Is It Faithlessness to Take Medicines While Believing God for Healing?
1) Direct Answer
No. Taking medicine while believing God is not faithlessness. God is the Healer; medicine is only a help. Keep your faith in God, use what help is available, and give Him the glory.
2) Scriptural Explanation
- “I am the Lord that healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26). Healing is God’s work.
- Hezekiah: God said, “I will heal thee,” and yet commanded a poultice of figs to be laid on the boil (2 Kings 20:5–7). Promise and means walked together.
- The Good Samaritan poured in oil and wine to treat the wounds (Luke 10:34).
- “Luke, the beloved physician” was honored among the saints (Colossians 4:14).
- Paul counseled, “Use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities” (1 Timothy 5:23), showing Scripture recognizes medicinal help without endorsing excess or drunkenness.
- The prayer of faith shall save the sick (James 5:14–15). The oil is a sign; God does the healing.
3) Simple Clarifying Logic
- You see, a doctor can set a bone, but only God knits it. Medicine can fight infection, but only God gives life and restoration. So using medicine doesn’t replace faith; trusting medicine instead of God does.
- If it were unbelief to use means, why did God direct a poultice after promising healing to Hezekiah? The issue is not the fig; it’s the God who heals.
- Keep your confession: after prayer, hold to God’s promise regardless of symptoms or prescriptions. Don’t throw away needed aids to “prove” faith unless the Lord has clearly delivered you. Faith is obedience to God’s Word, not presumption.
- Walk clean and sober. Scripture condemns bondage and excess. Be led by the Spirit, not ruled by any substance.
4) Reinforcing Statement
Now notice, God heals; means are servants. Keep your eyes on Christ, use what helps are at hand with a clear conscience, and testify that the Lord is your Healer.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
Why?
60-0309 §34
The doctor leave you medicine, say, "Why didn't you take it?" The next thing your fever's high. "Why didn't you take it? Why didn't you? How can I doctor you unless you take my medicine?" How can God save you unless you take His medicine? How can He heal you unless you take the medicine? As I said, heart trouble's not number one---sin trouble. And what is sin? Sin is not smoking cigarettes, sin is not committing adultery, sin is not drinking, swearing. That's the attributes of sin. There's only one sin, that's unbe...
At Thy Word, Lord
54-0221 §44
So, God said, "I'm the Lord that healeth all of thy diseases." That don't condemn the medicine. It just keeps it clean, while God's healing it. A doctor can set your arm that's been broke. But if God don't heal that arm, it'll be broke the rest of your life. He can set the bones in place, but God has to produce the calcium, and life in there to knit them bones together. Is that right? So, a doctor didn't heal your arm. The doctor set your arm; God healed your arm. The dentist might pull a tooth out, but what about...
God's provided way of healing
54-0719A §32
Now, faith is not healing. Faith produces healing, see. By faith are you saved. Now look, if here was a loaf of bread that cost a quarter. I believe that's about the price of it. And I had twenty-five cents. Now, twenty-five cents is the purchasing price of the bread, but I've got the twenty-five cents, but haven't got the bread. Now, you can have faith for healing, and I believe many of you have. But you can't receive healing until you purchase healing, by that faith that you have. You say, "Oh, Brother Branham, I...
Ministry explained
50-0711 §14
Now, hope is one thing and faith is another. Faith is a positive sense. It's not a guess work; you don't just imagine it. It's just as real as any other sense of your body, just the same as sight is. Sight is real. Hearing is real. See, taste, feel, smell, and hear, the five senses of the body that control the body, they're real faculties to you if none of them is injured. And then, faith is just as real as any of the other five senses, and more real, because it'll go in and above those five senses. Now, the first...
Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever
58-0207 §5
And now, we are here to try to put in our little ministry with your ministry together to bring glory to God. The Lord has called me years ago to pray for His sick children. And that I reverently try to do. And I do not claim to be a healer now. If anyone can hear that, I'm not a healer. I don't claim to heal people. I, frankly, I don't believe there's anyone can heal people, because that's God's job, and He's already did that, see. By His stripes we were healed when His Son, at Calvary, was wounded for our transgre...