Healing by Spoken Words
Laying hands on sick people for their recovery is a biblical standard, but it is not always possible or prudent. The person might be in another country and your only chance to minister healing could be on the phone. You may be a man next to a sick woman at a department store, and laying hands on her might not seem like such a great idea if it turns out that she has a jealous husband in the next aisle. Or the person may have had a past trauma that makes him not want anyone touching him, especially not a stranger. It’s good to know that it’s possible to minister healing by speaking words with no physical contact. This discussion will show the Bible precedent for it.
In Matthew 8:5-13, Jesus spoke words and the centurion’s servant was healed. (Luke’s account in Luke 7:2-10 does not mention this aspect of things.)
In Matthew 9:2-8, Mark 2:2-12 and Luke 5:17-26, a paralytic was healed when Jesus spoke words.
In Matthew 12:10-13, Mark 3:1-5 and Luke 6:6-10, a man with a withered hand was healed when Jesus spoke words.
In Luke 17:12-19, Jesus told ten lepers to go show themselves to the priests without touching them. They were healed as they went.
In John 4:46-53, Jesus spoke words and the nobleman’s son was healed.
In John 5:2-19, Jesus told a crippled man to get up and walk without touching him.
In John 11:1-44, Jesus commanded Lazarus to rise from the dead without touching him.
In Acts 9:32-35, Peter told Aeneas, who had bedridden eight years, that Jesus the Christ healed him. He got up without Peter touching him.
In Acts 9:36-42, Peter commanded Tabitha (Dorcas) to rise from the dead. He did touch her, but only after she rose from the dead in response to his words.
In Acts 14:7-10, Paul told a man who had never walked to get up without touching him. The man was healed, though in this case, we know that the recipient of the healing had faith to be healed.
In an interesting flip-side to this, Paul pronounced the judgment of temporary blindness on Bar-Jesus without touching him, and Bar-Jesus lost his sight for a season (Acts 13:6-12)!
So we have ample Bible proof that healing can be ministered by spoken words, not just by laying on of hands.
I will use as an illustration four notable cancer healings by mere spoken words.
In the first case, my wife’s uncle had stage 4 brain cancer and was given up to die. The X-rays showed that his head was full of cancer. My wife, a visiting evangelist and I spoke to that cancer and commanded it to die in the name of Jesus. This was done over the phone while we were in Maine and the uncle was in Newfoundland. He went around telling everyone that Jesus had healed him – with no medical proof! But he went for X-rays again that next week and they couldn’t find a trace of cancer in him! As I write this many years later, he’s still alive and cancer-free.
In the second case, a woman who had never been to church in her life visited a service where I was the guest speaker. The doctors had tried chemo, radiation and surgery to no avail and they informed her that she would be dead within weeks. I got her permission to speak to the cancer that was in her body. I commanded it to die in the name of Jesus. It did and the doctors ended up giving her a clean bill of health – there was no trace of that cancer left!
In the third case, the doctors told my father that cancer had spread too far in his body for them to get it all, and at best they could give him a few more years before it killed him. He was given a PSA reading in the 70’s. At this writing, the medical community assumes that any reading above 4 warrants further investigation and anything above 10 indicates likely prostate cancer, so his case was REALLY bad. Our church, meeting in our living room at the time for a mid-week service, commanded the cancer to die in the name of Jesus. They sent him in for surgery to cut out part of it, knocked him out, and scanned him one more time. To their shock there was nothing there to cut out. They were sure someone had switched MRI’s and that they had the wrong person on that operating table. But they were able to confirm that it was the same person who used to have a tumor there. They woke him up and sent him home without cutting him! But they still didn’t believe he was completely healed and they wouldn’t re-test his PSA level. Finally, he got someone else to do it and it was zero! The doctors told him that had to be a lab error where they switched his blood with someone else’s. In fact, some unrelated readings that were bad were now good as well. So they insisted on doing another PSA test themselves. It also came back zero!
In the fourth case, our church cursed stomach cancer in someone in another state. When they had the person on the operating table and stuffed a scope into the person’s stomach, there was no trace of cancer!
Death and life are in the power of our tongues (Proverbs 18:21), and the “death” side of it is useful when you need to command cancer or other sicknesses to die. Jesus gives us the authority to do that!