Healing By Faith: Evangelical Christendom's Lost Heritage

ENDNOTES

INTRODUCTION

Some years ago, I read an article detailing how political groups go about changing the destiny of people groups they want to influence. The first step, the article said, was to separate the people from their history. If people are strongly connected to their history, it will be very difficult to get them to accept a new philosophy for the future. Their sense of being historically rooted holds them to their roots and militates against embracing a new or different political philosophy.

I believe the enemy of our souls uses this tactic to rob the Church of the blessings of the past and give us a different future. Specifically, he has robbed the evangelical Church of its history in the area of divine healing. Most evangelicals think of divine healing as primarily a charismatic or Pentecostal practice. They have no idea that long before the Pentecostal movement arose, the evangelical Church taught and practiced divine healing. In fact, the Pentecostals learned about divine healing from the evangelicals!

The nineteenth century saw the advent of the faith cure movement, led by such men as A.J. Gordon, A.B. Simpson, Andrew Murray, R.A. Torrey, A.T. Pierson, and many other respected and grounded evangelicals. Though the movement was centered in New England, it was international in scope, and its practitioners hailed from Great Britain, Europe, South Africa, and many other places. Even D.L. Moody, though he wasn’t known as a minister of healing, regularly gathered teachers and practitioners of divine healing to speak at his spiritual life conferences.

Since this movement pre-dated the Pentecostal movement, it was not focused on the gifts of the Spirit, such as the gift of healing. Though some discussed the Holy Spirit’s gifts, the primary methodology of healing in that movement was by faith in God’s promises.

For example, James 5:14–15 was often used when ministering to the sick:

Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

In accordance with this verse, the sick were anointed with oil and encouraged to believe healing was taking place by faith, before they saw any improvement.

In this book, I will examine the history of this movement and the teaching of its practitioners. Their strong emphasis on faith will likely surprise many readers. Much of what was taught then is similar to teaching on faith today that is arising in the charismatic movement. And so much of today’s teaching has been drawn from those who taught these things in the late nineteenth century. Through examining this movement, I hope to stimulate fresh inquiry into the subjects of divine healing and faith and to encourage the evangelical Church to reclaim its lost heritage.

I also want to encourage ministers to teach their people to pray for the sick (and to do so themselves), and to encourage those who are seeking healing to continue trusting the promises of healing for themselves.

Joe McIntyre, January 2014

part one

THE HISTORY OF THE

FAITH CURE

one

EUROPEAN ROOTS

One of the little-known aspects of modern divine healing is the fact that its roots are found among some pioneers in Europe, who rediscovered God’s healing power. In fact, the practice of praying for the sick with dramatic results is not at all a new phenomenon.

We are all aware that the early Church regularly healed the sick and cast out demons. The book of Acts confirms this. What many do not realize is that healing and miracles have continued ever since those early days, in one part of the Church or another, as documented in such works as 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity by Eddie L. Hyatt.¹

Hyatt documents the occurrence of signs and wonders long after the death of the twelve apostles, as various groups within the greater Church continued to see healing and deliverance accompany their preaching. This continued throughout Christian history until modern times. Thus, the tradition that miracles ceased with the death of the last of the twelve apostles lacks both biblical and historical evidence to sustain it.

In this book, I will focus primarily on the post-Reformation ministry of healing in the evangelical Church. Though we find some evidence of healing in the life of Martin Luther² and other early Reformation leaders, here we will be looking at more recent advocates of a supernaturally empowered Church.

EDWARD IRVING

One of the significant post-Reformation contenders for a supernatural Church was Edward Irving (1792–1834) of the National Scottish Church. He pastored in London, England, in the early nineteenth century. Irving lamented the fact that the Church, in performing her duties and services to the people, had descended to the level of the natural and that, in preaching, the gifts of the Spirit had been supplanted by the arts of logic and rhetoric.³

A.J. Gordon, the respected Baptist from Boston, Massachusetts, said this about Irving:

He believed with the whole strength and intensity of his nature, everything which he found written in the Scriptures. Cast upon times of great spiritual deadness, he longed to see Christendom mightily revived, and he conceived that this could only be effected by stirring up the Church to recover her forfeited endowments.⁴

Edward Irving was controversial in his day, but it is clear he longed to see the Church restored to the example of the book of Acts. Irving had the audacity to expect God to be the same yesterday, today, and forever. And he came to believe that all the gifts of the Spirit, including healing, were for the Church in every age.

It is significant that Irving was led to this hunger for the supernatural by reading the Scriptures. He did not have some vision or dream that led him to this conclusion, but what he read in the Bible stirred up his longing for an empowered Church.

As Irving led his people to seek the fullness of the Holy Spirit, some dramatic healings took place. This further encouraged his quest for a fully biblical and empowered Church.

Gordon elaborates further on Irving:

He was no mere theorist. He not only exhorted his flock to live by faith continually on Jesus for the body as well as the soul, but he has told us the story of his casting himself on the Lord when mighty disease laid hold of him; and how his faith was tried to the last extremity till with swimming brain and deathly sweat he stood holding on to the sides of the pulpit, waiting for God to fulfill in the eyes of the people his word the prayer of faith shall save the sick; and how his Redeemer at last appeared for his help and loosed him from the bands of sickness enabling him to preach on that morning with such demonstration and power of the Spirit as he had rarely known.⁵

IRVING’S MISSTEPS

Irving also developed an end–time teaching that projected Jesus would return in 1864. The habit of date-setting and end–time speculation is certainly not a new thing, as recent history confirms! It is never wise to predict the date of the Lord’s return since He Himself said no man knows the day or the hour (see Matt. 24:36). His teaching about the human nature of Jesus was also controversial.

Yet he strongly contended for a restoration of the supernatural to the Church. He saw healings and gifts of the Spirit in his church and believed this to be the norm for Bible-believing Christians. Edward Irving died in 1834, a forerunner in the quest for healing power in the Church.

Inspired both by reading the Word of God and by the desire to see the Church experience what he saw written there— Irving’s quest was an honorable one.

JOHANN BLUMHARDT

Johann Blumhardt (1805–1880) came to the small town of Mottlingen, Germany, to pastor a church in 1838. After he was in that city for a short time, a young lady, Gottlieben, who had been attending the church, came to him seeking help. She had faced one illness after another and began to speak of strange presences that were manifesting to her. So Blumhardt began to seek the Lord in prayer for her, and over the next year, he prayed for her many times. Often, she would improve for a while, but then the problems would arise again.

As Johann Blumhardt continued to pray for her, he sensed things coming to a climax, and an unnatural voice, not her own, began speaking from the woman’s throat and striving to engage Blumhardt in argument.

CHRISTUS VICTOR

He continued to challenge the devil’s power, and after many hours, he sensed the breakthrough had come. When the demon came out, it was with a great and terrible cry, Jesus is Victor! Jesus is Victor! She was completely delivered! All of her former ailments completely disappeared—including a high shoulder, a short leg, stomach trouble, and other problems. All were now gone.

After this amazing victory, the young woman worked with Blumhardt until her death many years later. On her tombstone was written, Jesus is Victor!

Blumhardt saw divine healing as a battle against the powers of darkness. When the battle was decisively won, Blumhardt too proclaimed, Christus Victor! Christ is Victor! This revelation of the power of Christ to overcome the devil became the battle cry for Blumhardt’s ongoing work.

After this breakthrough event, healing and miracles began to happen regularly. Revival broke out in the small local parish, and people flocked to the church, with tears and lamentations, to find forgiveness and escape punishment for their sins. As is often the case, the manifestation of the supernatural brings a renewed awareness of the goodness of God—as well as sin and the need to be right with God.

About this, Blumhardt reported:

Everything concerning illness in my parish began to be changed. Seldom did a medical man appear in it; the people would rather pray....The general state of health became better than it was before.⁶

As word spread across Europe, many came to receive healing prayer from Blumhardt. In response, he opened the church manse to be a faith home where he could work with the sick ones and bring them into an atmosphere where they could receive healing. Those seeking healing at the home received Bible teaching, personal guidance and individual prayer sessions. He walked many of them through forgiveness prayers that brought much relief to them, and many were healed as a result.

RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE

This explosion of the miraculous continued until the Lutheran ecclesiastical authorities—Blumhardt was a Lutheran pastor—ordered Blumhardt to cease praying for the sick. He reluctantly complied.

However, people continued to attend his services, and many were still healed. After some time of seeking the Lord, Blumhardt resigned from his church, left his denominational oversight, and purchased a building that could be used for a faith home. It was called Bad Boll. Because of his favor with the king, the king personally contributed the funds to restore the building, which had been a gambling resort and a health spa. This new facility was able to house about one hundred sick people at a time!

Blumhardt made it plain that sickness is an enemy that should be viewed with indignation and strong resistance.