Christian beliefs about healing for sickness have had a long and winding history.¹ This blog picks up only a fraction of it.

Doctrinal debate in the North American evangelical sphere The MBiC interest in healing in the 1880s was strengthened by the teaching and testimony of the Canadian-born Albert B Simpson, who resigned from his New York City Presbyterian pastorate and went independent in 1881, partly because of his experience of healing in answer to prayer in faith that year. His testimony concludes his book The Gospel Of Healing.² Simpson’s other innovation, or approval of an innovation, was to emphasize that healing was “in the atonement,” a claim that the MBiC accepted and many deny.³ The point seems to be, Simpson and others declared, that Jesus’ atonement for sin included a wider redemption of the whole person, not only from sin, but also from the curses of Genesis 3:16-19. This meant redemption potentially restores the believer, body, soul and spirit, and therefore healing of the body is promised, which we can claim from God. Holiness churches such as the Church of the Nazarene and the Free Methodists certainly teach that God heals in answer to the prayer of faith,⁴ and agree with the EMCC statement since 1993, that “healing cannot be demanded of God.”⁵

Many Pentecostals and charismatics continue confidently promoting that God wants you well (Andrew Wommack’s favourite phrase), based, among other reasons, on Isaiah 53:5 (KJV), “By his stripes we are healed,” which seems to many to have an atonement context (v 4-6). Few want to stress as an unconditional promise, the phrase in James 5 that “the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well” [my emphasis] and if the conditions are met, the sufferer will be healed. It is plain that not every prayer for healing results in a cure. But some do insist that all who ask in faith will be healed, especially among the health and wealth, “Word of Faith” people. This last point has often led to anguish when the ill persons have not “received ‘their’ healing.” Many Christians point out the terrible cruelty healing evangelists cause by suggesting that the one who does not receive healing has some kind of defective faith. They use a “blame the victim” argument to spare themselves.

A Canadian debate. Two evangelical leaders in Toronto promoted divergent teachings on healing in the 1920s. The young Oswald J Smith, later the founder of the Peoples Church in Toronto, wrote The Great Physician when serving with the C&MA, basically supporting Simpson’s view.⁶ O J Smith’s books could be found in many early EMCC church libraries. They are still widely reprinted in Nigeria. Smith’s career with the Alliance began late in 1920 and ended in early 1927. Smith learned about divine healing when the C&MA superintendent for Canada, Alfred W Roffe, invited the healing evangelists, the Bosworth brothers, to Toronto in 1921. Among others, Roffe’s daughter was healed of tuberculosis in a meeting, which allowed a long missionary career in West Africa.⁷ Smith was impressed by the definite healings he observed and the role they played in leading to many conversions (Smith’s priority), at the same time observing weaknesses in the approach, such as offering times that tended to commercialize the gospel, and many going away without being healed. He took Bosworth team members with him to visit sick people in hospitals, and he was surprised they refused to pray for the people they visited.⁸ Smith’s own health was never robust. He learned to take a few hours of rest each day, and needed hospitalization at times. Healing campaigns did not become important for the independently-minded Smith; his work was missions mobilization and evangelism simply. Lindsay Reynolds, historian of the C&MA in Canada, detailed the relationship of Smith to the loosely organized Alliance of that time.¹⁰

The other leader was Baptist Rowland V Bingham, founder of the Sudan Interior Mission and the Canadian Keswick Conference. The SIM in Nigeria was sometimes called a big brother by United Missionary Society¹¹ missionaries, but perhaps not in this one area. SIM missions books were also often in church libraries. Bingham was converted under the Salvation Army, and was helped to assurance of salvation by John Salmon, the first Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor in Toronto. After 1893, Bingham was pastor of a Baptist Church, reflecting his changing theological views.

Bingham began his missionary career in Nigeria. He and his companions avoided the use of medicines, instead choosing to trust only God for healing. The deaths of his companions and bouts of malaria in 1893 and 1899 suggested he revise his views, which became a book, The Bible and the Body: or, Healing in the Scriptures.¹² Bingham did not testify to his “non-healing;” that can be inferred from his history of SIM, Seven Sevens of Years and a Jubilee.¹³ In a book about the Christian poet Annie Johnson Flint he also approved her conclusion that God uses chronic illness (40 years’ arthritis in her case) to accomplish his purposes.¹⁴ He was critical of the Alliance doctrine of divine healing, and preached against the Bosworths’ version.¹⁵ Bingham certainly trusted God for many things including mission personnel and finances. His view rejecting healing in the atonement would not encourage the MBiC to go along with everything Bingham believed.

Teachings and practices of the early EMCC As early as 1888, the Discipline of the MBiC recorded confidence that God would heal as promised in scriptures such as James 5:13-16, coupled with the quotation of Isaiah 53:3-5 in Matthew 8:16-17. The first statement was simple: “We believe that it is the will of God to heal the sick, who by implicit confidence and faith look to Him and trust in His power.”¹⁶ That General Conference recommended every pastor preach on divine healing once a year, which is pretty minimal.¹⁷ By 1892, the Conference added the further belief that all sicknesses are related to sin,¹⁸ and Christ’s work to atone for sin was taken to provide the believer with a promise of healing.

MBiC members accepted this teaching in their personal lives. The Gospel Banner contained many testimonies of healing. Letitia Holmes wrote the church magazine thanking God for healing after Sam Goudie, MBiC pastor from Port Elgin, anointed her on a preaching tour in June 1891.¹⁹ Goudie himself testified that God healed him in answer to anointing and prayer at the Markham camp meeting in 1898.²⁰ And he testified of healing toward the end of his life in 1949, after what appears to be a stroke.²¹ In the first testimony, he specifically referred to the Four-fold Gospel slogan of A B Simpson, urging his fellow pastors to teach the doctrine faithfully, and to expect healing as well.

Prayer for the sick, prayer accompanied with anointing with oil, and healings, were regular parts of the United Missionary Church’s experience.²² The Missionary Church Association also practiced prayer for divine healing. Joseph E Ramseyer, President of the MCA from 1900 to 1944,²³ prayed for seekers’ healing regularly in his evangelistic campaigns over 40 years.²⁴ The Reflections issue of 2016-2017 published 18 stories of healings gathered from the Missionary Church (including MCA and UMC sides) from 1881 to the time of the issue. In that same issue, Timothy Erdel added stories of several healings in his family.²⁵

The stories continue. Willis Hunking, an Ontario pastor and UMS missionary to Nigeria reported a case of a demon cast out on the mission field.²⁶ Alf Rees (1925-2002), former UMS missionary to India, pastor of Banfield Memorial Church, Toronto, and an evangelist with Barry Moore, exercised a combination of gifts of knowledge and healing in many events.²⁷ Rees did this despite that, growing up, he probably lost his father because of a pastor’s defective “faith healing” teaching that dependence on God for healing required abandoning medicines and doctor’s care.²⁸ Pastor Glenn Hart, then at the Hespeler Missionary Church, testified in 1990 to healing from a sudden condition of hearing loss, after prayer, anointing and deliverance.²⁹ The worship leader at Hart’s church, also testified to the healing of his daughter’s growing deafness in January 1992.³⁰ The summer of 1978, I was an assistant to Ted Montgomery, pastor of the two-church field on Manitoulin Island. He told me of the case of a man he prayed for, who, though an unbeliever, was healed of lameness. I am not sure what you make of this: but the man returned to his lame condition when he refused to follow Jesus. (Compare this to John 5:14, “Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”)

This article cannot end without a testimony of my own. Nearly a million die from malaria every year, mostly in Africa, especially children. When our daughter of two was sick with malaria in 2005, she did not respond to the common treatment available. She grew worse, lost weight and lost her gains in speaking. My wife took her to the Federal hospital in Gusau, Zamfara State, Nigeria, where my wife’s sister was a nurse. We did not have phones available in our town, so as I taught my College classes day by day and cared for our two boys, as each day passed and no news came, my heart sank. I was “preparing” myself for the worst (how can you, really?) Were we praying? Yes, sir, we were. (With faith? Satan whispers, Enough faith?) Then, many days after my wife had expected to return, she came with our daughter, a diagnosis and a prescription for straight quinine—bitter, tough medicine for a little girl. And she fought! No way was she going to swallow that stuff! But we forced her to take it, and gradually she responded until her life was saved. Our daughter is a lively young woman today, as healthy as they get, the joy of our lives. Was it quinine? Was it God? Yes.

Banner: Alfred William Rees (1925-2002) in 1977, between Carl Reesor (L), and Vergil Stauffer in Didsbury, AB.

1In Canada: James Opp, The Lord for the Body: Religion, Medicine, and Protestant Faith Healing in Canada 1880-1930 (Montreal/ Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2006).

2First edition collected from articles published in an Alliance magazine 1883-1885; my copy is A B Simpson, The Gospel of Healing rev ed (Harrisburg, PA: Christian Publications, 1915).

3By the time of the 1892 MBiC Discipline.

4James B Chapman, A History of the Church of the Nazarene (Kansas City, MO: Nazarene Publishing House, 1926) p 49, quoting the 1923 Nazarene Manual. Identical language was still used in the 1976 Nazarene Manual, p 31. Free Methodist Church of North America: The Book of Discipline 1985 Part 1 (Winona Lake, IN: The Free Methodist Publishing House, 1986) p 56.

5J Fred Parker, “Heal, Healing,” in Richard S Taylor, ed, Beacon Dictionary of Theology (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1983) p 248-249.

6Oswald J Smith, The Great Physician (New York: The Christian and Missionary Alliance, 1927).

7Lindsay Reynolds, Rebirth: The Redevelopment of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada 1919-1983 (Willowdale, ON: The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, 1992) p 64.

8https://ffbosworth.mystrikingly.com/blog/what-oswald-j-smith-discovered-in-the-revival-meetings-of-the-bosworth-brothers

9Lois Neely, Fire in his Bones: The Official Biography of Oswald J Smith (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1982) p 129-130, 204.

10Reynolds, p 59-60, 67-69, 152-153.

11The mission of the MBiC/ UMC 1921-1969.

12Roland V Bingham, The Bible and the Body: or, Healing in the Scriptures 3^rd ed, Introduction by W H Griffith Thomas (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1939, [1^st ed 1921]).

13Roland V Bingham, Seven Sevens of Years and a Jubilee (Toronto: Evangelical Publishers, 1943) p 22-25, 27-29, 32-33.

14http://www.homemakerscorner.com/ajf-annie.htm

15Reynolds, p 64.

16Everek R Storms, History of the United Missionary Church (Elkhart, IN: Bethel Publishing, 1958) p 226.

17Jasper A Huffman, History of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church (New Carlisle, OH: Bethel Publishing, 1920) p 165, the only statement about divine healing in the book.

18Simpson, p 30-31.

19Letitia Ann Holmes, “Letter from Pine Tree, Ont., of June 4th,” Gospel Banner (July 1 1892) p 10, and “Letter,” Gospel Banner (November 19 1895) p 11.

20Sam Goudie, “Letter,” Gospel Banner (January 17 1899) p 15.

21Sam Goudie, “Testimonies,” Gospel Banner (April 14 1949) p 6.

22Storms, p 226-227.

23Mostly organized by former members of the Defenseless Mennonite Church, helped by German-American staff of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in 1898.

24Paul Erdel, “Great Preachers of the Missionary Church,” Reflections Vol 9: 1 & 2 (Spring and Fall 2007) p 5.

25Timothy Paul Erdel, “Divine Disclosures and Supernatural Signs,” Reflections Vol 18-19 (2016-2017) p 29-43.

26Willis Hunking, “A Miracle of Deliverance: A Demon Cast Out,” Missionary Banner (September 1965) p 3.

27Wayne R Shirton, Tried, Tested, Triumphant: The Eventful Life of Alf Rees (Np: For the Author, 1997) p 166-167.

28Shirton, p 14-15.

29Judith Gooding, “Signs and Wonders,” Communiqué (September/ October 1990) p [4].

30Andrew LeGrow, “Signs and Wonders,” Communiqué (January/ February 1992) p 5.