Chuck Smith, 86, Dies After Cancer Battle

Chuck Smith was extremely influential on the West Coast and elsewhere. Many, including some in my extended family, will miss him tremendously. In my ministry I’ve met many people who have been directly or indirectly influenced for good and God by his ministry.

I’m prayerful about the cognitive dissonance some Calvary Chapelers might be experiencing over his death to cancer. Last summer, many Calvary Chapel pastors and lay people were rejoicing that Chuck had been “healed.” His tumors had shrunken and appeared to have died. I don’t know that Chuck ever used the term “healed.” but some CC pastors publicly discussed it that way on the air and in social media. Turns out it was a remission, not a miraculous healing.

As a cessationist, I don’t feel triumphant about this, and I certainly don’t want to come across that way. My heart hurts for those with a confused theology of healing, who don’t know how to make sense of the idea that he was killed by a disease from which he was healed (supposedly). I know that there are CCers and other charismatics with a more nuanced view of healing, and they’d agree that the remission was a sovereign act, not a miraculous one. But many don’t, and I fear some of them will fear that Satan killed him, or that people didn’t pray enough, or …