More thoughts of what happened at Faith Assembly
Having sat under Dr. Freeman, I must say the man had a passion in making sure the Bible was preached in its completeness. While all the negative things that happened, and I don't have an answer for it, there is a heck of a lot of good that went on there also.
I got "delivered" if you take it or leave doesn't bother me, from a range of emotional baggage and sin. Literally I knew things were leaving me.
As for healings, I saw things happen in my life an others that were beyond explanation so healings did take place.
Why not for everyone? I don't know. Yes the one thing missing in the preaching was Grace. Grace to let others grow at their own speed.
Seems the church grew so fast and things were happening almost weekly at Faith Assembly, the new building, I believe the zeal of the people is partly to blame what happened. Legalism crept in and a false hyper-faith grew in such an environment that deaths occurred and sadly could have been prevented by medical attention.
Nevertheless God is still faithful and did heal. But as to why not always, I guess we have to learn more about grace and not giving up.
Sadly a lot of teens, like a previous poster stated, have fallen or turned their backs on God. This hurts me, but at the same time I guess one has to move on and realize it still is a personal walk with God. Not excusing the either the parents or the teens, but I do know from reading emails sent to me, the teens were neglected and expected to grow up quickly in the faith environment. This was not fair and hindsight would show the adults were guilty of this special ministry, even to toddlers, like a "Sunday school". Somewhere has to be the balance in all this. On one side we have in the Old Testament, they took rebellious teens out of the city and stoned them, on the other side we have Timothy where it says children will become disobedient and rebellious.
So where does one draw the line to say the Bible is true and we should follow it?
That is a personal choice, and unfortunately for Faith Assembly and Dr. Freeman we were caught blindsided by legalism and destroyed what could have, well was for a bit, a mighty move of God not seen since the big revivals in Chicago and California and such.
Myself, I have balanced my life out with medical attention, like going to the dentist (my heart goes out for David Ash's aunt) and health check ups, and prayer. I generally pray first for symptoms and they go away without side effects, but some linger, some like cavity don't heal. So I go get it fixed. Why don't they get healed? I don't know, but I don't throw out what I know is true - Jesus still heals today.
Do I condemn others for going to seek medical help? No, not at all. But I do feel sad if at the first sign one doesn't seek God, rather than seek the aspirin bottle as society is so conditioned today.God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If He healed and delivered me back in 1980, He can do it today.
Cheers
Tom