How Do You Explain Charismatic Healings?

Charismatics often respond to biblical and theological reasoning by appealing to experience. They plead, "But incredible things are happening; how do you explain it?"

In reply I say: "Since no charismatic healer can come up with genuinely verifiable cases of instant healing involving organic disease; since no charismatic healer heals everyone who comes for healing and hundreds go away from their services as sick or as crippled as when they came; since no charismatic healer raises the dead; since the Word of God needs no confirmation outside itself and is sufficient to show the way of salvation; since charismatic healings are based on a questionable theology of the atonement and salvation; since charismatic writers and teachers appear to disallow God His own purposes in allowing people to be sick; since charismatic healers seem to need their own special environment; since the evidence they bring forth to prove healings is often weak, unsupported, and over-exaggerated; since charismatics are not known for going into hospitals to heal though there are plenty of faithful people in hospitals; since most instances of healings by charismatics can be explained in ways other than God's unquestioned supernatural intervention; since charismatics get sick and die like everyone else; since so much confusion and contradiction surrounds what is happening -- the return question is: How do you explain it? It is certainly not the biblical gift of healing!"


Healings are occurring today. But the biblical gift of healing is not present. God heals whom He wills, when He wills and there are many times when committed Christians are involved in the most tragic unexplainable and seemingly needless cases of suffering. Loved ones have been earnestly prayed for only to see the answer come back no. Charismatic pastors -- if they are honest -- will admit they have had the same types of experiences.


But what is the typical explanation charismatic teachers, healers, and leaders give for the multitudes of those who are not healed. "THEY DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH FAITH." That kind of reasoning is neither kind nor accurate. And furthermore, faith cannot be measured!

(from "Charismatic Chaos" by John MacArthur, Jr.)