T.B. Joshua can never be intimidated
We can never with be intimidated by critics of T.B. Joshua. It is now clear that the activities by our detractors and the two media outlets they called upon to help them fight this unnecessary battle with T.B. Joshua and SCOAN have failed.
As we stated some time ago, and still maintain, we always encourage those who are arraigned in our healing prayer line to furnish us with their medical history before prayers, and after prayers every effort is made for those who are healed to produce their respective doctor’s report certifying they have been healed. This has been the position of SCOAN since its conception.
We maintain Jesus heals and we do so now and forever. We also believe medicine cures and we find no contradiction between the two. There are great many who seek medical help and they die and again there are others who seek divine healing and also die. They all remain the children of God and He loves them as much as he does to any of His children.
T.B. Joshua is under no obligation to explain the position of the church to any institution in the UK. What he has said is enough to any sensible person or institution. Whatever the detractors want could be found on the SCOAN website. The church keeps marching on as the Lord keeps adding more souls to the flock.
On physical and spiritual healing we advice readers to read part of an essay by Joseph Tkach, Sr. & Bernard Schnippert
Correct understanding of key scriptures
Let’s look now at Psalm 103. Here we find the “benefits” of serving God. Look at verse 3 closely. Some say that in this verse God promises to heal every illness as surely as he promises to forgive every sin. But God does not promise to forgive our sins unconditionally. We do not experience the results of his forgiveness if we do not repent.
Neither does God promise unconditionally to heal us every time. Just as in the case of forgiveness of sin, there are conditions. In the case of healing, the conditions are often faith and obedience, but always the condition of what is best for the person’s eternal life — God’s will for the person!
Healing has a condition that forgiveness of sin does not — namely, the condition of what God deems best in our life. But this is only because it is always in our best interest to be forgiven immediately, but not always in our best long-term interest to have the suffering of illness instantly removed (1 Pet. 5:10).
Now let’s examine James 5:14-16. “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. Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.”
Does this passage promise that God will heal everyone every time? Although the statement, “and the Lord will raise him up” appears on the surface to be written without qualification, it sits amidst the rest of the Bible and is qualified by it. Every verse of the Bible must be read in the context of the whole Bible — not in isolation.
Here, as in every other case of a request for answered prayer, is the implied condition of healing being in the best interest of the party. It is an implied condition, but it is stated by the Bible to apply to all prayer! “If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14).
Some commentators have noted that the word translated save in James 5:15 is a Greek word that is used only a few times in the Bible in reference to a person being made well from sickness (e.g., Mark 6:56). The vast majority of times this word is used in the New Testament, it is used in the sense of spiritual salvation. Likewise, the word translated raise in this same verse can mean “to rouse from sleep or lift up as from a bed or floor,” but most often is used in the New Testament to represent the resurrection from the dead (see Matthew 10:8; 11:5; 14:2; 16:21, etc.).
Thus James in this verse uses terminology that can refer not only to physical healing, but also to the spiritual resurrection from the dead (also based on conditions not stated here but found elsewhere in the Bible).
We must address here a related point. One view of James 5:14-15 is that James meant that God heals every time — but he heals some now and some at the resurrection of the dead.
It is true that God heals some now and that in the resurrection the saints will have perfect, immortal bodies. But this is not the right way to explain why God does not heal every time in this life. Eventual healing of the body by the resurrection is not what sick people are asking for in their prayers to be healed. They already know they will not be sick in their resurrected state.
God has promised to heal us, but has set conditions on such healing — the conditions of faith and allegiance to God, and always the condition of God’s will.
These conditions may seem easy to understand. But when a person becomes ill, these simple concepts can become confused. Usually the confusion is over the matter of faith, although it may be stated in the form of questions such as, “If God loves me, how can he see me suffer and not intervene?” Or, “How can I have faith that God will heal me if I don’t know whether it is his will to do so now?”
To answer these important questions, we must look at the oft-misunderstood but vital connection between faith and healing.
Watching TB Joshua 