Bless the Lord, O my soul;
And all that is within me, bless His holy name!
² Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget not all His benefits:
³ Who forgives all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases,
⁴ Who redeems your life from destruction,
Who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies,
⁵ Who satisfies your mouth with good things,
So that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.  ~Psalm 103:1-5

There is much debate and conjecture among Christians (and Jews) about whether using physicians is God’s will for us.  It is true that many physicians are Christians, but that does not make it necessarily God’s will for us, any more than any profession or action done by a Christian makes it God’s will for us.  In the following passage, God is obviously very chagrined that King Asa, who reigned longer than either King David or King Solomon, sought care from physicians instead of the Lord; so much so that He allowed him to die from his affliction.

And in the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa became diseased in his feet, and his malady was very severe; yet in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians.  So Asa rested with his fathers; he died in the forty-first year of his reign.  ~2 Chronicles 16:12-13

Critics argue that this means you should also seek the care of God, not just physicians.  But this makes no practical or logical sense because doctors’ treatment is largely atheistic and lacks faith, whereas God’s method of healing is largely by faith, simple touch, and prayer.  These are diametrically opposed philosophies.  If you are seeking curative treatment with a surgeon’s scalpel how does faith in the Lord and prayer factor in?  If you are healed, the glory will go to the doctor and surgery you had, not to God.  The whole reason the healing of Naaman worked from the prophet Elisha was because it was so simple as to give God the glory!

God likes to work miracles in such a way as to bring people to faith in Him.  This cannot happen when you have two conflicting belief systems at work in you.  It is similar to how the ancient Israelites worshiped God but also held to belief in their idols, praying to them and making offerings to them to ‘cover all their bases’.  Does God like this?  No he does not.  He wants all the faith, all the belief, and all the glory to go to Him, being a jealous God for us.

Let’s face it:  those who seek out doctors for care don’t really believe God can or will heal them.  Most may say a token prayer, pray daily, or even add a loved on to the church prayer list for Sunday, but they save the heavy faith for their doctor and their hospital.  At the root of this is the fleshly fear that we might become sick or die.  Men and women may prolong their life with a heart bypass or their quality of life with man-made pharmaceuticals, but this is not God’s will.

Concomitantly, due to the following verse in the Bible by the Apostle Paul, many believe Luke the Evangelist to have been primarily a doctor:

Luke the beloved physician and Demas greet you.  ~Colossians 4:14

Paul may been using the word ‘physician’ liberally to mean simply healer or comforter since Luke was an intelligent man of faith and accompanied Saint Paul on many of his journeys.  We know Luke was definitely a good historian and even artist, but the only reference historically to him being a medical doctor was the above description used by Paul, which can mean many things, as illustrated by Jesus’ use of the term ‘physician’, and the use of the term in the Old Testament by the prophets.

In other words, Luke may have been more of a ‘faith healer’ than modern day physician.  So to use this one statement to support the claim that God allows Christians to seek out care from physicians is to negate all the Biblical evidence to the contrary!

There is only one word used for ‘physician’ in the Bible in each of the Biblical languages, Hebrew and Greek.  The New Testament Greek word for physician is iatros, which means physician.  The Old Testament Hebrew word for physician is R-PH-A or R-PH-H, raphah, which means to mend, to cure, and to slacken or cease.  In Strong’s Concordance these are the listed references to ‘physician’ and ‘physicians’:

New Testament:

Matthew 9:11-13:  “And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?  When Jesus heard that, He said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’  For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” [Jesus is stating that sickness is spiritual, and that He is a physician who can heal them]

Mark 2:17:  “When Jesus heard it, He said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.'” [A repeat of the above verses]

Luke 4:23-27:  “He said to them, ‘You will surely say this proverb to Me, ‘Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in Your country.’” Then He said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own country.  But I tell you truly, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a great famine throughout all the land; but to none of them was Elijah sent except to Zarephath, in the region of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.  And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”  [It takes faith to be healed by God, and by the same token, God chooses whom He will and will not heal.  It is His sovereign right as God to have power over life and death.]

Luke 5:30-32:  “And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against His disciples, saying, ‘Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’  Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.’” [A repeat of the above verses in Matthew and Mark]

Colossians 4:14:   “Luke the beloved physician and Demas greet you.” [See above]

Mark 5:25-34:  “A woman who had suffered a condition of hemorrhaging for twelve years—a long succession of physicians had treated her, and treated her badly, taking all her money and leaving her worse off than before—had heard about Jesus. She slipped in from behind and touched his robe. She was thinking to herself, “If I can put a finger on his robe, I can get well.” The moment she did it, the flow of blood dried up. She could feel the change and knew her plague was over and done with.  At the same moment, Jesus felt energy discharging from him. He turned around to the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”  His disciples said, “What are you talking about? With this crowd pushing and jostling you, you’re asking, ‘Who touched me?’ Dozens have touched you!”  But he went on asking, looking around to see who had done it. The woman, knowing what had happened, knowing she was the one, stepped up in fear and trembling, knelt before him, and gave him the whole story.  Jesus said to her, “Daughter, you took a risk of faith, and now you’re healed and whole. Live well, live blessed! Be healed of your plague.” [ALL the physicians that tried to treat her failed her and treated her badly until she took an intuitive step of faith, reached out to Jesus, and was healed by Him.  Physicians today do the very same thing, pretend to be able to cure us, take our money, and often cause more harm than good, leaving us worse off than we were to begin with.]

Luke 8:43-48:  “Now a woman, having a flow of blood for twelve years, who had spent all her livelihood on physicians and could not be healed by any, came from behind and touched the border of His garment. And immediately her flow of blood stopped.  And Jesus said, “Who touched Me?  When all denied it, Peter and those with him said, “Master, the multitudes throng and press You, and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’”  But Jesus said, “Somebody touched Me, for I perceived power going out from Me.” Now when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before Him, she declared to Him in the presence of all the people the reason she had touched Him and how she was healed immediately.  And He said to her, “Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well. Go in peace.” [A repeat of the above verse]

Old Testament:

Jeremiah 8:22:  “Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?” [Jeremiah mourns for the people here after the Lord has punished them for backsliding and holding fast to deceit without repenting of their wickedness.  Not even the balm of Gilead nor the physicians there can heal them once God has a mind to strike them down.]

Genesis 50:2:  “When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people.  Then Joseph fell on his father’s face and wept over him and kissed him.  And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel.  Forty days were required for it, for that is how many are required for embalming. And the Egyptians wept for him seventy days.” [The Egyptian physicians were Joseph’s servants, Joseph being a son of God.  He used them not to heal the living, but to embalm the dead, as per the custom in Egypt at that time.]

2 Chronicles 16:12 (quoted above)

Job 13:1-16:

None of those references from the Bible speak very highly of physicians which is not surprising to true believers because physicians were analogous to Greek philosophers (whom Paul advocated against listening to) and likely progressed out of the magicians of Egypt and Babylon.

Looking deeper into the history and origin of medicine we find that it was the Egyptians and Babylonians that primarily perfected and used physicians, and later the Greeks and Romans.  Have these societies ever been the emulation of God’s chosen people?  A resounding, ‘No!’ would be the answer.  So why do we think it is okay to emulate it now?  Hippocrates, the ‘Father of Western Medicine’, lived from 460 to 370 bc, and created the Hippocratic Oath still in use for doctors today.  If medicine was such a reverent gift from God, it seems likely Jesus or the early church fathers would have spoken positively of it, and referred to it since it would have been well-known in their world by that time.  Yet they did not.  Paul, James, and Peter, the pillars of the early church, taught not to ‘make an appointment with a well-known physician to heal you’, but ‘to lay on anointed hands of those abiding in Christ, and pray’ for you.

Furthermore, the symbol used for medicine itself is the Rod of Asclepius, from Greek mythology.  Asclepius is a deity associated with healing and medicine.  It is a representation of a serpent entwined around a staff.  The serpent is God’s most cunning creature, cursed since the beginning of time for deceiving God’s chosen people.  The serpent conjures thoughts of gnosis, or knowledge, obtained illegally without God’s permission (Genesis 3).  And the staff represents God’s wand, used to perform miracles by His prophets, culminating in the sacrifice of the life of Jesus Christ, the Messiah.  To combine the staff with the serpent is heretical and blasphemous to the highest degree; it means replacing Jesus with the gnosis of man.

Which is really what we do when we seek out the care of a physician.

Why do we want to seek ‘healing’ from a profession that venerates and makes an idol of this creature which God cursed and replaces Jesus Christ as our physician?

Original Hippocratic Oath:

I swear by Apollo The Healer, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the Gods and Goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture.

To hold my teacher in this art equal to my own parents; to make him partner in my livelihood; when he is in need of money to share mine with him; to consider his family as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they want to learn it, without fee or indenture; to impart precept, oral instruction, and all other instruction to my own sons, the sons of my teacher, and to indentured pupils who have taken the physician’s oath, but to nobody else.

I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art. I will not use the knife, not even, verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.

Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free. And whatsoever I shall see or hear in the course of my profession, as well as outside my profession in my intercourse with men, if it be what should not be published abroad, I will never divulge, holding such things to be holy secrets.

Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain for ever reputation among all men for my life and for my art; but if I transgress it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.^[5]

The beginning of this ancient oath starts out by honoring idols and end with glorifying oneself.  God as we know him is no where in this.  And it, or a version of it, is still used today by most medical schools in the United States.

Who his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live to righteousness: by whose stripes you were healed.  ~1 Peter 2:24