Today, foolish platitudes are counted as sound doctrines, and the Bible’s own teachings and commands are often portrayed as errors and heresies. The Bible says that faith is dead without action that is consistent with this faith. For example, if you see someone who is hungry, and you have something to give him, then you should not only say to him, “May you be warm and full.” This is an empty platitude, not faith. Put your faith into action and give him something. Of course, we can make a declaration of faith for a suffering person that effects a miracle for him. If this is what we do, and if it is effective, then this would be putting our faith into action. But we are against pious statements that offer false comfort, that are void of faith, that cannot relieve suffering, and that are unbiblical in the first place.
Sometimes statements from the Bible are twisted around and used as religious platitudes to offer false encouragement. A tragedy happens to someone, and a Christian says, “God works out all things for the good of those who love him, and who are called according to his purpose.” Right, but what is “good”? We should let the Bible define it, instead of calling something good just because it has happened. Perhaps what has happened is very, very bad, and the good is going to be when God overcomes it by his power. Something very, very bad happened to Joseph, but God arranged everything to catapult him to the top position of the mightiest nation of that day, where he gained unparalleled fame, power, and prosperity, and also saved many lives. Evidently, God thought that was good. Something very, very bad happened to Job, but God arranged everything to overturn his troubles, to double his wealth, heal his body, and ensure his long life. God thought that was good.
Is this what people mean when they say that God works all things for our good? No, they usually refer to only spiritual salvation and ethical development. Of course these things are good, very good. However, if someone does not believe in God’s promises about healing and prosperity, about faith and miracles, and many other things in the Bible, does he really have salvation? And is he really developing ethically? Someone who refuses to have faith in God’s very words is wicked by definition. Ethically, he is getting worse and worse. We hope that he is saved and is merely ignorant of what the Bible teaches, but if this is the case, then he should accept God’s promises when we talk to him about them, for as Jesus said, “my sheep will hear my voice.” The Bible indeed says that all things work together for good, but only “for those who love God” and “for those who are called according to his purpose.” But if someone refuses to accept the word of God, then we have no basis to say that he is someone who loves God or someone who is called according to his purpose. So what has happened to him is just exactly what it appears to be — something very bad, and something that will not lead to any good. When a Christian says “all things work for good” as a mere religious platitude, it is no different than when a non-Christian says, “all things happen for a reason.” But even damnation is a reason.
On the other hand, if we truly love God, and if we are indeed called according to his purpose, then let us define good as the Bible defines it, and then let us insist on obtaining this good result when we face attacks and hurdles in life. We refuse to twist the word of God to excuse our weakness and failure, but we will become strong by the word of God. We refuse to lie to ourselves and call something good when it is obviously very bad. If something is bad, it is bad, but God will destroy the bad things that come against us, and he will compel all things, even bad things, to become stepping stones to have us believe his good promises and to obtain the good results. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, and we are more than conquerors though him who loved us.
There are those who call themselves Christians, but with itching ears, they gather to themselves false teachers who tell them what they want to hear, such as telling them that the bad things that happen to them are not due to their sin and unbelief, but due to God’s sovereignty and arrangement for their benefit. The benefit is somehow always spiritual and ethical only, but still we do not see these people of weak faith receive it. They are still unspiritual and unethical. They are still full of unbelief, following the traditions of men rather than the commands of God. The word of God is twisted this way so that the people would receive false comfort, so that other than maintaining their endurance, they would not need to change anything about their beliefs or improve anything about themselves.
If someone who has a sickness comes to you, do not just say, “May God comfort you” or “May God teach you patience.” Do not say, “Think about what you can learn from this.” This is a useless platitude. This is not what the Bible says to do with sickness. But you should say, “Think about how you can get rid of it.” Jesus said, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you receive it, and you will have it.” Many people have received healing in this manner. The Bible also says that the sick person can call for prayer, and the faith-prayer will work, not to bring some vague feeling of comfort, but it will bring a physical miracle. One can pray for himself, or ask someone else to pray for him, in order to blast the accursed thing out of his body. This is what the Bible says to do with sickness. Faith will end the sickness and restore full health. The Lord himself will answer. He will heal the person and raise him up! It is useless to tell the person that God works all things for his good, unless by good you mean a miracle healing and complete recovery. Forget religious platitudes. Tell the person what the Bible says. Teach him how to receive healing by faith. And then the two of you should put action to your faith. Lay your hands on him in the name of Jesus. Demand the sickness to wither by the roots and disappear. Command healing to take place.
Platitudes must never be confused with orthodoxy and humility. They are just excuses that people make for themselves, and even excuses that they make for God. Of course, God does not need us to make excuses for him, because he has done nothing wrong, but people’s conception of God is wrong, and therefore they must make excuses for him when the false God in their orthodoxy does not measure up to the true God in the Bible. They are not defending the God of the Bible against people’s misconceptions, but they are defending the God of their misconceptions against the God of the Bible. They also wish to excuse themselves. This is because they do not receive the results that the Bible promises due to their unbelief, but they do not wish to admit this, so that they would rather preach a different gospel than to humble themselves and improve themselves. The result is that they harden their hearts against God, and they make a mockery of people’s suffering. They convince people to allow their problems to continue, to even embrace and defend the problems, although the Bible describes them as curses and offers weapons against them. The Bible teaches the good news, but religious liars replace this with their bad news, and compel people to accept that instead.
The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit, for they will appear as foolishness to him. This is not because the things of the Spirit are indeed foolishness, but because the natural man is so far from touching even the bottom of divine intelligence that the things of the Spirit would appear outside of what this man regards as the realm of intelligibility. Thus spiritual things are as gibberish to the natural, stupid man, much like human language is unintelligible to a slug. As it is written, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” A disciple of unbelief, such as a cessationist or a traditionalist, cannot receive the things of the Spirit because he is a mere natural man, still possessed by “the spirit of the world.” He refuses to accept the benefits of the gospel and regards them as unspiritual, as unworthy of his lofty religious ideals and pretensions, or his historic creeds and theories, even though the Bible directly, explicitly, and repeatedly promises these things to those who have faith in God. This is not an evidence of greater faithfulness or scholarship, as he would like you to think, but it is an evidence that he has never made even an initial contact with the things of the Spirit. Even if this does not compel us to form certain conclusions about his salvation — but tell me, why shouldn’t it? — we have no authority to defy God and say that such a man qualifies for any form of ministry.
On the other hand, “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.” If we have the Spirit of God, then we will receive what God says about the benefits of the gospel. If we refuse to accept what God says, then we have another spirit, and not the Spirit of God. It is as simple as that, and the point is undeniable. Now those who are of unbelief are so wrong and so far from the truth that when we point out the simple truth about them, it would sound so outrageous to them that they would tend to reject it, and then attack us for it. However, it is irrelevant what they say to us or what they say about us. They are the least of our obstacles, because to say better things about them, we will have to overcome the Almighty and his Scripture. Attack me all you want, but who am I to fight against God? My preference is irrelevant. Seeing what the Bible teaches about the benefits of the gospel and about those who accept or reject them, the truth is that I have no authority and no permission to say better things about these people. I would be happy to get out of the way completely, so that they would not need to criticize me at all, but then the Bible still says what it says. If they wish to show that they have the Spirit of God, then they only need to show that they accept what the Bible says about the things that God has freely given to us, including healing, prosperity, visions and dreams, prophecy, and all kinds of signs and wonders. This is so simple, and so easy to do when a person has the Spirit of God. It is so easy for us to accept all these things. Because we have been born of the Spirit and filled with the Spirit, this is our realm, the realm of the Spirit.
People who refuse the benefits of the gospel are not more spiritual or mature, but they are inferior human beings altogether. Some of them refuse because of ignorance, and they will quickly accept the truth when we show it to them. But some of them refuse because they are unsaved, natural people. They refuse to hear the voice of the Shepherd because they are not his sheep. Again, if you speak this way, you might be criticized. But what does it matter? It doesn’t change anything, and they are only hurting themselves when they remain stubborn against the truth. As for us, we will keep speaking about all the benefits of the gospel to both the church and the world, even when these benefits are even more unpopular in the church than in the world. There are those in the world who want God to help them, and they are bitter against God because the church has told them that he would not help, and that they are sinful and man-centered for even wishing that he would. This is not only a different gospel, but this is not even the same God as the one in the Bible.
God wants to save us, heal us, prosper us, guide us, love us, teach us, protect us, mature us, and yes, he also wants us to serve him. It is such a simplistic and stupid theology to think that a God-centered life is about working and suffering, and rejecting even the comfort that comes from God. It is the most satanic and man-centered religion to tell God that we will have a God-centered religion on our terms! How grotesque is this? True religion is God-centered, and this means to revere God as the reference point for all things. This might or might not mean suffering, but we will need to look at his word to find out, instead of assuming that it is all about suffering. But when we take God as our reference point in the matter of health, what do we see? We see that Jesus took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses. We see that God himself said that sickness is satanic bondage and oppression, and we see that Jesus was obsessed with healing people. We see that a God-centered theology, therefore, must have a strongest message of miracle healing. It is God-centered to have faith for man’s physical health and comfort, because this is God’s own perspective on the matter. If it comes from faith, it is God-centered. But if it comes from tradition, unbelief, and a self-centered piety, then even if one offers his body to be burned, he is nothing. He is a martyr only in the eyes of men, but utterly worthless in the eyes of God. Suffering is stupid, worthless, selfish, and self-centered, unless it is a suffering that is according to the word of God. But so much suffering is against the word of God.
One Christian author wrote, “Don’t waste your cancer.” What a demonic message. This is counter-gospel. This is fake religion. The Bible never calls sickness a gift from God, but it says that sickness is satanic bondage and oppression. Sickness is a demonic attack, not a divine gift. Jesus devoted an inordinate amount of effort to obliterate it everywhere he went. Would that author accuse Jesus of wasting everyone’s sickness? Behold the demeaning effect of unbelief. This fake teacher calls upon thousands of people to waste the blood of Christ, who took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses to obtain healing for us. Unless you “waste” your sickness, you waste your redemption. Behold the perverse theology of tradition. This fake teacher romanticizes sickness and suffering, and urges thousands of God’s people to embrace bondage and oppression, surrendering to Satan to do all his will. Because he weakens people’s faith and urgency in receiving healing from God, the author has become directly responsible for their suffering and even deaths. He is a sadist and a murderer. But spiritual poison like this is usually presented as profound piety and scholarship.
Jesus never said, “Don’t waste your sickness,” but he said, “Do you want to be healed?” And then he said to the invalid, “Pick up your mat and walk.” He never said, “Let the will of God be done,” but he said, “What do you want me to do for you?” And then he said to the blind man, “Your faith has healed you.” He never said – he never even hinted it once — “God will heal you, if it is his will,” but he said, “According to your faith will it be done to you.” In other words, “What you believe will happen, is what will happen. What you believe God will do, is what God will do.” What did the apostles say? They said, “Jesus Christ heals you,” “In the name of Jesus, rise up and walk,” and “The prayer of faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will raise him up.” So never say to someone, “Don’t waste your cancer,” but say, “Don’t keep your cancer.”
Jesus never said, “God has a noble purpose in your suffering.” He said that we cannot serve God and Mammon at the same time, but he said that the Father knows that we need these things and that if we will seek God first, then Mammon — money, food, clothing, etc. — will be added to us. He said that this is a matter of faith, and that worry comes from unbelief. In other words, Jesus’ teaching is that, have faith, and he will end your sickness, poverty, and suffering. Nowadays this is called heresy, but Jesus taught exactly this. People want the Bible to say, “It will be done to you according to the will of God,” so that they can offload all spiritual responsibility. No matter what happens, it is not their fault. But the Bible does not say what they want. The Bible keeps saying, “It will be done to you according to your faith.” Why don’t they save the suffering for persecution and martyrdom? But no, they wish to replace suffering for the gospel with suffering for their own unbelief. They wish to cast the narrative that they are epic spiritual heroes – just for being failures. The Bible’s narrative is that they are worthless no-faith losers.
They say that things like healing and prosperity are not important, especially relative to the spiritual life, but then they pursue these things by their own wit and strength. They are religious hypocrites. They live a double life. Jesus said that our life does not consist of the abundance of possessions, but in both recorded instances where he multiplied food, he made so much that there were many baskets left over. He warned against covetousness, but he still taught that the possession of material things are related to faith, that God knows we need them, and that these things will be added to us when we seek God first. Jesus said that material things do not define us, and he said that the heathens chase after these things. But he still taught that if we have faith, we will not need to worry about money, if we have faith, we will get food, and if we have faith, we will get clothes. In other words, Jesus placed materials things as items that are received by faith along with spiritual things, but he prioritized them according to their importance. Contrary to Jesus, the no-faith people place the reception of spiritual things under faith, but the reception of material things outside faith, and under human effort. The gospel places the attainment of material things under faith by the explicit teachings of Jesus himself; therefore, to teach anything different is to teach a different gospel, a non-Christian religion. The resulting view on health, wealth, and material things attempts to pass itself off as Christianity, but it is far more similar to Buddhism or one of the eastern or mystical religions.
Offer people real faith, real gospel words and actions, and not religious platitudes. To those who follow Christ with unworthy motives, we say, count the cost. You might face troubles because of your faith in Christ. These troubles will come from men, likely religious men who pretend to uphold orthodoxy. God is not the one who troubles you, for as it is written, “If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing.” He will save you from these troubles. To those who are suffering, we say, have faith in God. If you come to Jesus Christ by faith, he will save you, heal you, prosper you, and establish you, so that you can go forth and be effective witnesses for him. Do not play the victim and make pious excuses. God can give you the victory. This will not just be a moral victory, but it will be a victory in every sense.
God had promised Israel the land, and that they would win when they fought against the inhabitants. So when Joshua lost a battle, he did not say, “Well, I guess all things work for the good to those who love God.” He did not say, “Perhaps the gift of winning has ceased after Moses died.” He did not say, “This will help us develop humility and patience.” He did not say, “People, don’t waste this bloodbath! Let us get slaughtered for the glory of God.” No, he knew that he lost because something went wrong — very, very wrong. He refused to accept it. He confronted God as if something went wrong. He did not embrace what happened as “the will of God.” And God told him that someone in his camp had sinned. Aha! What did Joshua do? He dragged out those who sinned and led the people to stone them to death and burn their bodies! After that, Joshua went right back into battle and won — not just the moral victory, but also the military victory, because this was what God promised. Joshua knew that when God promises something and it does not happen, it is not because it is “the will of God,” but it is because something has gone terribly wrong. He refused to make excuses. He dragged out the problem, killed it, and burned it. He was not satisfied until he obtained exactly what God said.
But what do you do to those among you who preach unbelief, who teach the traditions of men rather than the promises of God? You call them doctors and reverends, and you hear their sermons and buy their books, and you place them on your boards and committees to control your resources, and you write their words into your creeds and policies to control your doctrines, when you ought to exterminate them from the church and destroy their materials. This is why you do not receive the promises of God. It is not because this is “the will of God.” It is not because “all things work for the good.” It is not because anything from God has ceased. You do not receive the promises of God because of your unbelief and disobedience. And if you keep making excuses, things will keep getting worse and worse for you. I will tell you exactly what you must do. Take out “Achan son of Zerah, the silver, the robe, the gold wedge, his sons and daughters, his cattle, donkeys and sheep, his tent and all that he had” — yes, even his donkeys and sheep, and all the things associated with him — then kill them and burn them.
Now here is the gospel, the good news. When sickness attacks you, God will not just give you a moral victory so that you will endure it with a smile and then die. If you have faith, he will not allow Satan to take away your dignity. As it is written, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” No doubt God will give you that moral victory, and you will laugh at the devil even when he attacks you. But then God will also give you the material victory, and by faith in the name of Jesus you will smite the disease and uproot the thing from your body, and you will walk in life and health for the glory of God. When poverty attacks you, you will not only say, “God makes me rich in faith.” Indeed you will be rich in faith, and because you are so rich in faith, you will also believe Jesus when he said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” The gospel is good news, the good news of the power of God to save you in every sense. Anyone who denies this preaches a different gospel and a pagan religion, and the Bible says, let him be accursed.