The Healing Promise, A Charismatic Response

Letting God be God

There is little else in the book that requires a response. It is helpful to see a Christian response to suffering and I completely agree with the statements given there. However, we need to avoid giving the impression that it is better to be sick than well. While granting that God works for his glory through sustaining believers through their trials, I cannot help thinking of the healing of the man born blind (Jn. 9) or the resurrection of Lazarus. Mayhue almost gives the impression that it is better that people are not healed today. If this is always the case, then we would have to assume that Christ was mistaken to think that healing the blind man and raising Christ would glorify God. Leaving them would have glorified Him far more!

I have to conclude that The Healing Promise demonstrates precisely the kind of anti-supernatural hermeneutic that Deere warns us about.⁵² He does not notice the miraculous when it occurs in scripture and where we have a clear, uncontested healing promise⁵³ he fails to let it speak for itself. Charismatics are often accused of basing their arguments upon experience, rather than scripture. I will have to let the reader judge if I have been guilty of that. Yet, it seems to me that Mayhue reveals a deep seated unease about letting God work however he chooses to, through whomever he chooses to, whenever he pleases to.

Reviewed by Graham Old

Publisher’s page: http://www.christianfocus.com/item/show/386/

Notes ¹ P. 7.

² P. 272. Unfortunately, Mayhue does not give a single reference to verify this accusation.

³ See Deere, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, ch. 5, The real reason Christians do not believe in miraculous gifts.

⁴ See Deere’s helpful chapter on The Myth of Pure Objectivity.

⁵ Taken directly from Mayhue, p. 35. In what follows, I will not respond to this list point-by-point but it will form the basis of the argument to which I am responding.

⁶ P. 86.

⁷ Pp. 86-87.

⁸ P. 90.

⁹ P. 92.

¹⁰ P. 92.

Tags: charismatic, featured, healing, promise, response

Category: Spirit, Winter 2005