Does God still physically heal people today — or has the church been lying to sick people for a century and calling it faith?

• DS

  Drew S.1w ago

  My daughter had stage 3 lymphoma. Our entire church fasted and prayed for three weeks straight. She went into complete remission. Her oncologist called it statistically remarkable. You want to tell me that wasn't God? Go ahead. I dare you.

  187Reply
• JB

  Jamie B.1w ago

  I was in a wheelchair. Went to a healing service. A man in a white suit screamed at my legs. I drove home in the same chair, feeling like maybe I just didn't believe hard enough. That was 2009. I still haven't fully recovered from the spiritual damage that night caused, and I mean that separate from the MS.

  162Reply
• DT

  Diego T.1w ago

  I watched my mother pray for healing every single day for eleven years of chronic pain. She never doubted. She never wavered. She died at 62 in agony. If you try to explain to me why 'it was God's plan' or 'her faith wasn't enough' I will absolutely lose my mind in this comment section right now.

  156Reply
• Y

  Yuki1w ago

  Joni Eareckson Tada. Quadriplegic for over 50 years. More theological depth and spiritual authority than most people who claim to heal with a word. If her disability is evidence of weak faith I am not interested in the God you're selling.

  152Reply
• L

  Liam1w ago

  spent 18 years in word of faith churches. watched a woman get told to throw away her insulin because claiming sickness was a lack of faith. she almost died. she did lose her feet. the pastor said she didn't believe enough. i left that month and i haven't looked back and i make no apology for it

  148Reply
• R9

  Reese 921w ago

  The problem isn't whether God CAN heal. Of course He can. He's God. The problem is the teachers who turn it into a transaction — YOUR faith buys you healing, YOUR doubt caused your cancer. That's not theology. That's spiritual abuse with a Bible verse taped to it.

  143Reply
• M

  Maya1w ago

  I've been a nurse for 24 years. I have sat with dying patients who believed to their last breath that God would heal them. Some of them died in peace. Some died terrified, confused, feeling abandoned by God. The difference wasn't their faith. The difference was whether someone had given them permission to also accept death as part of God's sovereignty. That's pastoral care. The healing industry doesn't do pastoral care.

  141Reply
• RM

  Reese M.1w ago

  I'm a hospitalist physician and a committed Christian. God works through medicine. Claiming otherwise is a false dichotomy that kills people — literally. The human who refuses chemo for prayer alone, the child who dies of a treatable infection because parents chose faith over doctors. This is not a hypothetical. I've seen it.

  139Reply
• N

  Nina1w ago

  What bugs me is how selectively we define miracle. Insulin works every day. Antibiotics work every day. But when surgery saves a life we say 'God healed him.' When prayer alone was supposed to do it and didn't, we say 'God called him home.' Heads God wins, tails God still wins. At some point that's not faith, it's a rigged game.

  134Reply
• NB

  Nina B.1w ago

  Nobody in this thread has mentioned that Jesus Himself in Gethsemane prayed 'not my will but yours.' The greatest act of submission in history was Jesus accepting that the Father's answer was no — or at least not yet. If the Son of God could pray that prayer, why do we teach people that 'not yet' or 'no' is always a sign of failed faith?

  133Reply
• L

  Liam1w ago

  the charismatic church I left used healing as a control mechanism. if you were sick you weren't in right standing. if you weren't healed it was your lack of faith. if you questioned you were in rebellion. its the perfect closed loop. theres no evidence that could ever count against it. that's not faith. that's a trap.

  131Reply
• Y

  Yuki1w ago

  What I want to know is why healings in the Bible were public, verifiable, immediate, and undeniable — a man born blind, a man dead four days — but modern healings are always back pain that got better and tumors we can't check the original scans for. Why does God's power seem to have gotten quieter and harder to verify over the centuries?

  123Reply
• M

  Morgan1w ago

  i grew up believing sickness was always demonic or faithless. do you know what that does to a child when they get strep throat and their parent is rebuking the spirit of infection over them instead of taking them to a doctor. i needed antibiotics not spiritual warfare. this theology has real victims.

  122Reply
• LR

  Liam R.1w ago

  if you disagree that healing theology harms people, explain to me why there are entire Facebook groups of people processing spiritual trauma specifically from being told their child's death was their fault for not believing enough. explain that to me. explain the funerals.

  119Reply
• PM

  Priya M.1w ago

  Benny Hinn made $100 million off sick people. Kenneth Copeland owns three jets. If God's healing power is flowing through these men, why does it always cost you a love offering first? Follow the money before you follow the miracle.

  118Reply
• LR

  Leo R.1w ago

  Three years ago I was told I had an inoperable brain tumor. I had a spontaneous remission. The neurologist showed me the scans side by side. He had no explanation. I have one. You can call it confirmation bias. I call it Jesus. Neither of us can fully prove our case and I'm at peace with that.

  114Reply
• QK

  Quinn K.1w ago

  My grandfather was a Pentecostal pastor for 52 years. Laid hands on hundreds of people. Some were healed. Some weren't. He never once blamed the sick person. He prayed and trusted God with the outcome. He died of Parkinson's. He was at peace. I think that's actually what mature faith looks like and it's very different from what you see on TBN.

  109Reply
• T

  Taylor1w ago

  Paul had a thorn in the flesh. He prayed three times. God said no. Timothy had stomach problems and Paul told him to drink wine for it — not to rebuke the sickness. If the apostles themselves weren't guaranteed physical healing then someone explain the modern prosperity health gospel to me using just the New Testament.

  107Reply
• R

  Reese1w ago

  the honest answer that nobody wants to give is: we dont know why some people are healed and some arent. we dont know. and building entire ministries and theologies on top of 'we dont know' is where we went wrong. just sit with the mystery. pray anyway. stop pretending you have a formula.

  105Reply
• I

  Iris1w ago

  Healing happens. I've seen it. But here's what nobody in the charismatic world wants to say: it's not reproducible, it's not predictable, and it doesn't track with how much someone prays. That's not the testimony we give at church but it is the honest one.

  101Reply
• A

  Alex1w ago

  The entire book of Job exists to push back against the idea that suffering = faithlessness or God's displeasure. Job was righteous. He suffered horribly. God rebuked the friends who tried to explain it spiritually. Yet somehow we built an entire healing theology that requires us to explain every illness spiritually. Job should haunt us more than it does.

  98Reply
• N

  Noah1w ago

  Jesus healed EVERYONE who came to Him. Every single one. No one walked away and heard 'sorry, not your season.' So why is the church's batting average so much lower than His? Either we don't have what He had, or He had something we've fundamentally misunderstood. Both of those are uncomfortable answers.

  97Reply
• R

  Reese1w ago

  Hot take: the real miracle isn't always the tumor disappearing. Sometimes it's the person with the tumor who trusts God anyway, loves people anyway, faces death with courage and hope. That's not a consolation prize. That's actually the deeper work of the Spirit. I've seen it and it undoes you.

  96Reply
• RK

  Ravi K.1w ago

  James 5:14-15 is just sitting right there in your Bible. 'Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.' You either believe that or you don't. Pick a lane.

  94Reply
• K

  Kofi1w ago

  Both sides of this argument talk past each other because they're answering different questions. 'Does God heal?' is a theological question. 'Does the faith healing industry harm people?' is an ethical one. The answer to both can be yes simultaneously and refusing to hold that tension is intellectually lazy.

  89Reply
• T2

  Theo 211w ago

  Most? Tell that to the Churches of Christ Scientist. Tell it to some Pentecostal communities in Appalachian states. Tell it to every parent who's sitting in a prison cell right now because their child died of a treatable illness while they prayed. 'Most' isn't good enough when the theology itself creates the exception cases.

  88Reply
• L

  Leo1w ago

  Simple and hard is right. I've watched my faith evolve from 'name it claim it' at 22 to something quieter and less certain and honestly more real at 48. I still pray for healing. I hold it with open hands now. I don't know if that's wisdom or defeat. Maybe both.

  88Reply
• OB

  Omar B.1w ago

  There's a difference between abuse of a doctrine and a doctrine that inherently produces abuse by its own internal logic. When the theology itself says 'your suffering proves your failure,' the harm isn't a perversion of the teaching — it IS the teaching. That distinction matters enormously.

  86Reply
• N9

  Nina 921w ago

  ^ The 'perfect' in 1 Cor 13 referring to the canon of Scripture is one of the weakest exegetical arguments in cessationist theology and most serious NT scholars don't defend it. The word teleion doesn't refer to Scripture anywhere in the New Testament. You're reading the conclusion into the text.

  83Reply
• R

  Reese1w ago

  okay but nobody talks about the miracles that aren't on stage. my uncle, doctors gave him six weeks. rural church in mississippi prayed over him. that was four years ago and he just went fishing last weekend. it doesn't have to be a spectacle for it to be real

  77Reply
• M

  Maya1w ago

  That response is doing a lot of work to protect a belief from any possible falsification. If healing theology can't be tested or questioned then it also can't be confirmed. You can't have it both ways. Either evidence matters or it doesn't.

  76Reply
• ET

  Elena T.1w ago

  God heals. The church exploits. Both are true. Throw out the exploitation. Keep the prayer. Stop blaming the sick. Trust God with the outcome. It really is that simple and also that hard.

  74Reply
• NT

  Noah T.1w ago

  The Southern Medical Journal study has been criticized heavily for its methodology, small sample size, and lack of proper controls. Look it up. One study from one ministry is not reproducible evidence. I'm not saying the people were lying — I'm saying anecdote is not data and we owe sick people better than anecdote.

  71Reply
• R

  Ravi1w ago

  So the Kingdom of God isn't still coming? It's fully established? You're arguing that the Kingdom fully arrived and we're just wrapping up? Because I've got some news headlines that suggest otherwise. If the Kingdom is still breaking in, so are its signs.

  69Reply
• R2

  Ravi 211w ago

  A parking spot? Brother. Sister. I cannot express how much I need you to understand the difference between everyday providence and the specific theological claim that anointed individuals have a repeatable gift of physical healing. These are not the same category of claim.

  64Reply
• M

  Marco1w ago

  Honest question for the skeptics in this thread: how do you explain the medical documentation coming out of Mozambique with Heidi Baker's ministry? Blind people seeing, deaf people hearing, verified by independent investigators including a study published in the Southern Medical Journal. What's your explanation?

  62Reply
• SK

  Sam K.1w ago

  Nope. Hard disagree with the cessationists. Acts 2:17 says 'in the LAST DAYS I will pour out my Spirit.' The last days started at Pentecost. We're still in them. You don't get to end-cap the Holy Spirit's gifts because it's theologically convenient.

  58Reply
• IR

  Iris R.1w ago

  That's a lovely thought and also extremely convenient theology for a God who doesn't heal. At what point are we just redefining miracle to mean 'anything that happens' so God always gets credit?

  57Reply
• A

  Alex1w ago

  The cessationist position is actually more defensible than people admit. 1 Corinthians 13:10, the 'perfect' that has come, the closing of the apostolic age — these are serious arguments. I'm not saying God CAN'T heal, I'm saying the normative gift of physical healing ceased with the apostles and confusing the two categories has caused enormous harm.

  55Reply
• R

  Ravi1w ago

  Read the Gospels carefully. Every time Jesus healed it was tied to the proclamation of the Kingdom. The healings were SIGNS. Signs point to something. They pointed to Him as Messiah. Once the Messiah is established and the canon closed, the function of the sign changes. This isn't cessationism being cold — it's hermeneutics being honest.

  52Reply
• J

  Jordan1w ago

  okay doc but nobody actually thinks using medicine is faithless. the real debate is whether God also works OUTSIDE medicine and you know it. stop pretending the only options are 'doctor or faith healer.' most Spirit-filled Christians use both.

  47Reply
• NB

  Nina B.1w ago

  Abuse of a doctrine doesn't invalidate the doctrine. Priests abused children — does that mean sacramental theology is false? Prosperity preachers exploit the sick — does that mean James 5 isn't in the Bible? You're arguing from bad actors, not from Scripture.

  44Reply
• TL

  Taylor L.1w ago

  Because faith is not a laboratory experiment. 'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.' The demand for reproducible proof is itself a theological position — materialism dressed up as rationality — and I won't bow to it just because it's fashionable.

  39Reply
• R

  Riley1w ago

  Im not charismatic, never been to a healing service, grew up Presbyterian. But I prayed for a parking spot once and got one and I still somehow believe God is involved in the details of life. Draw from that what you will.

  31Reply

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