A Miracle at the Beautiful Gate

The miracles of Christ and of the apostles were varied, impressive and indisputable. There were always reliable witnesses to those supernatural events, except for Christ’s creation of the universe. No one knew the details of the creation, except God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, the witnesses to Christ’s miracles numbered in the thousands. Most of the witnesses had nothing to gain and much to lose--if they were not telling the truth. Witnesses friendly to Christ and to his apostles could have lost their livelihood and even their lives for standing up and telling the truth. Nevertheless, hundreds and hundreds of people were willing to risk their reputations, their families’ welfare and their own lives to testify about the miracles they had seen.

All of us can profit greatly by a careful investigation of the great miracles of the Old Testament and of the New. As valuable as it would be to study Christ’s multiplying five loaves and two fish to feed five thousand men plus women and children, his turning water into wine, his casting out demons and his raising Lazarus from the dead, I shall concentrate in this brief study on the miracle at the Beautiful gate of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem (Acts 3-4). If you want to compare and contrast the so-called “modern miracles” with biblical miracles, today’s study should be helpful. I urge you to open your Bibles to Acts 3 and study this miracle of healing with me.

The church of our Lord had been in existence for a very short time when Peter and John performed this spectacular miracle. It has a number of features that will help us to know that the faith healers and other so-called “miracle workers” of our day are deceiving their viewers and listeners. What I am telling you today is very simple: Not one of the men who claims to have the gifts of healings will attempt to heal a man who has been lame since his mother’s womb. If you listen carefully, you will be able to discern the differences between Bible miracles and the spurious miracles that are given so much publicity on television, on radio and in popular books and magazines.

I assure you that I have no intention of making fun or ridiculing anyone. As much as I disagree with Pentecostals, Neo-Pentecostals and members of the New Age movement--many of whom claim to have supernatural powers--I am not questioning anyone’s honesty or sincerity. I sincerely challenge everyone of us--Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal alike--to examine the scriptures, as the noble Bereans did (Acts 17:11) so that we may ascertain whether the reports that we read or hear are true--whether they harmonize with the powerful miracles of the Bible.

Let us take note of the background of the miracle at the Beautiful gate of the temple. The apostles Peter and John were going into the temple at about three o’clock in the afternoon--the hour of prayer (Acts 3:1). These two apostles and all others who entered the temple were accustomed to seeing a lame man at the Beautiful gate. We do not know his name, but we know he had been lame since birth. He was not able to move on his own. His friends or family members had to carry him every day and lay him at the gate of the temple. Thousands of devout Jews entered the temple daily. This provided the lame man with an opportunity to make a living by asking alms of people who came to worship God.

Luke does not describe the exact nature of the man’s physical disability, except to say that it had affected his ability to walk and to engage in gainful employment. When the lame man saw the apostles about to enter the temple, he began begging for money. He did not know who the apostles were and could not have assumed they were people with no money. They explained very carefully to the lame man that they did not have any silver and gold. But the apostle Peter offered a blessing worth more than all the silver and gold in the world. “Such as I have I give to you: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (Acts 3:2-6).

The apostle Peter took the lame man by the right hand and lifted him up. Immediately the man’s feet and anklebones received strength. He leaped, began walking and entered into the temple through the Beautiful gate. The tense of the verb “leaping up” indicates that he was leaping up repeatedly after the apostle Peter pulled him up. He entered into the temple and kept on walking, leaping and praising God (Acts 3:7-8).

I plan to return to verses seven and eight in a very short time, but for the present, please notice the contrast between the facts surrounding the miracle in Jerusalem and the reports of modern miracles. Pat Boone’s book, A Miracle a Day Keep the Devil Away (Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1974), includes one chapter with the title, “Miracles Happen even in Nashville” (pp. 83-87). Pat accuses folks--especially church folks--of not believing in miracles. He acknowledges their beliefs in the miracles recorded in the Bible, but Nashville people think miracles have ceased. When the word was confirmed by miracles, signs and wonders, Pat affirms, church members in Nashville believe that “God went out of the miracle business” (pp. 84-85).

Pat tells of a woman in Nashville whom he identifies by the name “Nancy.” Members of the churches of Christ brought her to the home of Pat Boone’s parents in Nashville. According to Pat, Nancy had enlarged (lymph) nodes in her neck which she feared were malignant. She had already had one operation for the problem. “The lumps had been removed and found to (be) malignant--and now new ones appeared.” Pat claims that his mother was speaking in tongues and received a sign that Nancy would be healed. Pat assured the people who brought Nancy that everything would be all right (p. 85).

In Pat Boone’s story, the woman’s name was Nancy, but we know nothing else about her. The people who took Nancy to the Boone’s home are not identified. We have no idea who they were, how many there were and how reliable they were. We know nothing about the credentials of those who diagnosed the problem as being enlarged lymph nodes. Pat Boone does not mention the doctor who performed the first surgery or the one who operated to remove the “two, tiny harmless little growths that were not malignant” after the so-called miracle.

For Pat’s so-called “healing” to qualify as a miracle, he would have to furnish much more information than he has provided. We must have names, places, dates, x-rays, doctor’s reports, and such like. People act very foolishly when they accept hook, line and sinker the stories charismatics tell us. We must have definite proof that the healing was a direct, miraculous result of the Boone family’s prayers. After all, cancers sometimes go into remission for no apparent reason. Doctor’s cannot always explain why cancers disappear without treatment, but they know it happens. I am not saying that is what occurred in the case Pat mentions, but it certainly could be what happened. There certainly is no evidence to prove otherwise. Can you now understand some of the differences between the account in Acts 3 and Pat Boone’s alleged miracle? I shall point out other differences very shortly.

When people or their family members are desperately ill, they may seek for any kind of healer who promises help. They are like the proverbial drowning man grasping at a straw. Waymon Miller’s book, Modern Divine Healing (Rosemead, CA: Old Paths Book Club, 1956), tells of a number of disappointed people who attended an Oral Roberts healing campaign in Fort Worth, Texas. Waymon Miller attended the so-called “healing service” in Fort Worth and gave the following account of some of those who were supposedly healed. “A mother presented her infant child, perhaps a year old, for prayer. The child was afflicted with a nervous disorder which caused constant twitching. When she returned to her seat, she passed down an aisle just a few feet from us, and the child was till jerking… A woman professed to have cancer, and claimed it was cured. The affliction was not visible, and neither was the cure… A woman carried her infant child before Roberts. The child’s legs were shriveled. Perhaps it has been a victim of polio. The case was passed by, with no prayer being offered on the child’s behalf” (p. 216). Incidentally, Waymon Miller grew up in the Pentecostal movement as a member of the Nazarene Church. In fact, his first book has the title, Why I Left the Nazarene Church (1947). At the time he wrote the book on modern divine healing, he was preaching for the North Side Church of Christ in Fort Worth, Texas.

William Nolen, a surgeon from Litchfield, Minnesota, and a nationally known medical writer, published a book in 1974 on modern divine healing. His book has the title, Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle (New York: Random House). Dr. Nolen’s book on healing tells of his investigating three different healers or groups of healers: Kathryn Kuhlman, the famous Pentecostal healer, Norbu Chen, a New Age healer from Houston, Texas, and the Filipino psychic surgeons. Dr. Nolen’s book probably is no longer in print since it was published in 1974, but you would profit greatly by reading his book.

Dr. Nolen confesses that he is not a “good Catholic,” although he was born into a Catholic family and was educated in Catholic schools. He professes to believe in God and finds it “difficult to comprehend how anyone cannot believe in God. “It seems to me,” he says, “you have to be almost irrational to be an atheist” (p.43). Dr. Nolen requested permission to serve as an usher at a Kathryn Kuhlman campaign in Minneapolis. He was given the freedom to talk to any of the sick people who came to the healing services. He tells of examining one man who was brought in on a stretcher. Dr. Nolen asked the man what his problem was. He said he had cancer of the liver. Dr. Nolen examined the man and confirmed that he did appear to have liver cancer. Please listen to Dr. Nolen’s observations: “He was swollen as a woman in the ninth month of her pregnancy. And in the upper half of his abdomen I could feel stony-hard lumps, deposits of cancer in the liver. He was obviously in the terminal stages of his disease” (p. 57).

During the healing campaign, Kathryn Kuhlman declared, “there is someone in the audience who has cancer. The tumor is in the lower half of the body. They are supposed to have an operation in a week. Now the tumor is gone. They’ll never need the operation. Praise the Holy Spirit” (p. 62). The young man with liver cancer tried to get to the platform to claim his healing, but had to be carried in a wheelchair. He died of cancer just twelve days after Kathryn Kuhlman’s visit to Minneapolis. I hope you can understand the heartache, the disappointment and tragedy that occur at some of the healing services I have described for you. Through such activities, the scriptures are being misapplied and doubts about God’s love and power are being generated.

Am I saying that Kathryn Kuhlman, Oral Roberts, Pat Boone, Benny Hinn, Rod Parsley and other so-called “faith healers” are dishonest--that they are deliberately deceiving their followers? No, I am not arguing that, although I believe there are dozens, perhaps, hundreds, of dishonest men and women who practice what they call “faith healing.” Peter Popoff, for example, claimed to have miraculous powers, but was exposed on national television as a fraud. However, I do not believe all faith healers fall into that category. How, then, do we explain the faith healers? It is my considered judgment that they are sincerely deceived. They have not studied the scriptures carefully enough to discern their error. Neither have they sufficiently investigated the so-called “miracles” which are reported in books, in magazines and in other media.

The healing of the lame man at the Beautiful gate of the temple was instantaneous. Luke records that Peter said to the lame man, “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.” Then Peter took him “by the right hand, and immediately his feet and anklebones received strength. And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking and leaping, and praising God” (Acts 3:7-8). The word “immediately” does not leave any time for the man’s body to develop strength. God supernaturally provided the strength for him to begin to walk immediately. There was no need to practice standing or walking or leaping. Have you ever seen the modern charismatics duplicate this great miracle or even try to duplicate it? If they had the same power Jesus and the apostles had, they ought to be able to cure any disease or illness, but you know they cannot and they know they cannot.

There was no need for anyone to teach the lame man to walk. When God healed him, he gave him the ability to walk and to leap. The tenses of the verbs in verse eight are very meaningful. “Walking” and “leaping” and “praising” are imperfect active verbs and indicate that the man went on walking, leaping, and praising God. He apparently alternated between walking and leaping, but he was always praising God.

Did you know that some modern divine healers wait for months or even years to announce healings? Some faith healers have been known to argue that the ones being healed must believe they are healed even if they still have the same symptoms they had before the healing. Can you imagine Peter’s saying to the lame man at the Beautiful gate: “You must believe you are healed even if you cannot walk or leap?” My friends, I can believe on the basis of evidence, but it is mere gullibility to believe contrary to evidence.

Pat Boone says, concerning the woman in Nashville, “Several weeks went by, and the nodes stopped enlarging” (p. 86). What does the expression, “several weeks,” mean? Was it eight weeks or twenty or fifty-two? Whatever the case--according to Pat’s own testimony--it was not immediate. It does not take a medical doctor or a Bible scholar to see through the claims Pat Boone made for miraculous healing. I am not denying the healing; I am vigorously denying that it was supernatural.

When a faith healer completely fails to heal or when a healing is postponed for weeks or months or years, how does he explain his failure to the family and to others? You can know for sure that they have an abundance of alibis to explain their failures. One of the most common and most foolish is: “The person did not have enough faith.” Did Christ’s miracles, such as the raising of Lazarus, rest on the faith of the individual being healed or raised from the dead? How much faith did the lame man at the Beautiful gate have? Lack of faith is an excuse--not a reason--for failure. Besides, faith should exist in the heart of the healer--not in the person being healed.

One more point must be made before we conclude our study of this great miracle. The scriptures are very careful to mention witnesses to the miracles of Jesus and of his apostles. Luke points out that “all the people saw him walking and praising God: and they knew that it was he who sat for alms at the Beautiful gate of the temple: and they were filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened to him” (Acts 3:9-10). The witnesses had no doubt about the man’s identity and about what had transpired. Who would not have been filled with wonder and amazement in the presence of such supernatural power?

In the case of the miracle in Acts 3 and 4, even hostile witnesses were convinced that a genuine miracle had occurred. The Jewish priests, the captain of the temple and the Sadducees saw the man who had been healed standing with James and John. They could not say anything against the healing. The members of the Jewish Sanhedrin commanded Peter and John to step outside the council hearings. They conferred among themselves, saying, “What shall we do to these men? For that indeed a notable miracle has been done by them is manifest to all them who dwell in Jerusalem; and we cannot deny it. But that it spread no further among the people, let us warn them, that they speak henceforth to no man in his name” (Acts 4:14-17).

I urge you to study these matters carefully and to communicate with me if you have questions or objections.

Winford Claiborne

The International Gospel Hour

P.O. Box 118

Fayetteville, TN 37334

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