1 Thessalonians 5:19-21 “Do not quench the Spirit. (20) Do not despise prophecies. (21) Test all things; hold fast what is good.”
In the above quoted passage of scripture the apostle Paul teaches us to test all spiritual gift manifestations to ensure that we are being exposed to the genuine and not the counterfeit. The gifts of healings however, is the one spiritual gift that Satan and his demons cannot counterfeit. So why is that? The reason is because God is the one who endues His creations with power (Psalm 62:11), and in this current dispensation the only creations of God who have been endued with power are the angels, which would include Satan and his angels. Because mankind has not been endued with any power in this age, they are therefore reliant on accessing one of two power sources that are available in this world. The first source is God and His angels, and the second source is the devil and his angels. And so while the saints have access to God’s power; the sorcerers have access to Satan’s power. The problem that sorcerers encounter in the area of healing however is that while God has endued the devil and his demons with the power to cause sickness and disease (Acts 10:38), He has not endued them with the power to heal. That truth is clearly illustrated to us in the encounter that Pharaoh’s magicians had with Moses. Because they had access to demonic power, Pharaoh’s sorcerers were able to perform some of the same miracles that Moses performed. However, when Moses caused boils to break out on the Egyptians, not only were the sorcerers powerless to heal the boil outbreak, they were also powerless to prevent the boils from infecting their own bodies (Exodus 9:8-11). And so we see that when the gifts of healings is manifested in the church that it is the genuine gift and not a demonic counterfeit.
I will close off this section with an example of this gift operating through my ministry. A number of years ago I was teaching a bible lesson in a morning meeting and after the lesson I invited people who needed healing to come forward for prayer. Among those who came forward for prayer there was a woman who was completely deaf in her left ear. She had been deaf in that ear since she was a little girl due to some incident that had occurred. When I spoke with her I knew in my spirit that she had faith to receive her healing, and so I told her that the moment I laid hands on her that God would heal her. I placed my finger in her ear and prayed for her healing in Jesus name. The moment I did that there was like a small static electric spark that left my finger and went into her ear, and God instantly healed her ear and gave her perfect hearing. She was obviously ecstatic at having been healed, but this incident did not end there. After the Lord healed her I knew in my spirit by revelation of the Holy Spirit, that Satan would try to take her healing from her and so I told her that when she left the meeting that Satan would come and try to steal her healing. In other words I gave her a word of knowledge. I then said that when he did this that all she was to do was to rebuke him in Jesus name and claim her healing, and that her healing would then come back to stay. In other words I gave her a word of wisdom. The following week she stood up in the meeting to testify as to what happened. She said that as she was lying in bed with her husband on the night that she was healed, that she went completely deaf in that ear once again. She said to her husband, not to worry because the preacher had told her this would happen and that all she had to do was rebuke Satan for trying to steal her hearing in Jesus name, and that her hearing would return. She promptly did that, and instantly her healing returned and she has been healed in that ear ever since. And so, we see that in ministry very often the gifts of the Spirit operate together. In this case three gifts of the Spirit were made manifest, the gifts of healings (the Holy Spirit healed her ear), the word of knowledge (the Holy Spirit told her what would happen) and the word of wisdom (the Holy Spirit told her what to do in the situation).
Michael E.B. Maher
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