A Cessationist Healing?

This is a short excerpt from a quote on Challies Dot Com which Tim says is entirely consistent with a cessationist perspective. It sure doesn’t sound like the cessationism I love to caricaturise!

“. . . My friend knelt down in the middle of a circle of elders. We anointed him with oil, laid lands on him, and began to pray. Since I had started the process, I was appointed to offer the closing prayer.

As soon as we began to pray, I had an overwhelming sense that God was, at the moment, healing my friend. My arms felt what I can only describe as bolts of fire pushing through them. As I grasped my friend’s shoulder, heat and energy burned my hand. I felt that my one hand could lift all of his 230 pounds to the ceiling or push him through the floor if I wished.

I knew God was healing him. I wanted to shout, ‘We must stop praying that God will heal John and start praising God that He has healed him.’ But I was too astonished, too ensure of my sensations, to say a word to anyone that night. For four days, I kept my experience to myself.

Four days later, after church, my friend beckoned me with a wild grin, ‘Dan, watch this.’ At once, he dashed up a flight of steps. I dashed after him and met him at the top. He smiled, ‘And I’m not even breathing hard.’

‘I knew it,’ I exclaimed, and told him what I had felt a few nights earlier. And he told me, ‘I knew it too . . . .”