Thursday, March 27, 2014

Prophets and Healing

In the scriptures, the ministry of the prophet and gift of healing go together. Elijah and Elisha both healed people who were sick. When Jesus healed a young man by raising him from death, the people just assumed that Jesus was a prophet.

They were all filled with awe and praised God. “A great prophet has appeared among us” (Luke 7:16).
So although I am keen to see the prophetic ministry restored, I strongly believe that we need to see the gift of healing restored too.

I am intrigued that my book on the prophetic ministry sells three times more frequently than my book on healing. It could be because it is better, but I do not think so. Strangely enough, I think the latter is more prophetic than the former.

So here is a question.
Can you be true a prophet, if you do never minister the gift of healing?
Or to put it another way.
If you are standing in the council of the Lord (Jer 23:13), won't he sometimes give you the key to someone’s healing from sickness.

1 comment:

August said...

Let me be cynical for a moment. A healing ministry can easily be evaluated. Either people get healed or they don't.
A prophetic ministry is not necessarily so easy to evaluate. One could 'prophesy' a lot of things that aren't falsifiable, vague things, words of comfort and unity, etc... The happy, happy, joy, joy cult will confirm all your words and make you feel very important, but some guy with an illness you can't heal is going to notice he isn't healed, even if he thinks you are sincere.

I've had a neuralgia in my face since 2010, and have had to put up with modern evangelical nonsense for twice as long. I know most of these folks are mainly just fooling themselves, wanting narrative in their lives that gives them a larger sense of importance than they actually have.

Personally, if anyone wants to be a prophet, I'd tell him to shut and go farm, shepherd, or otherwise engage in manual labor. God seems to take men from such labors and have them prophesy, while the guild of prophets in the city tell the king whatever it is he wants to hear. In this day and age, the guild prophets seem to tell women whatever it is they think they want to hear, since nobility has pretty much been rooted out of the land.