Can you lose your healing?

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    William Branham taught that it was possible for God to supernaturally heal a person and then for that person to lose their healing. Speaking of a person being healed, William Branham states:

    ...if you start doubting again, the very faith that taken it out, unbelief will bring it back again.[1]

    What does the Bible teach?

    The Bible does not contain even a single account of a person losing their healing.[2]

    William Branham seems to be providing an excuse where people, perhaps because of excitement, adrenalin or the placebo effect, start feeling better after having been prayed for and then after a few days their disease is back.

    This appears to be a simple case of William Branham providing an excuse for people that were never healed by God in the first place. This was a common ploy used by healing evangelists as related by Walter Hollenweger, a noted Pentecostal historian who worked as translator for Branham in one of his campaigns in Switzerland, who wrote of William Branham:

    He possessed an extraordinary diagnostic gift and could identify the illnesses (sometimes even the names) of persons he had never seen. Unfortunately his healing prognosis was accurate only in rare cases. The excuse of healing evangelists in such cases has always been: The patient did not really believe; for they were convinced that faith leads automatically to health.[3]

    Quotes of William Branham

    Someone wrote me a letter today, a woman that was healed with cancer. She said, "For the first two or three days, I was gloriously, I felt wonderful. Then on the third day," said, "I had an awful upset. Have I lost my healing?"

    Now, that should be explained in every m--every case each night. No, that's the--the most perfect sign of your healing. After seventy-two hours, the corruption's setting in the growth. It's dead. It'll... It may be... God sometimes will--can perform a miracle, and it won't even be any growth.

    Now, I--I can tell you this. God, Who is my Judge, Who I stand before, I... By newspaper clippings, front page headlines carrying this, it could be showed here at the platform. I seen the time when people come to the platform with hanging cancers, hanging on their bodies; and while prayer was being made, their cancer turning white, dropping off, and rolling down across the floor while I was praying for them. God, Who is in heaven, that looks down, knows that's true. When newspaper reporter standing there and shoot the picture of it, and declared in the newspapers on the front page. That's Christian newspaper (See?), where they got Christian editors, men who believe God, and got a feeling for sick people for the lost.

    Now, none of these things move us. God can reveal in my hotel room what you would never know. So that's all right. All those things there, just He lays, just... Always let the Lord have His way.[4]


    Well, what about a lump of--of dead flesh laying in your body? Well, you'll almost go through death. That's the time to stand and give God praise. That's right. Yes, sir. Don't waver in your faith. There's exactly the truth that you're healed. See?

    Now, when that... Well, if we'd kept the cancers that'd passed through the people... One year, I believe, it was. we had so many jugs and bottles we couldn't even put them on the platform to show the people when they'd passed out. Doctor's names written on them. That's right.

    If a growth had passed, it'll die, turn loose and the adhesions and things that stick that there, it'll pass from you if it can. If it can't, then you're going to get sick, because it'll lay right there.

    In plain words where the simplest child would understand, and the only way I know to put it, it'll rot. And it's laying right in there rottening in your body. And when it does, your heart stream, your bloodstream is being purified by your heart, and it picks up that and causes sickness and headaches, and oh, you can't stand up hardly.

    And the person immediately, the patient, weak in faith, will say, "I lost my healing." Why, God's not that kind of a Father. You can't lose your healing. Jesus purchased it. It's yours. When Jesus prayed for Peter, said, "I'll pray that your faith fail not," not his morals, 'cause they did, but, "That your faith fail not..." See?

    Now, now, when you go... Now, let me show you what takes place. Excuse me for saying, "Let me show you." I didn't mean that. I don't mean that. I could show you nothing, but I'll tell you to the best of my knowledge what I see in the realm of it.

    That when that cancer goes out, when it's cast out, and you see the very evidence of everything that was of the Son of God in His... in the leading of His people, working and showing His signs and wonders and that demon is pronounced gone and you feel it's gone, and then in two or three days, if you start doubting again, the very faith that taken it out, unbelief will bring it back again.

    And the Bible said, "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, walks in dry places, and when he returns he brings seven other devils worse than he was." Is that right? And the last estate of this man is seven times worse. You're going to die then.[5]


    Say, '"Is healing lasting?"

    Just as lasting as long as faith is.' That's right. Just as long... Salvation's the same way. Just as long as you got faith, you're healed. When you lose faith, you're gone.[6]


    The patient then, that the evil has gone out of the patient, the cancer is dead. For a few days they feel fine. Like the cataract, tumor, or whatever it may be, they feel fine for a few days, and then the first thing you know it begins to swell, swell. And then if the patient isn't truly instructed in the Word of God, they'll lose their healing as sure as anything, because they get sick and get twice as bad as they ever was. And that's the best sign you ever had that you're healed, certainly, is swelling. It's gone away.[7]


    If I prayed for a person, and I—I tell them people they're going to live. I believe they're going to live. But, no matter, if my word was absolutely THUS SAITH THE LORD, and you would disbelieve It, you'd die, anyhow. Certainly. Here is THUS SAITH THE LORD, and many of them receive It and die. Many of them go to hell, when, THUS SAITH THE LORD, "You don't have to." Is that right? [Congregation says, "Amen."—Ed.] Sure. See? It's what… It's all based on your faith.[8]


    And today when we think that we're different from the other fellow, and so forth, it just does not work. We must still accept that basis of the shed Blood. And therefore, when God was called on the scene, to heal a man, He healed a man upon the basis of his faith. And when he's called on the scene again, He will heal the next man the same way, or He acted wrong. If God ever did heal a man because he believed, and then the next man calls with the same kind of faith, God is obligated to do the same thing to the next man. If not, He's respecter of persons, and acted wrong in the first place. So, you see, back to the Word. I--I believe it with all my heart.[9]


    Footnotes

    1. HEALING.WHAT.CANCER.IS_ CHICAGO.IL FRIDAY_ 53-0904
    2. Guy P. Duffield and Nathaniel M. Van Cleave, Foundations of Pentecostal Theology (Los Angeles, CA: L.I.F.E. Bible College, 1983), 401.
    3. Hollenweger, Walter J. (1997). Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide. Baker Academic. ISBN 978-0801046605.
    4. LOOKING.TO.THE.UNSEEN_ CLEVELAND.OH 50-0816
    5. HEALING.WHAT.CANCER.IS_ CHICAGO.IL FRIDAY_ 53-0904
    6. SIRS.WE.WOULD.SEE.JESUS_ LOUISVILLE.KY SUNDAY_ 54-0328
    7. JAIRUS.A.SECRET.BELIEVER MACON.GA 55-0604
    8. William Branham, 57-0922E - Hebrews, Chapter Seven #2, para. 267
    9. JESUS.CHRIST.THE.SAME.YESTERDAY.TODAY.AND.FOREVER_ TUCSON.AZ 63-0604


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