Some professing Christians declare that it is unbiblical to organize a meeting with the expectation of healing miracles. Their reasoning is that by doing so one presumes upon God, as if his promises were too uncertain to be taken at face value. They recoil at the thought of entering a gathering with the confidence that miracles will occur. Yet this posture is itself the real presumption. It treats divine promises as if they were fragile words that may or may not be kept, and it treats the gospel as if it were merely an offer without fulfillment. Scripture demands us to expect what God has spoken, and to arrange our lives and assemblies in accordance with that expectation. To condemn a healing meeting is to condemn the practice of believing God’s word.
The criticism, when reduced to its essence, amounts to saying that it is wrong to expect God to fulfill his promises. In fact, it means we should expect God to lie most of the time. This is the heart of their argument. When one declares that it is unbiblical to gather for the purpose of healing, the charge is not against the form of the meeting but against the reality of faith itself. For faith is nothing other than the expectation that God will do what he has said. To object to such expectation is to object to the essence of faith, and to set oneself against the entire framework of biblical religion. The logic of their position would mean that every assembly of believers should be stripped of expectation and drained of faith, so that worship becomes the repetition of words without the anticipation of fulfillment.
The truth is that healing is a mark of a true church as much as evangelism, and a church that does not pray for miracles of healing and experience them has no counterpart in Scripture. No one in the Bible knows such a church. Healing is integral to the work of Christ and inseparable from his ministry. It is not a peripheral curiosity or a sporadic supplement but one of the chief expressions of his redeeming power. To speak of forgiveness of sins is to speak also of the healing of diseases, for the gospel joins them as two benefits issuing from the same source. To speak of atonement is to speak of wholeness and restoration. Any assembly that excludes the expectation of healing mutilates the gospel, presenting a false portrayal of Christ’s work and concealing its fullness.
The posture of those who reject healing betrays the presence of an alien spirit. It is not intellectual caution but demonic hostility toward the promises of God. They label themselves Christians, but they display no faith and no compassion. They construct a system of phony orthodoxy in which the standard of truth is not Scripture but mutual approval. They commend one another for their doubt, calling it balance or sobriety, while treating faith in God’s word as fanaticism. They persecute those who actually believe, treating them as if they were the enemies of the faith. Their orthodoxy is a system of unbelief consecrated by repetition and protected by reputation, a shell that shields them from exposure while they blaspheme the promises of God.
Their accusations are predictable. They speak of “strange fire” whenever someone preaches faith and healing. Yet the fire that burns in their pulpits is the fire of hell itself. When God called Moses, he authenticated the mission by signs issuing from a bush consumed but not destroyed. But when these men speak, their words resound with the serpent’s question, “Did God really say?” They call their suspicion a safeguard, but it is the echo of Satan in the garden, the oldest attack on the word of God. They remind us that even the devil quotes Scripture, as when he tempted Christ in the wilderness, or when impostors invoked the name of Jesus in Acts and were overpowered by demons. To speak some of God’s words while denying their meaning is the tactic of the enemy. These critics are content to sound biblical while undermining the truth.
The Faithless pretend to preach the gospel, but they preach the gospel of their religious heritage, not the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is only one gospel, not subject to interpretation, and it announces forgiveness, justification, healing and miracles, prophecy and tongues, faith, love, and eternal life. Claiming to preach the gospel while denouncing a main thrust of Christ’s ministry and commission is the height of satanic behavior and religious hypocrisy. Their words of criticism become their own indictment. They declare that they do not expect God to keep his word, and they condemn those who say that he does. They label as presumption the very faith by which men are justified.
If we are Christians, of course we should expect miracles, and of course we should announce them. To refrain from this would be to treat God as a liar. Faith is the acknowledgment that he will act in accordance with his promises. Those who denounce healing meetings are enemies of the church and of humanity, and they should be confronted with the soul-damning gravity of their unbelief. If they persist, they ought to be considered for excommunication, because they are not harmless skeptics but agents of destruction. By denying the promises of God they align themselves with the adversary, and by discouraging faith they corrode the confidence of the people of God. Certainly no one like this is qualified for ministry or any form of teaching.
The issue, then, is not whether healing meetings are permissible but whether meetings without healing should be allowed. The former are demanded by the gospel; the latter are a contradiction of it. To proclaim Christ while excluding healing is to present another Christ, a different person than the one revealed in Scripture. To censure those who expect miracles is to censure the very act of faith in the gospel. The church cannot indulge such unbelief without destroying its foundation. The word of God compels us to believe and to announce. Those who resist are self-condemned. They prove that their piety is false. Their orthodoxy is fraudulent, and their allegiance is satanic.
Healing meetings are biblical and necessary. They are inseparable from the gospel. They bear witness to the nature of Christ’s work, affirming that his promises remain active and his benefits remain available. To reject them is to strip the gospel of its reality and to deny its truth. The church must hold fast to the promise and proclaim it openly. It must condemn all who seek to suppress it. The word of God does not permit neutrality on this matter. It demands faith and confession. To preach Christ is to preach healing, and to assemble in his name is to expect his miracles among us.