Beware of Richard Roberts
By Bro. David Cloud
June 29, 2000 - David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143. Send e-mail: fbns@wayoflife.org
Confusion About Physical Healing
There was great confusion about healing at Celebration Jesus 2000. Richard Roberts spoke on Thursday evening and made the claim, "If we don’t have healing to confirm the preaching, we don’t have the full gospel." He went on to say that Jesus hates sickness and that He died to heal all sicknesses. Richard’s father, Oral Roberts, is one of the pioneers of the "faith healing" movement. His ministry was originally called Healing Waters. His first book, published in 1947, was titled If You Need Healing--Do These Things! He listed six steps to deliverance, the first being, "Know that God’s will is to heal you." In the September 1976, issue of Abundant Life magazine, Roberts made the following statements:
"Sickness is part of the curse and Jesus came to destroy the curse. He suffered in our stead because he did not want us to suffer disease. He took our specific diseases and infirmities upon his own sinless, perfect body in complete payment for the penalty of sin."
"I know it is God’s highest wish for you to be in health."
"Sickness is not part of God’s plan and not devised by God’s will."
"Some ministers are still praying, Father, if it be thy will, heal. I wonder if they could be sued for theological malpractice? Well, it’s a thought" (Oral Roberts, "Why I know that God wants to heal you," Abundant Life, Sept. 1976).
Oral Roberts also pioneered the "seed faith" concept that those who give money to his ministry will reap money back. In the early 1950s, Roberts began to promise his followers that their financial gifts would be returned to them by God seven fold.
Oral is still alive, but Richard has taken his place as head of Oral Roberts’ University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and he follows in his father’s footsteps by teaching that healing and prosperity are promised by Christ. In St. Louis, Richard told the people, "Let us believe for healing to flow." He than began to rebuke sickness. "I come against every sickness, every disease. I bind it in Jesus’ name. I speak to it. I command it to go. Pain is leaving the neck now. Go, you foul, tormenting thing! I speak to cancer. You foul, tormenting cancer, go in Jesus’ name! Every tumor dissolve in Jesus’ name." He invited the people to receive healing, but while there was much commotion and noise and "spirit slaying" and laughter and such things, there was no evidence that any one was actually healed of an organic disease. There were many cripples attending in wheelchairs, but they did not find deliverance.
The modern charismatic healing movement is a great deception. While we know that God does often heal in answer to prayer and we have witnessed and experienced such healings ourselves, the Charismatic healing movement itself is a sham. Many times through the years medical doctors have attempted to find evidence of healings that were claimed by people attending Oral Roberts crusades and they have been unsuccessful. A physician in Toronto, Canada, examined 30 people who passed through Roberts’ healing line, and he found no case of healing "that could not be explained, in terms of psychological shock or straight hysteria." At least one of the 30 had died. Disasters have repeatedly overtaken Roberts’ healing crusades. On September 8, 1950, in Amarillo, Texas, a 64-year-old man died when he ran from the tent as it was being buffeted by a wind storm. Two days later, another wind storm destroyed the crusade tent and sent 50 people to the hospital. In 1951 an Alabama businessman died while attending a Roberts crusade in Atlanta. In 1955 Jonas Rider died during a Calgary, Alberta, Canada, crusade. In 1956, Mary Vonderscher died twelve hours after appearing on Robert’s television program to testify of her healing. In January 1959, a 64-year-old man died during a campaign in Oakland, California. In May 1959, a three-year-old girl died during a healing crusade in Fayetteville, North Carolina. An elderly Indian woman died on her way to that crusade. In July 1959, a woman died after believing herself healed in a Roberts crusade.
Not only has Roberts been unable to heal strangers, he has been unable to heal his own family. In 1984, a grandson that was named after him (the son of Richard and his second wife, Lindsay) died two days after birth, in spite of special prayers by many important Charismatic faith healers.
We want our readers to understand that we are not gloating over the tragedies which have befallen Oral Roberts. These are sad things, and there is no joy in relating them. The reason we mention them is that he has made claims that must be taken seriously. If healing is in the atonement, if special healing powers belong to Christians today, if God wills that the Christian be healthy and prosperous, if sickness is never God’s will, such will be evident in the reality of the Christian life. These facts from Roberts’ own life, though, show that such things are not true. His life witnesses the same problems, the same sicknesses, the same afflictions which befall Christians which do not believe Pentecostal-healing doctrine, who believe in a cessation of the apostolic sign gifts.
The same can be said for all of the other charismatic leaders who teach that healing is promised by Jesus Christ.
God has not promised health and financial prosperity, and it is wickedness and confusion, therefore, to make such promises.
For more about physical healing see our book Is Healing in the Atonement, which is available at the Way of Life Literature web site under the Charismatic section of the End Times Apostasy Database.
Like This Page? Send It To A Friend!
Click Back