"Thank God, I can. Thank God, I can," I tell them. "You see, you were healed on somebody else's faith, or by a manifestation of the Spirit of God. You didn't have any foundation of the Word of God in you to help you keep your healing.
"You were like the man who built his house on the sand. The storm came and destroyed it. The symptoms came—you accepted them, and he put the sickness back on you."
I tell people, "The thing you must do is get to know the Lord through His Word."
As Smith Wigglesworth said, "I can't understand God by feelings. I can't understand Jesus Christ be feelings. I understand God by what the Word says about Him. He is everything the Word says He is. Get to know the Lord through the Word."
When you know that by His stripes you WERE healed—when you know that surely He has borne our diseases and carried our pains—when you know "Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses"—when you know that in your spirit as well as you know in your head that 2 + 2 = 4—then the devil will have no power over you.
When you know the power and authority of the Name of Jesus and that you have a right—a biblical right, a scriptural right—to that Name, then the devil will have no power over you.
And when symptoms come, you'll not be filled with fear. You'll simply laugh at the devil and say, "Satan, did you know you're whipped? Now you leave my body!" And he'll leave.
In August 1970, my wife and I went to Syracuse, New York, to preach a Full Gospel Business Men's Convention and to stay on for several weeks to speak for their chapter in Upper New York State.
I remember three Methodist ladies who came up to us after one of the morning services. They said, "We're new in this."
One of the ladies told me how her doctors had sent her to a hospital in New York City because they couldn't determine what was wrong with her.
After five weeks, specialists told her they had found out what was wrong, but it was incurable. She gave us the name of the disease; I had never heard of it.
"In all the history of medical science we know of only seven or eight people in the world who have ever had this," the doctors said. "There is no cure for it. We don't know exactly how long you will live; it's according to how the disease progresses. But we do know that you'll be dead within ten years."
That's not much for a 36-year-old mother to look forward to.
She went on, "Somebody told me about wonderful healing meetings in Pittsburgh, so I went."
In the first service she attended, the Spirit of God operated in the evangelist. She pointed in this woman's direction and said "There is a lady over here who has a very rare disease. In fact, medical science has said that only seven or eight people have ever had this."
"I was instantly healed," this woman related. "I went back to the specialists; they ran every test they could; and they couldn't find it. They said, 'We don't understand it, but it's gone.' And for months I never felt better.
"But now," she told my wife and me, "every symptom has come back on me. I haven't told my husband yet, but I'm worse than I ever was. I've been back to the meetings, but I haven't received anything. Can you help me?"
"Yes, I can," I said. "You see, you were healed by a special manifestation initiated by the Spirit of God in the life of this evangelist—and thank God for it. But then, after you got back home on your own, Satan took advantage of what you didn't know and began to put symptoms back on you. And instead of resisting them, you accepted them."
"What can I do?" she asked.
I said, "Just get in these Bible teaching services like we've been teaching here this week."
So she and her two friends began to follow us from city to city as we spoke for the various Full Gospel Business Men's chapters.
When we were getting ready to leave the area, she said, "Brother Hagin, I'm completely healed. Every symptom has disappeared. This time I got it on my own faith, and I know how to keep it. And I'll tell you something else: I know how to go out and get others healed, too."
What happened to this Methodist woman happens to many. It's easy to get healed in a mass meeting where there is a mass faith and everybody's believing. Others get healed through a special manifestation of the Holy Spirit—through gifts of the Spirit, gifts of healings, etc.
But when these people get back home on their own, they're really on their own! They're not surrounded by faith any longer. Many times they're surrounded by doubt and unbelief.
Then the minute the first symptoms show up, they say, "I thought the Lord healed me. I guess He didn't." And when they say that, they open the door to the devil. Instead of rising up and meeting the devils with the Word of God and commanding his power to be broken, they yield. Why? Because they have no foundation of God's Word in their lives. They are depending on other to carry them on their prayers and faith.
That might work temporarily, but a permanent healing will be based on their own faith. No one can maintain a healing which has come as a result of another's faith, gifts of the Spirit, and so on, unless his faith is developed through the Word of God to the point where he can maintain his own rights.
We must learn to say, "Devils, you can't put that back on me! The Lord has healed me. I won't accept it back." We must learn to stand in faith; to "keep the switch of faith turned on."
We know God uses people who are especially equipped and gifted by the Spirit—and thank God for them. The healing gifts bring people in. But just like new converts need to get established in the Word if they're going to go on, people who get healed need to get established in the Word if they're going to stay healed.
Excerpt permission granted by Faith Library Publications