Transcript

ANNOUNCER: So did an angel really stir up the water and heal people at the pool of Bethesda in John chapter 5? Or was it some other mystical phenomena? Thank you for joining us. This is Grace in Focus. We’re glad you’re here. And we are a broadcast and podcast ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Find us at faithalone.org. By the way, we have a magazine that has a free subscription. It comes out six times per year. It is full-length, full-color, a beautiful magazine. We write articles about our Free Grace position. And we want you to have the magazine for free. It’s free, all except for postage if you live outside of the 48 contiguous United States. Sign up for today at our website faithalone.org. 

And now with our question and answer discussion for today, here is Bob Wilkin and Sam Marr. 

SAM: All right, Bob. We’ve got a question from Hayden, and he’s asking about John 5:4. He says, I was watching John Niemela speak on John 5:28-29 on YouTube. And he seemed to imply that God indeed sent an angel to the pool to stir it up to heal those who could get in. And then he says he’s open. His view is that 5:4 likely doesn’t belong in the, even though it is found in the Majority text, that it’s likely a scribal note, and that it probably doesn’t belong in the text, but he’s open and wants to hear your thoughts on it. 

BOB: Okay, first of all, the incident is this pool at Bethesda, where Jesus heals this man who’s been paralyzed for nearly 40 years. And evidently his paralysis was due to some sin in his life because at the very end of the incident, He tells the man, “See you have been made well, sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” That tends to imply the reason he had this was because of some sin in his life. Or at the very least, what the Lord is saying is, keep in mind that something worse than this could happen if you fall into a life of sin. But Hayden’s question is, did this really happen? Did an angel come down, stir up the water, and then the first one to get in would be healed? 

The first issue is, is this even in the text. The Critical text, which is the reading of translations like the New American Standard, the NIV, the Net Bible, the Holman Christian Standard, that would omit this verse altogether. So you don’t even have it. 

It’s a healing at the pool of Bethesda, but the man doesn’t say anything about, hey, I’ve never been able to be the first one in the water when the angel stirs it up. However, the majority of manuscripts do include this. That’s why the King James and the New King James include this verse. And what I would suggest is this, in my opinion, this is part of Scripture, and the man did say this. 

Now, whether this actually occurred or not is a separate question, the man could be lying. The Scriptures do report lies like Satan said, “You shall not surely die”. Well, Satan really said that, but that was a lie. And this man could be lying, but I see no good reason for him to lie. I would say, however, that if the angel is healing here, it’s rather unusual, right? Can you think of any other examples in Scripture where angels healed people in Scripture? 

SAM: I cannot. 

BOB: I can think of places where angels destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, where angels killed people, but places where angels healed people, I don’t know, and it’s not coming to my mind examples of where that occurs. So if this is true and it really did happen, it was unusual. And it sounds like even if it did happen, it was pretty infrequent. Otherwise, in the course of 38 years, this guy eventually would have been able to be the first one in the water. Presumably, he could move his arms, he just couldn’t move his legs, so that he could move to the edge and get in there, but someone else was getting in there first. But in any case, obviously, God could send an angel and he could heal people. I think Hayden’s problem is, he says that this sounds like something that pagans would report. 

SAM: Yeah, he said it kind of aligns with pagan or specifically, Greco-Roman tradition of having sort of a mystical place that offers healing. 

BOB: Yeah. I guess my answer would be, the fact that something in Scripture is similar to something which happens in pagan thought doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, or that it didn’t happen. I guess my point would be it really doesn’t much change our interpretation of the passage, whether you see this as something that happened or didn’t happen. 

Whether this is not even part of the text—one of the things that Metzger commentary on the text of the New Testament points out is there are a lot of variations. The majority manuscripts do include this, but there’s a bit of variation or a lot of variation as to exactly how many of the words are included, etc. So I would say in terms of a Majority text person, this isn’t as solid of a reading as other texts in the Majority text, but I would take this as an original reading. Most likely, this really did happen. The man’s not lying. We don’t know how many times it happened, but it’s certainly not beyond God to bless people, especially in Israel, with healings, right? 

SAM: So I have a question. We talk about the miracles. We know Christ performed miracles, but then the miracles that His apostles performed, the signs and wonders were to validate their ministry. And so we hold that those signs and wonders, the miracles, the things that they did, like casting out demons and healing people are no longer gifts that believers have, because we don’t need to validate that same ministry. So could something like this, an angel physically coming down and healing a group of people in the seemingly random location, is this something that we can put in that category of things that maybe were there to validate Christ’s ministry? Or is this a separate—should we view this separately? Because there’s no indication at how long this went on for. It’s clear that there were people that were sick and injured and they would gather around this pool to wait for healing, but it doesn’t say that they’ve been doing this for 100 years or, you know, 100 days. 

ANNOUNCER: We will rejoin in just a moment. But years ago, Zane Hodges wrote the Gospel Under Siege. Sadly, this is still true. And GES president Bob Wilkin has recently written its sequel. Bob’s new book, The Gospel is Still Under Siege, is a book about theological clarity on the Biblical teaching about eternal salvation. It is available now. Secure yours today at the Grace Evangelical Society’s bookstore. Find it at faithalone.org/store. That’s faithalone.org/store. Now back to today’s content.

BOB: And let me point out, coming back to Hayden’s point about pagans, pagans could see water as having healing properties, right? Or crystals, you know, the new age movement, they see crystals having some sort of power to bless you and power to maybe heal you, etc. This text doesn’t say the water healed. It says that the angels stirred up the water and then as a result there was healing. So it’s the angel that’s causing the healing, not the water, because they could go into the water every day and nothing was going to happen unless the angels stirred it up. So this is quite different from what you see in pagan thought, but did the miracles that Jesus did validate His message? Yes. Did the miracles that the apostles did validate their message? Yes. Have those miracles ceased? Yes. 

We know from Scripture that by the end of the apostolic age, they were no longer being able to do all these things. Paul left Trophimus sick at Miletus. Why would he do that? If he still had the gift of healing, He would have just healed him or he would have found someone else there in Miletus to heal him, but no, he left him sick. 

So the point is, the sign gifts were ceasing and I would argue, by the way, that those sign gifts were used in the Old Testament for the same reason. Elijah and Elisha both did many amazing miracles and it validated their message. You remember with the ten plagues of Egypt, God did many miracles through Moses and Aaron, and they validated their message that Israel was the chosen people. And by the end, the Egyptians are giving the Jews and the Israelis who are leaving, they’re giving them gold, they’re giving them silver, they’re giving them nice things because they realized these are God’s chosen people and they want some measure of God’s blessing for blessing Israel, which goes back by the way to Genesis 12:1-3. “He who blesses you, I will bless. He who curses you, I will curse.” And so yes, the miracles do validate, but there’s no need for that today because we have the completed Bible. We have not only the Tanakh, the Old Testament, but we have all of the New Testament as well. And of course, we already have the completed ministry of Jesus and His apostles. 

But let me point out one other thing. Remember in Hebrews 13, you might look it up, it’s around verse 2. He says, beware of entertaining angels unawares. That kind of thing happened in the history of mankind many times. Angels would appear to people in Genesis 18, angels appeared to Abraham. 

SAM: Yeah, Hebrews 13:2 says, “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so, some have unwittingly entertained angels.” 

BOB: Yeah, so if angels unwittingly in the first century were visiting people, enough so that the author of Hebrews is mentioning it, is it not possible that some of those angels were blessing people? And they might have even healed people. So there are indications that even though we tend to think in our day and age, we’ve never seen an angel, I think it’s quite possible that in my lifetime, I’ve talked to some angels, some people who were actually angels. I don’t know that. It’s possible that angelic intervention stopped at the end of the age of the apostles, but I doubt that. 

SAM: So then do you, back to the question, do you think the angel at the pool of Bethesda was that evaluating ministry or is that something that was already going on and just happened to be recorded in John’s Gospel? 

BOB: I think what it validated was that Israel is God’s chosen people. He wasn’t sending angels to the pool in Cairo. He was sending them to the pool in Bethesda in Israel. So yes, did God do healings elsewhere? Sometimes. He healed the Syrian general of leprosy when he came to Israel, and he would show his mercy, but the guy actually came to Israel when the healing took place. So I think the validation there would have been on the fact that Israel is God’s chosen people. And that God loves the Jewish people and heals them. 

And I think it also underscores the fact that ultimately all disabilities are something which God hates and that there will be no disabilities when we’re glorified. 

SAM: And we hope that helps you Hayden on your question and we hope everybody keeps grace in focus. 

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Thank you for joining us all this week here on Grace and Focus. We hope you have a great weekend, enjoy some time with your friends and family, and worship at a Bible teaching church. Come back and join us again on Monday and in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.