John Wesley stated, “Whatever is true is not new, and whatever is new is not true.” For anything such as an assertion that,” it is God’s will that all believers be in perfect health,” or ” healing is in the atonement,” is something that we must be able to find, not only in the Scriptures, but throughout history. It has already been shown that the theory of healing in the atonement is not something that can be proved from the Scriptures, we can look to other sources to see if we can come up with the same conclusions.

The early church leaders were tutored by the apostles. Many of these people became pastors and bishops at the passing of the apostles. Some of them were even direct students of the apostles just as Timothy was a student of Paul. Many people do not realize it, but many of their letters about the operation and teaching of the Church of the first centuries still survive today. These have been transcribed into English in a work called The Apostolic Fathers. If this teaching of healing in the atonement is the teaching of the apostles, we should be able to see where they looked at these verses (Isaiah 53, Matthew 8:16-17, and 1 Peter 2:24) and observe the connection to healing in the atonement. Unfortunately for the teachers of this doctrine, the first century Church saw exactly what the Bible teaches about the atonement; that it is in relationship to sins and forgiveness, and knowsnothing of a physical healing in the atonement! In fact, how come such a “truth” could be missed by the apostles, the early church, and suddenly “rediscovered” in the past few centuries? While some truths have been revived in later centuries, (salvation by faith, holiness, grace not works,) they had a clear line of history and can be validated by the Scriptures and the early church. This is a problem that the new “healing in the atonement” teachers cannot resolve. They have no history, they have no clear Scripture, and they have no proof. All of history stands against them!

If we are to accept what the modern healing movement has to say about the subject I must ask, “how did the early church miss it?” How does a newly found doctrine of physical healing in the atonement negate nearly 2000 years of Church doctrine and history? This is something that must be asked, and cannot be answered in light of the evidence.

We conclude this section on the historical basis with the fact that there is “zero” basis in history to validate this teaching!