With Healing in His Wings
Surely all of you have heard of the divine healing of various diseases, some of you may doubt that it has really occurred. You think that it was just the imaginary healing of an imaginary disease. We can assure you that we personally know of many cases of very real diseases, which were healed far more quickly than the best of physicians could accomplish it. One who had never seen the city of Chicago might doubt that it exists; a person who has been there knows it is real. So it is with divine healing, we who have seen sicknesses, healed by Yahweh, know this is real.
Possibly some of you have hoped for divine healing of your own sicknesses, but have not received it; you have wondered why you don't get the healing. I shall try to answer that question and to show you how you may be healed. You know Yahweh can heal, you know He does heal, but you don't know how or why.
First, let's find out why there is sickness in the world. Yahweh gave us a code of laws, set out in the first five books of the Bible; these laws covered all phases of life and civilization. They were not concerned only with your morality, though Yahweh always has required that you try to live a good life. These laws covered every phase of life that can affect our well‑being.
There were political laws to keep us free, economic laws to keep us prosperous, agricultural laws to keep our land productive and our crops nourishing. Then there were the dietary laws, to keep us strong and healthy and religious laws to keep us true to the one true God, Yahweh. Yahweh has given us all good things, even our very lives. Then the shortest laws of all, the moral laws, to keep our personal conduct such that Yahweh could stand to associate with us. He promised us good government, long life and good health when we obeyed the laws.
We have been taught to see many of our troubles as a punishment sent upon us by Yahweh for some of our sins; this hasn't given us a true picture. We visualize it in terms of the parent of a small child running after him/her, catching it, and giving him/her a spanking. This is a punishment, which would not have come if the parent had not actively inflicted it.� This is a mistaken view. All of Yahweh's laws are natural and the consequences of disobedience occur automatically.
You can't disobey even one of these laws, you either obey it the easy way, and reap the blessing, or you take the hard way and don't obey it and pay the penalty. For example, you can't disobey the law of gravity. You ride down the elevator from the 10th floor, obeying the law of gravity the easy, voluntary way. But, if you jump out of the 10th floor window, you still obey the law of gravity, but this time it is the hard way, with the penalty.
Similarly, Yahweh's laws stated in the Bible, are the great truths, which reveal that there is only one way to get peace and prosperity, good health, etc. A refusal to do these things must necessarily and automatically lose what you can't gain in any but the right way.
Many of you have been taught that since you are now Christians, you aren't under the law anymore, but under grace. This has been greatly misunderstood; the laws of Yahweh were given to us, here in this life on earth, to govern our conduct here, not in heaven. They are the means by which we can have the good things of this life. Take for example the dietary laws, one of these forbid us to eat animals, which have died of disease. I don't care how good a Christian you may be, even if you were the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, it would still be true that if you found the carcass of a cow that had died of hoof and mouth disease, and you took some of the meat and ate it, you
would get sick.
Yes, I know you wouldn't lose your eternal salvation but you certainly would lose your present health by violating this law of Yahweh's. Yahweh wouldn't run after you and beat you with a stick, the penalty would be automatic, the same as in the case of other violations of Yahweh's laws.
Yahweh told us how to receive all the benefits this life can give. He promised us, among these benefits, good health if we obeyed Him. Deuteronomy 7:12, 15 tells us,
"Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye hearken to these judgments, and keep and do them, that Yahweh thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy which He swore unto thy fathers. And Yahweh thy God will take away from thee all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon those that hate thee."
��� Exodus 23:25 records,
"And ye shall serve Yahweh thy God, and he shall bless thy bread and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee."
The blessing comes as the automatic consequences of obedience to Yahweh.
On the other hand, Yahweh warned that if we scorned His commandments, we would suffer many penalties, among them being sickness. Deuteronomy 28:58‑61 warns us,
"If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest reverence this glorious and fearful name, Yahweh thy God; then Yahweh will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues and of long continuance and sore sickness and of long continuance. Moreover, he will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt, which thou wast afraid of; and they shall cleave unto thee. Also every sickness and every plague which is not written in the book of this law, them will Yahweh bring upon thee."
This will come by the automatic process by which wrong produces its own consequences.
Someone may say, but this is from the Old Testament, that was all done away with. NO IT WASN�T! Yahshua said in Matthew 5:17,
"Think not� that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I come not to destroy, but to fulfill."
I John 3:4 reminds us,
"Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law; for sin is the transgression of the law."
You recognize it is a sin to violate the seventh commandment Thou shalt not commit adultery. It is also a sin to violate the agricultural and dietary laws thereby giving the people food, which has lost much of the wholesome qualities, which Yahweh intended it, should have.
If you kept all the law, what sin could you commit? We often say, the wages of sin are death, but we forget that the wages of sin is also the intermediate step of sickness. Psalm 107:17‑20 states both the problem and its remedy.
"Fools, because of their transgression and because of their iniquities, are afflicted. Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat; and they draw near unto the gates of death. Then they cry unto Yahweh in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses. He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them from destruction."
Psalm 30:2 affirms this.
"Yahweh my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me."
The most serious diseases have been healed this way. 2 Kings 20:1‑6 tells us,
"In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the prophet Isaiah, the son of Amoz came to him and said unto him, Thus saith Yahweh: Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die and not live, And Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto Yahweh saying, I beseech thee O Yahweh, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore. And it came to pass, before Isaiah was gone out into the middle court, that the word of Yahweh came unto him saying, Turn again and tell Hezekiah, the captain of my people, Thus saith Yahweh, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee: on the third day thou shalt go up into the house of Yahweh. And I will add unto thy days fifteen years."
Remember, the power of Yahweh is limitless. Many people, in our own day, have been brought back from the brink of death by the power of Yahweh, just as Hezekiah was healed.
Some of you must be wondering what we are doing in the Old Testament all this time. Does this mean that Christianity is not the answer and we must seek righteousness under the law? No, we don't mean that at all. In the first place, we have been looking for the cause of sickness, we have seen that it is one of the consequences of sin, sin brings it on. We shall have sickness until we find the remedy, not the result, but for the cause, sin. We have already discovered that we aren't able to keep all the laws perfectly; therefore we must look for another answer. (Taken, in part, from an article entitled �With Healing in His Wings,� by Bertrand L. Comparet)