Foreword

It goes without saying that the subject of the healing of body and mind is a live subject today. A steady volume of publications continues to emerge for our current reading. Yet the matter is not only within books. Over the past few decades many have emerged, within the Christian church, to take up the ministry of healing. We are in an age of healing ministries.

Doubtless much of this healing ministry has been greatly discredited by some who are in the Elmer Gantry tradition. It may well be that few are like him, yet flamboyancy of method, poverty of biblical teaching, and commercial gains of some have prejudiced moderns against such healing methods. Confrontation by the seemingly miraculous healings has been disconcerting to some who like their faith kept to theological categories, and who care little for such 'action'.

Is there, then, real healing from God? If so, is this confined simply to the medical care, modern medicines, and the hospitalisation of the sick and surgically needy? Why do people seek healing at hospitals? Why do churches pray for sick people? Why does mankind set about healing with such determination as we see?

There are other questions, also, which are being asked:

Why does not the church heal as Christ and his apostles healed? Is not such healing for today? Could God possibly visit persons with disease and sickness, and would He cause such to suffer for their sins and failures? Is not sin simply a visitation of Satan, although permitted, so to speak, by God? If the Kingdom ministry healed in the Gospels, why does not the same Kingdom heal now?

There are other questions asked, and books have been written to answer these. Some healers have evolved modes and methods of healing. 'They seek to rationalise these on biblical bases'. Hence the current discussion of these interesting and confronting issues. What is called the 'Princeton View' claims that healings and miracles were given, so to speak, to launch the church, were temporary, and have ceased. Missionaries oppose such a view, reporting miracles and healings on new mission fields. Some, then, amend the Princeton View to include such action wherever the inception of churches is taking place.

Others such as Pentecostalists and charismatics insist that God is the same yesterday, today and forever, and that He not only can but does heal today, as ever. The healing movement has these two wings just nominated, ie. the Princeton View exponents and Pentecostal exponents, but between these two wings is a marvellous range of others who are more moderate in their views. They, too, have definite ideas on the matter, ranging from the use of medicos, psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists to those who use prayer, the ministry of communities, and therapies for inner healing, and healing of hurtful memories.

To attempt a reconciliation of all these elements would be a vast, if not hopeless task. This book is no attempt to do that.

Whilst the writer believes God not only can but does heal, he is not convinced that wholesale healing is advocated in Scripture. To say God does not heal today is to go against the facts, not only of medicine, but also of what we might call spiritual healing. We are not creatures fatally enclosed in a squirrel cage. Our universe is not a closed system. This is the heresy of deists. God is the same yesterday, today and forever, but then He did not always heal, anyway not in a wholesale fashion, yesterday. He has healed in remark able ways in various epochs of our history, and doubtless, in quiet, unseen ways through it all. Doubtless the matter of healing is His, and calls for humility, submission, and obedience on our part as to His times and purposes in and for healing, today. It is for these reasons that the writer has found the compiling of this book both frustrating and enriching. No human mind dare claim to handle the complexity of the matters discussed. No human heart dare to be other than simple, and let God be God. The secret things always belong to Him, and the things revealed belong to us, to do them.

We trust that some of the insights shared in this book may help to bless, and even to heal. Where a reader takes issue with some of the material expounded, let him not only feel free to do so, but let him rejoice in the fact that God, and not man, is the true Healer, and that He heals, not by men's methodologies or prescriptions, but by His love, and that in His wisdom, sometimes revealed to us, and sometimes left inscrutable.

Geoffrey Bingham

Coromandel, 1980