Question
Could you elaborate on Pastors preaching ‘healing and prosperity’ messages. They seem to be very popular, and I have not found any scripture which tells us to teach healing or prosperity, am I missing something?
Response
Your assessment of these teachings is correct. The verses and passages used to support these teachings come from the portion of God’s word that pertains to God’s program with Israel and not to this present dispensation of grace. Just as you said, in order for these ‘health and wealth’ or ‘healing and prosperity’ teachers to be able to teach people that God wants them healed and prosperous they need to mishandle the Bible by failing to ‘rightly divide’ it, and thereby deceive people with promises, doctrines, and the like, that are not part of God’s program with us today. And this is the very thing that they do. They deceive people into thinking that things like the blessings of the Law, the promises of the prophets, along with the signs of the kingdom and the provisions for health and sustenance during the climactic stage of Israel’s program, are things that pertain to us today. They have no knowledge about this present dispensation of God’s grace, Paul’s distinctive apostleship and message, the need to be “rightly dividing the word of truth”, and the vast differences in God’s program and dealings with us today compared to His program and dealings with Israel.
As you also correctly recognize, in our epistles we are not promised anything like ‘healing and prosperity’ in this present dispensation. Rather, for example, we are taught right from the beginning of our edification in Romans 8 that we are going to be subject to “the sufferings of this present time” and that God is not going to intervene and stop them, remove them, or shield us from them. Hence, we are to expect such “sufferings”; with God purposing not to deliver us from them, but providing for us to endure them to His honor and glory. Likewise, we are also taught that we are privileged to experience “the sufferings of Christ”, and that God will not shield us from these “sufferings” either.
In view of this, Paul’s epistles for this present dispensation are rarely dealt with and/or appealed to by the ‘health and wealth’ preachers. For they can find no support for their teachings therein. Instead they find things that directly contradict what they espouse, profess, and teach. Consequently, they generally avoid Paul’s epistles. In truth, instead of following Paul as he followed Christ, these teachers follow Phygellus and Hermogenes in their departure from Christ’s revelation to Paul; (these two individuals being the leaders of the original and foundational ‘turning away’ from Paul and his doctrine in favor of teaching and claiming promises, doctrines, and the like, from God’s program with Israel).
So again, your assessment of these ‘healing and prosperity’ teachers is correct. They could teach no such things as they do if they ‘rightly divided the word of truth’. Likewise, no saint who does ‘rightly divide the word of truth’ will be deceived by them. But for those who do not, they will be deceived by such teachings, or by some other doctrine that is not according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God committed to Paul’s trust for this present dispensation of God’s grace.
Keith Blades
Enjoy The Bible Ministries
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