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Why is it that many evangelists don’t obey this instruction to anoint with oil when praying for the sick, and yet the sick are often still healed? A. That is not a hard and fast, fixed-in-concrete command, that you MUST call for an elder (or two) to pray for you – or anoint with oil – in order to receive healing. God listens to the earnest, believing, trusting prayer of a contrite and sincere person. His healing does not depend upon elders, nor upon oil. It depends upon us responding to Him. When you have grown in faith to know that God heals, you can anoint others with oil and pray for their healing, if you feel so moved by the Spirit. Or you can pray for them without anointing them. The oil is merely a symbol, and a physical ‘crutch’ to help the one prayed for to believe and trust God more. James 5:14 is a directive, not a command – it says “let him” – a suggestive encouragement to the person who has not received healing, to encourage him to receive. Perhaps it is also to help him dig deeper as to why he has not been healed (see Jas 5:15 about sins). If a person calls for the elders of the Church to pray over him, he is asking them not for a ritual prayer (as it has become in too many circles), but to enquire of God. When we pray to God, we should expect reciprocation. God responds to us. He speaks. Elders should be mature and know God’s voice. When they pray over the sick person, they are asking God what can they do to encourage and help that person spiritually. God can reveal to them weaknesses or blockages in that person’s spiritual life that are hindering the healing which God promises. All that is bound up underneath those words in Jas 5:14. It is not a command to engage in a ritual that asserts ‘eldership superiority’ over brethren, as some Spirit-dead churches have made it. They turn the scripture on its head!
Is this biblical? Don’t they contradict the words of James 5:16 and the numerous instances the apostle Paul said “Pray for this and that person and pray also for me”? A. Dumitru Duduman was repeating what God had told Dumitru for Stan’s wife – that she was being brought down (discouraged) by demons because she was praying for others without praying sufficiently for herself. Their problems were coming back on her and she was weighed down by them all – being oppressed. In 1 Timothy 2:1, Paul describes several forms of prayer: “Supplications (asking help for specifics), prayers (more general, and up to the individual what is prayed), intercessions...” (NKJV). Now, intercession is not a request. It is warfare. Helena engages in intercession. I don’t, except in my writing. She has a specific spiritual gift whereby she feels a pressure or weight in her head (what the prophets referred to as a ‘burden’) to pray for someone and against some spiritual force that is restricting or dominating them. She is exerting a spiritual force against demons. She can actually feel in her head the strength of what she is up against, as the Holy Spirit engages her in the fight. You must realise that this type of prayer cannot be engaged in humanly. It is the Spirit which engages us in it (if you are called to that type of service). If you try to fight demons on your own, you can’t. And that’s what Stan’s wife was doing. She was not in tune with God sufficiently before she got hooked up into the spirit realm and started to try to pray for others, to release them from the problems demons caused. So, the demons that were troubling those people came to torment her. The problems those people were weighed down with were coming back on her, and they were crushing her. Perhaps she was shallow spiritually, and didn’t realise the depth of what she was getting into by engaging in intercession. Or perhaps God gave her a calling in that area, to enlighten her about just how futile her prayers were, to humble her and draw her to rely upon Him more. I suspect that is the case. Anyway, in His love, God spoke to Dumitru for her benefit, so that she could be delivered.
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