Now we come to the next category of three: faith, healing and miracles. I'm sure that many have the gifts we read of in Hebrews 11, in the Hall of Fame. However one must not confuse the gift of faith with the general faith that we all may have. The gift of faith is given when a special supernatural impartation of divine intervention is needed. Our natural faith would not be sufficient in any special need. The gift of faith, as I have said, is a fragment of deity, that is an action of faith. (From the Greek we translate "the actual faith of God.") Mark 11:22 says, "Have the faith of God," meaning the actual faith of God. It is not human endeavor to believe God. This faith is not subject to human reasoning or circumstances.
Scripture records that Enoch was translated by this faith, by-passing many dispensations of law, of conscience, of grace, and even the Church Age. Enoch appropriated the resurrection ahead of time! Would you not like to have a faith like that?
Moses proved to Pharaoh that he had more than just presumption when he delivered two and one-half million Israelites out of Pharaoh's greedy hand. What a miracle of faith! In fact, many miracles were performed before he delivered the children of Israel from Egypt. Without them, Pharaoh would have never let the people go.
By faith, Noah built an ark which saved his entire family. It took more than natural faith when it had never rained previously and would be contrary to rhyme and reason.
Joshua had a divine impartation of faith when he told the children of Israel to walk around Jericho once each day, and seven times on the final day--and yes, down came the wall, not by dynamite or by modern techniques, but by the power of special faith.
Peter exercised the gift of faith when he said, "Such as I have give I unto thee, in the name of Jesus arise and walk."
Paul, by faith, made Elymas blind. When Sergius Paulus, the deputy, was about to come to Christ, Elymas hindered the Gospel--he "withstood them" in the KJV. So Paul turned around (in Acts 13:11) and said, "Be blind for a season," that he might learn a lesson. We're not fooling around with ordinary things. We are dealing with the gifts of the Spirit.
Jesus, naturally, had the gift of faith. He urged His disciples to "have faith as a grain of mustard seed." Men who know seeds say it is the purest of all seeds. Jesus said if we had this kind of faith it could move a sycamore tree--which, I am told, has several miles of roots beneath it. I believe our Lord is speaking of the gift of faith that works immediately and miraculously.
Jesus stilled the storm by a word, paid taxes from a fish's mouth, fed multitudes on a few crumbs, and raised the four-day dead--all by faith. We need to covet this kind of faith for the last days to convince a lost world that God is truly with us, so that it can see the supernatural operation of the Spirit of God.
Let me illustrate. Years ago, in the middle of winter, my mother was sent home from the hospital paralyzed by a tumor on her back which also affected her nervous system. The doctors said they had done all they could and our family was desperate. Out of his concern, my father called a man of God in our community who set out for our home with a team of horses and sleigh. Upon his arrival, he and my father went into the bedroom to see my mother. He simply anointed her with oil (according to James 5:14), bid my mother goodbye, and left. When my father came back from seeing him off, my mother was at the door to meet him!
Amazed, my father said, "Tell me what happened!"
Mother said, "It seemed that a thousand watts of electricity went down my back!"
The large lump on her back was dissolved! She was so delighted, she demonstrated her healing to me and my father by bending over a washboard--in a tub where my sisters had been washing clothes that morning before school. Mother bent over that tub and rubbed up and down on the washboard. She was healed from that tumor, and until she went to be with the Lord it stayed healed! The gift of faith spoken by a man of God had healed my mother!
In my own life I have experienced this same gift of faith. In the first church I pioneered and built, I had a real challenge to my faith. I was a young pastor, and as it happened, I had preached a powerful sermon about divine healing. We were having a home prayer meeting when a lady came up to me in great desperation with her newborn baby in her arms.
She said, "I've just come from the hospital, and the doctors say my baby girl is going to die! The x-ray shows that she was born without any bowels! The doctors told me that as long as she was in my womb she was fed through the umbilical cord, but now there's no way of normal function! Please help me! My baby's going to die if you don't help me!"
She handed me the baby and, in desperation, I took it in my arms. I was the pastor and there was nothing else I could do! You can imagine my quandary, but I decided that I'd at least have to pray! So I began to entreat the Lord, and in the middle of my feeble prayer, suddenly the gift of faith dropped into my spirit! I knew that what I was saying was going to come to pass! I found myself praying with God's faith--creative faith. I gave the baby back to her mother! God had created a bowel and a natural passage made completely whole.
The last time I saw her, she was a 35-year-old woman, married, and with children of her own. I was forced into that position, but God gave me faith to work a miracle.
Another such incident happened when I was preaching at a convention in Toronto, Canada. The Spirit at this meeting was strong, and I was preaching from Mark 16:17. I had just quoted, "And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them, they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
With great gusto and jubilance, I added, "We can even raise people from the dead!"
A man sitting in the congregation suddenly fell over and died! I thought, what am I to do? Everything in the whole auditorium stopped. There was a deathly hush. He had slumped over and was lying on the arm of the pew. I thought, Dear God! This man has died, and here I am in this pulpit, preaching with such gusto, and the congregation's saying "Amen." What will I do?
Being the speaker, I had to do something, so I left the platform and walked, rather slowly I can tell you, towards the dead man. The pastor and another man walked behind me. Every step I took I was praying, Jesus, help me! By the time we reached the man, a nurse--in full nurse's attire--was at the scene. She hadn't had time to change, having come straight from the hospital to the church. She tried to get his pulse at the wrist and at the temple, but there was no heart-beat whatsoever.
She flung her arms up in the air and said, "This man is dead. There's no heart beat at all!"
Someone went for the doctor. (How do you get a doctor on a Sunday night that fast?) Already eight or ten minutes had gone by, and they say that after six or seven minutes brain damage occurs. No doctor could be found, and we seemed to be defeated when all of a sudden the Spirit of God came upon us and I cried out, "In the name of Jesus, come alive!"
Believe me, It was something to behold! The man sprang up "like a jack-in-a box!" He'd been lying there, draped over the arm of his pew with his tongue hanging out, and it was obvious that he was dead. Now he was alive, alert, and it was just as obvious that he was all right! Spontaneous praise erupted from all those in the congregation! What a celebration! Praise kept raising up to the Lord until almost midnight.
Some might say, "Was the man really dead?" Well, the nurse thought so.
The Lord left no doubt in my mind, either. Surely it was no coincidence that two years after the incident in Toronto, I was flying up to Eskimo land and I was caught in a storm in Hayriver, Alberta, Canada. I was given hospitality at a Christian doctor's home near a Christian hospital. While storm-stayed, we visited this hospital--and there I met the nurse who had witnessed that man's death!
I couldn't believe my eyes. I questioned her regarding the event. "Was that man really dead?"
She said, "Yes, he was, and I should know! I'm the nurse--and he happens to be my uncle and a board member of that church!"
God doesn't leave us without verification, does He? The nurse said, "Anyone can contact me and I will verify it."
These stories are necessary to show evidence that God still performs miracles through His people today. Just as the Acts of the Apostles are recorded in Scripture to increase our faith, so, I believe, these stories are necessary to prove that the gifts of the Spirit are still operating today. There shall be great restoration of the gifts of the Spirit in these last days--and according to the Scriptures it will show forth the glory of God.