Matt. 9:35 says “Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.”

As my pastor (Richard Jordan) explains, “Christ's healing campaigns weren't like what you see on TV or down at some arena or tent. He healed EVERY sickness and EVERY disease. And He didn't make them do this superstition thing where it’s, ‘Well, the healing’s there but you just don't see it yet. Claim your healing and it will eventually come.’ ”

Jordan said he once sat waiting for an airplane next to a guy who had an abscessed tooth. “It looked like a big softball stuck out the side of his face and I suggested to him that, instead of getting on the airplane, maybe we should get him to a dentist, and he said, 'No, I've claimed my healing.' And I looked at him and said, ‘Well, it's not there.’ He said, ‘No, but I've claimed it. It's there.’ Well, when we hit about 37,000 feet he passed out. He had to have medical attention administered to him all because he had this superstitious idea that if he doubted what was real then his healing wouldn’t be given to him. That's just superstitious nonsense.”

When the healing program was in vogue during Christ’s earthly ministry, He healed every sickness right on the spot—visibly, physically accomplishing the healings in peoples’ midst.

In Matt. 10, Christ commissions the 12 apostles and sends them out to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, etc.

So the question for people who don’t rightly divide the Bible is, “If Jesus Christ, the apostle to the nation Israel, and His 12 apostles He trained, were all able to heal sick people, why did the Apostle Paul get sick?”

“Everybody else's apostles get well, heal people, raise the dead. . . With Peter, just his shadow accomplishes miracles,” says Jordan. “By the way, when Paul's in Lystra, he heals a lame man. In Acts 19, just a touch of Paul’s handkerchiefs taken from his body healed people.”

In Acts 20, a man who falls from a third-floor loft and dies is raised from the dead by Paul. In Acts 28, Paul handles a snake that bites him but it doesn't hurt him.

“Paul had the signs of an apostle, but in his personal life—and in the life of his friends— there’s no healing,” says Jordan. “Paul says in II Timothy, ‘Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick.’ He tells Timothy to take a little wine for his oft infirmities. What's going on here?! Paul was at Galatia sick and the Galatians were so concerned about him some were willing to have an eye transplant to help him out.

“Was Paul out of the will of God because he was sick? In Exodus 15:26, God says, ‘If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.’

“Paul wasn't out of will of God because he was sick. God had changed the program. Today we're not under that, ‘If you will do my law then I'll bless you’ program. Paul recognized that he, as our apostle, had been made an example of what God now wants us to understand about suffering and sickness.”

Paul writes in II Cor. 4:17, “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”

Because God reminds Paul, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness,” Paul responds with, “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”