Miracles and Gifts of Healing
By G. D. Ballou
The Law of Rest in the Healing of Disease
By G. D. Ballou, for Many Years a Devoted Student of Physical and Mental Therapeutics
(Concluded from Last Week.) Miracles and Gifts of Healing.
WHY, then, in the face of the facts before us and the needs of humanity and the promise of the Saviour in the last commission—“These signs shall follow them that believe: In My name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover”—why do not we see more of the miraculous workings of God’s Spirit? Some will claim that we are having them in Christian Science. Do not be deceived; there have been no real miracles wrought by these so-called healers. That working is only a perversion of the true application of the law of rest. They have shown no creative power. By a special process of diversion they have made a multitude of people forget the worryings and frettings which caused their physical ills, by contemplating the vagaries and mysteries of something that is neither Christian nor science. Even Mrs. Eddy is yet troubled occasionally with an “old belief”—her term for a fit of sickness. Nor does hypnotism present us with any manifestations of divine power. It is only the manipulation of a mind and nervous system that has in a measure lost control of itself. But are there no miracles among all those who have in the last few years claimed divine power to heal? The writer has kept his eyes open for the last forty years trying to intelligently observe and interpret the religious and other phenomena of these times. Among all those who advertise themselves as possessing the divine power to heal, or are willing and anxious, like Gehazi of old, to look out for the filthy lucre, I must say frankly I have never seen a case of real healing. The lepers have not been cleansed, nor the palsied restored to health, nor the maimed been made whole, nor the crooked made straight. I have seen them throw aside their crutches at the command of Alexander Dowie, but in three days they were on them again as helpless, and more so, than ever. I have seen a sort of hypnotic working that held control for a brief period, and then the invalids lapsed into a worse condition than their former one. Cases of Genuine Healing.
None of these professional healers have any antidote for poisons, nor do they venture to try their pretensions on smallpox nor spinal meningitis. Christian Scientists have not yet adopted Mark Twain’s advice to them to “stick to surgery.” It is folly to spend time looking for integers where nothing but zeros are written. A few cases I have seen and known among those who unpretentiously and humbly asked God for help, if it could honor Him to grant it, where cancers and other incurable tumors have been removed. I have seen a case where peritonitis had prevailed until the death-damp was upon the brow and the eyes were set as in death. I have seen the change come like a flash of light in answer to the humble petition for help, and the hue of health take the place of the pallor of death, and the patient mend from that moment and live to serve God for years without a single symptom of the old malady. And I know the physicians who have attested these cases. And there are others acquainted with similar cases. But there was no boasting nor spiritual bombast, if such a thing can be, nor any braggadocio indulged in connection with these cases either before or afterward. God our Father is ready to hear the feeblest cry of His humblest child. His hand is not shortened that it can not save; nor His ear heavy that it can not hear. But why do we not hear of more of these cases of healing? It is said of one place that Jesus “did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” Again, if blessings are asked for selfish ends, the Lord can not, in love for the individual, grant them. Again, where are the men and women to-day who could bear in their persons the gift of miracles and not be exalted by it? If Paul needed a messenger of Satan, a thorn in the flesh, to buffet him lest he be exalted above measure thru the abundance of the revelations given him, what would the men of this generation need to keep them humble under similar circumstances? There are a few here and there, enough to attest the power of God, and He will manifest His power thru them whenever it can honor His name and advance His cause. But the children of God in the last generation of men are not to be characterized so much by miracle-working as by the spirit of obedience and willingness to suffer. “Here is the patience of the saints; here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:12. See context to learn when this applies. Paul says, “So that ye come behind in no gift [of the Spirit]; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Cor. 1:7, 8. So their endowment is the patience of the saints and the commandments of God in their outward conduct; the faith of Jesus and the gifts of the Spirit for their support and comfort. These are stupendous facts. The patience of the saints shows a life in harmony with natural law. There is no patience without temperance. 2 Peter 1:5-11, particularly verse 6. And they must have absorbed the truths of the text, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” Rom. 12:1. They will be in condition for the Lord to work for them, because they have been obedient to all God’s requirements, both moral and natural. And having lived up to the light given on the care of their bodies, they have less occasion for the working of miracles in their behalf. Think you, reader, that the Lord will take special pains to work miracles for those who do not care enough about His word to practise self-denial in eating and drinking, and are so fretted and worried about the things of this life that they forget to breathe? We hear much about getting ready to die. It is my opinion that but few of us are fit to live. So it is an important thing to learn how to appreciate, honor, and adorn this life. Does not the life to come depend on this? When that is bestowed it will become infinitely more valuable than this. But now let us show our appreciation of this life by following the simple principles on which it depends, if we want God to take a special interest in our cases and work for us in our extremity. If we have lived carefully and humbly to the best of our light and knowledge, we may look to Him hopefully and joyfully, trusting Him to do just the thing that will be for our good and His glory, both here and hereafter. And here let us say that after unbelief and danger of exaltation, the greatest hindrance to miracle-working in the church is the failure to live up to the laws of health—in other words, failure to daily take care of the life God has bestowed on us here. And then comes the unreconciled heart.5
Death is not the worst thing that can overtake the Christian. An unreconciled heart may be developed at last, if we are not wholly His. Teasing and commanding the Lord are not becoming. Importunings are not long necessary, for He avenges speedily when the day and night cry begins to ascend. We may not expect that every ailment will be removed in answer to prayer, for then death would not be possible. But “if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us.” So let calm resignation be the soul of every petition for relief, and then whatever comes is best for time and eternity. Of this very time it is said, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.” Rev. 14:13. The next verse brings the coming of Christ. So let us with all the apostles and prophets look to that event for the fruition of our hopes and not be too anxious for our way and wishes to be fulfilled, so shaping our lives and our petitions for aid in our extremity that God can safely give favorable answers to our petitions, and thus thru helping His people with miraculous power when needed, advance the interests of His cause. I can not leave this subject without referring to a wonder-working power that will be developed in this world just before the coming of Jesus and which will constitute one of the signs of the end. In Matthew 24, Jesus, in answering the question, “What shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the consummation of the age” (A.R.V., margin), says, “For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” In Revelation 16, describing the seven last plagues which just precede the coming of the Lord, it says of a certain manifestation: “They are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.” Now here is a wonder-working power from beneath opposing God’s work and pretending to work miracles, and the result is deception and war. Every one living knows of the inception of these manifestations in our own day, foretold in Matthew 24. Their name is legion and their devotees are numbered by millions. Their working can be called miraculous only on the ground that anything which we can not account for on any known natural principle is a miracle to us; not intrinsically miraculous, but only relatively to us, because we can not understand it. But because I can not understand some occult, mysterious working does not prove it to be of God nor yet for my good. We have been considering the genuine, now we are looking at the counterfeit. The old Detector shows up this spurious affair. Isa. 8:17 pictures the Lord’s servants as waiting and looking for Him. And right following in this chapter it tells of familiar spirits that, thru modern wonder-workers, are trying to get human hearts and minds turned to them in seeking to the dead. Verse 20 applies the test: “To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” The true people of God will have all the gifts and will keep the law and the testimony. The spurious workers will use just enough of the Bible to trap the unwary, but they will every time reveal a character and a teaching that are not in harmony with God’s standards. And it is not only those who openly pretend to deal with the old familiar (from the word family) spirits, but also every wonder-worker whose life is not in harmony with the law of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ and whose teachings must of necessity antagonize God’s word, who are unsafe guides in these perilous times. So now we have right here before us two classes of teachers, each of which is a sign of the day of God. One class humbly follow God’s law and the faith of Jesus, saying, “Thy will, O God, be done,” developing patience, obedience, and faith until these qualities mark them as God’s children and candidates for His soon-coming kingdom. The other class set forth signs and wonders and pretend to work miracles by divine power, drawing thousands of sentimental, marvel-loving minds after them, setting forth the occult things of the so-called under-world; teaching theories that if received overthrow the Bible doctrine of salvation; leading men and women to trust in the wonder-worker to develop in them the hidden powers—“the God within”—by which they may become masters of every situation, pretending to rise superior to all the forces of nature and control all things of time and sense. I can not begin to call to mind all the extravagant claims, nor can I name all the long list of wonder-workers that just now are seeking for recognition on account of their wonder-working. They will even carry it thru to the day of final reckoning, when they will say to the Judge: “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works?” The Master will reply: “I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity [that break My law].” Matt. 7:22, 23. The same evil vein runs thru all this false wonder-working like a barbed wire empaling thousands upon its multitudinous prongs—the rejection of God’s word, and the doctrine of an indestructible entity within every man, which is either a part of or superior to the God of the Bible. This error is as old as the world, and came from the father of lies when he said, “Ye shall not surely die; . . . ye shall be as gods.” Gen. 3:4, 5. Discernment comes only thru the word of God as illumined by His Spirit. Those who seek it will be able to detect the spurious. They will obtain the Spirit “of power, and of love, and of a sound mind,” and they will not be ignorant of Satan’s “devices.” 1 Tim. 1:7; 2 Cor. 2:11.