Objection: Jesus Didn’t Heal Everyone in His Earthly Ministry; He Left Many Sick at the Pool of Bethesda

Yes, Jesus did leave the rest of the sick people there.  The man who was healed was healed by a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, not by his own faith.  The man argued a good case for staying sick, in fact!

Why didn’t Jesus heal all the other sick people at this infirmary?  The gifts of the Spirit were not in manifestation to do so.  Remember that Jesus ministered as a Man anointed by the Holy Spirit, not as God.  He could not heal the others unless the Holy Spirit moved in a special way.

This does not prove that God did not want to heal the others.  No one else at the pool asked for healing!  No one else believed that Jesus would heal him.  Almost all the people who got healed in Jesus’ ministry heard about Him, believed in Him, and came to Him or were brought to Him to receive their healing.  Jesus did not go around looking for people to heal.  The case in John 5 is an exception.

This is why you can’t just go through a hospital and raise up every person in succession.  Every person there could be healed if he heard God’s Word and believed it.  But a servant is not above his master, and you will not do what Jesus Himself could not do.

Rather than making a big deal about the fact that there were people at this pool who did not get healed, we should make a big deal about the fact that multitudes did get healed when they came to Jesus for healing!  Jesus turned no one away who came to be healed.

Jesus could not do miracles at Nazareth, either (Mark 6:1-6), and it is safe to say that there must have been those who needed miracles.  Jesus had to leave them without healing them because of their unbelief.  Jesus did not heal the religious leaders when the power of the Lord was present to heal them, either (Luke 5:17-26).  So, no, Jesus did not heal everyone.  He did heal everyone who came to Him in faith.  It is the same today.  Jesus heals all who come to Him in faith, but many today are not healed because they do not come to Him in faith.  This does not prove that God and Jesus do not want everyone well any more than failure by some to receive the new birth proves that God and Jesus do not want everyone to get saved!

A variant of this objection simply states that sometimes Jesus healed “all” and sometimes He did not heal “all” but only healed “many.”  I thought you would enjoy the following statistics from the gospels.  The incident counts are open to interpretation, but you will get the general idea.  Multiple citations of the same incident are counted as separate incidents.

Times Jesus healed ALL who came to him = 16

Times Jesus healed MANY but we know from the context that it was ALL = 1

Times Jesus healed FEW or NONE present = 4

Times Jesus healed an individual who was present = 45

Times Jesus healed an individual who was not present = 3

Unclear how many healed = 1

We know that in the cases where few or none were healed, no one came to Jesus in faith.  All who came in faith were healed.

As you can see, the claim that “many” were healed instead of “all” on any kind of regular basis does not stand up to scrutiny.  It sounds good until you count the incidents for yourself.  Jesus went about healing all who were oppressed by the devil (Acts 10:38), so Peter said that all, not many or some, was the rule.  Peter should have known – he spent 3 years walking with Jesus in person!