From: gerald <gerald@evestamail.com>

Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 17:21:16

To: WalterMartin@mail.serve.com

Subject: Re:Re: WM: Trials and tribulations 2

Richardleeevange@aol.com wrote:

>Dear Gerald,

>I'm glad that you are weighing in on the old WOF controversy. Much bad exegesis on Isaiah 53:4,5 is responsible for the "Healing Guaranteed in the Atonement" error, and even Pentecostals like myself and Gordon Fee in his "Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospel" documents just how this passage cannot mean this. In fact Matthew 8 says that Isaiah 53:4,5 was fulfilled in Jesus' HEALING MINISTRY, not at the whipping post where he "bore strips on his back." Have you heard of the "whipping post healing theory" before? All WOF'ers teach it, and it is quite erroneous. The word translated "stripes" in KJV can also mean "wounds." Therefore, this has nothing to do with stripes on Jesus' back meant for our physical healing! Both Martin and Hanegraaff have done stellar jobs refuting that teaching, and I can't add to it. Healing I believe is a BENEFIT of Christ's atonement, but not a guarantee. This is extremely flawed Pentecostal exegesis which many Pentecostal scholars had the sense to dispense with.

Gerald:

I started looking at this area some years ago due to the death of a cousin due to cancer. I have read David Harrell's book "All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America", and other books about the healing revivalists. Yes, and doctrine seemed to start with the Pentecostals such as Charles Parham, Aimee Semple McPherson, Kathryn Kuhlman, William Seumour, John G. Lake, William Branham, Oral Roberts, Jack Coe, Gordon Lindsay, John Alexander Dowie, A. A. Allen and others. I believe that Gordon Lindsay was from the AOG and he actually made the statement "It is a very serious offense to deny that divine healing is in the Atonement." This was stated in reference to Jack Coe's early death at the age of 39 due to polio. Gordon Lindsay said jack Coe's death must have been God's will. This is kind of ironic in that Jack Coe said that the day would come when those who consulted physicians would have to take the "mark of the beast" and that men were clearly looking to the wrong source for healing when they consulted doctors. Jack Coe let his wife admit him into the hospital when he became sick. Mr Harrell says the following about Jack Coe in his book:

"In…Alabama he had 103 people in wheelchairs and crutches all in a line. So he goes down through the line—there’s none, not any, that’s ever followed after him—but he would go down the line and pick people up out of the wheelchairs. If they fell, he’d say you didn’t have faith…"(All Things are Possible, pg. 59)

This begs the question that Jack Coe himself died due to lack of faith. I found this history very fascinating, and know that some of the WOF teachers mention the ministry of the healing evangelists as helpful to them. I am not saying that there were not true healings manifested by these evangelists, but the doctrine of healing in the atonement and your faith seems to have been taught by these evangelists.