DIVINE HEALING by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Dec 27, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 52.

“DIVINE HEALING.”

By Editor

A intelligent and earnest correspondent writes us that he has been reading the SIGNS OF THE TIMES of late and heartily enjoys it. Its theories, comments, opinions, combined with historical evidence, seem very convincing, especially on the Sabbath question; and nothing in the spiritual realm I love so much as the theme of Christ’s coming again. But I have wondered and questioned why, since you advocate so many truths so emphatically, and are so definite in your assurances, that also important truth, Divine Healing, has little or no place, instead the substitute of sanitariums, medicines, etc.—human agencies and kindred means.

Our correspondent can not have read the SIGNS very long. There have been in this year’s volume not less than nineteen articles on the miracle-working power of Jesus. Many of these miracles were miracles of healing; and in all the articles the lessons were drawn for the present, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever." Let us talk with this correspondent, and with all our readers.

1. God’s highest law is His great moral law, of which the Decalogue is a summary. This governs the moral, spiritual man. In and through the channels of this law, God designed that life—the more abundant life—should flow to His people. For the law “was ordained to life.” Rom. 7:10. “In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” Prov. 12:28.

2. There are also physical laws which govern the healthful operations and functions of man’s physical organs. This is recognized by all.

3. The transgression of the moral law is sin. 1 John 3:4; Rom. 7:7; 4:15. A transgression of that highest law perverts the laws below it; and death entered because of sin. Yet under ordinary circumstances, owing to God’s goodness, it is possible for the man so to observe the laws of his physical being that he will live to what the world calls a “hale and hearty old man,” and this though he recognizes no special obligation to God. The most pious man, if he disregard the laws of his physical being, becomes sick; while the unreligious man, if he observe the laws of his physical being, preserves and conserves his health.

4. The vast mass of mankind are more or less ignorant of both of these laws and their relations to them; some of them willingly, some of them wilfully, some of them through no fault of their own.

5. As Christianity takes hold of the whole man, body, soul, and spirit, it is the duty of the children of Christ to do all in their power to enlighten the ignorant concerning both of these laws and their operations, by every means in their power. As the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, it is the duty of the Christian to know how to keep that temple that it be not defiled (1 Cor. 3:16, 17; 6:19); it is his duty so to care for it, that it may be presented to God a “living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,” man’s “reasonable service” (Rom. 12:1, 2). In other words man should eat and drink and do all things else to God’s glory. 1 Cor. 10:31. Not that any of these things can save him; but by doing these things he is coming into harmony with the laws of God’s working.

6. When man is sick, he is out of harmony with the law of his physical being, and perhaps of his spiritual nature also. All his sickness may be the direct result of his ignorance of physical law. He may be using tobacco, one of the most harmful of bad habits, or eating pork, one of the most corrupting of foods. If God should heal him in answer to faith, and the man unenlightened should continue to transgress physical law, he would bring himself into the same condition again. God could not continue healing power to be used in transgression. If the man could not grasp God’s healing power by simple faith, then enlighten him in regard to physical law and its transgression, that he may be healed by a natural process, by a right course of living. Against this there is not one word of Scripture; in fact, there is much to support it. If sanitariums can help better and more rapidly to enlighten persons who are ignorant regarding right laws of living, praise God for all the right kind of sanitariums. Yet we believe that God desires His own people to be well without sanitariums; so to use all His common blessings as to appropriate the life in them for their best physical good.

7. God heals, wonderfully, miraculously heals. To that soul who will by simple, childlike faith yield himself into perfect harmony with the law of God’s power, God’s power

of His life in such plenitude as to overcome physical effects of transgression; to transform diseased tissue into healthful tissue; to allay burning fever and cool the blood; to take away abnormal growths, to quench the flow of blood; to make well and strong the ill and the weak. It is the blessed privilege of God’s children to claim His healing power and blessing. But the greatest blessing is not physical healing, else Inspiration would not tell us that in the last evil time “blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,” and that God lets them rest, taking them from the “evil to come.” Rev. 14:13; Isa. 57:1, 2.

Sin is worse than death, when the soul sleeps in Jesus. Above all things else Christ wishes us healed from sin and recreated anew in Christ Jesus. That is what God’s professed people need to-day—to be changed, regenerated, born from above, to be made new creatures in Christ Jesus, saved from sin and sinning. He who is thus saved will give to God all the glory. The mightiest sort of miracle has been wrought in him. God has changed him to a new man. He belongs to God. He is God’s because he is cleansed and changed. He will bear God’s healing power. He will not count it above all other blessings. He will not boast in it, or be lifted up by it; he has experienced a greater miracle. To that place God’s remnant church will come, and there will not be “one feeble one in all their ranks.” The healing power of God will be felt and known.

And yet, nowhere has God given healing or miracles as a sign or signs of His own true remnant church. He has told us that every counterfeit miracle which could be conceived will be manifest among the workers of iniquity, and that they will argue that they ought to be saved because of the manifestations among them. (See Rev. 13:14; 16:14; 2 Thess. 2:9, 10; Matt. 24:24; 7:21-23.) But God’s people will be known by this divine description: “Here is the patience of the saints; here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:12. The mightiest power of God will be manifest in the last days in making characters which will stand for God, loyal to truth and righteousness. That is God’s great miracle in Jesus Christ. That is the one miracle which Satan is seeking to circumvent and disprove.