p. 6 | A Beautiful Type of Christ by H. A. St. John

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 3, 1912

A Beautiful Type of Christ

By H. A. St. John

H. A. ST. JOHN

THE pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-9) — what a wonderful sanitarium or water-cure! Was there ever another like it on earth? Continually open, wide and free, for all hopeless invalids from all kindreds, tongues, and peoples.

But after all, was not that a wonderful and beautiful type of Christ? It was located in the city of Jerusalem, a typical city, where existed and were enacted many services and ceremonies that were types of Christ and his work, all of which ceased when he, as the great antitype, came to earth, took man's nature, lived his example, and died his sacrifice. The devil, ignorantly no doubt, performed a very significant act, when he took Jesus and set him "on the pinnacle of the temple." Had we been there, and looked up at that particular time, we should have seen the Lamb of God, to whom all the services of that magnificent temple pointed, having come down from heaven, and sitting on that dizzy height, the pinnacle of the temple. Soon after, we should have seen the same great antitype, Jesus, hung between heaven and earth, on Calvary's cross; and hung there, too, by the same devil and his agents. At the crucifixion, Jesus caused the law of ordinances and oblations to cease. Type had met antitype.

The healing work accomplished at the pool of Bethesda was manifestly a miraculous healing by the Holy Spirit, through the ministration of Christ or his angel. When Christ came, he became a walking pool of Bethesda, and all who came to him were made whole of whatever disease they had. To Jesus, all diseases were alike; he made no inquiries as to the cause or nature of the disease; and no disease could resist his power. All his miracles were performed by the Holy Spirit through the ministration of holy angels. And in the personal, marvelous, instantaneous, and complete healing at the pool of Bethesda, we have a beautiful type of this prominent and important phase of the work of Christ among men.

At the pool multitudes waited and watched for the opportunity to have the healing virtue applied. Thus multitudes watched and waited for the troubling of the waters by the presence of Jesus, the Great Healer, in their neighborhoods or villages.

The antitype of Bethesda was met that Sabbath morning when Jesus quietly entered the enclosure, and without noisy ostentation, selected one of the most pitiable cases in the whole multitude, one of thirty-eight years' standing, just at the point of death, and made him every whit whole, without troubling the waters of the pool. Nor have we any proof that the waters were ever troubled again thereafter. The astounding miracle of healing the dying man in their midst was the signal for the multitude to find Jesus; and for ought we know, many did, and were healed; for he never turned any away.

Sanitarium, Cal.