Elijah Challenge Coordinator earns Ph.D. from Seminary
November 2013
Davy Hermanus is The Elijah Challenge Coordinator for Indonesia—a nation with the fourth largest population in the world after the United States. Recently Davy defended his Dissertation for his Doctor of Ministry at the Sunergeo Banten Theological Seminary in Tarakan, Indonesia. This is his testimony.
“I passed my Dissertation Defense very well. After giving a presentation about my dissertation The Model of the Healing Ministry of Jesus as Applied to Preaching the Gospel Today, I was asked many questions by four Professors and also by people in the audience. I focused my answers only from Jesus’ method of healing in the Bible.
I said that Jesus used miraculous healing in order that people could believe that He was from God—because only God can do such miracles. The problem in churches today is that they have no more use for it. But they have to use the scriptural way which Jesus taught. I explained that Jesus did not send the disciples to pray for the sick, but to heal the sick (Luke 9:1,2,6; 10:9).
One Professor asked me about “praying for the sick” in James 5. I answered that in the four gospels, Jesus did not pray for the sick. So why do we pray for the sick according to our traditional interpretation of James? Actually, according to the Greek, the text in James 5:14 is not “pray for” but rather “pray over” the sick. It probably means laying hands over the infirmity of the sick person [and speaking over him or her with authority]. James is likely the brother of Jesus, so he should be teaching Jesus’ pattern of ministering healing to the sick [which we know did not involve simply traditional prayer].
After my presentation, the Rector of the Seminary who led the four Professors in examining me asked me to give a demonstration of healing. He told me that I had to heal someone in the room to prove and demonstrate my dissertation. Then he asked me to heal him from the pain in his heart from which he was suffering. So I took a moment to minister healing to him in the name of Jesus. And he was healed. Praise God!”
As Dr. Davy Hermanus, Davy will now have opportunities throughout Indonesia to teach Seminary students, most of them future or current pastors and leaders, how to heal the sick as Jesus did in the New Testament. He will have them actually heal the sick in his classes as a demonstration of the Scriptures. And these pastors trained by Davy will be able teach their congregations how to heal the sick as Jesus commanded His disciples when He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God. These trained leaders will obey the Great Commission in which Jesus commands the Church to “teach disciples to obey everything I have commanded you”—including healing the sick and proclaiming the kingdom of God to the lost.
We at The Elijah Challenge are more and more convinced that the teaching is not simply another passing fad to tickle the ears of 21st century believers. The teaching rather goes back to the essence of the New Testament—Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father, and the Church is to proclaim this to the world with power to make disciples of all nations preceding the great and terrible Day of the Lord. We believe the Lord is returning His Church to the basics of New Testament Scripture during these last days. Therefore we will see the Lord restoring the teaching to more and more of His Church in the days to come, especially in the Church outside the West. Elijah Challenge Asia Coordinator Albert Kang in Malaysia is already beginning to heal the sick in the class he teaches for the prestigious Haggai Institute.