PRAY TO BE HEALED OF THE CAUSE AS WELL AS OF THE EFFECT by David Paulson; W. S. Sadler

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 12, 1901

PRAY TO BE HEALED OF THE CAUSE AS WELL AS OF THE EFFECT

By David Paulson; W. S. Sadler

DAVID PAULSON AND W. S. SADLER

Causes may be wrong, but effects are always right. Our sowing may be either right or wrong; but the reaping, being in God’s hands, is always for the best. Prayer for the sick, like all rational treatments, should be directed toward the removing and healing of the cause of the sickness. Prayer should not only be offered for the removal of the present visible effects, but also for the removal of the disposition to do those things which have made it necessary for God to speak to us in the language of disease.

To illustrate: When a person has a long-continued fever, he soon loses his appetite. This is a wise provision of nature; for his system is in no condition to digest and assimilate food. What folly, then, it would be to pray to have the appetite restored. This would be asking God to work against himself; for it was He who took away the appetite, and thus saved the patient from inflicting further injury upon himself. Fever is nature at work burning up the rubbish which has been introduced into the system, and has there accumulated in larger quantities than the eliminative organs can dispose of, thus necessitating the kindling of these fires within the body.

The proper thing for us to do, in both our praying and working, is to co-operate with the divine intelligence, by assisting nature in her efforts to rid the system of this poison. “But,” asks one, “why do anything? Why not let the fever go on and burn it all up, if it is God at work?” This is the answer: If all the rubbish is left to be burned up, in many cases the fires of the fever may burn so long and so furiously as to consume the man himself. We should (1) cease to take poison and rubbish into the system; (2) stimulate the elimination of poisons through the natural eliminative organs; and (3), by the intelligent use of water internally and externally, and other rational remedies and remedial agents, seek to rid the system of a portion of these waste products, and thus enable the dross-consuming fires to subside at an earlier date than they would if they were allowed to run their course. By thus removing a portion of the poison within the system, we are co-operating with God, who by the fever is endeavoring to destroy and burn it up. We should not only pray to be healed of the effects of our transgression; but the prayer of genuine faith is a supplication so flavored with the spirit of obedience that it will ever be directed toward the removal of the disposition to transgress the laws of God, which transgression is the cause of the various afflictions from which the sufferer seeks deliverance.

HEALING FAITH IS ACCOMPANIED BY WORKS OF OBEDIENCE

There is no healing that is divine without a reform in those habits of transgression which have separated man from the divine Healer. The true faith that brings true healing is the faith that gives birth to the spirit of true obedience. That so-called faith, however enthusiastic or demonstrative it may be, that is unaccompanied by the spirit of conscientious obedience, is a faith that can only deceive and disappoint those who think they have thereby obtained divine healing. Says the Lord to these victims of deceptive healing, which promises peace when there is no peace: “Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein.” Jer. 6:16. But the disobedient answer: “We will not walk therein.” It is of this class, who claim to be healed, and yet refuse to walk in the paths of obedience; it is of those who commit abominations in the full blaze of heaven’s enlightenment, and yet do not blush, that the Lord has said: “They shall fall among them that fall.” All so-called divine healing, notwithstanding the signs and wonders and boastful claims, that ignores the necessity of removing the cause of disease and of reforming the wrong habits of the man, is not divine. These persons will look for permanent health, but will not find it. Sooner or later they must wake up to the sad realization that they have been deceived, that their much-boasted divine healing was a deception. Read Jer. 8:15: “We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble.” Those who look for, and profess to have found, a healing that heals without the co-operation of man’s obedience to the laws of health will find, instead of health, a time of trouble.

“THE PRAYER OF FAITH SHALL SAVE THE SICK”

“Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” James 5:14, 15.

The prayer of presumption is not the prayer of faith, and we have no promise that presumption’s prayer will save the sick. “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:12. The prayer that has power to save the sick is the prayer of faith. Those who can pray the prayer of faith are the ones who have the faith of Jesus. And those who have the faith of Jesus, the Scriptures declare, “keep the commandments of God.” Therefore, the prayer that has power to save the sick is a prayer of obedience as well as of faith.

The one who has the faith of Jesus—who keeps the commandments of God—is controlled by that mind which was also in Christ Jesus; and therefore his requests of the eternal Father would be only those which the mind of the Son within him had recognized as right and consistent for the Father to grant. The prayer of genuine faith has in it saving power; because it is but the expression of what the Saviour himself knows to be both right and possible for the Father to do. The prayer that will save the sick is the prayer that comes from a mind and heart in tune with the mind of Christ,—a mind that pleased the Father in all things, and offended not in one point.

THE PRAYERS OF RIGHTEOUS MEN AVAIL ONLY AS THEY INSPIRE OBEDIENCE

To-day the world is sowing broadcast for physical suffering, mental sorrow, and moral anguish. Messengers of God in the earth are seeking to disseminate rays of light and truth, obedience to which would bring health and healing to body and soul. But the world passes on, wedded to its sins, hardly blushing at its disobedience. And now, would it be reasonable to expect that holy men of God can step in and simply by their prayers save earth’s guilty inhabitants from reaping the harvest for which they are so persistently sowing? “If I send a pestilence into that land, and pour out my fury upon it in blood, to cut off from it man and beast: though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness. For thus saith the Lord God: How much more when I send my four sore judgments

upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast?” Eze. 14:19–21.

Here the Lord tells us that even Noah, Daniel, and Job, if they were here, could not by their prayers divert the consequences of persistent disobedience. And yet, while it is true that the prayers of the righteous can not be made a scapegoat, as it were, to bear the sins of the wicked, we must not forget that the Scriptures say that “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” James 5:16. Prayer does not accomplish the purpose of changing the mind of God (Mal. 3:6); but it may be a most powerful factor in changing the will of man, in changing his disposition from one of disobedience to one of obedience. Repentance of physical sin or moral transgression removes the cause; but the removal of the effect is in the hands of God, and will take place in such a manner and at such a time as the infinite One recognizes will be for the honor and glory of His name, the best good of the individual, and the accomplishment of God’s eternal purpose.