Welcome to the For the Gospel podcast. My name is Kosti Hinn, and I have the pleasure of being your host. For the Gospel is all about providing sound doctrine for everyday people. And over the next couple of episodes, I want to take a deep dive into the topic of healing. I'll be sharing personally about some things, but mostly providing you with a biblical foundation for healing and trusting the Lord in the midst of physical suffering. On this particular subject, I have a new book out called More Than a Healer. It releases tomorrow, September 28th. If you're listening to this after the episode comes out, the book is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold. And my prayer and goal for the book is that people grow closer to the healer, not merely chase the healing. That's something that's prevalent in our world today. It always has been because physical needs are a reality for us as finite and broken human beings. But on our first episode, I want to answer the question: is it always God's will to heal right now? Most people who are in the faith healing world have to say that it is because their business, their ministry, their philosophy is built on saying, yes, it is always God's will to heal right now. How faith healers explain when people don't get healed varies. Not everybody says, well, it's your lack of faith or you just don't give enough money. A lot of preachers do say that who are in the prosperity gospel, but some have other approaches. One of those approaches, more and more away from the prosperity gospel, but sort of a quasi-theological explanation, is from Bethel Church and specifically Bill Johnson, who's the apostle and the leader of Bethel Church. I'm not throwing stones for no reason here, and I'm not simply trying to be aggressive or just harp on Bethel. I really want to help people understand. This is what Bethel teaches. This is a view on healing. And then I want to weigh that view against the Bible, like Acts 17, verse 11. The Bereans, they were diligent, they studied the scriptures, and they didn't care who was preaching it, whether it was Paul or anyone for that matter. They studied to see if what was being said matches scripture. So here's my challenge to you: you need to weigh everything I say and everything that every preacher and teacher says, including Bill Johnson, including John MacArthur, including John Piper and Stephen Furtick. You go back and forth like a yo-yo between guys that have historically been more reformed or conservative and guys who are a little more rah-rah and prosperity gospel or faith healing, new apostolic reformation circles. And one theme should be consistent in your life and mine. Not a loyalty to a person or to a theological camp, quote unquote, but a loyalty to scripture. The Bible must speak, and the Bible must be our authority. So the question is: is it always God's will to heal? I want you to listen for a moment as I play two clips for you in this episode. The first one is from a video called Bill Johnson, The Theology of Sickness and Healing, in this video series called Rediscover Bethel. They put this out not long ago. This is just from this summer in 2021. And Bill Johnson answers a few key questions. I want to break down two of them, and then I want to provide you with biblical truth and weigh everything against Scripture. Here's the first thing that he claims about healing and God's will.
SPEAKER_01So do you uh believe that it's God's will to heal everyone? Is that like Bel standard teaching or uh I I have to approach that it is.
SPEAKER_02I have to approach that it's always God's will. And uh and my lead on that is everybody the Father sent Jesus to, he healed. Everyone who came to Jesus, he healed. Even the Syrophoenician woman, the one who would have been disqualified uh because she wasn't uh wasn't a Jew. He still was moved by her faith and healed her.
SPEAKER_00So let's stop there for a moment and let me offer some reflections on what Bill Johnson has just said. First, taking the fact that Jesus healed everyone who came to him to mean that you have to believe it's his will to heal everyone right now is leaving out numerous aspects of Jesus' ministry and his intentions. First of all, in John 5, verse 1 through 17, he heals a man at the pool of Bethesda who doesn't even know who he is. The man didn't quote unquote come to Jesus. Jesus actually went to him. Jesus initiates a conversation with the man. By the way, there's a whole lot of other sick people at the pool of Bethesda that Jesus doesn't heal. Obviously, Bill Johnson's argument would be that, well, they didn't come to him, so he didn't heal them. But I would still put in front of all of us that Jesus went to people. The model for his ministry wasn't that he only healed people who came to him, it was that he also went to people and healed them. That's an important distinction. And then in Mark chapter 1, verses 36 to 38, there are many sick people looking for Jesus. That's literally what the disciples say. They say, Everyone is looking for you. And this is after Jesus had done some prominent things, and they're all trying to get to him. And he says, Let's go elsewhere so I can preach. Because that's why I came. Honestly, believers, we need to ask a big question right then and there. There were sick people looking for Jesus. Was he trying to hide from them? Did he walk away from them? He did. He was walking away to do what? Preach. He said, This is why I came. Certainly he came to heal people. He showed who he was by healing people, but ultimately the main reason he came was not to preach a message of healing for the body, but a message of healing for the soul. Physical healing and performing miracles was one of the ways that he showcased that he was deity. This is the Jesus that Bethel and Bill Johnson and the new apostolic reformation need to keep in mind. I say that lovingly. I say that through exhortation and with passion and joy and love in my heart for people and for souls, not as an assault against them. We need to think critically about the Jesus we're teaching and preaching. It doesn't matter if Bill Johnson or Costi Hinn think they should approach things this way or that way. It matters the way the Bible presents Jesus, and it's a both and here. Yes, he healed those who came to him, but also Jesus went to people. We can't take his ministry approach and turn it into a formula and then decide, well, I assume God always wants to heal everybody because of course he healed everybody who came to him when Jesus was walking the earth. No, it is not always God's will to heal everyone. If it was, his will would be done. You'd be able to heal anyone at any time. Even Bill Johnson has a wife with cancer, he would heal her. His son struggles with deafness. And while he is believing God for a miracle all the time, his son is still deaf, wears a hearing aid. Bill Johnson wears eyeglasses. They've tried to raise the dead as a ministry, and those things aren't happening. Well, does that mean that God doesn't heal anyone? Well, of course not. Nobody's saying that. But my encouragement and my challenge to Bethel and people who believe this way is to humbly realize that we don't need to approach every single person with the assumption that God will heal them. We need to know God can heal and God does heal, and that we should pray for healing, but realize that many of God's servants will suffer and do suffer ongoing. And we also have answers in the Bible for that. It is the sovereignty of God. It is sanctification, that is the purification of a believer and the strengthening of our faith because we suffer and endure trials. Paul says in Romans chapter 5, we rejoice in our suffering. Suffering actually creates endurance, endurance character. So we see that we're not flailing and failing, if you will, in our faith. We're growing and progressing, and God's doing a mighty work. Philippians 1 6 says, He who began a good work will perfect it until the day of Christ. So God is working in us powerfully. We're not complaining even though we're sick. We're not wavering in our faith, even though we're hurting or we're suffering. That's a beautiful moment where you see the activity of the Holy Spirit and his power in your life, and I see it in my life, and we can say, Wow, our faith works. This gospel is working, the Holy Spirit is working, and we can be encouraged and rejoice even when we are suffering. Did Paul lack faith when God didn't take the thorn away? No. In 2 Corinthians 12 7, God says, My power is made perfect in weakness. God loves to display his power through people in their weaknesses, which means it's not always God's will to heal people right now. Many times it is God's will to use people mightily for his glory in the midst of suffering, because then he receives even more credit and more glory, and people are in more awe because they say there's no way this person could do that on their own. This must be God. Only God could do such a great thing through someone who has such great weakness. Did Paul have an issue with his faith in Galatians 4 13 to 14 when he preached to them in, I quote, bodily illness? What was wrong with Trophimus when Paul left him sick at Miletus in 2 Timothy four nineteen? Church, we need to be very careful, very diligent, and even more, very humble in the way that we approach healing. No, God is not going to heal everyone all the time. To assume that because the gospel shows us accounts of Christ healing the sick who came to him, but leaving out when he went to them is irresponsible at best. To leave out situations in which people didn't get healed in order to keep pumping our narrative that he always wants to heal everybody right now is dangerous and can be abusive, and at worst, it's cherry-picking passages to promote a theological position that messes with the minds of sick and hurting people. Shallow theology on healing and suffering, like this ideology, fits into that old adage, expectations breed frustrations. People are taught to demand and expect of God whatever they want. When they don't get it, and they don't have a theological framework for that, they turn on God. And while they will be held responsible for their own sin and unbelief, Romans 1 makes that clear, teachers will also be held responsible for pumping this stuff from their pulpits and on YouTube. James 3, verse 1 says, Let not many of you become teachers lest you incur a stricter judgment. I need to be careful what I teach. Bill Johnson and other self-proclaiming apostles need to be very careful what they teach. It doesn't matter what Costi Hinn thinks, it doesn't matter what Bill Johnson thinks, it matters what the whole counsel of God's word presents and says. And so, no, we do not approach every person as though it's automatic, guaranteed, God wants to heal them and is going to heal them. We approach people in humility, asking God to heal them, but also knowing he may work mightily through their suffering. I want to play another clip for you from that video, and I want to assess this idea of praying your will be done. Listen to what Bill Johnson says about praying your will be done.
SPEAKER_01So it was a different idea. It wasn't like if if it's you, Lord, if it's your will, oh no, but no. So it's not like um having that um in your prayer or in your thought life. Because in your it's like practical theology, like you approach everybody like the Lord's going to move right now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And I can't pray if it's your will, because for me that's a prayer of unbelief.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02Because it's already revealed to me it is his will. In his provision for healing, and personally I use Isaiah 53, but you can, you know, you can come at it from many different angles. It's an aspect of the kingdom, which is the present reality. Uh, Jesus made provision for it. So I have to, I have to pursue it in that light. And then, but in in my relationship, you know, it's appointed under man to die. So there is a point of death. And uh I I don't know that that should be the subject now, but uh uh but uh I remember praying for this lady. I was uh visiting a it was the mother of one of our staff members, and uh and I was in, she'd been sick for a while, and as I was praying for her, I could tell she's supposed to go home. She's supposed to go home. That's an awkward, that's an awkward moment. It's not as a pastor, because we're in those situations often. But to to pray for that is a bit awkward for me. Uh I mean uh I don't have the impartation of death, you know.
SPEAKER_00Okay, let's stop there. He goes in to tell a story about how he prayed for a lady who went on to die and that God had basically spoken to him that it was her time to die, and so uh he didn't really pray for healing. He says, you know, almost jokingly, I don't have the the gift or the impartation of death ability. And so um, but the Holy Spirit sometimes tells me when people are about to die. After basically accusing Jesus of unbelief, uh he offers those various rabbit trails and sets up some stories and kind of goes on a few other tangents. But here's the deal what he just said that praying thy will be done is a prayer of unbelief whether he intends to or not sets itself up against Luke 22, 42 when Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, his sweat drops turning to blood, about to go to the cross, the weight of the world on his shoulders, he's about to drink the cup of wrath from the Father Himself, and he says, Father, if possible, let this cup pass from me. Jesus is saying what we know and think he was saying, this cup of wrath, if it's possible, Father, oh please let it pass from me. And then as quickly as he prays that, he says, But not my will, but yours be done. He was saying, Father, let your will be done, your will that your wrath pour out upon me, your will that they crucify me in injustice, your will that my mother watch me be stripped and nailed to a cross, your will that the scourging on my back would rip my flesh to shreds, your will that a crown of thorns be beaten down upon my brow, your will be done, that they will pluck my beard, your will be done, that a thief will mock me, your will be done, that a soldier will pierce me, your will be done, that the curtain will tear into the veil in the temple, and that the Pharisees and the high priests will think we've done it now. Seal the tomb, your will be done. Put soldiers in front of it, your will be done. Have my disciples run and hide, thinking they're next, your will be done. Jesus suffered, and he modeled the prayer, your will be done. And Johnson will cleverly throw things out there, like, you know, it's a prayer of the kingdom, the kingdom's a present reality. You know, it those are statements that don't have a lot of foundation in scripture. They sound pithy, they preach really well. You know, your kingdom come, your will be done. Of course it's your will. What's your will in heaven that everyone's healed? So your will has to be done now. The reality is what he said, that Jesus has paid for that or provided for it, is a reference to the atonement. Yes, right now in heaven there is no sickness. Yes, right now in heaven, people are enjoying the eternal beauty of Christ. They're not gonna come back to earth as human again in the form that we are. They have died. They're gonna enjoy the new heaven and the earth, the new earth one day. They're gonna enjoy the eternal state, and we're all gonna die as well. It's as he said, appointed to a man wants to die, and we're gonna get a glorified body, and there'll be no more tears and no more pain as the book of Revelation describes. But let me make sure this is clear. Many people will suffer on this side of eternity. Jesus has paid for healing and the atonement, yes, but we don't get it now. We're not guaranteed it now. Just like eternal life, we have to die in order to experience our best life to come. This is why sometimes I'll say, and I know this makes some people uncomfortable in different circles, but you know, Joel Osteen telling everyone that God wants you to live your best life now. Based on what the Bible teaches, no, he doesn't. God wants you to live faithfully now, as best as you could for his glory on earth, but your best life is not now, your best life is to come. Glory so far outweighs and overshadows this earthly state that we're currently in. And so I would challenge Bill Johnson and those who teach this sort of theological framework to once again join all of us together in asking God for healing, but in also saying your will be done. It's not something that we want to put in front of people. We don't want to be plugging out from pulpits and out into the airwaves, that it's always God's will to heal, and that a prayer of thy will be done is a prayer of unbelief because we are opposing Christ and his model of prayer. And so, what are some truths that you and I can take away from an episode like this? Well, let me walk you through a clear, truth by truth answer to the question, is it always God's will to heal right now? And for those of you who have ever felt guilty for praying, Thy will be done, I hope that burden is alleviated. Jesus prayed that prayer. You and I can pray it too. Truth number one, God doesn't heal everyone all the time. During Jesus' earthly ministry, he didn't always heal everybody. He healed one man at the pool of Bethesda, he didn't heal anybody in his hometown of Nazareth in Matthew 13, verses 58. Again, he went and preached elsewhere in Mark 138. So Jesus didn't really come to hold a healing crusade, he came to bring salvation. And the fact that God doesn't heal everyone all the time is clear from the life of Jesus, the Apostle Paul, uh, even Timothy told to take a little wine for his stomach issues. I already mentioned Trophimus left sick at Miletus in 2 Timothy 4.20. God does heal, but he heals as he wills, and his healing power is not a formula that anyone can master. Truth number two, God doesn't heal people solely based on faith. So you can't believe your way into getting healed. A lot of people will say, well, you just you got to have enough faith, and faith is a huge part of it. Well, again, there were times where Jesus healed people and he was moved with compassion by their faith, but there were many times, like the man at the pool of Bethesda, who's a prominent example of this, he didn't know who Jesus was and he didn't even have enough faith. In Luke 5, you know, 17 to 26, Jesus does heal based on faith. He heals a man's soul through salvation. And when the Pharisees had questioned his authority to forgive the lame man's sins, Jesus heals the man physically to prove it. His whole goal was saving souls. He healed people in order to save their souls and show that he was God. When he heals the woman with the bleeding issue who crawls across this streetway, if you will, to get to him through the crowd, just to touch the hem of his garment, he feels power leave him in Luke 8 46. He's moved by her faith. He heals her and then basically tells her, Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace. Daughter is a beautiful familial term. You can say she's part of the family of God now. He saves her and then says, Go in peace. Why in the world would he tell her to go in peace unless she was now at peace with God? She had the greatest healing of all, not just healing for her body and her bleeding issue gone, but healing for her soul. Truth number three, God doesn't perform healing for a price. Now Bethel has slowed their role on telling people that if they give and do this and do that, they're gonna get healing. I've watched a lot of different videos that they put out, and they have been much more careful to pump the prosperity gospel out there, but there are still many prosperity preachers who will say, If you give enough, God will move. People will say, You gotta make God move. God can't do anything until you give them something. You can't reap a harvest of healing until you give that seed in faith, they'll tell you. You. Well, Simon the Sorcerer tried to buy the gift of God as well in Acts chapter 8, verses 9 through 25. Fortune tellers and witch doctors try to sell it. Faith healers will tell you to sow your biggest seed to get it. And what you'll see throughout the Bible is no one is told to give money by having the right amount of faith and by doing the unthinkable, giving money to buy the gift of God and his healing touch on someone's physical sickness. God's will in that case is that you be liberated from that sort of teaching. The next truth, number four, is that God will heal all believers in heaven. This is the best truth of all, and it's the truth that's tied to the atonement. The atonement bought and paid for everything that you and I could never afford. Christ has died and paid the penalty for sin, sickness, tears, your fears, the wrath of God, eternal separation from God in hell. And while all of this is provided for in the atonement, many of the blessings we'll experience are not going to be fully realized until heaven. For example, like I said earlier, we have assurance of salvation and we can live confident in Christ, but I'm not there yet. You're not there yet. There are things we're going to enjoy that are a now but not yet promise. And so some people are going to experience the sovereign healing hand of God in this life. Others are going to suffer and not be healed until heaven. In every circumstance, let these truths from God's word bring you comfort to your soul. Have comfort even in your hurting and broken and sickness-filled body. Yes, God can still move and work in those times. Your years of suffering and uncertainty are but a vapor here on earth. Your eternity is filled with perfect joy. If you have Christ, it's a beautiful thing to look forward to. And like Paul said to the church at Thessalonica, we don't hope like the world. We don't, we're not without hope. Oh, we have hope beyond this world. And so to the question, does God still heal today? We've got to say yes and amen. Absolutely, he does. To the question, is it always God's will to heal right now? The answer is no, but he has through his son ensured that the glory of heaven will be known by all believers and that there will be no more sickness and no more pain. So your ultimate healing is coming. When God heals now, are we playing some part in making him do that? No, he heals according to his will. He heals for his glory. And finally, and perhaps most important of all, in light of what Bethel and Bill Johnson and others teach, is praying your will be done, a mentality of unbelief, a lack of faith, or unbiblical. No, it's not. Brother or sister, Luke 22, 42 is the passage you better memorize. By the end of this episode, I think I've said it five times. Not my will, but yours be done is the prayer that Jesus prayed when he was going to the cross. And so let endurance and suffering have its perfect result, like James 1, 2 through 4 tells us. Let God use your suffering, pray for healing, yes, and give him glory if he heals you. But also, let's see that he can be greatly glorified in suffering and even in death. This is a counterintuitive way of thinking, and it's foreign to this world. Well, shocker, that's why Peter calls believers foreigners and aliens in 1 Peter 2.11. We are a people called to an otherworldly perspective, the perspective of heaven. We are different. We're even weird, and we need to embrace the weird. The simple reality that the world could be burning down and falling and crumbling around us, and we still have hope because we're living for a coming kingdom. And think of how countercultural it is to believe that God will use your story for his glory, no matter what the outcome may be, whether that's healing in this life or suffering. Isn't that the greatest honor of all? Isn't even greater than physical healing? The joy of knowing that you and I are tools in the master's hand. I don't know about you, but I want to live my life knowing I'm gonna face Jesus one day and get to hear him say, Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master. I don't want to hear Matthew 7, 22 and 23. I don't want to hear him say, I don't know you after I say, Lord, Lord, I did all these miracles, I did all these amazing things, look at how I casted out demons, look at my signs and wonders, and he'll say, Depart from me, I never knew you, you, Costi, you who practiced lawlessness. And so, yes, pray for healing and believe God for great and mighty things, but your will be done, mighty King, for your glory and our good, knowing that your definition of good is the greatest good of all. Thanks for listening. I hope this episode has challenged you, and I even hope my presentation of Bethel and what Bill Johnson teaches has been fair. Uh, to watch that video in its full extent, you can Google on YouTube and Bethel's page, Bill Johnson, The Theology of Sickness and Healing on their Rediscover Bethel series. I always want to be fair and we want to be truthful. We don't want to ever lie or twist or do things that are dishonest when we put certain teaching that's questionable on display. We want to be biblical. And so weigh what I have said, weigh what teachers like Bill Johnson are saying against Scripture and let the Holy Spirit lead and guide you. Thanks for listening. Again, my new book, More Than a Healer, is out. And so I would order that, read it, go through it with a small group. I've put some reflection and discussion questions in the back of every chapter for you. And my prayer is that the book takes you beyond chapter one, that he is healer and into all the other aspects of who Christ is, as our hope, as our savior, as our peace, as a sovereign Lord, the one who will administer final justice once and for all, and who has given us the ability to say we are healed. No matter what we're going through physically, we are healed spiritually when we have been saved by Christ our Lord. For more videos, you can go to our YouTube channel or to check out our website, see more about our team, to give or access more resources. Go to www.forthegospel.org and be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter. We'll be back next Monday with another episode as we dive more into the topic of healing. For now, keep on living for the gospel.