JHU and Legal Action
I refer to the above captioned article which appeared in The Sunday Leader of November 15.
It is the pastor of the church in Koswatte who should institute legal action against the JHU for criminal trespass and damage. However, this will not be forthcoming because our Lord has told His servants to bless those who persecute us, to love them and pray for them. Our prayer for the JHU is “Father God in Heaven, forgive them who persecute us for they do not know what they do.”
With all good intentions, Pastor Joseph prays for the healing of thousands. It is not an easy task. On the other hand, I don’t deny that this pastor has faults and failures. By no means is he perfect but our Lord does not condemn him as the JHU has done.
Now the question is whether this pastor is responsible for the deaths of the two women who came for the meeting. I was made to understand that these two women had died in hospital. However, divine healing is real and our Lord has told us to heal the sick in His name. However, I wish to point out that only those who come in faith are healed. The Holy Word of God says, “But without faith it is impossible to please him (God)…”
If you examine the Holy Will of God, some spectacular healings have been recorded to demonstrate the power of God.
Kotakadeniya has asked why the pastor in question would not go to the hospitals in Sri Lanka and heal the sick. Is it practical? Do doctors go to those who are sick in their homes; or do the sick come to the doctors at the hospitals? The pastor in question is not the only pastor in Sri Lanka who prays for the sick. There are many Christian workers who visit hospitals and pray for the sick; but the most important healing is for the soul where one’s sins are forgiven by God and one becomes a child of God and finds peace. Then, a change of heart takes place and you come into a personal relationship with your maker, to live in obedience to His Holy Word. This is what “conversion” is.
Is healing the sick and helping someone a crime against which legal action should be taken? There is nothing called an “Illegal conversion.” One’s conversion is purely an act of God. We pray for the clergy in saffron robes and the others who instigated the attack on the Koswatte Prayer Centre indulging in criminal acts of violence. May God our Heavenly Father be merciful to them.
Bro. S. de Silva
Ratmalana
Dear Brother
Can you please tell me why the God commands to kill one’s wife,Children,Friends and other people who have other faiths. Why did the God kill all the animals except in Noah’s ark, though only the Humans sinned. Why did he burn innocent children with Sodem? I can publish the references in the Holy Bible if you want
bro S desilva just dont talk nonsence & hide behind name of God? there wl be no doctors if all wl be cured by healing. this menace has to be stopped by people who are paid by church fund to mislead kill & convert in name of GOD. namely AOG /JEOWAS WITNESS / BORN AGAIN ETC…. why are catholics not attacked? because they dont harm anyone. they live peacefully.
I am against religious violence, especially people attacking releigious places of worship but what sort of silly trollop is “Bro S. De Silva” dishing out here? People who fall for what “Bro S. De Silva” sells are not necessarily fools. Hopelessness and desperation make otherwise rational people vulnerable to ridiculous claims. If a pill that instantly cured AIDS came out and cost 2 rupees at any local pharmacy, there wouldn’t be many AIDS patients lining up at at centres of fraud like Jesus Lives. Christian fundamentalists in Sri Lanka are cleary taking advantage of people with chronic and terminal illnesses.
The problem is religion and the protection it gets from criticism. It is socially acceptable to a large extent to believe that Jesus can cure people through miracles. But because people will laugh at the idea of Zeus performing cures, it’s no surprise that there aren’t any successful faith healers who claim to get their powers from Mt. Olympus. If we could equate the absurdity of believing in Jesus to believing in Yoda, Christianity would fall apart like a stack of cards. The only way to do this is to open the doors to religious criticism.
In defending their practice of withholding medical treatment and looking solely to spiritual means for the cure of people’s illnesses, Christian faith healers disseminate extremely dangerous misinformation.
Supporters of faith healing such as the individual who wrote the above letter also argue that Christian history contains numerous instances of seemingly miraculous cures occurring without medical intervention. But the same claim could be made about many religions, including religions of antiquity that are now universally considered false.
Science reveals that what the adherents of past and present religions thought were miraculous cures were, in all probability, nothing of the sort. Natural healing processes can be mistaken for miraculous cures in some circumstances.
Moreover, for some illnesses there is still a small but decreasing percentage of cures that science does not understand. These occurrences are called “spontaneous recoveries” in the medical field. Since the inexplicable cures happen to religionists and non-religionists alike, however, divine intervention is apparently not the explanation.
And some illnesses can go through cycles of increasing and decreasing symptoms. If faith healing is resorted to just before a period of retreating symptoms, there can be the illusion of a miraculous cure.
In proclaiming that miraculous cures took place when other explanations are far more plausible, Christian faith healers cause some people to develop a very dangerous attitude. Because of their belief in faith healing, they conclude that resorting to medical science shows a lack of faith and can endanger their eternal salvation.
The resulting avoidance of medical care has produced immense suffering and countless preventable deaths throughout history. It continues to cause many tragedies, and often the victims are children.
For children who are fortunate enough to avoid death and physical injury at the hands of faith healers, there is still a danger of emotional damage. This is particularly true for disabled children. After their disability is not cured by faith healing, they are not only severely disappointed but also may develop serious psychological problems. They often blame themselves and think God is punishing them for being too “sinful.”
When confronted with such evidence, Christian faith healers respond that sometimes children who receive medical treatment die or are not cured. They accuse their opponents of unfairly making them guarantee that all children who receive faith healing will recover, while the same demand is not placed on medical science.
Contrary to their claims, no one is requiring parents or anyone else to guarantee that children will recover from all illnesses. What is being advocated is simply this: the best possible care for children.
And the fact is that overwhelming evidence proves that medical science is the most effective method of treating illnesses. Faith healing has no such evidence of effectiveness.
For those who want to learn more about the falsity of some Christian claims please see the following website:
http://whywontgodhealamputees.com
I am open to discussion.
Only God knows what really happens. The Bible says, do not judge others, so that you will be judged. But God does not get his children killed, may be because they have no faith, they didnt heal. May be they have some other illness, by praying you cannot kill people. The other thing is while praying you have to get medicine to get heal your sicknesses.
It’s unfortunate to say, but Christian fundamentalism has become a threat to Sri Lanka’s religious harmony.
Faith healing is the most cruel con game of all because it preys on sick, weak, suffering, and often desperate people. Hypothesize for a moment that you have terminal cancer; the pain is ceaseless and nearly unbearable. How will you feel lying in bed watching this so-called God heal other people on television? Why doesn’t “God” heal you? Perhaps you lack sufficient faith or just haven’t contributed enough money. Or worse, maybe “God” has condemned you to death.
Jesus Lives’ cruel and calculated hoax at Viharamahadevi Park is reprehensible if not criminal. Basically, they killed two innocent women for no reason at all. Not only that, the pastors and their henchmen have been threatening the victim’s families to prevent them from taking legal action against the church. This is the ugly face of evangelical Christianity in Sri Lanka today. Thousands of Sri Lanka suffer from a myriad of fatal or debilitating ailments and they are vulnerable to the fraud of faith healing by groups such as Jesus Lives.
Notice how claims of divine recuperation are always limited to disease – ailments for which the body has naturally evolved ways to protect itself. Never has anyone survived extreme physical trauma by prayer alone. A severed limb can only be restored by a surgeon – never by a Christian priest. A child hit by an automobile is rushed to a hospital – not to a church.
Sri Lankans need to be aware of the machinations of certain Christian priests. Many of them are wolves in sheep’s clothing, preying on the ignorant, the weak and the desperate. Bro. S. de Silva seems to be one of them.
This is not an issue about religious freedom but health and safety.
well done. this is the truth…….why create doctors to the world by the god??????????
I am saddened by Christian extremism in Sri Lanka. I often wonder what the country is coming to. When I was a child I just to enjoy reading the Bible – it was so beautiful…until I realised I had only been reading the new testament. Brother S de Silva in the letter written to the Sunday Leader speaks about God. He asks God to forgive the JHU, but my question is – Who is going to forgive God? This is an important question.
It always amazes me how many times the God theat Brother Silva worships orders the killing of innocent people even after the Ten Commandments said “Thou shall not kill”. For example, God kills 70,000 innocent people because David ordered a census of the people (1 Chronicles 21). God also orders the destruction of 60 cities so that the Israelites can live there. He orders the killing of all the men, women, and children of each city, and the looting of all of value (Deuteronomy 3). He orders another attack and the killing of “all the living creatures of the city: men and women, young, and old, as well as oxen sheep, and asses” (Joshua 6). In Judges 21, He orders the murder of all the people of Jabesh-gilead, except for the virgin girls who were taken to be forcibly raped and married. When they wanted more virgins, God told them to hide alongside the road and when they saw a girl they liked, kidnap her and forcibly rape her and make her your wife! Just about every other page in the Old Testament has God killing somebody! In 2 Kings 10:18-27, God orders the murder of all the worshipers of a different god in their very own church! In total God kills 371,186 people directly and orders another 1,862,265 people murdered.
So I ask Brother De Silva – Who is going to forgive God for his crimes?