needs in yourself. You get used to the idea! But the tyro therapist tends to be zealous and full of bullshit, so they need tons of supervision, to get a handle on that. At first, you want to cure everyone, and you have the key. Zeal is the give away. Ah, as the heart grows older, it will come to such sights colder ...
In practice, most of what I saw came down to wishful thinking and an over-egged sense of expectation.
As I've said, I'm no cessationist but very few contemporary charismatic claims stand-up to scrutiny. Many apparent healings seem to have a placebo effect and quickly wear off. Did you read my story about the squint?
I've seen people get out of wheelchairs to applause and Hallelujahs only to be wheeled out again at the close of the meeting. Why? Because they weren't healed.
I filed a formal complaint against a clergy person who I felt had overstepped the mark during the last weeks of my wife's life.
Then you wonder why I have so little time for those who go round spreading extravagant claims with very little to back them up.
Why is it always a bad back or a poorly shoulder or something orthopaedic or musculoskeletal?
Yes, we hear stories. I know a retired preacher who claims that a deaf and dumb teenager was healed in response to prayer in one of his meetings.
I have no way of verifying that. Nor am I particularly interested in doing so. If it happened, great, glory be.
All I do know is that the rhetoric exceeds the reality in the vast majority of cases.
I have a lot of charismatic friends and have a lot of time for the good work many charismatics do, but wild horses wouldn't drag me back into a full-on charismatic setting.
And many churches believe in all of the gifts of the spirit in theory and rarely use any of them in practice so they are certainly resisting the pressure of faking.
The implicit criticism is that some churches are not making the most of the gifts they say they believe in and that these gifts are sitting there on the shelf available for them to use. The implicit superior claim is that churches like Bethel are at least trying, no blame attaches to them for any failures, and that the others are blameworthy for not doing so.
honesty was a higher more important value in the kingdom
Yes it is, but Bethel is being if not dishonest, highly disingenuous as the above quote shows. I have learned to my cost that saying one stands for honesty and integrity is not the same thing as being honest and actually having integrity. It takes little investigation of the so-called Lakeland and Cwmbran "revivals" to discover downright dishonesty.
clearly believing something doesn't result in an irresistable urge to fakery
If, as Kingdom Now theology asserts, healing is a necessary prerequiste to the Kingdom coming, and that it won't come any closer until there's more healing, the first temptation is to cognitive bias, as @Gamma Gamaliel says; the second is to make shit up (a well-known 90s "prophetess" caught studying host churches' notice sheets and prayer requests on her host family's fridge before delivering her "words of knowledge"). If this stuff is true, it will bear investigation. It almost always doesn't.
i am also curious whether those who focus on the "now" see more miracles vs those who focus on explaining the "not yet"
I'm 100% sure they don't, and it's not for want of looking. I'm also indebted to @Gamma Gamaliel for a quote: the Church is like a public swimming pool: all the noise comes from the shallow end.
@Eutychus - with regard to Luke 9 and 10. In the great commission Jesus told his disciples to make disciples and teach them to do all that He had taught them....does that make it more difficult to argue that some of Jesus's instructions to his disciples don't apply today and if some don't apply how do we identify which ones (or does is it just end up being the ones we don't like such as "you can't serve both God and money").
If they all apply, I take it you systematically go out and evangelise in groups of two...? And, assuming you take the same line re: Paul's instructions in the epistles, that in your church you occasionally take time (between the notices and communion, perhaps) to hand people's bodies over to be destroyed by Satan so that their souls can be saved? If you don't, why don't you? Are you not guilty of not making use of the authority God gives you and you claim to have if you don't at least try and do this?
I'm a pragmatist. I see many who are in my assessment disciples of Christ. I don't see many of them healing the sick or raising the dead (or drinking deadly poison or handling the serpent). Far more often than not, those that claim to do any of these things are exposed as charlatans and con artists (or for the stuff in brackets, end up dead). So either none of us are true disciples of Christ or there has to be a more nuanced way of understanding those instructions.
You mention me missing off the bit about raising the dead - but unlike healing we don't see much of that in the NT, only Peter once and Paul once and only three times even for Jesus
Evidence, if any more was required, that these things are of symbolic significance rather than indicative, cumulatively, of a Kingdom being ushered in. What greater physical healing could there be than overcoming death, the 'last enemy'? Something that Bethel allegedly expect to see, inflicting who knows what suffering on families like the Heiligenthals with this expectation. It's dangerous, possibly life-threateningly so.
while healing seems more normative in Acts.
Go through Acts and see how much time is devoted to teaching rather than healing. The healings grab our attention, but they're not what there's most of. And besides, who's to say Acts is "normative"? It makes a whole load more sense to me now as a description and not a blueprint.
That might be worth a separate thread, lilBuddha. I think it's a fascinating topic but it's on rather different level of abstraction. If it continues as a tangent, I'll split the thread.
If, as Kingdom Now theology asserts, healing is a necessary prerequiste to the Kingdom coming, and that it won't come any closer until there's more healing, the first temptation is to cognitive bias, as @Gamma Gamaliel says; the second is to make shit up (a well-known 90s "prophetess" caught studying host churches' notice sheets and prayer requests on her host family's fridge before delivering her "words of knowledge"). If this stuff is true, it will bear investigation. It almost always doesn't.
I would certainly reject the theology that healing is a prerequisite to the kingdom coming. Does anyone actually believe that? I certainly can't see any biblical basis for making that claim no matter how literally or metaphorically you read the NT.
There is a big difference between saying that healing is a sign of the kingdom and saying it is a prerequisite of anything. I know you made a distribution saying it's possibly correct to view this as a foretaste but not as "first fruits" but those expressions strike me as synonymous (I would be interested in hearing you unpack the distinction) ....Secondly if healing is a prerequisite of the kingdom coming why on earth would faking it help? It's hardly going to fool God is it....
Secondly I don't think the claim of whether healing is a sign of the kingdom stands or falls on our assessment of the extent to which Bethel is good, mistaken or fraudulent. I wasn't planning on debating Bethel - I originally mentioned them in the other thread because it struck me as unfair that a news story about them doing what was clearly the right thing led to them being criticized even more and it was particularly stark when another church was criticised (rightly in my view) for making the opposite judgment.
I did mention Iris ministries because they emphasis both miracles and suffering for the gospel; and seem to have also displayed "putting their money where their mouth is" in terms of their readiness to expose themselves to danger and discomfort due to their belief in Jesus. The Bakers moved to Mozambique just after the civil war when it was a very dangerous country and seem to have been seriously ill multiple times (one criticism aimed at Heidi is that she was unable to heal her husband of cerebral malaria through prayer and he was eventually treated in a German hospital) and been physically threatened n occasion by militia, rebels, as well as more prosaically by villagers who don't want their evangelism; rather than cashing in comfort and big bucks from their a ministry in a safe environment.
In terms of the not applying commands of Jesus literally going out in pairs it is a relatively normal approach to evangelism (and other tasks) in many churches which isn't viewed as as iron law but is viewed as a guideline...handing over to Satan - I think one issue is that no one knows exactly what Paul meant but it is not beyond the bounds of imagination a God would want a church to take some action to confront a member who is sleeping with his step mother.
I think the important thing that people miss about the book of Job is that it's fiction.
Who says so (apart from you that is)?
Which theological college did you go to?
Plenty of theologians and commentators as well as popular apologists like C S Lewis have posited that Job is rather like a parable or a work of pious fiction rather than a journalistic account of what happened one Thursday afternoon in the Land of Uz in BCE diddley-wotsit.
Otherwise, we have to explain how the writer knew what happened in the heavenly Oval Office when the Devil came in for his appraisal meeting.
Heck, even the IVP commentary holds out the possibility that it might not be an actual historic event - whilst hedging its bets and suggesting that Job may well have been an historical figure. He may well have been. But are you seriously suggesting that we have some kind of Watergate tape of a wager between God and Satan?
However we understand the Book of Job, surely we are going to allow for some artistic licence?
Going in pairs does seem a more specific instruction for a specific situation. Even more so is the command to go and get a donkey before palm Sunday, or the command to wait in Jerusalem. I can see an argument that healing the sick fits in the same category but that seems a bit of a stretch as it seems less contextualised to a specific situation.
And in Acts we see disciples healing the sick but we don't always see them going around in pairs like JW, and we certainly don't see large amounts of donkey collecting.
@Gamma Gamaliel I agree with you. Job doesn't read like reportage, his daughters and sons etc reads far more like a just so story or indeed a parable. I'd say the same for Jonah as well.....
I wish I could claim the swimming pool quote, Eutychus, but it comes from Mark Oakley's book, 'The Collage of God'.
FWIW, when it comes to so-called revivals like Lakeland and Cwmbran, the latter is my hometown and whilst I don't get there very often these days, from what I could see and from relatives I still have there and around, it was very apparent even at its height that very few people were aware of it other than those in the Pentecostal and charismatic churches. It had little to no impact on the town itself. Most of the punters were bussed in or travelled from other parts of the country attracted by the hype.
@Gamma Gamaliel I agree with you. Job doesn't read like reportage, his daughters and sons etc reads far more like a just so story or indeed a parable. I'd say the same for Jonah as well.....
My view is that God heals, that healing is one sign of the coming of God's kingdom, and this includes physical healing I.e. isn't limited to just spiritual or emotional healing.
As a translator, I get paid to think about what actual words mean, and to me "sign of the coming of God's kingdom" suggests that it's something that heralds the imminent arrival of same (I believe this is in the Elim denomination's statement of faith, the "coming King"). I would prefer to say that healing is a sign of the Kingdom to come.
I know you made a distribution saying it's possibly correct to view this as a foretaste but not as "first fruits" but those expressions strike me as synonymous (I would be interested in hearing you unpack the distinction)
A foretaste does not necessarily imply that the full taste experience is up imminently, whereas "first fruits" is what you get at the start of a harvest, so the full harvest is imminent. I do not believe the eschataological advent of the Kingdom of God will be a, um, frictionless transition (which, again, AIUI, is what Bethel teaches). With Paul in 1 Cor 15, I believe it will involve a complete transformation.
Secondly if healing is a prerequisite of the kingdom coming why on earth would faking it help?
Of course it doesn't help. That's why all these "revival" movements and an overemphasis on signs and wonders are so unhelpful!
I think faking, through "ignorance, weakness, or own deliberate fault" is nonetheless inevitable. If one believes that there must be more signs and wonders in order for the Kingdom to come, and one firmly believes that that Kingdom is coming imminently, failing which one has to deconstruct one's entire belief system (and in the case of someone in full-time ministry, potentially lose their livelihood), it's no surprise that one does not look too closely at any evidence to the contrary. This is usually dressed up as "the Lord has told us not to respond to criticism" (Wimber) or "you can't build a doctrine out of disappointment" (Bill Johnson) or "we're too busy healing to worry about checking with doctors" (Todd Bentley) or various other veiled threats to whistleblowers.
Secondly I don't think the claim of whether healing is a sign of the kingdom stands or falls on our assessment of the extent to which Bethel is good, mistaken or fraudulent.
I think there's a consensus among the christians on this thread that NT accounts of healing are intended to be read as a sign of the Kingdom. The argument is about whether they are to be reasonably expected on a regular and/or increasing basis today as a sign of that Kingdom and, more specifically, its imminent eschatological advent. Bethel is an example of a movement that preaches that they are, indeed that their presence and increase are imperative to that Kingdom being fully manifested.
it struck me as unfair that a news story about them doing what was clearly the right thing led to them being criticized even more
I can see why you thought that, but the fact is that it gives the lie to their claim to be distinctively and supernaturally endowed to embody the Kingdom by healing the sick.
it was particularly stark when another church was criticised (rightly in my view) for making the opposite judgment.
That criticism was levelled not because of their hypocrisy but because of their stupidity.
I did mention Iris ministries because they emphasis both miracles and suffering for the gospel; and seem to have also displayed "putting their money where their mouth is" in terms of their readiness to expose themselves to danger and discomfort due to their belief in Jesus.
But such readiness does not in and of itself validate their beliefs any more than Rodney Howard Browne's beliefs are validated by him putting himself and his church in physical danger. It would be a lot easier if all the people with dangerous theology were evil: they aren't. But that doesn't stop their teaching doing tremendous damage.
In terms of the not applying commands of Jesus literally going out in pairs it is a relatively normal approach to evangelism (and other tasks) in many churches which isn't viewed as as iron law but is viewed as a guideline
In other words, by your own admission, you're willing to interpret Jesus "orders" as "guidelines" when it suits you. I don't have any problem at all with that, because everybody does, including me.
What I do have a problem with, in view of that admission, is suddenly drawing criticism for not implementing "heal the sick" literally when a) I obviously can't (and as mentioned previously have found this out the hard way over cooling dead bodies) b) as often as not, attempting to do so goes against the wise advice to "first do no harm" and indeed against the Golden Rule.
Prerequisite - "a thing that is required as a prior condition for something else to happen"...
So saying healing is a sign is saying it is something that happens as a result of the kingdom coming. And I said " one of the signs"...a link that seems to be clearly there in the gospels. This doesn't seem to be very different to what you are saying when you talk about foretaste except you are clear it's not what you are saying.
Saying it is a prerequisite is saying it must happen before the kingdom can come, so the causation is completely reversed. Is that what "kingdom now" theology means or did you choose the wrong word?
Kingdom Now theology says, AIUI, that the only way for the eschaton to happen is for Christ's body on earth, i.e. the church (or the "overcoming" portion of it, the two-sevenths of Revelation which by some miracle our denomination is part of, etc.) to perform the exact same works Christ did, and greater ones of the same ilk, until this "kingdom-of-God" "atmosphere" (another favourite Bethel word) so pervades the terrestrial globe that it is in fact "heaven on earth" and Christ the Head arrives to consummate his reign.
In this view, healings are not just signs, indicators, pointers: they are more like birth pangs.
In the gospels, I think healings are a sign of the proximity of Christ incarnate, and I've ended up on these boards agreeing with @Martin54 to the extent that these signs, which were there like huge waves when Jesus was on earth, and wavelets when the Twelve were, have gradually subsided since the Christ Event - although not to the point of total non-existence, which is where I part company with Martin.
So they are signs, but not like countdown markers on a motorway exit. They are not prerequisites to the eschaton in the sense that we need more of them before Christ can return.
So they do show up in the stats but they don't look like miracles but they really, really are and the people having them know they are despite their clinicians knowing that they are not?
What are these stats of which you speak? Not every miracle is investigated by the Lourdes committee. I've been through the healings I've seen first-hand with you before. In my lifetime, I can think of two, which I'd think is statistically non-significant by most standards.
Nothing spectacular, but more than what I believe to be medically explainable (one of them was certainly acknowledged by the clinician in question). The very ordinary people in question were just grateful for them and got on with their lives.
They weren't looking for "proof" or aiming to start a TV ministry or trying to make a point about the advancing Kingdom, and I'm certainly not going to build such a theology on two healings per lifetime's experience (to date).
I'm talking morbidity stats and their outcomes. I don't question anyone's integrity at all. Least of all yours. Suffice it to say that if there are occult, statistically undetectable healings, lost in the statistical noise, then they point to an occult, statistically undetectable Kingdom, lost in the statistical noise.
I'd rather focus on obvious manifestations of the Kingdom, especially at this time.
I hope no one decides my totality is represented by one quote. Though I expect you've never heard of him before.
I haven't either. But that quote suggests to me that he squared the circle by deciding that God doesn't care about people (or sparrows, presumably). Logical, perhaps, but not Christian.
Except he was. And so am I.
I am persuaded that God pays less attention to our individuality and personal sufferings: pays less attention to things we'd like God to pay attention to. Like whether we've guaranteed our eternal life. This is a misfocus from our modern individual focus,
to mine and Davies' way of thinking. That there is context to the quote and rebuke of Christianity which makes few demands on people to live differently and is mostly practiced to give them personal comfort. That God cares far more about how we behave in the context of others' suffering- first. Our suffering second. Which is the Jesusly example. Anything about ourselves is secondary to how we are instructed to live. There's nothing Christian in loving yourself.
I suspect that for God, the difference between life and death is more about their similarity than difference. They're states of being, of existence. The same thing in essence.
CS Lewis also had it in The Screwtape Letters that WW2 deaths were merely a backdrop. They might be tasty devil's food but not nutritious.
I think the important thing that people miss about the book of Job is that it's fiction.
Who says so (apart from you that is)?
Which theological college did you go to?
Plenty of theologians and commentators as well as popular apologists like C S Lewis have posited that Job is rather like a parable or a work of pious fiction rather than a journalistic account of what happened one Thursday afternoon in the Land of Uz in BCE diddley-wotsit.
Otherwise, we have to explain how the writer knew what happened in the heavenly Oval Office when the Devil came in for his appraisal meeting.
Heck, even the IVP commentary holds out the possibility that it might not be an actual historic event - whilst hedging its bets and suggesting that Job may well have been an historical figure. He may well have been. But are you seriously suggesting that we have some kind of Watergate tape of a wager between God and Satan?
However we understand the Book of Job, surely we are going to allow for some artistic licence?
It was a genuine question …. MT was speaking as if Job not being a real character dismisses the lessons it can teach us.
I don't see it as a verbatim tape nor does Job have to be real for me to learn anything from it. That learning will be different for me as for others so again, no issue with artistic licence.
As for the college I went to, I'm not sure that's overly relevant but I'll tell you by PM. I won't say do publicly, as taken with other stuff on here it could reveal the real EM to the world. For the moment, I'm happier for it to be as it is.
I think the important thing that people miss about the book of Job is that it's fiction.
Who says so (apart from you that is)?
Which theological college did you go to?
Plenty of theologians and commentators as well as popular apologists like C S Lewis have posited that Job is rather like a parable or a work of pious fiction rather than a journalistic account of what happened one Thursday afternoon in the Land of Uz in BCE diddley-wotsit.
Otherwise, we have to explain how the writer knew what happened in the heavenly Oval Office when the Devil came in for his appraisal meeting.
Heck, even the IVP commentary holds out the possibility that it might not be an actual historic event - whilst hedging its bets and suggesting that Job may well have been an historical figure. He may well have been. But are you seriously suggesting that we have some kind of Watergate tape of a wager between God and Satan?
However we understand the Book of Job, surely we are going to allow for some artistic licence?
It was a genuine question …. MT was speaking as if Job not being a real character dismisses the lessons it can teach us.
I didn’t read him that way at all. I don’t think anyone is saying that Job being fictional diminishes what it has to say.
At the risk of derailing this thread, what @Martin54 would you class as an obvious manifestation of the Kingdom at this time?
No snark - a genuine enquiry!
Heaven forfend! You! Snark! Lucifer will be skating to work.
Anybody and everybody being incarnational. Decent. Going the extra mile. Stepping up. Whether health or shop workers. And punters. I know it's only human. But we are certainly made in His image. I have a neighbour running himself ragged for the practically unhelpable homeless who've noticed that there's nowhere to go to the toilet. I don't see God twiddling His nose and doing anything about it. It's entirely down to us. Whether we know Him (how?) or not.
I didn't read MT's comment that way either and it's why, EM, I reacted with a sarcastic rhetorical question. It sounded to me as if you were encountering the idea that Job might be a work of pious fiction for the first time.
Apologies if I misunderstood you and responded with a snark.
I don't doubt your ministerial or theological education credentials in the least, but I was taken aback by your response to MT. I have no interest in exposing the identity of the real EM.
God commends Job for not doing so, and condemns his comforters for claiming to know more than they do. In short, to use a word much loved of the Orthodox, human suffering is a mystery. The world is full of wonders, and we can't understand those, how do we expect to understand suffering?
I think we are lead astray if we think the purpose of the book of Job is to explain "why good people suffer." Even the devil in the first chapter is not to be taken literally -- it's a framing device for the story, not something that really happened or happens. If the book has a "point" it's that we don't know. Suffering is, if you will, just another mystery.
I’m sympathetic to this reading, but the way I read it the mystery is a little more fully worked through than this.
God doesn’t just tell Job: you’re a worm, as somebody way upthread had it (ignore SoF for a day, and look what happens ...). He repeatedly enjoins Job to ‘brace himself up like a man’, and itemises many of the things he has created. And what these things have in common is that they are typically great and powerful - the eagle, the warhorse, Leviathan and Behemoth. Awe-inspiring, rather than simply ‘beautiful’ or ‘pleasant’. And so, while God is clearly putting Job in his place, he is also clearly reminding him that Job is part and parcel of this vast and awe-inspiring creation. Job may want a wealthy and comfortable life; but in fact he has a higher and a sterner nature than this, made for thriving amongst the suffering, even if this thriving is other than what Job might have wished for. We are, as the psalm has it, ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ - and this is something Job’s ‘comforters’ and to some extent Job himself have tried to hide from themselves. Job may be humbled by God; but he is also, on another plane, ennobled.
Of course, this still leaves suffering as a mystery. But it’s as I see it the nature of suffering and our participation in it that is the mystery, not the fact of victimhood per se.
But it's perhaps more fairly put as a question: is it better to have no healing at all, or healings that fail to conform to one's ideas of justice?
How about everybody being healed? Too generous really.
Well, this is just upping the ante, isn’t it? In your view, as I understand it, justice would obviously demand that all be healed without exception. Miraculous healings would almost by definition fail to meet this high standard; therefore any God who did bring about such healings would deserve condemnation, rather than praise or gratitude. And it is thus preferable that all should be levelled, than that some should be saved.
But it's perhaps more fairly put as a question: is it better to have no healing at all, or healings that fail to conform to one's ideas of justice?
How about everybody being healed? Too generous really.
Well, this is just upping the ante, isn’t it? In your view, as I understand it, justice would obviously demand that all be healed without exception. Miraculous healings would almost by definition fail to meet this high standard; therefore any God who did bring about such healings would deserve condemnation, rather than praise or gratitude. And it is thus preferable that all should be levelled, than that some should be saved.
I think that you are offering an interpretation, and saying it's mine. Not sure why.
Comments
Actually, it is written as a play--one of the oldest plays we have intact. The first few verses of Job may be referring to an actual man who had tragedy befall him. From the point of Satan coming before God in the council of gods to the end where it says Job prospered once again, it is all a play--and a very good play at that.
So they do show up in the stats but they don't look like miracles but they really, really are and the people having them know they are despite their clinicians knowing that they are not?
True, although "play" and "fiction" are not mutually exclusive.
In this way of thinking, "God" is just shorthand for "the totality of things" or "the way the universe operates." There's no actual supreme being as such.
I haven't either. But that quote suggests to me that he squared the circle by deciding that God doesn't care about people (or sparrows, presumably). Logical, perhaps, but not Christian.
As far as I'm concerned belief in God is a presupposition in this thread. For my part, I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm giving my attempt to make sense of what I see and hear about divine healing with that presupposition in mind and the assumption the Bible has something to say about what that God is like. Which is also an assumption for the purposes of this discussion as is clear from the OP.
I'm not fully intellectually convinced of the existence of God, the presence of divine healing, or the reliability of the Bible in either respect, but I find there's a lot more to who I am and my convictions than intellect alone (fortunately). Here I stand.
Nothing spectacular, but more than what I believe to be medically explainable (one of them was certainly acknowledged by the clinician in question). The very ordinary people in question were just grateful for them and got on with their lives.
They weren't looking for "proof" or aiming to start a TV ministry or trying to make a point about the advancing Kingdom, and I'm certainly not going to build such a theology on two healings per lifetime's experience (to date).
Where's @Bullfinch got to?
Among the Christians I know a large number like you Eutychus would be able to provide a story of a healing they have experienced or someone they have seen healed as well as lots of stories of praying for healing and not seeing it and also not praying and not seeing it!
Few of those stories would be seen as anything more than a quicker than expected or better than expected recovery/outcome by medical professionals but they are convincing to the people they happen to as they happen at the same time or shortly after prayer. The most recent example I have would be praying for a chap with lack of movement and pain in his shoulder after surgery on it. We prayed for him and he said the pain had gone immediately and he was able to lift his arm over his head which he couldn't really do before. Someone I know who was there told me they had see. Him again a week later he said his shoulder was still better. Obviously the point of the operation had been to repair the shoulder and presumably it would have healed anyway eventually but the shoulder was still painful at the time he was prayer for and
the restoration of movement and the pain going happened immediately after receiving prayer.
Part of the reason why I still think healing it is a sign of the kingdom is that Revelation sees the healing of the nations and wiping away every tear as part of the fullness of God's kingdom coming, Healings now are a partial foretaste of that future reality. The two thing are put together when Jesus taught his disciples...look at Luke 9: Jesus sent the 12 out to "preach the kingdom of God and heal the sick". In Luke 10 when Jesus sends out the 72 he instructs them "Heal the sick who are there and then tell them the kingdom of God is near you".
The latter conclusion either leads people to a sense of guilt and unworthiness or is, again, so unthinkable to them (are they not hungry for God, searching after him daily, etc.) that it creates a kind of feedback loop in which they become self-deluded and terminally arrogant to boot (consider your comments earlier about how all the other churches paid only lip service to the spiritual gifts they claimed to believe in, and the implications of that comment).
I've been a Christian for half a century. I don't think I'm much of a worse one than I was before, I've had enough of being put on guilt trips by allegedly super-spiritual people, I simply haven't seen more signs, wonders, and miracles over that time, and the more I investigate the more I'm convinced nobody else has either, whatever they might claim.
Great. I won't knock people getting better, if they really are better and haven't swapped physical ailments for psychological dependence. And that extends to include people apparently healed by folk healers, mesmerists, and whatever. I think actual healing can only be from God whatever the channel.
But you have to admit that this is hardly in the same register as NT healings. Nobody's coming back from the dead three days after being buried. Nobody with withered limbs is suddenly seeing them restored. Nobody blind from birth is suddenly seeing. They just aren't. But look back at the thread I referenced on the old Ship to see how keen Bethel are to seize on alleged testimonies of this happening, and how slow they are to acknowledge they didn't. So slow that they in fact never acknowledge that it never happened - the press release to prove it is still there nine years on: Agreed, but this is not the whole story of what Kingdom Now theology teaches.
Kingdom Now theology teaches not just that such healings are a partial foretaste of a new heaven and a new earth, but also that they are the firstfruits of that eschatological reality.
It foresees a gradual increase in these firstfruits, performed by the body of Christ, until they equal or exceed those performed by Christ in his body when he himself was on earth, when Christ as the Head of his body can fittingly return and consummate the Kingdom in, effectively a seamless transition. That's what all that "Heaven on Earth" and "Changing the Atmosphere" talk is all about, and that is why this is so dangerous.
It's a form of millenarianism.
I believe healings are a foretaste, but they are a foretaste of another plane of reality entirely, not a gradual shift from this one. Bethel conflates the "now" and the "not yet" and delusion is the result.
First off, we are no longer in the NT, and I don't believe every specific instruction given to the disciples is to be adopted literally by today's disciples. If that was the plan, we've failed by such a degree that we might as well give up now, and that includes Bethel and all its ilk. Was it out of modesty that you missed out the instruction to "raise the dead" (Mt 10:8)?
My takeaway from these instructions is that healings or no healings, Jesus taught his disciples to drive back evil and advance the cause of good. That I can get behind.
Untangling that - if you're serious about it - involves taking the time to sort out just what it is one is saying and doing so with those who think differently, not those with "broadly similar views".
Only "speaking to people with broadly similar views" is the most charitable explanation of how Bethel managed (and are still managing) to spin an obvious hoax as a validation of their belief in resurrections. Think about that for a while.
In my view the implications (in terms of whether it's correct or not, and the impact it has on a lot of people, including within mainstream christianity) are serious enough that time doing so is time well spent.
It is often said that many charismatic groups suffer from an 'over-realised eschatology' and that's what I think we are seeing here. Someone has a poorly shoulder and it gets better. Yayy! the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!
Yes, I believe in the immanence of God and for all Martin's comments, I retain a belief that God can and does heal in response to prayer - and no, I don't go round looking for stats to back that up. It's part of my belief system if you like, in the same way that I believe that there's 'something there' - or rather Someone there - when we pray, or gather in Christ's name or celebrate communion or walk in the hills or whatever else we do or don't do ...
Yes, we may be able to 'taste the powers of the age to come', but there is a gap between the 'now and the not yet'. We see 'as in a glass darkly', we know in part but one day will know fully, even as we are fully known.
Would I ask people to pray if one of my relatives were seriously ill? Yes, I would and have done. Would I take them to a charismatic meeting so they could go forward for prayer? Not on your Nelly.
A zealous vicar's wife once pursued my wife after a church service in an attempt to 'lay hands' on her in a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to pray for her cancer. Such an action fulfils more of a need in the pursuer than the recipient, it seems to me. My wife faced terminal illness with great fortitude, resilience and resolution - with resignation and acceptance. Yes, she feared death but she accepted its inevitability. I only hope I can be as brave when the time comes.
We all need to grow up.
See above quote - my comment means that "all other churches paid only lip service to the spiritual gifts they claim to believe in" and at least an implication if not quite a direct statement that this is because I am terminally arrogant and self-deluded."
Now it may be true that I am arrogant and self-deluded (I hope I'm not but I can hardly prove I'm not self-deluded!) however below is what I actually said:
My actual comment was a response to the point that believing healing is a sign of the kingdom inevitably results in faking....and was that firstly honesty was a higher more important value in the kingdom; and secondly that clearly believing something doesn't result in an irresistable urge to fakery given many (note I didn't say all or most!) churches believe in spiritual gifts in theory while rarely using them in practice.
Now in the context of our discussion I would certainly characterize my view as "kingdom now and not yet" rather than "kingdom now"....but i am also curious whether those who focus on the "now" see more miracles vs those who focus on explaining the "not yet"; or whether as you suggest they just do more faking.
You mention me missing off the bit about raising the dead - but unlike healing we don't see much of that in the NT, only Peter once and Paul once and only three times even for Jesus; while healing seems more normative in Acts. I'm not saying it can't happen though; testimonies of it happening tend to be from the poorest nations though.
What is more common is 'confirmation bias', people convincing themselves that there is a miraculous explanation for something that would happen anyway.
Looking back, I'm not sure that many of the apparent healings I saw or heard about - and anecdote was far more common than actual incidents I observed - during my time in full-on charismaticdom would bear a great deal of scrutiny.
You keep mentioning miracles that take place. In my experiences there was far more talk about these things than actual incidents or accounts that could be verified.
I do remember hearing some remarkable accounts from a missionary who was by no means a raving charismatic. I would be prepared to accept it from someone like him who was working in rough and difficult circumstances and not flying around in a private jet earning vast sums from healing crusades.
As I've said, I'm no cessationist but very few contemporary charismatic claims stand-up to scrutiny. Many apparent healings seem to have a placebo effect and quickly wear off. Did you read my story about the squint?
I've seen people get out of wheelchairs to applause and Hallelujahs only to be wheeled out again at the close of the meeting. Why? Because they weren't healed.
I filed a formal complaint against a clergy person who I felt had overstepped the mark during the last weeks of my wife's life.
Then you wonder why I have so little time for those who go round spreading extravagant claims with very little to back them up.
Why is it always a bad back or a poorly shoulder or something orthopaedic or musculoskeletal?
Yes, we hear stories. I know a retired preacher who claims that a deaf and dumb teenager was healed in response to prayer in one of his meetings.
I have no way of verifying that. Nor am I particularly interested in doing so. If it happened, great, glory be.
All I do know is that the rhetoric exceeds the reality in the vast majority of cases.
I have a lot of charismatic friends and have a lot of time for the good work many charismatics do, but wild horses wouldn't drag me back into a full-on charismatic setting.
If, as Kingdom Now theology asserts, healing is a necessary prerequiste to the Kingdom coming, and that it won't come any closer until there's more healing, the first temptation is to cognitive bias, as @Gamma Gamaliel says; the second is to make shit up (a well-known 90s "prophetess" caught studying host churches' notice sheets and prayer requests on her host family's fridge before delivering her "words of knowledge"). If this stuff is true, it will bear investigation. It almost always doesn't.
I'm 100% sure they don't, and it's not for want of looking. I'm also indebted to @Gamma Gamaliel for a quote: the Church is like a public swimming pool: all the noise comes from the shallow end.
I'm a pragmatist. I see many who are in my assessment disciples of Christ. I don't see many of them healing the sick or raising the dead (or drinking deadly poison or handling the serpent). Far more often than not, those that claim to do any of these things are exposed as charlatans and con artists (or for the stuff in brackets, end up dead). So either none of us are true disciples of Christ or there has to be a more nuanced way of understanding those instructions.
Evidence, if any more was required, that these things are of symbolic significance rather than indicative, cumulatively, of a Kingdom being ushered in. What greater physical healing could there be than overcoming death, the 'last enemy'? Something that Bethel allegedly expect to see, inflicting who knows what suffering on families like the Heiligenthals with this expectation. It's dangerous, possibly life-threateningly so.
Go through Acts and see how much time is devoted to teaching rather than healing. The healings grab our attention, but they're not what there's most of. And besides, who's to say Acts is "normative"? It makes a whole load more sense to me now as a description and not a blueprint.
B62 Purg Host
I would certainly reject the theology that healing is a prerequisite to the kingdom coming. Does anyone actually believe that? I certainly can't see any biblical basis for making that claim no matter how literally or metaphorically you read the NT.
There is a big difference between saying that healing is a sign of the kingdom and saying it is a prerequisite of anything. I know you made a distribution saying it's possibly correct to view this as a foretaste but not as "first fruits" but those expressions strike me as synonymous (I would be interested in hearing you unpack the distinction) ....Secondly if healing is a prerequisite of the kingdom coming why on earth would faking it help? It's hardly going to fool God is it....
Secondly I don't think the claim of whether healing is a sign of the kingdom stands or falls on our assessment of the extent to which Bethel is good, mistaken or fraudulent. I wasn't planning on debating Bethel - I originally mentioned them in the other thread because it struck me as unfair that a news story about them doing what was clearly the right thing led to them being criticized even more and it was particularly stark when another church was criticised (rightly in my view) for making the opposite judgment.
I did mention Iris ministries because they emphasis both miracles and suffering for the gospel; and seem to have also displayed "putting their money where their mouth is" in terms of their readiness to expose themselves to danger and discomfort due to their belief in Jesus. The Bakers moved to Mozambique just after the civil war when it was a very dangerous country and seem to have been seriously ill multiple times (one criticism aimed at Heidi is that she was unable to heal her husband of cerebral malaria through prayer and he was eventually treated in a German hospital) and been physically threatened n occasion by militia, rebels, as well as more prosaically by villagers who don't want their evangelism; rather than cashing in comfort and big bucks from their a ministry in a safe environment.
In terms of the not applying commands of Jesus literally going out in pairs it is a relatively normal approach to evangelism (and other tasks) in many churches which isn't viewed as as iron law but is viewed as a guideline...handing over to Satan - I think one issue is that no one knows exactly what Paul meant but it is not beyond the bounds of imagination a God would want a church to take some action to confront a member who is sleeping with his step mother.
Which theological college did you go to?
Plenty of theologians and commentators as well as popular apologists like C S Lewis have posited that Job is rather like a parable or a work of pious fiction rather than a journalistic account of what happened one Thursday afternoon in the Land of Uz in BCE diddley-wotsit.
Otherwise, we have to explain how the writer knew what happened in the heavenly Oval Office when the Devil came in for his appraisal meeting.
Heck, even the IVP commentary holds out the possibility that it might not be an actual historic event - whilst hedging its bets and suggesting that Job may well have been an historical figure. He may well have been. But are you seriously suggesting that we have some kind of Watergate tape of a wager between God and Satan?
However we understand the Book of Job, surely we are going to allow for some artistic licence?
And in Acts we see disciples healing the sick but we don't always see them going around in pairs like JW, and we certainly don't see large amounts of donkey collecting.
FWIW, when it comes to so-called revivals like Lakeland and Cwmbran, the latter is my hometown and whilst I don't get there very often these days, from what I could see and from relatives I still have there and around, it was very apparent even at its height that very few people were aware of it other than those in the Pentecostal and charismatic churches. It had little to no impact on the town itself. Most of the punters were bussed in or travelled from other parts of the country attracted by the hype.
Me too.
As a translator, I get paid to think about what actual words mean, and to me "sign of the coming of God's kingdom" suggests that it's something that heralds the imminent arrival of same (I believe this is in the Elim denomination's statement of faith, the "coming King"). I would prefer to say that healing is a sign of the Kingdom to come.
A foretaste does not necessarily imply that the full taste experience is up imminently, whereas "first fruits" is what you get at the start of a harvest, so the full harvest is imminent. I do not believe the eschataological advent of the Kingdom of God will be a, um, frictionless transition (which, again, AIUI, is what Bethel teaches). With Paul in 1 Cor 15, I believe it will involve a complete transformation. Of course it doesn't help. That's why all these "revival" movements and an overemphasis on signs and wonders are so unhelpful!
I think faking, through "ignorance, weakness, or own deliberate fault" is nonetheless inevitable. If one believes that there must be more signs and wonders in order for the Kingdom to come, and one firmly believes that that Kingdom is coming imminently, failing which one has to deconstruct one's entire belief system (and in the case of someone in full-time ministry, potentially lose their livelihood), it's no surprise that one does not look too closely at any evidence to the contrary. This is usually dressed up as "the Lord has told us not to respond to criticism" (Wimber) or "you can't build a doctrine out of disappointment" (Bill Johnson) or "we're too busy healing to worry about checking with doctors" (Todd Bentley) or various other veiled threats to whistleblowers.
I think there's a consensus among the christians on this thread that NT accounts of healing are intended to be read as a sign of the Kingdom. The argument is about whether they are to be reasonably expected on a regular and/or increasing basis today as a sign of that Kingdom and, more specifically, its imminent eschatological advent. Bethel is an example of a movement that preaches that they are, indeed that their presence and increase are imperative to that Kingdom being fully manifested. I can see why you thought that, but the fact is that it gives the lie to their claim to be distinctively and supernaturally endowed to embody the Kingdom by healing the sick. That criticism was levelled not because of their hypocrisy but because of their stupidity.
But such readiness does not in and of itself validate their beliefs any more than Rodney Howard Browne's beliefs are validated by him putting himself and his church in physical danger. It would be a lot easier if all the people with dangerous theology were evil: they aren't. But that doesn't stop their teaching doing tremendous damage.
In other words, by your own admission, you're willing to interpret Jesus "orders" as "guidelines" when it suits you. I don't have any problem at all with that, because everybody does, including me.
What I do have a problem with, in view of that admission, is suddenly drawing criticism for not implementing "heal the sick" literally when a) I obviously can't (and as mentioned previously have found this out the hard way over cooling dead bodies) b) as often as not, attempting to do so goes against the wise advice to "first do no harm" and indeed against the Golden Rule.
So saying healing is a sign is saying it is something that happens as a result of the kingdom coming. And I said " one of the signs"...a link that seems to be clearly there in the gospels. This doesn't seem to be very different to what you are saying when you talk about foretaste except you are clear it's not what you are saying.
Saying it is a prerequisite is saying it must happen before the kingdom can come, so the causation is completely reversed. Is that what "kingdom now" theology means or did you choose the wrong word?
In this view, healings are not just signs, indicators, pointers: they are more like birth pangs.
In the gospels, I think healings are a sign of the proximity of Christ incarnate, and I've ended up on these boards agreeing with @Martin54 to the extent that these signs, which were there like huge waves when Jesus was on earth, and wavelets when the Twelve were, have gradually subsided since the Christ Event - although not to the point of total non-existence, which is where I part company with Martin.
So they are signs, but not like countdown markers on a motorway exit. They are not prerequisites to the eschaton in the sense that we need more of them before Christ can return.
Virtually everybody here.
I'm talking morbidity stats and their outcomes. I don't question anyone's integrity at all. Least of all yours. Suffice it to say that if there are occult, statistically undetectable healings, lost in the statistical noise, then they point to an occult, statistically undetectable Kingdom, lost in the statistical noise.
I'd rather focus on obvious manifestations of the Kingdom, especially at this time.
Except he was. And so am I.
I am persuaded that God pays less attention to our individuality and personal sufferings: pays less attention to things we'd like God to pay attention to. Like whether we've guaranteed our eternal life. This is a misfocus from our modern individual focus,
to mine and Davies' way of thinking. That there is context to the quote and rebuke of Christianity which makes few demands on people to live differently and is mostly practiced to give them personal comfort. That God cares far more about how we behave in the context of others' suffering- first. Our suffering second. Which is the Jesusly example. Anything about ourselves is secondary to how we are instructed to live. There's nothing Christian in loving yourself.
I suspect that for God, the difference between life and death is more about their similarity than difference. They're states of being, of existence. The same thing in essence.
CS Lewis also had it in The Screwtape Letters that WW2 deaths were merely a backdrop. They might be tasty devil's food but not nutritious.
No snark - a genuine enquiry!
It was a genuine question …. MT was speaking as if Job not being a real character dismisses the lessons it can teach us.
I don't see it as a verbatim tape nor does Job have to be real for me to learn anything from it. That learning will be different for me as for others so again, no issue with artistic licence.
As for the college I went to, I'm not sure that's overly relevant but I'll tell you by PM. I won't say do publicly, as taken with other stuff on here it could reveal the real EM to the world. For the moment, I'm happier for it to be as it is.
Heaven forfend! You! Snark! Lucifer will be skating to work.
Anybody and everybody being incarnational. Decent. Going the extra mile. Stepping up. Whether health or shop workers. And punters. I know it's only human. But we are certainly made in His image. I have a neighbour running himself ragged for the practically unhelpable homeless who've noticed that there's nowhere to go to the toilet. I don't see God twiddling His nose and doing anything about it. It's entirely down to us. Whether we know Him (how?) or not.
Apologies if I misunderstood you and responded with a snark.
I don't doubt your ministerial or theological education credentials in the least, but I was taken aback by your response to MT. I have no interest in exposing the identity of the real EM.
I’m sympathetic to this reading, but the way I read it the mystery is a little more fully worked through than this.
God doesn’t just tell Job: you’re a worm, as somebody way upthread had it (ignore SoF for a day, and look what happens ...). He repeatedly enjoins Job to ‘brace himself up like a man’, and itemises many of the things he has created. And what these things have in common is that they are typically great and powerful - the eagle, the warhorse, Leviathan and Behemoth. Awe-inspiring, rather than simply ‘beautiful’ or ‘pleasant’. And so, while God is clearly putting Job in his place, he is also clearly reminding him that Job is part and parcel of this vast and awe-inspiring creation. Job may want a wealthy and comfortable life; but in fact he has a higher and a sterner nature than this, made for thriving amongst the suffering, even if this thriving is other than what Job might have wished for. We are, as the psalm has it, ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ - and this is something Job’s ‘comforters’ and to some extent Job himself have tried to hide from themselves. Job may be humbled by God; but he is also, on another plane, ennobled.
Of course, this still leaves suffering as a mystery. But it’s as I see it the nature of suffering and our participation in it that is the mystery, not the fact of victimhood per se.
Well, this is just upping the ante, isn’t it? In your view, as I understand it, justice would obviously demand that all be healed without exception. Miraculous healings would almost by definition fail to meet this high standard; therefore any God who did bring about such healings would deserve condemnation, rather than praise or gratitude. And it is thus preferable that all should be levelled, than that some should be saved.
Well, hmmm. I wasn’t raised Catholic, or indeed, religiously, so perhaps I don’t have the psychological scars to really understand that condemnation.
But from my secular upbringing .... well, the notions of original exculpation and entitlement haven’t worked out so great, either.
I think that you are offering an interpretation, and saying it's mine. Not sure why.