Your friend said that he would be healed if it was “God’s will,” regardless of God’s explicitly revealed will in the Bible. The truth is that people who say that they would be healed if it is “God’s will” do not believe that it is God’s will to heal them. Of course, if they recover after medical treatment, they would say that it happens because of God’s will. This is not our topic. I mean they never believe that they would receive healing in the way the Bible describes, that is, by God’s miraculous power. When medical science cannot help them, they would die, and then God would get the blame for it, even though God himself tells them not to think as they do. There is no faith in declaring that they would be healed if it is God’s will. It is just religious talk. Faith would accept God’s word, embrace that as God’s will, and receive what it promises.

This is not to condemn your friend. He was taught false doctrine, too much of it for too long. Perhaps he would have believed if taught properly. Perhaps he would have listened eventually. Perhaps the word of God would have broken through. But it was too late. When he disregarded the Bible and said that it was up to God’s will, it meant he already decided that it was not God’s will to heal him, but that it was up to medical science. Of course, medical science failed, as it does so often. Again, this is not to condemn your friend. He was a victim, but he was also responsible, and he paid for it with his life. Still, I am directing attention to this only so that you would not blame God, or to relegate the thing to “God’s will” in a way that is the same as to blame him for it. And I am directing attention to this so you would not think that God’s promises are not as stated or as we understand them. They are exactly what they appear to be, but your friend did not believe them. He surrendered to some nebulous “will of God,” and abandoned the definite word of God.

You often cannot force someone to receive healing if he thinks he knows God but for some reason refuses to believe what God says. You can successfully minister healing to unbelievers who do not know better, but the more someone knows, the more God usually holds him accountable. As Jesus said, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked” (Luke 12:48). There are indeed cases where you can “force” it, or make it happen by your faith, but this is not the place to become tangled up in the details. We often discuss this matter in connection with the doctrine of healing, as to when your faith can work for others.

The right course for you is to invest in healing even more. Throw yourself into it. Do not let Satan rob you of something that is plainly stated in Scripture. You have many other friends and relatives. Will they be ready when it is their turn to need healing? Will they declare that they will be healed only if it is God’s will, regardless of what the Bible promises? What is to blame in this case? We must blame cessationism. We must blame a false application of divine sovereignty. These things killed your friend. Hate them with a passion. Besides your friends and relatives, there are many Christians who have been scammed, and many non-Christians who could be healed and then led to Christ. You can help them if you would grasp this promise and ministry of healing. Resolve to bring God’s healing and salvation to the world. This is the way to honor your friend.

I am not lecturing you, and I am not being insensitive, but I have faced this myself. I was still in high school when I met the first one. He was fifteen, just slightly younger than I was. He had leukemia and was about to die. He was a Christian. His friends and relatives were Christians. They were supposed to believe in the word of God, but I brought the word of God to him and I could not talk him out of dying. He said it was “God’s will,” you see. I knew he could be healed. Many had been healed right under my hands as I prayed for them. But this boy already decided to die. Those Christians brought me in several days before he died, and gave me ten minutes to talk to him. Do your thing! Work your magic!

Perhaps I could have done more if they had allowed me more time, but when I went in, he did not have faith. He was just religious. Think about it. At fifteen, he had learned enough tradition to insist that he would be healed only if it was “God’s will,” regardless of what I showed him from the Bible. He never refuted any text that I used, but only nodded, and went right back to the “God’s will” routine. Cessationism killed him. Divine sovereignty — I mean that demonic but commonly accepted perversion of the doctrine — killed him. He could have been healed if he was an unbeliever, because then it would have depended on my faith and ministry, or he could have believed when I introduced the gospel to him. Ironically, “Christianity” killed him. And the Christians around him made it happen.

From: email