Healing and the Last Days
Daniel prophesied that knowledge would be increased in the last days (Daniel 12:4). If there is more knowledge, there should be more knowledge of healing, and the number of healings should increase.
However, there is considerable debate about whether there will be a special “last-days outpouring” just before Jesus returns. This has been the subject of countless prophecies, which often indicate that the outpouring will originate from the geographical location where each prophecy happened to be given.
For starters, we need to realize that the Bible is clear that no “end-time outpouring” will sweep most of the people on the earth into the Kingdom. If that were the case, it would negate Jesus’ words, which of course is impossible. Jesus said that there would be few who find the straight way that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14) and many who find the wide way that leads to destruction.
Another common thought is that we will take over every aspect of society (sometimes referred to as the “seven mountains of culture”) so that when Jesus returns, the planet will be conquered for Him. But this flies in the face of what Scripture says about people in the world (not the church!) getting worse and worse (2 Timothy 3:13). A “move” that caused most people to get saved would negate that prediction as well. The Bible predicts “perilous times” as opposed to “glorious times” (2 Timothy 3:1).
On the other hand, Jesus is not returning for a defeated church because He said that the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18). Being overcomers still doesn’t mean that we will take over the earth before Jesus comes back. If we did, the Antichrist could never take power because he’d never be able to get power away from us.
Will There Be a “Latter Rain” Outpouring of Miracles?
The “end-time revival” is often referred to as the “latter rain.” The idea that there will be a strong final outpouring of the Spirit is tied to some verses that include the latter rain. These three are the most commonly cited:
James 5:7:
Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
The question above is whether this is simply talking about the Lord being patient like a farmer because He doesn’t want any to perish (2 Peter 3:9) or if the latter rain represents an outpouring of the Spirit similar to Pentecost (though generally taught to be even greater).
Zechariah 10:1:
Ask ye of the LORD rain in the time of the latter rain; so the LORD shall make bright clouds, and give them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field.
This verse is generally used in conjunction with “praying for the latter rain” where the “latter rain” is considered to be the last-days outpouring.
Joel 2:23:
Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God: for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month.
The important questions are whether the verse above and the verses below refer to literal or spiritual rain and whether they apply to the last-day Church. It sounds like a great prophecy of last-day spiritual rain and spiritual harvest – until we get to the latter part of Joel’s prophecy that immediately follows this verse. Then we realize that we have two major problems with the “last-days outpouring” interpretation.
Joel 2:24-29:
And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine and oil.
And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.
And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed.
And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the LORD your God, and none else: and my people shall never be ashamed.
And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:
And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.
The trouble starts 3 verses up, where it becomes obvious that this prophecy was directed toward Israel. But until the day comes when all Israel will be saved (Romans 11:26), the outpouring of the Spirit will be more evident upon the Gentiles than upon Israel. So this calls things into question. Worse trouble follows in the next verse, when it becomes obvious that Joel’s prophecies will all be fulfilled before the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 when God poured out His Holy Spirit. He said “it shall come to pass afterward, meaning that the Acts 2 outpouring would come AFTER the fulfillment of Joel 2:23 and the verses that followed it! This makes it impossible for Joel to be talking about a latter rain that would come earlier than the early rain! If it came earlier, IT would be the early rain and the Day of Pentecost would be the latter rain!
There are other references to “latter rain” in the Old Testament, but all of them are quite clearly talking about literal water as opposed to manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Here they are so that you can see this for yourself:
Deuteronomy 11:14:
That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil.
Job 29:23:
And they waited for me as for the rain; and they opened their mouth wide as for the latter rain.
Proverbs 16:15:
In the light of the king's countenance is life; and his favour is as a cloud of the latter rain.
Jeremiah 3:3:
Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain; and thou hadst a whore's forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed.
But now the problem is that we really don’t have a conclusive “latter rain equals Spirit outpouring” verse. And it gets worse the more you think about it, as we’ll see.
What Would Be Poured Out?
If the “early rain” was the Holy Spirit outpouring in Acts 2, this leaves us with an issue regarding the “latter rain.” The Holy Spirit has been GIVEN already and He has never been retracted. So what exactly is God going to pour out IN ADDITION TO the Holy Spirit that produces more power than the Holy Spirit, who is still here? Jesus said that we would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon us (Acts 1:8), and the Holy Spirit has come. So we already HAVE power. We don’t lack the POWER to do miracles today, so we don’t need any additional outpouring to get that power. We need to start USING the power that we already have rather than looking for more of it somewhere and praying for God to send more power than the Holy Spirit within us has!
What exactly would have to be poured out for us to do “end-time” miracles when we have the SAME Holy Spirit who worked miracles at the beginning of the Church Age?
Nothing New Under the Sun
I still remember the first time I preached a message and people fell out “drunk in the Holy Spirit” – and got up healed. I was sure that I was “toast” in that church and that the “old-time Pentecostal” pastor of that church would never want anything to do with me again after that wild service. To my surprise, he started singing songs he had sung decades earlier about getting drunk in the Holy Spirit! He said, “We used to see this happen all the time when I was young, and I’ve always wondered what ever happened to it.” He was referring to the 1930’s and 1940’s!
Consider the following. In the 1950’s, there was a great healing revival. It was no more God’s will to heal then as it is now or was earlier, but there were more manifestations of spiritual gifts along those lines. But there had been moves of healing off and on for centuries, as church history books can attest. In the 1970’s, there was a teaching revival where faith was emphasized and taught more than before. Those faith concepts were true all along, and some “faith” teaching had actually been around since the earlier 1900’s. In the 1940’s, meetings where people got “drunk in the Spirit” were fairly common. This almost disappeared for a while, only to come back in the 1990’s. (It wasn’t a new phenomenon when it re-emerged then, though younger Christians probably thought that it was some end-time phenomenon that had never been seen before.) In earlier centuries, people shaking and being “slain in the Spirit” was a common occurrence when evangelists preached to the masses. In fact, a secular historian stated that people in the early 1800’s had called this phenomenon by a medical name – “the jerks,” noting that often people who came to the meetings to disprove or criticize “the jerks” would be the first people overcome by them! People thought that these manifestations were something new when they came back in our day.
There have been different “moves of God” at different times. But we did not have a “healing dispensation” or a “faith dispensation” in which healing and faith worked when they didn’t work before. They were just different things that the Holy Spirit was emphasizing at the time. There are different “flows” of the Spirit within the same Church Age dispensation.
Some “new” move of God will probably surface that has been seen in prior generations. Unfortunately, kooky moves of the devil and the flesh have also run in generational cycles, with “new revelations” like this-life immortality, apostles taking “apostolic authority” over churches they didn’t start, trying to engage high-altitude principalities and powers in “spiritual warfare,” teaching that ALL are saved, and Christians constantly trying to cast demons out of each other. Satan just “rebrands” these things with different names and passes them off as “new revelations” when they are nothing more than recycled extremism from previous generations who were duped by them.
Dispensing with Dispensationalism
Spirit-filled Christians often chide denominational people for believing in church-age dispensationalism, that is, that there was an “early church age” in which the power of the Holy Spirit flowed freely, followed by a “later church age” when everything is duller and less powerful. Yet they walk into exactly the same trap with Latter Rain dispensationalism, which teaches that there was an “early church age” in which the power of the Holy Spirit flowed freely, following by a “middle church age” when everything was duller and less powerful, to be followed by a “latter church age” in which the power of the Holy Spirit will flow freely again in an even greater measure than in the “early church age.”
Scripture never divides the Church Age. There is only ONE Church Age, and it is the age of the Holy Spirit. There are not 3 church ages – the age of the Holy Spirit, the age of no Holy Spirit, and the age of even more power than the age of the Holy Spirit (however that’s supposed to work).
Latter Rain Problems
There was a “Latter Rain” movement in the 1900’s that got very weird and followed some strange doctrines. However, it is possible to believe in a “latter rain” revival without going into those excesses. So you should not assume that someone who believes in a “latter rain” revival has to be kooky like some of those people were. (There is no reason to detail the issues; they wouldn’t be edifying. Suffice it to say that they caused many Spirit-filled Christians to be looked down upon by others who knew better than to get into some of the weird things that the Latter Rain people got into.)
So what could be the harm of expecting a mighty “latter rain” move, and why should I even try to rain on that parade? To me, the biggest harm is the attitude that we need to “wait on God” for an earth-shaking revival or some kind of increase in power. I’m not into praying for revival or waiting for revival; I’m into DOING revival. If we think that we don’t have the resources to do revival NOW, we won’t do it. If we have the mindset that we don’t have to wait, but we can go do the works of Jesus NOW, we’ll go out and do the works of Jesus NOW, which is what I’d rather see everyone do. Then we can see what people will think of as a “move of God” or a “revival.”
“Yes,” you may say, “but there are definitely outpourings where God does things that only God can do.” I agree. But God’s pattern is to work with us and confirm His Word when we GO and preach it. If we will do what we can do, God will do what only God can do. But if we sit around waiting for a move of God, that move will never come. A move of God follows a move of man!
Conclusion
While there have been and may continue to be “outpourings” such as the healing revival, the faith movement, the grace movement as well as other well-publicized local-church outpourings that people travel from afar to attend, I can’t see anything in Scripture that points to a stupendous final move that will sweep people into the kingdom, certainly not enough people to make MANY find the right way and leave only a FEW to find the wrong way. Now we can still get along if you disagree with me on this nonessential issue. But at least I’ve given you what I think is a reasonable take on the matter given the teaching of Scripture as a whole. And I DO believe that because of the increase of knowledge, the number of healings will increase for that reason.
There are a number of other considerations and Scripture passages that led me to these same conclusions; I go into these in more detail in my response to the question, Does Scripture Promise a Mighty Worldwide End-Time Revival?.