Acts 5:12-16 The hands of the apostles

Acts 5:12-16 Innumerable miracles occur, people are brought from the surrounding area to be healed, and the church continues to grow. This follows after the great fear that arose from what happened to Ananias and Sapphira. Signs and wonders continue to take place at the hands of the apostles, people hold them in high esteem and fear to associate with them. There is nothing that says that people were healed by Peter's shadow, but apparently they thought they would be.

          In the modern church, there are answers to prayer for healing, but they are usually isolated. Occasionally there will be itinerant evangelists with healing ministries that pray for people who line up, often hundreds of them in a single meeting. But the key aspect of this ministry seems to be that it was part of the organic ministry of the church. People from the outside came to be healed because they recognized that healing flowed from that body of believers who named the name of Christ. Peter had a unique place as the pastor of the first church of Jerusalem, yet the text says the signs and wonders took place at the hands of the apostles (plural). 

          In the modern world, the explosive power of God's healing does not seem to be manifested in the church. Traveling evangelists such as Kathryn Kuhlman and Oral Roberts, perhaps, but I cannot recall ever hearing about a stampede of sick people rushing to church to be healed. They go the ER instead. There are two possible views of this. One is that this type of sign and wonder ministry was confined to the early church and is no longer needed since the church has been established. The season of great works of power was needed then but is not needed now, as God has other priorities for the modern church, such as discipleship and spiritual formation. The other point of view is that this is missing because the church is missing the power of the Holy Spirit flowing through apostolic leadership. The test of the latter view would be if a church (any church, any denomination) were to be so led by the Holy Spirit that its leadership would go and pray for people and they would be healed so routinely that they would be sought out by unbelievers, not because they wanted to be saved, but simply because they wanted to be healed and believed that the church leadership had the authority to heal them in Jesus' name. What would this look like? Hard to say, but it would be different from the church services and ministries that we have now.