Am I Sick Because I Touched God’s Anointed?
The issue of “touching God’s anointed” is an interesting one from a New Testament perspective. We are ALL anointed under the New Covenant (1 John 2:27, 2 Corinthians 1:21 and elsewhere), so if you harm ANY other believer, you are touching God’s anointed! Sometimes we think of only prominent ministers as “God’s anointed,” and while they may have specific spectacular anointings that go with their offices, they aren’t the only ones with the anointing. Thinking that only prominent Christian leaders are God’s anointed is yet another example of trying to drag Old Testament theology into the New Covenant.
In fact, the main issue with bringing down a Christian minister undeservedly is not that the person was anointed, but that a work that is benefitting the kingdom of God is being stopped, which will have a negative impact on a lot of people.
It behooves us to look at the original use of the phrase, “Touch not mine anointed” in the Old Testament to discover its context:
1 Chronicles 16:20-22:
And when they went from nation to nation, and from one kingdom to another people;
He suffered no man to do them wrong: yea, he reproved kings for their sakes,
Saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.
Psalm 105:13:
When they went from one nation to another, from one kingdom to another people;
He suffered no man to do them wrong: yea, he reproved kings for their sakes;
Saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.
Even in the OId Testament, “mine anointed” who were not to be “touched” referred to ALL of God’s people, not just prominent leaders!
It is noteworthy that despite all the persecution the apostles and early believers went through, not once did they pronounce doom on anyone for “touching God’s anointed,” while we have seen modern-day examples of ministers warning critics against “touching God’s anointed.” One prominent case at a well-known revival involved pronouncing specific doom in a specific time period on someone who was criticizing the revival as unbiblical. The prophesied doom did not materialize within that time period, after which the well-known doom-sayer looked ridiculous and it may have made others not take the revival as seriously after that.
Stephen flowed in the anointing; he did great wonders and signs among the people (Acts 6:8). But when he was dying from being stoned, he asked God to forgive the stoners rather than saying, “Surely you will pay a dear price for this because you have touched God’s anointed!” Isn’t Stephen’s approach godlier?
I am familiar with stories from overseas of people suddenly dying after they tried to hinder the spreading of the gospel by doing things like hurling live cobras into crowds, hurling live grenades onto a platform and slicing up a gospel tent with machetes. The issue is not as much that they were touching God’s anointed as that they were trying to keep people from eternal life. God wasn’t good with that.
You will find no shortage of smear sites on the internet where horrible personal attacks are made against certain strong Word-preaching ministries. But when have you heard of immediate judgment falling on those authors? God is merciful! A certain well-known critic of healing ministries ended up seriously ill, then prematurely dead, after publicly calling certain legitimate healing ministers heretics, but he did so for years before he died. We are a lot quicker to “lower the boom” on someone than God is. We can’t even prove cause and effect conclusively in his case, as some healing ministers have also died before they should have.
There is no shortage of unbelief sites that criticize the teaching of faith and healing, but criticizing teaching without resorting to personal attacks is never “touching God’s anointed” or even overtly sinful if the criticizer is sincere and doesn’t deliberately misquote those whom he criticizes to make them look bad. This is a good thing, because this book is full of criticisms of positions published by ministers, some of them well-known. Disagreeing with a position and personally attacking someone are two different things. My disagreements are doctrinal and not personal.
The prophet, priest and king all had special and distinct anointings in the Old Covenant, and David was afraid to harm Saul for fear of touching someone God had anointed. He was concerned about being judged for it. He commanded execution for the Amalekite who said later that he had killed Saul. David was perhaps overboard in his thinking, but he definitely had a respect for the anointing. He probably didn’t think well of Saul, but he respected his God-given office and anointing, despite the fact that Saul actually didn’t have either anymore! God had already rejected him as being king long before that:
1 Samuel 15:23:
For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.
1 Samuel 15:26:
And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee: for thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD hath rejected thee from being king over Israel.
In the next chapter, Samuel anointed David as king. So the interesting thing about this is that DAVID, not SAUL, was actually the Lord’s anointed at that point! Yet David felt such a reverence for the anointing that he didn’t want to harm the man who HAD BEEN anointed.
God is merciful, but trying to destroy a genuine work of God opens you up to all kinds of trouble. If you sow destruction, you will reap it. This has to do with principles other than “touching God’s anointed.” There is the little-understood principle in 1 Corinthians 3:17 that if you try to destroy a church, God will destroy you. I don’t consider it a stretch to assume that if you try to bring down a Christian ministry other than a church, you can also open yourself up to big trouble. However, there is a big difference between destroying a Christian ministry and merely criticizing it publicly or exposing something that is corrupt or arguing against its theological positions. I believe that the main reason some faith-attackers don’t suffer horrible judgments is they are sincere, albeit sincerely wrong. They really think they are helping the Body of Christ by “exposing” alleged “lies” of faith preachers.
If we follow the Bible pattern, we will ask God for mercy for the attackers and pray that their eyes will be opened, as opposed to, “May their ministries close their doors in short order so that these instruments of Satan stop attacking us!”
Some cult-like churches and ministries try to instill fear into their followers using a “touch not God’s anointed” argument as a way to avoid having their shortcomings exposed. For example, say that you and at least one other person had proof that a leader is embezzling church money. (No charge against an elder is to be entertained unless there are two or three witnesses – 1 Timothy 5:19. This protects leaders against lone “cheap shot artists,” which is good because we’ve been in a couple situations where we were falsely accused by only one person of serious sin.) They may preach regularly about touching God’s anointed to deter anyone from being a whistleblower that could bring them down. So the people enable them to continue stealing God’s money out of fear of consequences if they say anything.
Far from warning Timothy not to “touch God’s anointed” if an elder sins, Paul said:
1 Timothy 5:19-20:
Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses.
Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear.
Let me make clear that I am talking about something blatant like taking “benevolence” money to pay for family outings or video games for the pastor’s family, not a difference of opinion over some gray area like whether the pastor should be reimbursed for meals over a certain amount at a certain conference.
In blatant cases, you can choose to leave quietly and say nothing or you can expose the leader’s actions. In this case, exposing theft is not touching God’s anointed; it is blowing the whistle on a thief, whether he has signs and wonders following him or not. You would not bring judgment on yourself for “touching God’s anointed.” If no one says anything, the thievery will almost certainly continue. And lest you think this is an extreme outlying case, the last statistic I saw said that around 10% of large churches have had money embezzled, though sometimes it is by the treasurer (especially if he is related to the senior pastor – a really bad idea) or one of the leaders other than the senior pastor. (This is of grave concern given that 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 states that no embezzler will inherit the kingdom of God!)
There are even sadder situations where evil leaders have exploited people in horrible ways, then tried to put them on a fear trip that they will suffer at God’s hands if they say anything to anyone because they would be “touching God’s anointed.” There is nothing wrong with exposing such leaders. Saying nothing is actually worse because it only enables them to exploit others with impunity. God will not punish you for “touching God’s anointed” in such a case.
I had someone call for prayer so that a “priest” (whom I knew personally) who had exploited a minor (and admitted it) would not go to jail. My response was that I would pray that he would be locked up in prison, the sooner the better, before he did anything to any other child. Such people’s sins need to be exposed, not whitewashed, and the guilty need to be imprisoned, not sent somewhere else where no one is aware of their track records, as sometimes has happened. Exposing sinful leaders is not “touching God’s anointed,” it is protecting God’s church. Of course, I got a lecture about how we need to forgive people and how God forgave him, and so on. My take was that he needed to be put away before he did the next thing he’d have to be forgiven for! Yes, we want such people to see the light and repent, but God’s forgiveness through Jesus does not mean that such people shouldn’t be forcibly kept away from children, especially because many such people never actually reform. I’ve encountered two who were good at lying about reformation who did not actually reform. Unfortunately, such people may need special churches/ministries for people in their position rather than being able to mingle at large with a typical congregation.
However, if you are accusing a leader, you’d better be sure of your facts. I’ve seen people interpret actions or even facts wrongly and present false accusations. That will lead to trouble for the accuser. A long time ago, a famous minister exposed a second minister for a certain sin based on what the second one considered “evidence.” The first minister went public and destroyed the second minister’s ministry. Unfortunately, there was nothing actually going on and the second minister did not have the alleged sin problem. It was too late; the story had made the rounds and the second minister’s ministry never recovered. The first minister’s ministry went down the toilet as well due to the law of sowing and reaping, so two successful ministries ended up in ruins over one false accusation based on a misinterpretation of an actual minor fact. You don’t want to get involved with anything like that!
We can see that “touching” the holy things of God can have severe consequences in 1 Corinthians 11:27-32. In this case, some Corinthians partook of the Lord’s Supper frivolously. Many were sick and many were already dead because of it. This serves as a warning to the rest of us not to mess with holy things, even under the New Covenant. Ananias and Sapphira died for lying to the church. A woman and her co-adulterers in Revelation 2:20-23 were going to be sickened and her children killed because of how she was messing with God’s church. As mentioned before, trying to destroy a church can result in your own destruction. Herod was killed for accepting worship from men (Acts 12:21-23). Some things you just don’t mess with.
However, these New Testament cases did not have to do with someone bad-mouthing a ministry gift, which is the usual circumstance in which someone brings up “touching God’s anointed.” There was a case where Paul said that people lying about him deserved their condemnation, but he did not explicitly pray doom over them:
Romans 3:8:
And why not say, “Let us do evil that good may come”?—as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just.
So it appears they DID get into trouble by lying about Paul. But there is still a difference between lying about someone and stating that you think their doctrine is “of the devil.” Lying will lead you into hot water, but I’ve never seen anyone struck down suddenly for just opining, “Getting drunk in the Spirit is of the devil. Falling over in a prayer line is of the devil.” One particular popular website of this persuasion still operates without God cutting it off in judgment. This site actually has some good things to say on some other topics, but divine healing is decidedly not its long suit.
Another way to “defile” the church that could get you handed over to Satan, and thus sick, is found in this passage:
1 Timothy 1:19-20:
Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck:
Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.
But even if you shipwreck your faith and violate your conscience as these men did, notice that Paul did not pray for them to die; he “handed them over to Satan.” In the other case of handing someone over to Satan, we see a redemptive purpose (see Sickness as Chastening and Judgment in the New Testament) – the immoral man at Corinth was handed over to Satan so that he would be saved, not destroyed. This was a warning shot in love from God and the church, not angry judgment. It was necessary to protect the church from corruption. And the redemptive purpose was that Hymenaeus and Alexander learn not to blaspheme, not that they die the way they were. This again was not angry judgment, but God resorting to extremes to bring these men around, while still protecting His church if they would not repent.
Even in these cases, God did not immediately strike these men dead on the spot – that would have put them beyond a place of redemption in this life.
This is consistent with 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, where the threat was corruption for the offender, not outright death. On the surface it looks like “God will destroy him” means that the person will drop dead, but the actual Greek word for “destroy” in that passage is only translated defile, corrupt or corrupted in the other places in the New Testament where it appears. Interestingly, the place where it is translated defile is in that that same passage! So Paul’s warning was that if you corrupt (defile) the church, God will corrupt (defile) you.
We get no elaboration on exactly what this means, but you can be sure that you would not want to be on the receiving end of it. At first, “defile” could seem to mean that you try to introduce harmful doctrine into the church. So let’s see if this makes sense: “If you bring harmful doctrine into the church, God will bring harmful doctrine into you.” No, that’s ridiculous – if you bring harmful doctrine into the church, it must have been in you already! Thus, the corruption must be interpreted in a more general sense. If you disrupt the well-being of a church, God will disrupt your well-being.
And notice that Paul didn’t say that God would “allow Satan to corrupt you” – He said that HE would do the corrupting. (I probably stepped on some “God is lovey-dovey all the time” toes with that.)
After all this, what about the question at hand – are you sick because you touched God’s anointed? That wouldn’t be the main issue, but it is possible that you are sick because you did things to harm a church or you openly disrespected the Lord’s Supper or by extension, openly disrespected the holy things of God. Of course, since the church is full of “God’s anointed” (as we’ve proved), harming a church is “touching God’s anointed.” But understand that this is about hurting everyone, not just coming against one particular “anointed” preacher.
The idea that ties together both of these “corruption” cases is messing with what is holy. We can see that is obviously the case with the Lord’s Supper, but it is also explicitly stated in the case of the church – “him shall God destroy [corrupt], for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.” (“Ye” is plural in the Greek, so the “temple” here is the church, not an individual in the church. Your body IS the temple of the Holy Spirit, as proved by other verses, but that is not what Paul is talking about here.)
This is somewhat similar to the warning in Galatians 6:8 that if a man sows to the flesh, he will reap from the flesh corruption. In fact, the Greek word for corruption there is phthora, which is related to the word translated destroy (phtheiro) in 1 Corinthians 3:17.
The good news is, if you’ve been doing things that hurt a church or you are disrespecting the Lord’s Supper, you can repent right now and be healed!