My pastor was preaching last Sunday on heaven invading earth. He wants to see heaven poured out in our worship gatherings so that God’s presence would be so manifest that anything would be possible: salvations, healing, forgiveness, restoration, etc. “Not just fifteen minutes, but an hour and a half or even two hours of extended worship would see this start to happen…” At that point in the sermon I shouted out “TWENTY FOUR SEVEN”! He paused. “Okay! Now that’s faith! Who said that?” He asked, looking over in my direction. I raised my hand. He said “that’s good, that’s right on!” and went on with his message.

He seemed surprised it was me expressing such faith.  Perhaps, it was because him and I are having a friendly debate over the nature of reality and how God heals. My wife is a medical doctor. She believes healing is from God whether it comes supernaturally through prayer or naturally through medical skill. For her and I, one way is not necessarily better than the other way.

Our pastor disagrees, preferring a supernatural manifestation of healing. He is taking his cue from a book by Bill Johnson, Senior Pastor of Bethel Church in Redding California entitled When Heaven Invades Earth: A Practical Guide To A Life Of Miracles. Johnson’s states “our mandate is simple: raise up a generation that can openly display the raw power of God. This book is all about that journey… the quest for the King and His Kingdom.” (p.27, online here) 

As a member of a charismatic church, I believe the gifts of the Holy Spirit are a vital part of the ministry of the church. Healing is one of those gifts. I support and I have benefited from prayer for healing in all its various forms at our fellowship. I have personally seen God’s power at work in our congregation through prophetic utterances, physical manifestations and demonic deliverance. I believe that God is alive and aggressively active in establishing his kingdom on earth through his church.

So I enjoy hearing stories of “power encounters” as John Wimber used to describe them. This is when God’s power confronts, overwhelms and undoes demonic powers in the form of healing or deliverance. I attended a Wimber conference in Edmonton in 1989 in which the power of God was so manifest that it blew the electrical system, dimmed the lights  and brought the City emergency services to the building. I have been in prayer meetings and seen evangelistic gatherings where light bulbs blew out and street lamps fizzled and went dark. I believe in the visible tangible demonstration of God’s power.

Bill Johnson’s book is full of these stories and they are of great encouragement to the church. However, I take issue with the way in which he constructs his version of reality. David Ruis, one of the founding pastors of our church, spoke recently on a Sunday morning and one thing he said struck me as capturing this problem. Ruis said, “there is a gospel that can come that puts one thing down to elevate another and that’s always a temptation in the church.” This is what I see Johnson doing in his book.

In the Foreword to the book Jack Taylor sums up Johnson’s view on reality. 

“I love this book because it points us toward primary reality in a world almost totally preoccupied with secondary reality. The reader of Scripture is aware that it ultimately defines primary reality as “unseen and eternal” while secondary reality is temporal, that is, it doesn’t last (see 2 Cor. 4:18). Bill Johnson’s beliefs, teachings, and ministry center on primary or Kingdom reality and finds that reality sufficient to change the face of “that which is seen.” (p. 18, online here)

Here is Johnson’s description of the “primary reality”.

The invisible realm is superior to the natural. The reality of that invisible world dominates the natural world we live in…both positively and negatively. Because the invisible is superior to the natural, faith is anchored in the unseen…

Unbelief is anchored in what is visible or reasonable apart from God. It honors the natural realm as superior to the invisible. The apostle Paul states that what you can see is temporal, and what you can’t see is eternal. Unbelief is faith in the inferior. (p. 45, online here.)

For example, Johnson is fond of making the point that there is no cancer in heaven, so when heaven invades earth cancer must go!

“Real faith is not living in denial of the natural realm. If the doctor says you have a tumor, it’s silly to pretend that it’s not there. That’s not faith. However, faith is founded on a reality that is superior to that tumor. I can acknowledge the existence of a tumor and still have faith in the provision of His stripes for my healing…I was provisionally healed 2,000 years ago. It is the product of the kingdom of heaven—a superior reality. There are no tumors in heaven, and faith brings that reality into this one."

While I endorse the fact that there are “no tumors in heaven” and that there is healing in the atonement, and that the prayer of faith brings healing, I cannot endorse the language that divides reality into that which is ‘superior’ verses that which is ‘inferior’.

It is language that puts one thing down (the natural) in order to elevate another thing (the supernatural). It reflects a fundamental insecurity in our creatureliness, (the Latin ‘natura’ means ‘that which we are born with’) as if something is fundamentally wrong with who God made us to be, where God intends us to exist and how God intends us to work...