Faith Healing​—What Is Its Appeal?

The church reverberates with the sound of the guitar, trumpet, drums, tambourines, and clashing cymbals. Men, women, and children dance and sing in a frenzied state of ecstasy. The mood is right for the healings to begin.

The faith healer, clad in flowing white robes, begins by laying his hands upon a crippled man who goes about on all fours. Next, a blind man, whose dark glasses cover his unseeing eyes. “It’s a miracle!” onlookers cry as the lame begin to walk and the blind begin to see . . .

SCENES like this are common in many African faith-healing churches. Indeed, faith healers have large followings in Africa and other lands due to their claims that they can solve all manner of problems through prayer and faith in God. Some thus come to faith healers with financial problems. And since in African society childlessness is often a stigma, some come to faith healers hoping for a cure for barrenness.

Health problems, however, engage the attention of faith healers more than anything else. Though medicinal drugs flood the world market and laudable efforts are being made in the medical field to bring relief to the sick, man is still a long way from finding an answer to the problem of sickness. Some victims of illness have spent large sums of money searching for cures, only to meet with failure. No wonder, then, that in desperation, many turn to faith healers!

Some feel that faith healing has worked for them and can see no conflict between it and Christianity. Indeed, since the healers often claim that they work in the name of Jesus, it is not unusual for their followers to be members of both a mainstream religion and a faith-healing church. But can a true worshiper of God appropriately avail himself of a faith healer? (John 4:23) And can any cures effected by such a one really be attributed to God?