A: Frankly, I couldn’t answer yes or no. The only thing that I do know is that many men who are in a position to know claim that about twenty percent of those healings are permanent. And I couldn’t give you that on my word of honor; I can only give you that as the word that I have heard from those who are in that same type of work.
I know several of those evangelists who do the same type of healing, and I have even been present where some of it was done, and I’ve actually seen a whole row of men and women with crutches and canes who were badly crippled, within just a few minutes, leave down those canes and crutches and get out and walk. But at the end of the service, they all had to go back to using them to get out of the hall.
In other words, there was an element of what we call suggestive healing: “Now, you’re well, aren’t you? Now you feel better, don’t you? Now, now, don’t you feel better?” And before you know it, you’re saying, “Yes,” and really feeling it too, whereas it’s nothing but a temporary suggestion.
Now, in the case of Oral Roberts, I have no way of knowing how much of that is instantaneous or how much of it is permanent, and I don’t suppose anybody except those around him actually knows. One thing is certain: It isn’t spiritual healing. It is suggestive healing. It is healing by suggestion, and for this reason: It is supposed to be God healing through a man.
Now certainly, you’ve been truth students long enough to know that that can’t happen. Wouldn’t God be a monster if He healed a few people through a man and let all the rest of us suffer? Wouldn’t that be terrible? Wouldn’t it be awful if He healed some of them through a man and not all of the rest of them that come there? No, no, there’s no such thing.
Spiritual healing has nothing to do with God healing the sick. Spiritual healing has to do with knowing the truth that since God is infinite, His universe is already perfect and needs no healing, and that which appears to the practitioner as sin, disease, and death is known as “nothingness.” That’s what causes the healing, not God. Jesus didn’t say a single word about God healing. Jesus merely said, “What did hinder you? Pick up your bed and walk.” Jesus didn’t say anything about God. He said, “Stretch forth thine arm, thine hand.” Jesus said nothing about God. He said, “Open thine eyes.”
It was the truth that Jesus knew that brought about what we call “healing.” And that is the way healing is done today, not by invoking the aid of a God for one individual, while God lets all the rest of us suffer. What a horrible God that would be! But the matter of truth is that in the kingdom of God, no one is suffering, no one is sick, no one is sinful, and no one has ever died—there is no such thing in the kingdom of God.
If you ever have a moment of inspired illumination, you will find that in the entire kingdom of God, there isn’t a sin, a disease, or a death. You’ll know that you’re in the presence of life eternal, and that everybody of the past, present, and future is also there, full and alive and complete and perfect, and among them is you.
It is only when you come down from your illumination and look out through these limited eyes that we see what man has done unto us, what manmade laws and manmade beliefs have done unto us, what the hates and envies and jealousies and spiritual darknesses of the world have done to us. God hasn’t done it; none of this has happened in God’s kingdom! Not a soul in God’s kingdom is lost or ever has been lost. Not a soul in God’s kingdom has ever been sick or ever died. All of this has happened in what we call “our manmade universe.”
As a matter of fact, many of our ills we’re doing to ourselves just by the food we eat and some of the things we drink. Don’t ever forget that—that if you ever ate properly and drank properly, half of the ills of your flesh would drop away even without spiritual help. That would only be on the physical plane, but nevertheless, it’s so. Now, so why blame God for our ills or think that God can heal our stupidity while we go right on poisoning ourselves?
No, give God credit for this: God is love, God is infinite intelligence, and in God’s kingdom, there isn’t a single sign of sin, disease, death, lack, limitation, or war. All of that goes on in man’s violation of law, and that we’re coming to in tonight’s lesson.