Unfortunately, our friend believes that the AMA is the world’s only medical body. It is common knowledge that it is only representative of what is known in other continents like Asia and Africa as, “English” medicine.  There are countless foreign medicines, naturally occurring remedies, which in some cases are just as effective if not more effective and with no side effects than the synthetic substances used in the west.  We do not favor either kind of medicine over the other. We are just making the point to our friend that we know of ample medical research (evidence) that figs indeed do have medicinal value. We hope he will do some research before he draws faulty conclusions.

Science, Vol. 228

From EA Bell and BV Charlwood, Eds., Encylopedia of Plant Physiology (Springer-Verlag ..)

“Roasted and split into two portions, the soft pulpy interior of Figs may be applied as emolient poultices to gumboils, dental abscesses and other circumscribed maturating tumours. They were used by Hezekiah as a remedy for boils 2,400 years ago (Isaiah xxxviii. 21).

The milky juice of the freshly-broken stalk of a Fig has been found to remove warts on the body. When applied, a slightly inflamed area appears round the wart, which then shrivels and falls off. The milky juice of the stems and leaves is very acrid and has been used in some countries for raising blisters.”

1. Wine cleanses the outside wounds and heals inside and oil heals the outside bruises. Onions, garlic and other herbs which God has created, has medicinal properties which the AMA recently found out (as they will continue to find out as something, “new” what many people have been using for many centuries to treat various ailments and diseases.  Virtually every culture can verify this fact whether it be that of the Orientals, Latinos, Africans etc.)

First of all, saying that, “taking medicine is sin”, is a sin in itself!

Secondly, it is an even greater sin and hypocritical when these people who follow this doctrine and declare that they don’t take medicine but use only herbal remedies, assert that one must, “trust only God” for divine healing, condemning people who take pills.

You have to accept, according to your own statement, that you friend, do not have faith for temporary relief hence you need herbs.  But pills? Oh no! That’s sin, you say. Why deceive yourself and others? These people when they get sick advise one another take this or drink this (which sometimes, as most people know, works better than English medicine).

Then if they get healed, they lie that “I trusted in divine healing and God healed me without medicine”. Either take medicine and admit it or if you say you don’t then don’t take it at all. You can call yourself a HERBAL BELIEVER and not lie because God heals through herbs just like through pills. Taking herbs and claiming it as divine healing while some one gets graciously saved from a  sickness using English medicine and saying  don’t say God healed, don’t thank God but thank the doctor, is a sin!  It is the grace of God that any human being is alive. How can you dare not to give glory to God?  Have you not read in Matthew 5:45 “…for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust”.  Unbelievers who get healed in the hospital or in the home are healed by the grace of God. Who gives conception? God or devil? The bible says in Psalms 127:3,  “Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.”  If this verse is true then how do unbelievers conceive? Do you say unbelievers children are born because of the devil?

How do people who don’t have children go to the doctor and get treatment and conceive after that? Is that from God, the devil or the doctor?

Please don’t give credit to the devil or to the doctor because the people are unbelievers or because they went to the doctor .No one can give life or create except the Lord God Almighty. Remember, God is the giver of life!

This CPM advocate further writes that Hezekiah would not have been healed if the medicine was not prescribed by God and said further that God was testing his obedience. He said it was not the medicine but God that healed him. Does this make any sense? Firstly, God is prescribing the medicine for Hezekiah and secondly God will not prescribe something that is sinful to someone to test his or her obedience. Remember that God is holy and that there is no unrighteousness in Him. God shows here that He can work through medicine or without medicine depending on His will for the particular person involved and for that particular time.

2. If you are going to be consistent dear friend, please don’t tell your children not to thank God for their needs being met but to only thank their mother for food or to only thank you because it doesn’t fall from the sky like manna or quail; because no angel or raven brought food nor did they get cool drinks from the rock.

If God takes you through the wilderness experience where you cannot get food, water, sandals, meat etc then He will send divine help like manna and quail and ravens will bring food, water will issue forth from the rock  etc. But you had better not dare to make that a doctrine and tell people not to work or cook or buy any thing or wear the same sandals. God will not give you food and your sandals will wear out and you will die from thirst. DO NOT PUT THE LORD YOUR GOD TO TEST!  The people in this organization are doing exactly the same.

2. He used King Asa of the Bible as an example of one rebuked for not trusting God but trusting in doctors as a lesson for believers to wait for Divine Healing instead of taking medicine.

The bible is very clear. It doesn’t day Asa sought the physicians and this displeased the Lord. It says he sought not the Lord. He  was chastened by  the Lord with that disease but even then he did not turn to God. The same thing can happen to you in another way.  You may lose your job as chastening because of going away from God but you can turn and repent and God can bless you with another job or you may not turn to God but still live in sin and keep looking for another job. In that case we can take it like this: Asa sought not the LORD but went looking for employment. And this displeased the Lord. Can you take that scripture and say working is wrong because you are not depending on God but your employer for food? Will you say bible says my God shall supply all your needs? Either you should trust God for your needs or trust your job? To take your own illogical doctrine you must admit that you are a double minded man if you work because Christ became poor so that you might become rich!

Be honest before God and see how the devil has twisted God’s word and sent many who believe his (the devil’s) lie into their grave prematurely and leave others invalid and cause some others to lose their faith in God because of this deadly perversion of the Word of God.

God, in His Sovereign Will, does sometimes heal directly without any other means. When He uses any, “means” to heal, it in no way indicates that His power is inadequate if He doesn’t have those particular channels that He uses available to Him. He is God and does not need to use anything but it is His divine prerogative to choose to use whatever He pleases. Just like He uses men to spread the gospel though He does not, “need" them. This in no way means that we can order Him to always heal without medicine or doctors (or even the constant prayers of others for that matter).  The means that He in His Eternal Wisdom uses, in no way can rob the Lord of the full credit due to Him and Him only for the healing; for everything good comes from Him only and no one can take credit for it. 

You have stated quite rashly that if we should go to a doctor for healing then we should thank the doctor and not God! Dear friend when you go to work for an employer and get your weekly or monthly salary do you thank your employer for the money, saying he was the one who provided it for you and not God. Do you sit at home and say, “It is a real lack of faith if I should go to work and not wait for God’s,  “Divine Provision” and if you should starve, call it “Divine Starvation” and when you die have your people call it “Divine Death” hoping to be included in the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11?  Yet, according to your argument if you should go to work, then it is a lack of faith and you should thank only the employer.

That is how ridiculous it is to say that if one uses doctors then one must give all the credit to the doctors. Can you believe dear reader, that our friend in the CPM faith actually stated the above not having the slightest care that he is boldly discrediting God’s loving provision, power and sovereign Will.

The plain truth is quite easy to see if one reads the Bible sincerely and does not try to manipulate it to fit man made doctrines (as our friend and the heretical movement he defends quite often does). King Asa was rebuked for seeking physicians instead of God. The operative word there is, “instead” of God. Nowhere does God say that it is wrong or faithless to go to doctors as long as one has full faith in God and it is His Will; that it is He Who is working through the instruments of His choice (whether it be physicians and/or medicines).

3. Luke was a  physician knowing that it is not sin to take medicine but a means by which God heals people. He continued to be a physician just like many missionaries who spread the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout different parts of the world like China, India, Africa etc. through medical missions. Luke will not be addressed as the beloved physician if he was displeasing the Lord and leading others astray by being their physician. Nowhere in the Bible can you see Jesus rebuking someone who came to Him for healing after going to the doctor.  Sometimes in spite of us spending all our wages on physicians for a cure, He may not allow a cure and cause us to come directly to Him for healing.  However, He never said, O ye of little faith or no faith, why did you go to the doctor and sin against God? O you children of disobedience don’t you know the scripture which says, “I am the Lord that healeth thee?” Repent and do not go to the doctor anymore. The Lord never told Luke to leave his medical profession.
4. The Apostle Paul did not describe, in the Bible, his infirmity or the treatment that he took for his sickness. Obviously, he had the thorn in his flesh which was allowed by God for his own good. So, Luke couldn’t give him any medicine, Peter (who had the gift of healing) or the elders couldn’t put oil or pray or fast or exercise great faith to take away the thorn in his flesh but it was God who uncategorically stated that special grace would be given instead for the situation to bear it.  He, Paul had a glorious death as a martyr and did not die prematurely from a, so-called, “divine death” because of that or become invalid. But we know that he recommended wine for Timothy’s stomach although he had the power to heal and the Bible says that people were healed even by touching his clothes. We have to be very careful and fearful when we take God’s Word to not take it out of context or assume something false and turn right around and call it spiritual interpretation or use portions of the Scripture as we like. Stubbornly refusing to take the way God has provided unless he tells some one in a specific way that God is going to do something supernatural in order to prove His power and insisting God to heal your way without taking medicine is like a man fallen in a well refusing to get the help of God through another man when he lets down the rope. Instead, he keeps quoting all the scriptures in the Bible and says Bible says, “Vain is the help of man” and therefore, I am trusting God and waits around for God’s Hand to pick him up will be left to die in the well. Do you think God will come and pick him up? No. Because he refused the help which God provided. The fellow refused to use the constituted means. That means the thing which God set up to deliver him.  We cannot call that divine death, if he dies and try to include his name in Hebrews chapter 11 saying that he took a stand for the truth by refusing the help of man and waited for God’s help and God chose to take him home. God will look at him and say, “O  FOOL  why did you not take the help that I gave and bring disgrace to my name like this with your false interpretation and vain tradition, teaching the doctrines of men? To take scripture out of context  and to misinterpret it, is a great sin.

5. The Word of  God which is the Bible, says a lot of positive things about medicine.
   
   Proverbs 3:8  It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones. {health: Heb. medicine} {marrow: Heb. watering, or, moistening}
   Proverbs 4:22  For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. {health: Heb. medicine}
   Proverbs 17:22  A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones. {like: or, to}
   Proverbs 20:30  The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil: so do stripes the inward parts of the belly. {cleanseth…: Heb. is a purging medicine against}
   Ezekiel 47:12  And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary: and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine. {shall grow: Heb. shall come up} {new: or, principal} {for medicine: or, for bruises and sores}

  The Word of God, a joyful heart and other good things are compared to medicine in God’s Word.

Mark 2:17  When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Jesus Christ Himself says that just like the sick need the physician the sinner needs Christ. He did not say that the sick need divine healing from God, unless of course, He(Jesus) forgot or did not know the Old Testament scripture which says “I am the God that healeth thee.”

There is a big difference between smoking or gambling and taking medicine.  Even an uneducated person who does not know the Bible knows the basic difference between good and bad. As known by everyone smoking is harmful to the body and medicine brings healing to the body. That’s why God in His holy word has said positive things about medicine in many verses and compares many good things to medicine. If it was sin He will not show that in a positive light in His Holy Word. God never equated a drunkard or an immoral person or any wicked person or thing to his Word or showed any of these sins in a positive light.

People who practice these false teachings and teach others also will try to deceive people by calling the simple, straight forward, Word of God which contradict their teaching as unspiritual and incorrect interpretation. Be very careful when you hear  someone say, the “spiritual meaning” or “deeper meaning of this is …”  Especially when regarding very plain and simple scripture passages which can be easily understood.

Our friend writes ridiculously comparing getting glasses with getting a pair of gloves in a hardware store. Please see his email above.

Now we must ask the writer of the above emails defending CPM doctrine the following? Don’t you go to the physician to get your failing eyes checked and for the prescription of corrective lenses? Or do you go to the hardware store to buy pair of glasses to keep your eyes from further deterioration and damage?

What a comparison! Don’t you know that when you have a need to wear glasses it means your eyes has lost its normal capacity to function and you have a medical problem with your eyes and you cannot see properly? What do you call that ? Are you just wearing plain glasses without any power? No. You wear glasses tested and prescribed by a doctor; one who is particularly trained to take care of your eye problem.  He prescribes the lenses that can correct your vision and make you see clearly.

Now don’t you have faith for God to heal your eyes just like your head and other parts?

Obviously not. You know you cannot get around without it .You may not die because of that but you will eventually lose your eye sight, so in this case you need glasses and not divine healing. Dying with a particular sickness is better than staying alive without being able to see. So in this case they are very cleverly knowing that  trusting God for divine healing of their eyes according to them (by not seeking the physicians)will bring divine blindness so in this case they trust medicine and not God.

They leave out the scripture portion which says in Deuteronomy 34:7,  “And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated” and about healing of the eyes in the New Testament. Why do you need divine healing while wearing glasses?  You don’t even pray for your eyes because glasses already give you the necessary visual ability you need.  They very cleverly say glasses don’t heal.  What a hypocritical excuse to wear glasses and say you wear it to get around and compare it with a pair of gloves when it makes you see comfortably for the rest of your life. When God healed, He healed completely; He didn’t say to take herbal medicine for temporary relief while the healing is on its way.   Yet you say not to take any pills when one is waiting for healing.  What a contradiction!  You will not give a give a simple vaccination for your baby but rather let it die while you people wear glasses permanently until you die and call it temporary and work around it when so much of  medicine is involved in it. Can you see the hypocrisy of trying to cover up and justify the contradictions?

DO THE FOLLOWING VERSES BELOW APPLY TODAY?

  YES. They are for today. When we read the Bible, we should be careful to read the scriptures above, below; the whole chapter and sometimes even the previous chapters also to get the proper contextual meaning.

If you would closely examine error and heresy, you would notice that all cults and false teachers take separate scriptures or part of the scriptures and make their own teachings to start a new cultic organization.

Luke 9:1-6 ¶ Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases.
And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.
And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor scrip, neither bread, neither money; neither have two coats apiece.
And whatsoever house ye enter into, there abide, and thence depart.
And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.
And they departed, and went through the towns, preaching the gospel, and healing every where. 

Matthew 10:5-10 These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, {Provide: or, Get} Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat.

The people who practice these teachings use verses 1,2 & 6 of Luke 9 and verses7&8 of  Matthew 10. When you read these scriptures you should read the whole passage not just pick 2 or 3 verses as you like. It is very clear that Jesus is sending His disciples with special powers over devils and diseases and death with a special commission commanding them not to take anything except a few things mentioned in these verses. When you read this scripture passage you can see it is for a specific reason. Some people cleverly use these scriptures only for healing the sick and not for raising the dead. Practice the whole verse if you want to; don’t just take the first part alone. Why don’t you do the same thing in the case of the dead; keep the dead and pray till they get up or till the body decays just like in Lazarus’ case in the Bible when God raised him up from the dead? You will not dare to do that because its very possible for you to end up in a mental institution. Do you know people in the CPM organization tried conducting resurrection service instead of burial service and were waiting and screaming and commanding the dead body of a preacher to come back to life until the nighttime while the police and unbelievers were watching to see if that person came back to life?  Finally the police had to drive everyone away. What a disgrace to name of a Holy God! Don’t you see that it is very obvious when you read the whole passage that it talks of certain things, which are very specifically used for specific circumstances by God. Does this mean that God does not heal or raise the dead today as He did 2000 years ago? No. God still heals and raises the dead today but He will do it when He wants. In remote villages where some missionaries go where they don’t receive the Gospel of Christ, God sometimes uses a simple missionary to heal or to raise the dead of the leader of the tribe and shows His power and thereby the whole tribe comes to believe in Christ.

Mark 16:17,18  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.

Casting out devils, speaking with new tongues, taking up serpents and drinking deadly things and laying hands on the sick are for very specific circumstances. Because it says “They shall take up serpents..”, doesn’t mean that you should go and take serpents. Some people in some cults in the U.S. and abroad did that and were killed. “…and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them;” This doesn’t mean that you can drink poison and tempt the Lord. Some people did that too and are now dead. “…they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover”. This doesn’t mean that you should not go to the doctor. Some people who did that became handicapped and some even died going through horrible suffering. These cultic things still go on to the harm of countless stubborn or innocent victims.

Is God’s Word not true? Or is something seriously wrong with people who practice misinterpretations of it?

God’s Word is always true. Then something must be seriously wrong with those who are misapplying it.  Misapplying the word of God can cost your life and even your soul. These verses apply when human strength, wisdom, resources fail and also where God specifically wants the heathen to know His power.  Previously we considered the sin of  tempting or testing God.  See for example Acts 28:3-6,  “And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live. And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm. Howbeit they looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after they had looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god.”  Now, God protected Paul and this verse of taking serpents and the vipers not hurting Jesus’ followers is effectual in this case.

Sadhu Sundar Singh was a great missionary. After he got saved he realized that he must break with his Sikh people. He cut off the hair he had worn long like every Sikh man. Then he heard the words of ostracization (or out casting) spoken over him. "We reject you forever. . . . I declare you are no more worthy to be called our son. . . . We shall forget you as if you had never been born. You will leave this house with nothing but the clothes you wear on your back. . . ." Hours later he experienced wrenching pain in his gut. His family had poisoned his last meal. He staggered to a mission hospital. The missionary-medic just like Luke the Physician was able to save the young man's life by the grace of God. God uses different means to save, heal and protect His people.  He was treated when he was very ill at his friend’s house. He never rejected medicine or never preached on not taking medicine. At the same time there are missionaries who have eaten poisonous fruits in the forests unknowingly and there are no doctors over there and nothing has happened to them because God has protected them according to His word. But when someone drinks poison and God has made a doctor available; to refuse that and say God said nothing will happen, will result in death for tempting God.

One other note: Sadhu Sundar Singh never advocated not taking medicine and even if he did we should remember that we are never to follow a man’s unbiblical of personal perspective.  One other example would be not wearing slippers; walking barefoot which he did for a while. Hence, he was know as the apostle with the bleeding feet. That does not automatically mean we can make a doctrine out it and turn right around and use that to say that this act encouraged believers all over the world to increase in faith by imitating him in walking without shoes or slippers. How ludicrous and irrational such an assumption!

Now the same thing applies for healing the sick also.  When medicine fails, God does supernatural healings. If you read in Mark 5:25-34 And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.

Jesus never rebuked her for seeing the doctors. The point that is made in the Scriptures here is that the best of medicine was ineffective; a total failure and God had to step in to do a direct miraculous healing. That is a specifically, sovereignly determined instance in which God chose to bring glory to Himself and His Son and bear witness of Himself and His power and love so that people may believe. We discussed this in the paragraphs above.

1 Corinthians 12:9  “To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; ..” God has given healing gifts to some people and He uses them according to His will. Just like many missionaries who sleep in the forests are protected by the angels, we who sleep in our homes are protected by God even though we have our doors locked with good locks on them.  We don’t recite Psalm 121 and keep our doors unlocked when we are sleeping or leave our money and things out unlocked and go away anywhere saying that your safety is from God and not from locking the doors. Either trust God or your locks. God will not protect or help people who do not use the means He has provided. So don’t take scripture out of context and make it as a doctrine .  “….they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover”. When God says, “THEY  SHALL RECOVER” that means, “THEY SHALL RECOVER.”  When Jesus healed He healed completely and no one got worse or lost their hands or legs and nobody experienced divine death because of their disease; because of not being healed. It is a big disaster when someone refuses the way in which God wants to work through them and brings shame to God’s name because of their rebellion against God. God is true to His word. He will heal when He wants in any way He wants to and not the way you tell him to!  Remember! If you say you trust God and make your little baby lame, blind, deaf and cause some to die from brain fever etc. because of not giving a simple vaccination and not taking the child to the doctor for some illness when God has made a way for their healing, don’t  say it is God’s will and that God made him like that. The child’s blood  will be on your head. Don’t make others to blaspheme God because of your perverting the scripture.

When God makes a cure available and you stubbornly say, “I will not take it but God has to heal me directly and miraculously only (Divine Healing)” and you end up dying; that’s just committing suicide. Sheer mockery.  God will be angry at those who twist His scripture

This organization has been the cause of the death of many young and old and responsible for making many women widows and children fatherless and/or without mother and for making others lame or blind etc. for the rest of their lives in the name of Christ! These cults operate in different countries with different names such as CELYON PENTECOSTAL MISSION (CPM) in Sri Lanka and THE  PENTECOSTAL MISSION (TPM, formerly CPM) in India and THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH  in the United states of America and THE UNIVERSAL PENTECOSTAL CHURCH  in United Kingdom (England) and with different other names in Africa and other countries all over the World.  So if you are looking for a church, find out if they believe in not taking medicine and in not getting married and reject that heretical movement.  The Bible commands it for your own good.

This cult, CPM say that they are the only church to make it to Zion just like so many other cults. The emphasis in their group is not love but exclusivist and separation from God’s children.  You cannot see fruit of the Spirit in them or their leaders especially.  You can see pride, spiritual pride rather.

Note also how this cult finds fault with Job, Paul etc.  We will be adding documented evidence from their own books soon ….