Big Healing Book - God Manifests Himself as Healer to Some and as Comforter

Objection: God Manifests Himself as Healer to Some and as Comforter to Others

The premise is that God has a “higher purpose” for letting some people stay sick, so He just “comforts” them as one of the devil’s diseases makes them miserable and kills them. But for His own sovereign reasons, He supposedly is willing to heal others. This is typical of something you might read in a book on the misnamed “Inspirational” book rack at a big-box store where you can often find “God Isn’t Always Willing to Heal” books. (That’s actually where I read this one!)

This objection flunks The SAVED Test. What would you think if I wrote a book claiming that Jesus manifests Himself as Savior to some and frees them from their sins, but He manifests Himself as Comforter to others, making them feel better emotionally while they’re still on their way to an eternity of agony? The idea that God or Jesus would play favorites like that is completely the opposite of what Scripture teaches.

This objection also flunks The SAME Test. To justify this objection, you need to find cases where Jesus comforted the sick rather than healing them in the Bible (as opposed to those aforementioned “Pop Christianity” books). For example, you would expect to see these verses:

Luke 26:23-26:
And Jesus said, “The thief comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy, but I have come to comfort you while he does it.”
And behold, a leper interrupted Him and said, “Please, Lord, I want to be made clean!” And Jesus answered, “I won’t do it. Sometimes God manifests Himself as Healer and sometimes He manifests Himself as Comforter.” And the leper pleaded, “But you healed another leper who came to You just as I did, and the priests testified that You just healed ten other guys of leprosy not long ago!” And Jesus said unto him, “It was My will to manifest Myself as Healer to them, but I’m only willing to manifest Myself as Comforter to you. Stay unclean and be comforted.”
And He turned to His disciples and said, “Behold, I give you power to tread on SOME snakes and SOME scorpions and over SOME of the power of the enemy, when it’s My will. The rest of the time I’ll just comfort the devil’s victims. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy SOME of the works of the devil – when He chooses to manifest Himself as Healer rather than Comforter.”
And truly there were many other cases where Jesus was Comforter instead of Healer, and if we were to compile them all into books, I suppose that all the Pop Christianity bookshelves in all the big-box stores in the world would be unable to contain them all.

Given that NO ONE can produce verses like the above, and that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8), we cannot believe this objection. Thus, the big-box store shopper should find a better book to read, such as the Bible.