02.11. The Verdict of Caution

The Ministry of Healing Or, Miracles of Cure in All Ages by A. J. Gordon 11. The Verdict of Caution

"The Church can no longer say, silver and gold have I none," said Pope Gregory to Thomas Aquinas. "No, nor can she say any longer, ’In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk, " answered Thomas. A very deep wisdom, and a very fruitful suggestion are contained in this answer of the theologian. As riches increase, that close dependence on God which is the fertile soil of faith and trust, decreases. It is when we are most straightened in ourselves that the bounty of God is most widely open to us; it is when we have nothing that we find the key with which to enter in and possess all things which are ours in Christ.

We are living in an age in which the Church enjoys very large prosperity in an earthly direction; when she is "rich and increased in goods," and, therefore, in constant peril of saying "I have need of nothing." It is not an era, therefore, in which the greatest triumphs of faith and intercession may be reasonably looked for. Every Christian knows in his own experience the difference between saying his prayers and supplicating God for help under the stress of overwhelming need; and in the Church we may well open our eyes to the fact that our prosperity, and our rest from persecution and trial are sources of weakness and enervation. We do not pray as apostles, and martyrs, and confessors, and reformers prayed, because not pressed upon by enemies, and thereby shut up to God as they were; and so we do not get such answers as they received. Our first caution therefore concerning this subject is that we do not demand too much of the Christian Church of today. We should ask great things and expect great things of God; but of men, weak and back-slidden in heart, we ought not to be too exacting. Faith for healing cannot rise above the general level of the Church’s faith. There are multitudes of prayers in these days, written prayers and extemporaneous prayers, prayers in the Church, and prayers in the family; but how many Christians out of the great mass have any very extensive record of direct, definite and unmistakable answers to their petitions? Of all who knock at the gates of heaven each day, how many wait and watch till the door is opened and their portion is brought to them? But it is not reasonable to expect that such as have no experience in prevailing prayers for other things should be able to wield at once the prayer of faith which saves the sick. In God’s school it is no more true than in man’s, that pupils can step immediately into the highest attainments with no previous study, or diligent mastery of the first principles of faith. If the conviction and assurance of the Church as a whole should rise to the height of this great argument, we might witness wonderful things; but, so long as it does not, we should not be made to doubt because of the meager conquests which we witness. It is for us to pray always and earnestly that the Lord would be pleased to restore to his Church her primitive gifts, by restoring her primitive endowments of unworldliness and poverty of spirit and separation unto God. If any organ of the body be weak and sickly, the only sure method of restoring it is to tone up the whole system, and bring it to the normal standard of health; so if the entire body of Christ were revived and reinvested with her first spiritual powers, these special gifts and functions of which we are writing would not fail to be in extensive exercise.

Then again we need to be very careful that we do not fall into heresy on this question. Heresy, as a thoughtful Christian writer has pointed out, means a dividing or a choosing; it is the acceptance and advocacy of one hemisphere of truth to the rejection of the other. Every doctrine is two sided; so that whichever phase commends itself to us we must remember its counterpart, and aim to preserve the balance of truth by holding fast to this also. In the matter before us, as in the whole doctrine of prayer, human freedom and the divine sovereignty are inseparably joined. Here are the two sides:

"Ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you." -- John 15:7.

"If ye ask anything according to his will he heareth us." -- 1 John 5:14. In our assent to the doctrine of the divine sovereignty we must never forget the gracious privilege which is accorded to us of freely making known our requests to God, with the fullest assurance that he will hear and grant them. "Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name that will I do;" -- we cannot lean too hard upon this promise or plead it too confidently. But at the same time we must be sure that beneath every prayer the strong, clear undertone of "thy will be done" is distinctly heard. Of course in saying this we open a mystery, and suggest a seeming contradiction which the wisdom of the ages has been unable to solve. But because we find both sides of this truth distinctly expressed in scripture, we must be sure to emphasize both. ("The only way for a believer, if he wants to go rightly, is to remember that truth is always two-sided. If there is any truth that the Holy Ghost has specially pressed upon your heart, if you do not want to push it to the extreme, ask what is the counter-truth, and lean a little of your weight upon that; otherwise, if you bear so very much on one side of the truth, there is a danger of pushing it into a heresy. Heresy means selected truth; it does not mean error: heresy and error are very different things. Heresy is truth; but truth pushed into undue importance to the disparagement of the truth on the other side." --William Lincoln.) Let us be very careful therefore that we do not proclaim the doctrine of divine healing in an unbalanced and reckless manner. If we are told that a brother in the Church is sick let us not make undue haste to declare that he will certainly be restored if we carry his case to God. We must keep distinctly in mind both Melita and Miletum: remembering that at one place Paul healed the father of Publius by his prayers, and that at the other place he left Trophimus sick.

Some commentators have conjectured the reason why the latter was not at that time recovered, viz., that he was to be thereby kept back from martyrdom which he would probably have met had he gone with Paul, and for which his time had not come in the purpose of God. Whether there is any truth or not in this conjecture, there was doubtless some good reason why this companion of the apostle should have been detained for the while under infirmity. The all-wise and gracious Lord, who is shaping our lives, must be allowed to choose such detentions for us, if he sees that he can thereby best forward our usefulness and advance his own glory. We should be cautious therefore that in this matter we do not push the element of human choice too strongly and rashly, to the ignoring of the divine, and so bring in the heresy of free-will.

Let us take warning from those misguided teachers who are going to the other extreme, and bearing so hard upon the divine sovereignty as practically to deny man’s freedom, to ask or expect miraculous healing. More than this, indeed, they seem to have pushed the sovereignty of God almost into an iron fixedness, where even the Almighty is not at liberty to work miracles any longer, as though under bonds to restrain this office of his Omnipotence since the apostolic age. This we hold to be a far more serious error than the other, since it appears not only to shut up man’s freedom of asking, but to limit God’s freedom of giving. There have appeared in our religious newspapers, of late, extended deliverances, in which the possibility of any miraculous interventions in this age is most emphatically denied, and the attempt to apply the plain promise in James to present times and circumstances characterized as gross superstition. A rash responsibility for evangelical teachers to take in speaking thus, we should say. It is opening channels of denial respecting the supernatural, into which the swelling unbelief of our age will not be slow to pour, inevitably deepening those channels into great gulfs of skepticism. "Ah, but it is you who are ministering to unbelief," it is replied, "by holding out promises in the fulfilment of which men will be disappointed, and thereby be led to doubt the word of the Lord." That is an objection that can be urged equally against the whole doctrine of prayer, and it is one concerning which we can take no blame.

It is for us simply to emphasize every promise which God has given, and to refrain from cumbering it with any conditions of ours. If such assent should promote unbelief in any, that is the Lord’s responsibility who gave the promise. If instead of assent we give denial, that is our responsibility, and the consequences must lie at our door.

Let us on our part, therefore, avoid heresy by keeping these two great elements of prayer in equilibrium, believing strongly but asking submissively, holding up in one hand of our supplication a "Thus saith the Lord," and in the other a "The will of the Lord be done."

It requires great caution also in this subject that we do not fall into fanaticism. As we have already indicated, fanaticism is not necessarily a sign of error. It is more likely to be a healthful than a fatal symptom. It is often the proud flesh and fever heat which indicate that healing is going on in some fractured bone or ligament of the system of doctrine. Nevertheless, it must be subdued and kept down lest the truth may suffer reproach. And in this field especially do we need to guard against it.

Nowhere does zeal require to be so carefully tempered by knowledge as here. Novices, lifted up with pride, will lay hold of this doctrine, and with the enthusiasm which the discovery of some long neglected truth is apt to engender they will parade their faith, and make extravagant claims concerning it Nothing needs to be held with such quietness and reserve as this truth. To press it upon the undevout and uninstructed is only to bring it into contempt Those who have the most wisdom in such matters will be found speaking in very hushed tones, and without assumption or ostentation. One who has the habit of parading this theme on all occasions, and haranguing it at every street corner, gives clear evidence of his unfitness to handle it. Here is a serious peril, as we distinctly forsee; but the best truth has always had to run such risks. Dry and lifeless tradition is the only thing which has invariably been exempt from them. The more careful, therefore, should all be, who desire to see God’s word prevail, to pray much and argue little, that the Spirit who can alone discover the deep things of God may reveal his true will to the Church concerning this important question. And most especially is all undue forwardness in attempting to exercise this ministry to be avoided. We are persuaded that there is no deeper or more difficult question which can come within our reach. If any one is sincerely desirous of being used of the Lord in this direction let him give diligent heed to be taught of God concerning it. We are persuaded that there is no school on earth which is competent to graduate one in this divine science. Therefore we would commend our readers neither to books nor to theologians, but to the personal instructions of the Spirit of God. We admire the candor with which one eminent doctor of theology, Professor Godet, has confessed the true secret of knowledge in this field. He says: "A single prayer answered, a single case of living contact with the power of the Father, a single exertion of the strength of Christ over the weakness that is in us will teach us more on the subject of miracles than all that I have been able in this lecture to say to you upon this great subject."

Let it be distinctly borne in mind that this is no easy art, no surface-truth to be picked up by any religious adventurer who may desire to exhibit some novel accomplishment. Unless one is ready for the most absolute self-surrender and the most implicit obedience let him not even enter this school of inquiry with any hope of learning its secrets. It is told of Pastor Blumhardt, who knew as much of this subject, we believe, as any man in recent times, that after the promise for healing was first brought powerfully to his mind he passed two years in repeated prayers and fastings and searchings for the mind of the Spirit before he had the assurance that he should lay hands on the sick for their recovery. We know that others who have been greatly owned of God in this direction have had a similar experience. Therefore we would interpose a strong caution against rashness or forwardness in this matter. We need less praying for the sick rather than more; only that the less shall be real, and deep, and intelligent, and believing. What a revelation is contained in the fact that some of the disputants in this controversy, after boldly denying that miraculous healing is possible in this age of the world, have then added "of course we ought to pray for the sick." That is, being fairly interpreted, after becoming thoroughly convinced that God will not interpose supernaturally for their restoration then we should offer our supplication for their healing. It seems to us, on the contrary, that such a conviction furnishes a good reason why we should refrain from praying till we have acknowledged our unbelief and forsaken it. The strongest and most enlightened faith, oneness of heart in all uniting to pray, minute and obedient submission to every condition named in scripture are what are absolutely essential in this field. With the utmost tenderness and deference we would allude to a memorable instance of praying for the sick, which is fresh in mind. A call issued by the secular authorities; a day of prayer in when believers and formalists alike unite; the incense of the Romish mass ascending with the intercessions of the Protestant prayer meeting; the Jew and the Christian offering up, each according to his kind; the helpless and imprisoned patient meantime shut out from the ministry of grace and shut in to the ministry of drugs and stimulants so that any lucid exercise of faith or of prayer in the Holy Spirit would seem to be well-nigh impossible, -- What shall we say of this? God forbid that we should by the slightest criticism seem to mock the grief of a suffering nation, or to disparage a call to prayer from the rulers who did the best they knew in a great crisis, and we have no light as to how the Lord may have regarded such an offering. But in simple candor and loyalty to the word of God we must decline to have this event established as a prayer gauge, as many are insisting on making it. It was simply a national fast day, concerning which we proffer no remark. But the prayer of faith, by the elders of the Church, offered at the special request of the sick person, made in the name of Jesus, the one mediator between God and man, and in the Holy Ghost the Comforter, and all rendered up in obedience to every known condition of faith and oneness of mind enjoined in scripture -- this is the kind of prayer for the sick which we are discussing in this volume, and no other. Here is a service which belongs to the Holy of holies of the Christian Church, and which cannot be brought out into the court of the Gentiles. A caution against dogmatism and pride of opinion in a field where we know only in part, may well close what we have to say. Alas! how little we truly understand of this whole matter. We believe strongly because we have promises that are "yea, and in him, amen unto the glory of God by us." And so we have presented as best we could the doctrine, the history and the experience of the Church upon this great question. How little we can speak of actual use of these gifts. But in the oft quoted words of a good man, we are "very confident that the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of his holy word;" on this subject especially, because so many of God’s people are "searching diligently what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ did dignify" when he penned these great promises. If God has anything to reveal by any instrument whatever, let us be open to receive it. If such instruments shall prove to be, as we quite believe, the "poor of this world rich in faith; " the servants of Christ, who after long endurance of the bondage of pain have traced the promises of healing line by line in their own experience; and the obedient children, who have faced the world’s doubt and scornful denial for the joy of answering God’s challenge, "Prove me now herewith," let us take heed that we do not despise even such teachers and light bearers. And in all our urgency for the truth of God in this matter, let us not forget that miracles are but signs, not the substance. In prayer, in preaching, in tears and persuasions over perishing souls, in bearing the cross and counting all things as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord, let us for the present be diligently employed, until the day dawn and the shadows flee away; until the harvest be gathered and the first fruits shall be needed no more; until that which is perfect shall come, and that which is in part shall be done away.