Speaking Ill of Illness

In my last blog post I expressed doubt about people who believe Jesus promised to take away all our sickness: “By His wounds we were healed…” Ironically, the day after I published that, my wife and I both came down with a virulent flu (COVID?) that laid us out for a week. It would be a double comic irony if I thought God put that on us as a lesson because I denied that all my sickness was taken on the cross. I say comic because the same people who say Jesus took our diseases say that God never uses sickness as a disciplinary tool. That’s not funny?

In any case, I wanted to circle back and be more specific as to why I don’t think Isaiah or Peter who quoted the prophet meant what the prosperity gospel preachers think they meant. The misinterpretation of this verse displays the kind of knowledge gap I was lamenting in the previous post. There are two bits of knowledge missing from the thinking of those who apply this verse to physical healing. They both concern context. It is a cardinal principle of Bible interpretation to look first to the original context when deciding what is being said. The context of both Isaiah’s original statement and Peter’s quote is about one’s spiritual condition not physical health. Isaiah was speaking to people who were being plagued (literally) with physical difficulties because of their spiritual infidelity to God. (Wait! God used sickness as a tool?!) Peter was talking about salvation in Christ.

Isaiah was speaking of a time when God’s Servant, the Messiah, would take away the spiritual sickness of His people. This would parallel Peter’s link with salvation. This same idea is what Ezekiel and Jeremiah were talking about when they said God would replace His peoples’ heart of stone and it with a heart of flesh. This is not literal, physical language; this is not a literal heart transplant. This is a metaphor for what salvation would do after the price for sin was paid on the cross. “He bore our iniquities.” He took away the iniquitous heart of stone. Until God came to dwell among us, then in us, stony-hearted people would continue to rebel against Him. Until He “shed His love abroad in our hearts” to soften the heart of stone. Isaiah was describing the spiritual work the Messiah would do, not promising physical healing.

Knowing the immediate context is the first bit of knowledge the prosperity preachers miss. The second miss is knowing the broader context of the entire Bible record. God is shown to use physical conditions as discipline throughout the entire Scriptural record. It began when He kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden for disobedience. Instead of free food and sweet fellowship they got blood, sweat, toil and tears, and it was a life sentence. The history of God’s chosen people is a record of one smack-down after another. God used every kind of calamity known to man, including physical disease, to discipline His wayward children.

The prosperity preachers like to say that that all stopped when Jesus came and died for us. They like to point out that He healed all who came to Him. While this is true, it is also true that there were plenty of lepers besides the ten He healed; there were plenty of other sick folk at the pool of Siloam; there were lots of daughters besides Jairus’ who died and weren’t raised. If it was Jesus’ earthly mission to heal all disease, He failed miserably. The story of Lazarus is instructive. Jesus let His friend die so He could make a point. He told the dead man’s sister that He is the resurrection and the life. I think his point was that real life – real healing – was related to resurrection: His resurrection being the first fruits, as Paul called it. In our resurrected bodies, we will have the complete physical healing the prosperity preachers clammer for.

Until then, we live in the already-not yet state where death has been defeated, but people still die. Jesus has borne all our diseases, but we still get sick. I have two sisters who starkly portray the contrast. One sister died at thirty-three of a curable cancer because she was trusting that Jesus took her disease on the cross, so she wouldn’t seek medical treatment. The other sister was badly injured in an explosion, and her lungs were so severely burned that she was not expected to survive the night. To the doctors’ surprise, she awoke in the morning with two completely new lungs. The same group of people was praying for both my sisters; one died, and the other was miraculously healed. The cross of Christ was not in play in those situations; God’s will for my sisters played out as He intended.

The prosperity preachers are trying to fast-forward God’s plan to the New Day when Jesus comes again to put all things right. Their knowledge of God’s timetable, His big-picture context is mistaken. At this point in history – post Eden, post-Egypt, post-Calvary – God is more concerned with our character than our comfort. To demand physical comfort (healing) is to sidestep His plan. It doesn’t work. That is not what the biblical record teaches nor does life experience bear it out.

Ask Ananias and Saphira if God punishes disobedience. Ask the writer of Hebrews what he meant when he said God chastens those He loves. Ask what Paul meant when he said that some had died because they despised the Lord’s Table. If Christians are supposed to be heathy and wealthy at all times, explain why Paul said we should count it a blessing to suffer for Christ. Explain why he had to go through stoning and hunger and shipwreck to accomplish his work for Christ. Explain why all Jesus’ Apostles died martyrs’ deaths except one. Explain the thousands upon thousands of Christians who have been persecuted and died following Jesus. Explain why Christians are still being persecuted and killed in China or any Muslim country around the world today.

The prosperity gospel only works in a country like America where people have bought the lie told by preachers who despise the knowledge which would allow them to interpret the Bible correctly. We Americans are filthy rich, and the prosperity preachers have the audacity to claim it is by God’s blessing of our tremendous faith. We would do well to read what Jesus said to the church at Laodicea. “You say you are rich… I say you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked…. As many as I love I reprove and discipline. Be zealous therefore and repent.”

I don’t know how I got the flu last week. I probably bumped into someone carrying the virus. Ordained by God? Maybe – certainly allowed by His sovereign will. What I do know is it’s a fool’s errand to go to Christ’s work on the cross to handle my flu symptoms. My salvation was assured at Calvary as well as my ultimate healing in my resurrected body when Christ returns. In the meantime, I’ll take Tylenol, drink plenty of fluids and get all the rest I can. I’ll take care of my physical body, but I am much more interested in preparing for the new one I’m getting one day, the one Christ died on the cross to provide for me.

Isaiah As a Cautionary Tale

The book of Isaiah may be the best loved book the Old Testament. It is familiar partly because Isaiah is quoted in the New Testament more than any other prophet; this should be no surprise since Isaiah’s message to God’s wayward people was that one day He would send His Servant, the Messiah, to redeem them and bring them back to him. People are encouraged to read that although Judah fell into sin and unbelief, God promised to save a remnant for Himself. What some people overlook is what God promised to do to Judah before salvation came.

 

While it is true that Isaiah offered hope for Judah’s future, he didn’t gloss over the punishment that was to come. The prophet shared God’s warning in no uncertain terms, “My people will go into exile because they lack knowledge.” The knowledge the prophet referred to is the same thing Wisdom teaches in Proverbs: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”  Jesus repeated this concept when He declared, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” The knowledge of God – who He is and what He requires – is the essential knowledge the people in Isaiah’s day were missing.

 

I fear that the same thing may be true of much of the church today. Personal Bible study, that which seeks essential knowledge, is rare even among evangelical, “born again” Christians. The Christian pollster, George Barna, reports the sad statistics of how few Bible believers read their Bibles regularly. Too many believers are satisfied with what their pastor or some popular media figure tells them. Sound Bible preaching is good; the growth of radio, television and Internet Bible teaching is a modern blessing. However, if believers don’t follow the Bereans and do their homework, they risk being led into the same trap as the people Paul warned about: “they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.”

 

There was a period in history about the time of the “Third Great Awakening” when Satan seems to have worked overtime to fill “itching ears” with the doctrines of demons. It is interesting to note that several of the quasi-Christian sects that exist today had their beginnings in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. The Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Seventh-day Adventists, the Christian Scientists each trace their roots to that time. Dispensationalists and Pentecostals, though perhaps not as far removed from Bible truth, also sprung from this era. I have often wondered what made that time period such fertile ground for error to sprout.

 

The premillennial dispensationalism of John Nelson Darby that swept early twentieth century America at the urging of the infamous C.I. Scofield lies in the foundations of venerable institutions like Moody Bible Institute and Dallas Seminary. Because of this, most Baptists today who know only of this version of end times theology have no idea that when Hal Lindsay’s The Late Great Planet Earth and LaHaye and Jenkins’ Left Behind series popularized Darbyism late in the century that the teaching was then barely one hundred years old. Darby’s invented eschatology stood in contrast to almost two thousand years of Scriptural teaching. A friend once counselled me that if a Bible student comes up with something no one else has ever seen in Scripture, he’s wrong. At the very least, one should question his assertions.

 

The same kind of thing happened with Pentecostalism early in the twentieth century as it spread a version of emotional, materialistic religion across America. The names of Charles Fox Parham and William Seymour are not widely known outside of charismatic circles, but these men and others heavily influenced primarily Wesleyan and Baptist believers. They took a particular reading of a few Scriptures and developed a system of thinking that has infected three generations of Christians. Their belief in a second work of the Holy Spirit in believers, the “prosperity gospel,” as it is sometimes called, the frenetic search for an ecstatic worship experience that characterize so many young churches today, all find their roots in the teachings of these few men.

 

It was during my Bible college years that I was introduced to the charismatic movement. I decided to take the “Berean” approach recommended by Paul, and I discovered that there was much to be admired in the desire of the charismatics to make the Word of God a reality in their daily lives. I also had some truly wonderful worship experiences when I visited their services. I was less certain that the health and wealth preaching paired with a name-it-claim-it attitude could be supported by Scripture. It all seemed too materialistic to be a proper reflection of what I see in the Word.

 

While I disagree with the hermeneutics that bring the dispensational Baptists and charismatics to their various conclusions, I wouldn’t call them heretical. Being wrong about the end times or focusing too much on material prosperity shouldn’t keep anyone from the Kingdom of God as long as the faith they proclaim is in Christ and His sacrifice alone. However, there are some teachings becoming popular today that strike at the heart of what it means to be Christian. The first I call the happiness gospel and the other is the same-sex gospel.

 

I have written extensively about the warm, fuzzy happiness misunderstanding in my Rob Bell series and my response to Randy Alcorn’s Happiness. (see links below) On the surface it may not seem like Alcorn’s confusion of happiness with joy is a big deal; it is when you realize it promotes a false gospel. It is easier to see how Rob Bell’s type of preaching—no hell; no judgment – can’t be squared with the Bible at all. I have also written about our generation’s exposure to a more subtle but deadly misunderstanding about same-sex relationships that threatens the foundation of what God is doing with humankind. The male/female intimacy of marriage is essential to the imageo Dei. (see Truth Dysphoria)

 

Each of these modern misapprehensions of Bible truth can be clearly rebutted with a good dose of Bible knowledge. The day is coming when our knowledge will be complete. Paul speaks of a day when we no longer see through a glass darkly. God promises a day when, “the land will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is filled with water.” I am confident that God has the same message for people today as He did in Isaiah’s day: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness.” Isaiah’s contemporary, Hosea, gave the same warning he did: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

 

I wrote it in “Today’s Chaldean Chastisement,” and I will repeat it here: we should not imagine that God is so much different today than He was in Isaiah’s day. As the prophet Malachi reports: “I am the Lord; I change not.” Our faith is a historical, propositional faith; it demands knowledge. If we don’t possess the knowledge of who God is and what He requires, we will bear the same consequences He promised through Isaiah: “If you do not stand firm in your faith [with knowledge as the foundation], then you will not stand at all.” Where do you stand?

 

Related posts: Today’s Chaldean Chastisement; Truth Dysphoria; Driven to the Cross; Canaan Cannot Be Heaven; How Do You Read Paul; Happiness and Joy (1-2); Answering Rob Bell (1-6