T
TruthDefender
Guest
Yet, Jesus healed ALL who were sick.Some false assumptions underly your reasoning
1. The first is that a "gift of healing" [IF it were real and if you believed in it] would grant to the person WITH the gift the ability to heal WHOMEVER they wish WHENEVER they choose to do so.
Did even Jesus have such a gift? I do not think so:
19 So Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it. For
whatever the Father does, the Son also does. 20 The Father loves the Son and shows Him all He does. And to your amazement, He will show Him even greater works than these.…
(John 5:19-20)
The power to work miracles did not come from Jesus out of His human nature. It came FROM God by the Holy Spirit. In order to do the works Jesus had to depend on the Father and "know what the Father was doing." Did this make Jesus a "faith healer" Even prophets like Elisha had to depend on God the Father to do the miraculous things they did.
Once when he was asked by King Jehoshaphat to give them a word from God Elisha did not immediately say anything. He did not have any thing like a continuously running gift of prophecy which he could turn on and off. In fact, Elisha had nothing (prophetic) to say until he received inspiration from the Holy Spirit. This is why, he had to wait:
…14Then Elisha said, “As surely as the LORD of Hosts lives, before whom I stand, were it not for my regard for the presence of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, I would not look at you or acknowledge you. 15 But now, bring me a harpist.” And while the harpist played, the hand of the LORD came upon Elisha 16and he said, “This is what the LORD says: ‘Dig this valley full of ditches.’…
(2 Kings 11:14-15)
Sometimes Cessasionists try and insinuate some arbitrary distinction between the gift of healing and healing that happens as an answer to prayer. I doubt the Early Believers made any such fine distinctions. Since most Cessationists deny that any supernatural miracles occur at all. How could they have anything but abstract or imaginary notions about how they MIGHT have operated in practice?
“But when Jesus knew it, He withdrew from there. And great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them all.”
Matthew 12:15 NKJV