False teachers

[psalms 91]

What was Pauls thorn? What is the cause of Timothys condition? Is it possible that by what he ate he made it recur? Was it possible that he was healed and then ate more of what upset him to start with? You have just ignored many verses and a whole chapter that talks about what Christ bought and paid for.

 

[tango]

What was Pauls thorn?

Nobody knows, the text doesn't say. What the text does say is that God declined to remove it, and said that his power was made perfect by Paul's weakness. Paul then said he would boast in his infirmities. Maybe he should have claimed the healing so he wouldn't have had to boast in his infirmities. Silly Paul, I wonder why he didn't think of that.

What is the cause of Timothys condition? Is it possible that by what he ate he made it recur?

It's possible, but then if you want to stand on every promise you can possibly pull out of the text even if you ignore context you can find a promise that God's people will drink poison and not come to harm. Maybe that didn't apply to Timothy either. Either way, if healing is guaranteed it's guaranteed. Are you saying that healing is conditional and that if we eat dodgy food we don't get healed? I don't see that condition in James.

Was it possible that he was healed and then ate more of what upset him to start with?

Are you saying that God's healing is conditional on not eating dodgy food? Or that some dodgy food is more powerful than the divine power of God? That doesn't sound like good theology to me.

You have just ignored many verses and a whole chapter that talks about what Christ bought and paid for.

I'm looking to reconcile an apparent contradiction. Unless Scripture supports Scripture we need to consider which passage is being misunderstood. You're still pulling the same old trick of slipping your position into your argument as if it were truth - the whole counterpoint to the healing issue is that Christ didn't buy and pay for a guarantee of perfect physical health in this life. If he did, why are people not healed? Why wasn't Timothy healed? If you want to claim that a prayer of faith is guaranteed to heal then you have to explain why poor Timothy slipped through the net - did he have too much sin in his life, did Paul lack the faith for his prayers to be heard, or is it a simple matter that God doesn't heal every single person all of the time?

 

[psalms 91]

Nobody knows, the text doesn't say. What the text does say is that God declined to remove it, and said that his power was made perfect by Paul's weakness. Paul then said he would boast in his infirmities. Maybe he should have claimed the healing so he wouldn't have had to boast in his infirmities. Silly Paul, I wonder why he didn't think of that.



It's possible, but then if you want to stand on every promise you can possibly pull out of the text even if you ignore context you can find a promise that God's people will drink poison and not come to harm. Maybe that didn't apply to Timothy either. Either way, if healing is guaranteed it's guaranteed. Are you saying that healing is conditional and that if we eat dodgy food we don't get healed? I don't see that condition in James.



Are you saying that God's healing is conditional on not eating dodgy food? Or that some dodgy food is more powerful than the divine power of God? That doesn't sound like good theology to me.



I'm looking to reconcile an apparent contradiction. Unless Scripture supports Scripture we need to consider which passage is being misunderstood. You're still pulling the same old trick of slipping your position into your argument as if it were truth - the whole counterpoint to the healing issue is that Christ didn't buy and pay for a guarantee of perfect physical health in this life. If he did, why are people not healed? Why wasn't Timothy healed? If you want to claim that a prayer of faith is guaranteed to heal then you have to explain why poor Timothy slipped through the net - did he have too much sin in his life, did Paul lack the faith for his prayers to be heard, or is it a simple matter that God doesn't heal every single person all of the time?

We are both supposing which does neither of us any good. There is no evidence that Pauls thorn was physical any more than there is proof that Timothy caused his own sickness but what is clear that if God healed him he would have also told him the root of the oproblem and if Timothy ignored that then it would have been disobedience. We can do this all day but I think accepting the Word is what is called for instead. I stand on healing, if you dont then it is obvious that I will not convince you. So I leave you to your beliefs

 

[tango]

We are both supposing which does neither of us any good. There is no evidence that Pauls thorn was physical any more than there is proof that Timothy caused his own sickness but what is clear that if God healed him he would have also told him the root of the oproblem and if Timothy ignored that then it would have been disobedience.

Does God always tell us the root of the problem? The last time I saw someone healed their illness just went away, pretty much overnight. I knew the person pretty well and they never said anything about God showing them the root of the problem. So I think it's presumptuous to assume that God would have made the root clear, and indeed to assume that Timothy would have ignored it. If he had ignored God's guidance he wouldn't have been fit for his position.

We can do this all day but I think accepting the Word is what is called for instead.

Nobody is disputing that, and frankly to keep stating it is dodging the issue rather than addressing inconvenient verses. That's why I wrote the signature I did - if we're going to pick and choose which sections of Scripture we're going to accept, if we're going to gloss over and ignore the inconvenient ones, we might as well throw the whole thing in the trash and accept we're forming a god in our own image rather than letting God form us in his image.

I stand on healing, if you dont then it is obvious that I will not convince you. So I leave you to your beliefs

You might have a chance of convincing me if you put forward a coherent argument. It would need to be an argument that couldn't just be copied and pasted to provide "support" to the exact opposite stance, and contain some specific reasoning that withstood scrutiny. So far I've seen precious little reasoning and lots and lots of distracting and deflecting comments about carnal reasoning and standing on the word, so much so that I seriously wonder whether even the people who do stand on the notion of healing being guaranteed know why they believe what they do. With any belief, if you can't explain exactly what you believe and why, and defend it to explain why it is correct and opposing beliefs are wrong, I'd have to ask how seriously you've thought about it yourself. Hence my ongoing reference to the Scriptural call to "test all things". Sometimes testing involves throwing out the trash and reforming a belief system.

If what you're saying is that you can't come up with a coherent argument to support your position that withstands scrutiny, by all means back away. If you decide you do want to get into the word to seek the truth feel free to come back. I'm usually up for digging into the word to get to the truth of what it means.

 

[psalms 91]

The argument has already been presented. My belief in healing is based on Isiah 53 which shows that Christs blood bought and paid for healing from the garden to the cross. Mark 16 tells us to go forth with healing and other things and that is a commandment to all believers. Acts which shows healing all through, James which tells us that we will not only be healed but also reciebve remissoion of sin. This is all familiar to you I am sure as I am also sure you have entered into this before. As to why I grow weary of this it is because over at CF I spent years in this debate tioll I figured out I wasnt changing anyones beliefs and they were not changing mine so as a result I just quit posting over there except in threads that were fellowship.

 

[Hammster]

The argument has already been presented. My belief in healing is based on Isiah 53 which shows that Christs blood bought and paid for healing from the garden to the cross. Mark 16 tells us to go forth with healing and other things and that is a commandment to all believers. Acts which shows healing all through, James which tells us that we will not only be healed but also reciebve remissoion of sin. This is all familiar to you I am sure as I am also sure you have entered into this before. As to why I grow weary of this it is because over at CF I spent years in this debate tioll I figured out I wasnt changing anyones beliefs and they were not changing mine so as a result I just quit posting over there except in threads that were fellowship.

If what you are saying is true, then only unbelievers should get sick. That is unless you think Christ died for all. Then nobody should ever get sick.


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[Hammster]

But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. - Isaiah 53:5

Here's the verse those who hold to faith healing cling to. Nowhere in the verse does it say anything about faith healing. In fact, the implication is that believers are healed. So by extrapolation, if someone who claims to be a Christian ever gets sick, it's not because they don't have enough faith (for even a small amount of faith can move a mountain). It has to be because they were never saved.


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[Hammster]

Faith as a requirement, lets see, for without faith it is impossible to please God, so is lack of faith sin? If so doesnt James say that the prayer of faith will heal and cleanse sin? If so doesnt this show that sin stops healing?

Where is it listed in Isaiah 53?


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[psalms 91]

Verse5 it says healing, how much clearer can that be? I know you will disagree and I will leave you to your beliefs but I accept what is written as it is written

 

[Hammster]

Verse5 it says healing, how much clearer can that be? I know you will disagree and I will leave you to your beliefs but I accept what is written as it is written

Where is faith listed as a requirement?


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[psalms 91]

James is one, also for without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Are you saying that you can expect anything from God without faith? Doesnt James also say that a man who wavers can expect nothing?

 

[Hammster]

James is one, also for without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Are you saying that you can expect anything from God without faith? Doesnt James also say that a man who wavers can expect nothing?

You are avoiding my question. Isaiah 53 says by His wounds we ARE healed. Where does it talk about faith?


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[psalms 91]

I refuse to allow you to cherry pick one verse without context. I will leave you to your beliefs

 

[Hammster]

I refuse to allow you to cherry pick one verse without context. I will leave you to your beliefs

I'm not the one cherry picking. You and the other false teachers are. You are not only taking this verse out of context, it isn't even saying what you want it to say.


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[tango]

I refuse to allow you to cherry pick one verse without context. I will leave you to your beliefs

You could always try addressing the verse. It would be really nice if we could figure out why the promise of healing appears to apply to everyone who ever lived over the last 2000-odd years with the sole exception of poor Timothy.

 

[tango]

James is one, also for without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Are you saying that you can expect anything from God without faith? Doesnt James also say that a man who wavers can expect nothing?

This seems like a classic example of twisting things around again.

Of course we need faith in God but that faith has to have a solid foundation. We can stand in faith on the promises God has made to us. If we decide to pull Scripture apart, piece it back together like a ransom note to create a new promise that God never made and then stand on this new "promise" we shouldn't be surprised to find our faith is misplaced.

Hence the relentless focus on context and on taking the message as a whole rather than picking and choosing. If a verse appears to fly in the face of a preferred theology it makes more sense to explore what the overall message might be so that everything is consistent, rather than simply writing off the inconvenient verse as being irrelevant, or sidetracking when people raise it, or throwing around vague concepts about faith that aren't relevant to the question at hand. (And before anyone says it, I'm not saying faith isn't relevant, I am saying that saying we have to have faith isn't relevant to the discussion of whether or not God made any particular promise)

Here's an example. I've got a friend who I'll call Pete who has a stand at a market. Every once in a while I help him at his stand, if his regular help can't make it. So let's say he sends me an email asking for help this week and I send him this back:

Hi Pete, no problem with Thursday, I can get to you a bit before noon and stay until 5 when it all winds down. I need to head off fairly quickly after 5 and won't be able to help transport anything left unsold back to yours because I need to be with some other friends at 6.

Now let's say another friend, Dave, also has a stand, reads my words and chooses the bits he likes:

Hi Pete, no problem with Thursday, I can get to you a bit before noon and stay until 5 when it all winds down. I need to head off fairly quickly after 5 and won't be able to help transport anything left unsold back to yours because I need to be with some other friends at 6.

It's entirely true to say I wrote every single word in what remains but if Dave decides to stand on this "promise" he's going to be disappointed. What he's standing on isn't what I promised, not to mention in this particular case I promised it to someone else rather than to him.

 

[Hammster]

You could always try addressing the verse. It would be really nice if we could figure out why the promise of healing appears to apply to everyone who ever lived over the last 2000-odd years with the sole exception of poor Timothy.

And everyone who died. According to one member, a good criteria for picking a church is one that doesn't have many funerals.


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[tango]

And everyone who died. According to one member, a good criteria for picking a church is one that doesn't have many funerals.


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

Technically speaking someone who died suddenly doesn't violate the concept that prayer always results in healing, if they died so fast nobody had chance to pray for them.

Of course many of the hyper charismatic churches are unlikely to have very many funerals, simply because the older folks tend to be found in more traditional churches. It's easy to get away with few funerals when you don't have many old folks attending. It's always older people who cause the problems by doing inconsiderate stuff like getting sick and dying so if a church can just shoo them away elsewhere they can look like they've finally conquered sickness and death.

It does make God look like some kind of bimbling half-wit though, if his people are constantly getting sick and calling on him to fix the problem when he could have just made sickness go away in the first place. It also doesn't answer the question of poor Timothy, and whether he was unrighteous or lacking faith (in which case we have to wonder how he got the position he did), or whether Paul was unrighteous or lacking faith (in which case we can dump most of the New Testament). Maybe Paul had a bad day and forgot to pray for poor Timothy.

 

[Hebrews 11]

You are avoiding my question. Isaiah 53 says by His wounds we ARE healed. Where does it talk about faith?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

For our right to claim the 3 places in scripture on Christ being wounded for our sins and bearing our infirmity,we must be Born Again by faith through His grace.

We cannot receive Salvation without faith let alone provision.

 

[Hebrews 11]

You are avoiding my question. Isaiah 53 says by His wounds we ARE healed. Where does it talk about faith?


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I truly believe people are contrary on purpose,not even accepting what is evident.