You are exactly correct.
It isn't happening anywhere in the body of Christ. We can't ignore the obvious right in front of our faces.
Ok,... but why not?
Whelp,..... it takes a lot of time invested with GOD, and most Christians won't give that to Him. That's about the easiest way to explain it without getting into the specifics of anointing and such.
I have no idea. I have done comprehensive research on the ministry of healing. I have read the books of most of the healing ministries of the 1960s-through to the present day. I did a research paper for my M.Div, entitled, "The Healing Ministry Then and Now" where I examined it through Scripture, church history, and current ministry practices.
There is no doubt according to Scripture that there should be people with the gifts of healing in our churches. Also, James clearly points out that church elders have the ability to lay hands on sick people and the Lord "will raise them up." Also Luke says, "These signs shall follow those who believe...they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." Evidence from the book of Acts supported it, along with the writing of the early church fathers, right through to Augustine (who originally was cessationist, but so many people were getting healed in his church, he changed his view and tried to convince the hierarchy in Rome without much success). It is interesting that John Wesley had 250 documented and validated healings during his ministry, including his horse. One notable healing was through St Benedict, where a worker at the Cassino monastery was crushed by falling masonry and his dead body was brought to him. St Benedict got down and prayed alongside the body, and immediately the man was raised from the dead and went back to work (no accident compensation for him!). I have Guy Bevington's book (a Methodist Holiness evangelist) where he relates a number of amazing conversions, and healing, one example of a man totally healed of tuberculosis, and Bevington himself being healed of a badly burned foot after having boiling water spilled on it. We're not talking about headaches or backaches here. Bevington himself was cessationist as far as healing went, at first, but when he observed that a man's crushed thumb was totally healed, he was convinced that Jesus does heal today and he threw away all his own medications and trusted God for his own healing when he got sick on a couple of occasions. But then in preparation to preaching, he would fast and pray until he got a vision that confirmed God's will. At one stage he got into a hollow log for three weeks, and when he got really hungry and started to starve, he was fed by squirrels until he got the vision of the school room door opening. He went and had a major revival there. Then he went back to see if the squirrels were actually using the hollow log to store their winter food, but those squirrels never went back there.
I have no doubt that in the early days of the Pentecostal movement, including the ministry of Smith Wigglesworth, genuine healing took place. But it was difficult to get validation through medical reports, because in those times, people were being taught that it was a sin - a lack of faith - to go to the doctor. Maybe medicine had not yet had the advances that it has today.
So, I have no doubt that the will of God is that sick and disabled people are healed through prayer and the laying on of hands. It is a puzzle to me why it is not happening in a widespread way around our churches, including the Pentecostal and Charismatic. I am sure that many genuine healing ministries are sincere, Jesus glorifying people, who are disappointed and frustrated that it is not happening for them. Instead we have other ministries who are making great claims and blaming people for not having enough faith when healing does not result. Benny Hinn, Reinhard Bonnke, the late Oral Roberts, Kenneth Copeland, the best examples of the modern healing ministry, are having the same lack of actual results in spite of their ambitious promises and assurances that if people have enough faith they will be healed.
So it is not that I am cessationist as far as healing in our modern church. It is that although Scripture and church history supports divine healing, I don't see it happening in our current churches, and I don't really know why.
