Healing Reawakening, The: Reclaiming Our Lost Inheritance [Paperback]

Francis MacNutt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2006

For the first three hundred years of Christian history, healing prayer was fundamental in the life of the church. It even proved the main method of converting the unbelievers of the day. Then began the long slide of healing prayer into near insignificance. The mystery of how this happened is described by Francis MacNutt in this fascinating history, which includes his own personal journey. MacNutt sees this loss as tragic and shows how necessary it is for us to rediscover healing prayer and once more embrace it. Christian leaders and anyone involved in the healing ministry must read this book.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Reclaim the transforming power of healing!

Although the main method leading to the conversion of the Roman Empire during the early years of Christianity lay in healing the sick and casting out evil spirits, belief in supernatural healing nearly disappeared from mainline churches during the following centuries. How did something so central to Jesus' own heart, something so essential to the spreading of the Gospel, nearly disappear? Join Francis MacNutt as he explores the fascinating disappearance and today's reawakening of healing ministry.

Jesus has not stopped pouring out His blessings. Through The Healing Reawakening we can rediscover the empowerment that the early Church once experienced.


"This book is more than timely. It is avant-garde, a 'forerunner' statement among signals I sense the Spirit is sending the Church, saying, I'm ready to move again in earth-shaking revival power."--Jack W. Hayford, president, The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel; chancellor, The King's Seminary; founding pastor, The Church On The Way

"A hard-hitting book that should be read by every Christian. I highly recommend it."--Vinson Synan, distinguished professor of Church history, dean emeritus, School of Divinity, Regent University

"This is the book for the whole Church at this critical moment in her history. MacNutt diagnoses with theological and historical narrative both the loss and today's partial recovery."--Don Williams, Ph.D, author; Vineyard pastor

"Destined to become required reading for all seekers of truth."--Barbara Shlemon Ryan, president, Beloved Ministry


Francis MacNutt, Ph.D., is the author of the bestselling Healing, as well as Deliverance from Evil Spirits and other books on healing prayer. He and his wife, Judith, are the founders of Christian Healing Ministries.

About the Author

Francis MacNutt, Ph.D., who as a young Roman Catholic priest was prominent in the charismatic renewal in the 1960s, is the author of the best-selling Healing, as well as Deliverance from Evil Spirits and other books on healing prayer. He and his wife, Judith, also conduct an extensive teaching ministry through conferences, seminars, tapes, and speaking engagements. They are the founders of Christian Healing Ministries in Jacksonville, Florida.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Chosen Books; Reprinted edition (September 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0800794141
• ISBN-13: 978-0800794149
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #389,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful History, Hopeful Expectation, October 25, 2006

By 

Jeff Doles (Tampa, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Healing Reawakening, The: Reclaiming Our Lost Inheritance (Paperback)

Francis MacNutt has written an insightful book about how the ministry of healing has been greatly diminished in the Church for centuries (almost 1600 hundred years!). Healing was a major part of the ministry of Jesus and His disciples, the record of which takes up about a third of the Gospels, not to mention the book of Acts. Throughout, MacNutt emphasizes the importance of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, not just for healing ministry, but for EVERY ministry.

MacNutt shows how healing ministry flourished for the first three centuries, and was then sidelined by nominal Christianity beginning with the Constantinian era. He details how ecclesiastical structures and the developing clergy/laity distinction quickly began to remove healing ministry from the hands of the people-it became a work for the "super-spiritual," and few could qualify to perform it (some of the Desert Fathers, for example). Healing shortly became the province of relics and shrines-and the clergy no longer had to deal with embarrassing questions when healings did not occur at their hands.

He also talks about how the purpose of God's love and compassion in healing had been severely neglected in the intervening centuries. Healing ministry became viewed strictly as a validation of truth, but was no longer necessary for faith. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe" became the watchword, and interest in the display of God's love through healing fell by the way.

MacNutt discusses how the Platonic split between body and soul, and the severe doctrines of the Manichees (i.e. the intrinsic evil of the flesh, and especially of sexuality) further eviscerated the ministry of healing. During the middle ages, the development of the "divine right of kings" generated "the Royal Touch," and healing ministry was limited, by law, to the monarchs of England and France.

Although a committed Roman Catholic, MacNutt believes that the Reformation did not extend far enough in its scope-the Reformers continued to ignore the reality of healing ministry. Oh, they recognized that there had once been such a thing in Jesus' day, but now that time was past, and the ministry had ceased. So much for reformation!

But all along the way, there have been healing ministers and ministries among the people, arising in times of revival and when people were desperate for a healing touch from God. In the last 300 hundred years there have been some glimpses of healing ministry arising again, then faltering. Then it began trending upward in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mostly among the pentecostally inclined. These came to include the charismatic and "third wave" movements late in the mid-to-late 1900s, about which MacNutt writes from personal experience (the appendix is a testimony of how he received the baptism, or "release" of the Holy Spirit, into his life and ministry).

In all, Francis MacNutt brings us understanding about the decline of healing ministry, but also a hope and a challenge to welcome the release of the Holy Spirit and healing ministry back into the Western Church-just as it has been increasingly been experienced in the Third Word Church.

Jeff Doles, Bible teacher and author of
Healing Scriptures and Prayers and
Miracles and Manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the History of the Church

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the healing reawakening, November 20, 2009

By 

northern beauty - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Healing Reawakening, The: Reclaiming Our Lost Inheritance (Paperback)

MacNutt is a scholar with a heart and has the ability to relate serious theological truths in ways that anyone will understand. AND he makes it fun. I couldn't put it down! This book is required reading for seminarians at ORU and should be required reading for every person who might think they "know" God and His Bible--pastors of 50 years as well as the newly converted. I would recommend it especially to those who want the whole Truth and not just those parts of the Bible that are fed to you by folk who have another agenda other than the Whole Truth.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable contribution to understanding divine healing, June 27, 2009

By 

Vartan Bakerdjian (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Healing Reawakening, The: Reclaiming Our Lost Inheritance (Paperback)

Francis MacNutt's historical analysis provides very compelling arguments in debunking centuries old and highly dangerous misconceptions about divine healing. This book is a must read for anyone who needs to gain a proper perspective on the subject of divine healing.