Propounded by Evangelist F. F. Bosworth in the Alliance Tabernacle, Toronto. Canada. April 20, 1925, As a Part of His Sermon Answering the Question of an Opposer, “Is There a Gospel of Healing?”
I. Since the seven compound names of Jehovah, one of which Jehovah-Rapha (I am the Lord that healeth thee) reveal His redemptive relationship toward each person, do they not point to Calvary?
2. Since all the promises of God are yea and amen in Him do not these seven names including Jehovah.Rapha (the Lord our Healer) owe their existence and their power to the redeeming work of Christ on the cross?
3. Has not every believer the same redemptive right to call upon Christ as Jehovah-Rapha (the Healer: of his body) as he has to call upon Him as Jehovah-Tsidkenu (the Healer of his soul)? Is not His name given for healing as long as it is for salvation?
4. If bodily healing is to be obtained independent of Calvary, as opposers teach, why was it that no blessing of the Year of jubilee was to be announced by the sounding of the trumpet until the Day of Atonement?
5. If healing for the body was not a part of Christ’s redeeming work. why were types of the Atonement given in connection with healing throughout the Old Testament?
6. If healing was not in the Atonement why were the dying Israelites required to look at the type of the Atonement for bodily healing? If both forgiveness and healing came by a look at the type, why not from the antitype?
7. Since their curse was removed by the lifting up of the type of Christ was not our curse of disease also removed by the lifting up of Christ Himself? (Galatians 3:13)
8. In the passage, “Surely He hath borne our sicknesses and carried our pains” (Isaiah 53:4) why are the same Hebrew verbs for “borne” and “carried” employed as are used in verses 11 and 12 for the substitutionary bearing of sin unless they have the same substitutionary and expiatory character?
9. If healing was not provided for all in redemption, how did the multitudes obtain from Christ what God did not provide?
10. If the body was not included in redemption, how can there be a resurrection or how can corruption put on incorruption or mortality put on immortality? Were not the physical as well as the spiritual earnests (foretastes) of our coming redemption enjoyed by God’s people throughout history?
11. Why should not the “Last Adam” take away all that the first Adam brought upon us?
12. Since the Church is the body of Christ does God want the body of Christ sick? Is it not His will to heal any part of the body of Christ? If not, why does He command “any sick” in it to be anointed for healing?
13. Are human imperfections of any sort, be they physical or moral, God’s will or are they man’s mistakes?
14. Since “the body is for the Lord, a living sacrifice unto God” would He not rather have a well body than a wrecked one? If not, how can He make us “perfect in every good work to do His will” or have us “thoroughly furnished unto every good work?”
15. Since bodily healing in the New Testament was called a mercy and it was mercy and compassion that moved Jesus to heal all who came to Him, is not the promise of God still true, “He is plenteous in Mercy unto all that call upon Him?”
16. Does not the glorious Gospel dispensation offer as much mercy and compassion to its sufferers as did the darker dispensations? If not, why would God withdraw this mercy and this Old Testament privilege from a better dispensation with its “better Covenant?”
17. If as some teach, God has another method for our healing today, why would God adopt a less successful method for our better dispensation?
18. Since Christ came to do the Father’s will, was not the universal healing of all the sick who came to Him, a revelation of the will of God for our bodies?
19. Did not Jesus emphatically say that He would continue His same works in answer to our prayers while He is with the Father (John 14: 12-13) and is not this promise alone a complete answer to all opposers?
20. Why would the Holy Spirit who healed all the sick before His dispensation began, do less after He entered into office on the day of Pentecost? Or did the Miracle-Worker enter office to do away with miracles?
21. Is not the book of the Acts of the Holy Ghost a revelation of the way He wants to continue to act through the Church?
22. How can God justify us and at the same time require us to remain under the curse of the law which Jesus redeemed us from by bearing it for us on the cross? (Gal. 3:13)
23. Since “The Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil” has He now relinquished this purpose which He retained even during the bloody sweat of Gethaemane and the tortures of Calvary? Or does He now want the works of the devil in our bodies to continue that He formerly wanted to destroy? Does God want a cancer.-“a plague,” “a curse”-“the works of the devil” in the members of Christ? “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?” (Cor. 6:15).
24. Are the proofs of Divine Healing among the one hundred and eighty-four persons who testified in this Tabernacle the last two Friday nights, less bright and convincing than the proofs of Spiritual Redemption among professed Christians today?
Are not these 184 who have been healed in better health physically than a like number of professed Christians are spiritually?
Would not the physical health of these 184 compare favorably with the spiritual health of even the same number of ministers of our day?
25. Would not the argument commonly employed against Divine Healing, drawn from its failures, if employed against justification, regeneration and all the rest be simply overwhelming?
26. Does the fact that Christ could do no miracle at Nazareth prove anything except the unbelief of the people or would it be right to conclude, because of the failure of Christ’s disciples to cast out the epileptic spirit from the boy, that it was not God’s will to deliver him? Christ proved by healing him that it is God’, will to heal even those who fail to receive it.
27. Is not God as willing to show the mercy of healing to His worshippers, as He is to show the mercy of forgiveness to His enemies? (Rom. 8:12).
28. If Paul (as a New York minister says) “was the sickest of men suffering from ophthalmia of the eyes,” or if, as others teach, his “thorn in the flesh” was physical weakness instead of what Paul himself says it was, “Satan’s angel” inflicting the many buffetings which Paul enumerates, how could he labor more abundantly than all the other apostles? Or since he had strength to do more work than all the others, how could his “weaknesses” be physical? Since Paul’s “thorn” did not hinder his faith for the universal healing of “all the rest of the sick folk on the Island” of Melita, (Moffatt’s trans.) why should it hinder ours? Would not Paul’s failure to be healed, if he was sick, hinder the universal faith of these heathen for their healing? Why do traditional teachers substitute “ophthalmia of the eyes” or sickness, (neither of which Paul mentions) for the “reproaches,” “necessities,” “persecutions,” “distresses” and all the other buffetings at the hands of “Satan’s angels” which he does mention. If the former constitute his “thorn” why does he not say he takes pleasure in the former instead of the latter? How could Paul, sick in body, or with the unsightly disease of “ophthalmia of the eyes,” and unable to be healed, “make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed through mighty, signs and wonders?” (Rom. 15:18-19).
29. If sickness is the will of God, then would not every physician be a law-breaker, every trained nurse be defying the Almighty, every hospital a house of rebellion instead of a house of mercy, and instead of supporting hospitals should we not then do our utmost to close them?
30. Since Jesus in the Gospels never commissioned anybody to preach the Gospel without commanding them to heal the sick, how can we obey this command if there is no Gospel (good news) of healing to proclaim to the sick as a basis for their faith? Or, since faith is expecting God to keep His promise, how can there be faith for healing if God has not promised it? And since the Bible is full of promises of healing are they not all Gospel (good news) to the sick? Since “faith cometh by hearing…the Word” how can the sick have faith for healing if there is nothing for them to hear?
31. “Could the loving heart of the Son of God, Who had compassion upon the sick, and healed all who had need of healing, cease to regard the sufferings of His own when He had become exalted at the right hand of the Father?”-Kenneth Mackenzie.
