A few days ago, I say a program on TV. It said it was a Christian program, but the guy was calling people up on stage, and telling them if they had enough faith they could be healed of anything; cancer, paralysis, and could even be given lots of money. Is this Biblical?

Glad you asked. I had the same question a few years back. One of my friends had taken me to a Benny Hinn healing crusade under the auspices that it was a worship service. What I observed that night was Mr. Hinn on stage calling people out of the crowd who had a variety of different disabilities/illnesses/or financial trials. He would ask them if they had faith that God would take it from them and, when the person said yes, he would place his hand on their forehead and they would fall backwards into the arms of the “catchers” stationed on all corners of the stage. At that point, Mr. Hinn said their faith had healed them.

After some researched I learned that this type of belief is called the Word of Faith Movement, and people like Mr. Hinn are called faith healers. The motto of the Word of Faith Movement is “name it and claim it.” In other words, if you state what the problem is, and claim that God has taken it away from you, it will be done.

Let's take a closer look at some of this. First, Isaiah 53:5 says “By his stripes we are healed.” This is one of the prime verses used by followers of the Word of Faith movement to justify their beliefs. But what does the verse mean? The stripes being referred to are the lashes across Jesus' back he received with a whip prior to his crucifixion. So the passage is saying that it is through Christ's suffering that we find healing. This is true, but what type of healing? Word of Faith followers say that it's healing of all kinds: physical, monetary, etc. However, most renowned Bible scholars, such as Gordon D. Fee, agree that the healing described is primarily spiritual and the passage is simply stating a fundamental Christian belief; that Christ's sacrifice was the atonement for our sins and that it is because of his suffering that we are saved.

The second point, and honestly the one which really helped me to understand why this line of thinking was so against Scripture is a specific phrase used by people in the Word of Faith movement. This phrase is a common conclusion to Christian prayer: “in Jesus' name.” We say this so often in our Christian lives, but do we really know what it means? What does it mean when we pray “in Jesus' name?” Simply put, saying something in someone else's name is attributing what you are saying to that person; saying that that person would touch and agree with what you are saying. It's essentially signing someone else's name. Now, as Christians, God allows us to do and say things in His name that He has already put His blessings on: things that we know from Scripture He allows, provides, and promises. When we pray something in Jesus' name, we are saying that we know God has promised to hear out prayer. However, when we say something is healed in Jesus' name, we are claiming that God has already said these things are healed. If God has spoken to us, and told us these things to be true, then it's perfectly fine to say “I feel like God is saying this will be healed,” but to say that the illnesses of an entire auditorium are healed, strictly by virtue of someone's faith, in Jesus' name is like a child signing their parents' names on a report card they don't want to show them...it is not right for the child to sign the parents' names because the parent is not being truthfully represented. Therefore, when one claims that all illnesses have been healed in Jesus' name without first having Jesus' blessing on it, He is not being truthfully represented. One is shaming Christ when they claim something in His name that He has not blessed. Actually, that's a good catch phrase to remember: when you name it and claim it, you shame it.