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Sunday, September 02, 2007

Healing: V-Healing of the Nations: Part B



The Ways and Characteristics of God's Healing of Nations.

Israel, eminent among the nations, was set as an ensign for the world to view as the way God deals with nations in general. In history, despite opinion, the scriptures declare it the only God-appointed Theocracy. The Only one. One of the earliest secular historical mentions of Israel, mentions the children of Benjamin, desert wanderers whose God was King, and later, contrary to God's heart, Kings and Judges were appointed in Israel, some very good, some very bad, and all a type and kind of Israel's Meschiach to come.

Israel though, was not loyal in heart, an adulterous wife, so much so that by the time of the Babylonian destruction, the image of her in God's heart was presented via the prophet Hosea forced to take a harlot for a wife. While Israel had been before in exile or under foreign rule, such as under a Babylonian King for 8 years earlier in her history1, or in the Egyptian exile, it had not always been a judgment because the the extremity of sin. By the end of the Division between the Southern and Northern Kingdoms, with 10 of the 12 tribes willingly rebellious not only in national issues but issues of false worship, and with the degradation of sin brought to bear, a severe 'breaking off' occurred, as a limb in need of completely being reset, and the Northern Kingdom was taken captive by Assyria, and the Southern, later by Babylon. [Babylon and Assyria had both been one nation, but had split and was used as an instrument of God's chastisement]

God's dealing with the nation of Israel and his healing process included several
tenets:
1) The 'Disease' Process of Israel falling away from God
2) The Beginning of Healing in Exile- Repentance, the Anointed, and the Remnant
3) The Dealing with a Rebellious King: Healing earthly sovereignty
4) Restoration to Health.


The Healing of 'a' nation is one thing, the healing of 'the' nations, is a very unique thing in God's sovereignty. The healing of any nation at any time, follows the pattern and meanings of the healing of individuals. Most often it includes
repentance of a people, even a 'heathen' or pagan/unbelieving nation, towards the truth of the true God of Heaven. An example of this is found in Jonah. Jonah, a genuine prophet of God is called to Nineveh, the people who have brutally treated Israel, to preach judgment and repentance for the salvation of Nineveh.

Jon 1:2-Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.



Jonah, however having seen the brutality and destruction the Ninevites wrought on Israel, runs the other way, on the Ships of Tarshish [comfort and ease], only to find the vital severity of God in dealing with recalcitrant prophets. Eventually though, after a short travel into death and the depths, he is thrown on the shore of Nineveh to do God's bidding, and the call is made and answered with more repentance than even Israel was willing to do at the time:


jon 3:5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

Jon 3:6-8 For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered [him] with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused [it] to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:
But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that [is] in their hands.

to be continued


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Thursday, August 23, 2007

Healing: Part V: Healing of the Nations



We will return in this blog shortly, to a discussion of the different kinds of personal healing which are made manifest in Jesus' life on earth. Most of what we have discussed so far has been from the individual's perspective: physical healing, emotional healing, spiritual healing, healing and deliverance, and the Healing of the Cross. Before moving on though, to the particulars of the 'kinds' of personal healing, we stop to describe an aspect of scripture and teaching that in modern times has only been briefly alluded to, but is just as essential and works similarly in macrocosm to personal healing. The issue is the "Healing of the Nations".

The clearest scripture that deals with the "healing of the Nations is in Revelation:

Rev 22:2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, [was there] the tree of life, which bare twelve [manner of] fruits, [and] yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree [were] for the healing of the nations.


We think often about the idea of the healing of bodies and occasionally of minds, but we do not think often about the "healing of nations", and yet if one looks at the world today, it becomes obvious, that healing is more needed on the national level than anywhere else. To most, that would mean a lack of conflict, and while that certainly would be central, it does not imply a one world government. In perfect healing, diversity can exist and so can peace, but that is not often understood today. The Healing of Nations though, is only mentioned in those exact words once, but is seen as a theme throughout the Old and New Testament.

Israel as the First Among Nations

When issues of healing nations arise, Israel is most often the 'prototype' which God holds up, to show how He deals with nations. This is why we can often apply the principles and commands God used in dealing with Israel to other nations across the centuries, because though Israel was unique as a divinely appointed theocracy among nations, it also acted as a 'firstborn' and ensample for all to learn from.

Jeremiah, Israel and the Potter's Wheel

In another bible study, we discussed the issues of national healing with regard to the Potter's Wheel Jeremiah mentions, while speaking of the Potter [God] being both the Creator and Destroyer of the pot: the word itself can refer to both. When a nation is either not formed correctly or strays from a right path, healing is necessary, or the nation is destroyed, that a new thing may be created. This is why there is a constant cry from God's heart throughout scripture to bring Israel back to her God and to righteousness: to 'right ways', for it is not in the heart of God to destroy even a recalcitrant nation. The passages in Jeremiah which deal with the breaking of a nation though, also shows a standard way God deals with a nation He rightfully deals with: with the harsh and sometimes almost unbearable 'destructions', come also covenant and promise of healing, making whole, and setting right the nation which has erred.

Jer 19:8 And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof.


But with the multiple curses in addition to the above, comes a prescription for repentance and 'turning around', away from the sins which caused God to judge Israel, and example of which is found in Jer 22:3

Thus saith the LORD; Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood in this place.
Jer 22:4 For if ye do this thing indeed, then shall there enter in by the gates of this house kings sitting upon the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, he, and his servants, and his people.


And even when severe and devastating judgment is sworn by God against the Land, God always couches the rebuke and judgment, in His trait of Justice, with His dovetailed trait of mercy:


Jer 23:3-5 And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase. And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the LORD. Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this [is] his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS


So that we see a threefold primary dealing with a nation which is 'diseased' and in need of healing:

I. The Statement of Sin and Call to Repentance, with a detailed description of forthcoming Judgment
II. The Giving of a Prescription or Command for Obedience which will turn the course of judgment, and
III. The Promise given upon forthcoming Judgment when Israel [or nations] fail to repent, of Mercy, and the covenant of taking the desolations and turning them to the good.


The one difference between Israel and other nations in the way God deals with them, is that God does not seem to be under any 'contractual' or covenantal obligation to restore or have mercy on a 'pagan' nation, especially if it is an enemy of Israel. Assyria and Babylon, once they had been used as God's 'sword' against his own people as an instrument of judgment and chastisement, is not promised a return to grandeur, and in fact neither returned to the grandeur of the time ever again! In sum, though, the above pattern of God's dealing with and healing broken and even rebelling nations often holds.

II. Therapeia and Ethnos

The word used in the expression "healing of the nations" for healing is Therapeia, from which it is obvious, we derive our modern English word 'therapy' and 'therapeutic'. BlueletterBible.com uses the following definition:

Service, care (hence healing), household.

And 'therapon', a related word is a servant or person who renders service.

The ideas which emerge are a submission and service, within a body, and those principles at least are quite applicable to the healing of nations.

Ethnos, from which we derive the word 'ethnic' refers to nations which are Gentile, pagan, or foreign, often described as 'heathen' or a 'people'. Various levels of persons within a government are similarly derived such as 'ethnarches' which means governor, ethnikos, which refers to a pagan or Gentile , or Ethnikos as an adjective referring to 'after the manner of Gentiles'.

While a word study is not enough by itself to intuit all of God's purpose or plan in the healing of a nation, it is clear that the intent of God with regard to even Gentile nations [goyim] is healing and 'setting right' and 'making whole' and according to their divine and expected purpose. A fascinating aspect of this study, which we will examine in more detail later, is that it is the Leaves [Phyllon] of the tree of life, the one that sits in the midst of Eden and Heaven, that are 'medicinal' to the healing of nations, and I posit that to mean both metaphorically and literally.

We will turn in the next study, to look at what the characteristics and descriptions are of 'national' healing.

08/26/2007 E.K.Best Contact Us
III.

Healing: Part V: Healing of the Nations



We will return in this blog shortly, to a discussion of the different kinds of personal healing which are made manifest in Jesus' life on earth. Most of what we have discussed so far has been from the individual's perspective: physical healing, emotional healing, spiritual healing, healing and deliverance, and the Healing of the Cross. Before moving on though, to the particulars of the 'kinds' of personal healing, we stop to describe an aspect of scripture and teaching that in modern times has only been briefly alluded to, but is just as essential and works similarly in macrocosm to personal healing. The issue is the "Healing of the Nations".

The clearest scripture that deals with the "healing of the Nations is in Revelation:

Rev 22:2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, [was there] the tree of life, which bare twelve [manner of] fruits, [and] yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree [were] for the healing of the nations.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Healing and Deliverance: Part IV---Healing of the Cross


All healing, ALL really begins at Golgotha. There is surely no way around it. While even unbelievers can be healed by a Believer filled with the Holy Spirit, lasting, life-changing and permanent healing comes first with belief, and that at the Cross. We have already discussed why in has to begin there by the nature of the Atonement, the great Sacrifice, the great EXCHANGE which took place there.

When I was an unbeliever, and I was one of the more vocal, I dismissed all of the above as foolishness and nonsense. I was both humanist and pragmatist. I believed what I could see, touch, experience, and hear, and was not given to local Christians with southern accents in Gainesville telling me to 'get saved'---in fact, I believe that drove me far from the real Messiah. It took years to come to understand that there was a God, a wondrous God, and that He was not just a pantheistic 'notion' or Oversoul, but a real, living true life-breathing healing God. Both modern Jews and Christians, though they may have attended synagogue or church all their lives, first have to come to that 'revelation': that God, the God of Heaven, not one of man's conception is real, true and working in the world.

I came to understand surrender, though, and to understand what was done on that dark afternoon on Golgotha 2000 years ago. We were healed. When the veil rent, the partition between man and God was gone: we could walk again with Him in belief and with his righteousness instead of our own, in the communion which had not been seen since Eden. So among the tasks on the Cross which were accomplished were


1. Our Healing [by His Stripes we are healed]
2. Our Righteousness
3. Our Salvation- safety, oneness with God,
4. Deliverance, from Death-- 2 Cor 1:10
5. Deliverance from Hell and Everlasting Judgment
6. Deliverance from Satan [the destroyer]
7 Deliverance from the Power of Darkness


We have already discussed how the Stripes of his Cross healed us, it was the exchange which was to lead to ours: His life for ours. Righteousness, the gift of God we could never attain on our own, was a healing to what we would need to do, to be with God, to have life eternal, and to be 'fit' for His presence in Heaven. Even in the Old Testament, this concept of 'righteousness' is replete: the concept of it being a total GIFT from God that man could not earn, is not a 'Christian' concept, but a Jewish one---every passage dealing with righteousness in the Old Testament, shows it to be a gift of God, and not an earned quantity, because, our righteousness is not sufficient to ever match His. When through Jesus' [Yshua's] blood and death, the righteousness of God was imputed to us in divine mystery, it was again, the healing that brought us into wholeness: He was the cornerstone and plumbline bringing God's creation back into line, back into right order for the purpose it was intended, in Love. We talk so little about the love of God these days except in a general sense, but it is more than good works, caring for the poor, the lame, the hungry, blind, deaf and so on---it is the undeniable reaching out of perfect whole unadulterated Love by the perfect Spirit of God, for the imperfect: us. Not only are we "imperfect", but before 'regeneration', we are vile in His eyes, but He can see past to our healing, to the person we will become in Him. Given this healing, we are delivered to FREEDOM---the perfect law of Liberty.

Now if we are given to liberty, we are no longer under the bonds of darkness. Darkness in the Bible is a symbol of spiritual darkness and sometimes the occult or demonic activity, seen for example in the description in Zechariah:

Zec 11:17 Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword [shall be] upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.

or the description in Daniel of the Abomination of Desolations:

Daniel 8:23: a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.



The healing of 'deliverance from Darkness' is a powerful one: often physical healing and 'mental' or 'emotional' healing are tied up in this deliverance. The Modern Mind does not comprehend the notion of 'darkness' except perhaps in a metaphorical sense, but anyone who has confronted the occult, though they may not be very 'spiritual' has seen or felt at least some of what the Bible refers to. Even hard hearted hard core police officers investigating real cases of ritual abuse and worship report 'feelings' or a sense of something overpowering. I was trained in a Psychology Department at a major Southern University. 'Darkness' and the occult were almost never mentioned---in fact, just as God was considered the premiere 'off topic' conversation, the notion of a heaven or hell, or the existence of a real entity of evil, was considered laughable: we were all far too 'sophisticated' (a psychological term for spiritual blindness) for all of that. Yet still, in metaphor or out, even some Psychologists have noted the idea of 'evil' or darkness. The eminent existentialist, mentioned before, Dr. Rollo May wrote a series of essays on Psychology and the Demonic: he noted the concept within psychotherapy of something that 'overpowers' the person, that the person become controlled by or enslaved by, although he stopped short of religious views, and attributed it to primarily cognitive-emotional phenomena, e.g. depression. One particularly fine address in 1961 at the National APA [American Psychologist Association] given by the then head of the APA, reknown psychologist Murray was entitled "Psychology and Satan".

While it was the first [and perhaps last] keynote address of the APA which will be always remembered, the Chair made some remarkable points for a psychologist: He said, that " here is where our psychology comes in with...its prevailing views of human personality, its images of man obviously in league with the objectives of the NIHILISTIC SATANIC SPIRIT, Man is a computer, an animal, or an infant. His destiny is determined by genes, instincts, accidents early conditionings and reinforcements, cultural and social forces...there are no provisions for creativity,... for voluntary decisions... no power of ideals, no bases for selfless actions...if we psychologists were all the time, consciously or unconsciously intending out of malice to reduce the concept of human nature to its lowest common denominator, and were gloating over our successes in doing so, then we might have to admit that to this extent, the satanic spirit was alive within us" Murray, Past President APA 1965 Keynote Address.


So, at least in metaphor, 'darkness' and the occult and even the 'Satanic' spirit, exist in concept not only in lived faith, but in theology, psychology, and even philosophy, and believe it or not in the Legal System!!! Several cases which have involved the practice, for example of exorcism, when brought to court, had to establish the reality of 'possession', a widely held recognition across cultures and religions. [See : "the Exorcism of Emily Rose."]

Even outside of the Christian walk then, there is at least the notion, that 'whatever' spirit it is, even just sort of generic one, there is a wave of what we are referring to here as 'evil' or darkness---the popular author and psychologist Scott Peck, while his doctrine is somewhat secularized, gained fame by positing the unstated observation of many psychologists, that true 'evil' really does exist.x

So then, darkness, and what the Bible refers to as 'the power of Hell' and Satan, while many in secular society today do not agree on the nature, most see at least the 'effect' in observation: police investigating ritualism, lawyers trying exorcisms, psychologists confronting sundry cases including ritual abuse and psychopathologies, theologians wrestling with the goodness of God, and even historians and ethicists trying to come to terms with the Shoah and other genocides.

Yet in the teachings about the healing and deliverance afforded us on God's Cross on Golgotha, we are promised that the obedience of the Messiah included power over darkness, over sin, over death, and over Satan.

Spiritual Darkness

What the Bible refers to as 'darkness' can run the gamut from unbelief, all the way to the 'dark' arts. Darkness is a theme which can be only momentarily expounded here, but which is frequently referred to in Scriptures, in both the Old and New Testament. 'Darkness' is mentioned in the beginning of the Creation when the world was 'dark and void' referring to a literal darkness, but also to a sense of 'nothingness', a juxtaposition of time and space without form or meaning, etc. Darkness is seen as part of the great judgment on Egypt when they would not allow Israel to go forth in the desert to worship God, and is part of the plagues, and the darkness then, intimating the great spiritual void of idolatrous Egypt in harming God's anointed people is mentioned as so great they could not see one another, which while meant literally, can be taken figuratively as well. Darkness is also mentioned in Psalms consistently as surrounding the place God dwells such as:

Psa 18:9 He bowed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness [was] under his feet.
Psa 18:11 He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him [were] dark waters [and] thick clouds of the skies.


Darkness also intimates, interestingly, a lack of understanding, a sort of spiritual and mental void or confusion, and is equated with chaos and the world being out of equilibrium and 'not whole'

Psa 18:28 For thou wilt light my candle: the LORD my God will enlighten my darkness.
Psa 82:5 They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.


Darkness is equated then with chaos, misunderstanding, reprobate conditions, and confusion and being less than whole.

It is also though eminently associated with dark arts and the occult: magic, and such and a darkened eye refers in several places in scripture to a person with unnatural power of an ungodly sort. Descriptions of the Anti-Christ in Daniel list this as a characteristic of the 'vile one' who arises to control the nations. The understanding of dark sentences is equated with the practise of the occult

Dan 8:23 And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.


Power Over Darkness

Healing comes in deliverance from 'darkness'. Colossians 1:13 says:
Col 1:13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated [us] into the kingdom of his dear Son:


Part of the healing process which occurred on the Cross, was the deliverance from darkness, and as the scripture above notes: the giving of power over the power of darkness. We may be healed, not in the flesh from 'darkness', but in the "new man", in which Christ, the Messiah is indwelling, [the Light] and is Master over the darkness: this may be a somewhat awkward way to say it, but it is nevertheless true, that the power of darkness of any kind: occultism, confusion, witchcraft, satanism or unbelief and chaos, are under the foot of the conquering Redeemer. We will turn to discuss the idea of the healing of mental and spiritual afflictions later, but for now we note that to be whole, a person who has allowed themselves to participate in dark arts, practices or 'states' is healed through being delivered from the 'power' of darkness, by a power greater than darkness:

John 1:5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.


The light of Messiah is so great, and the accomplishment of healing of such magnitude on the Cross, that the powers of darkness at work in the world, cannot overpower the light of Christ, and are subject to His sovereignty.

Power Over Death

The premiere idea of Salvation, the healing and making right and whole of God and man his creation, the finished work on the Cross of Golgotha, is power over death. Believe it or not, this is not a new concept in the New Testament: the words O death, where [is] thy sting? O grave, where [is] thy victory? [1Cr 15:55 ]is found also in the Old Testament in Isaiah.

Isa 25:8 He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken [it].


The power over death is a reality we rarely get ahold of and yet that is what our blood bought faith is all about: a real transaction took place that day on the Cross: we were 'healed' or 'delivered' from DEATH. Before we are saved, the idea of death is of either a complete end or some shadowy fearful unknown. But the Great Exchange on the Cross, and the victory won there on that hill, was a literal putting underfoot of death: we will not die, but live, and we will live the eternal life of God, since Jesus, Yshua, the firstborn of Creation, placed even death under his feet.
When I was a younger researcher I was in a department where a couple of persons were studying 'death threat' or 'death anxiety': they looked at how fearful and tense persons were about the concept of death, their own and others. Most people are very fearful: even Christians, but that fear can be healed, in knowledge that when we are imputed with His life and righteousness, we are given Life as a gift: eternal life and what we call death becomes a mere doorpost. When we are delivered not only of the fear of death, but death itself, we are able then to live the rest of our lives in victory and surrender---but not until then. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theologian and leader of the Confessing Church in the Shoah noted near his death that the "last temptation is hope". Until we reach for surrender to eternal life, we are always holding out and begging for 'one last chance at life'---the hope that we will escape death. The power of our life however is magnified immensely when we surrender even that hope and boldly take hold of the power of the New Life, the gift of Golgotha and the rich man's tomb: that even death could not provide a darkness so great that the power of God could not overcome it.

Power Over Satan

Satan is a created being: he is not a competing 'god'. He was originally among the Angels or ministering spirits although a vaguely described war took place in Heaven and a third of the angels fell in rebellion against the sovereignty of God. The hows and whys, or the attempt to make sense to the contemporary unbelieving mind, is almost impossible, it is an issue of faith. There is however a definitive, divine battle which goes on unseen except in effect behind natural contentions. In Daniel, for example, an angel is detained for weeks because he says he had to confront the Prince of Persia: a 'principality' or power in a hierarchy of powers which are behind the national workings of this world. Satan has power in this world, but it has limits, and can be overpowered by the blood of Christ, the Word of God and "loving not one's life unto death". He is a defeated foe, but a real adversary. C.S. Lewis, a former agnostic, became a great Christian apologist and author and in the Screwtape Letters notes that unbelief in Satan is one of his greatest accomplishments: he prefers it, that His power may abide. The unbelief in a real 'Satan'--mostly because he has been trivialized into a cartoon character, is the reason for defeat in many Christian lives. He is all that opposes Christ, the Messiah, the Prince of the Covenant [Sar B'rit]. We have no victory over him until we have a power greater than him in us:

"Greater is he that is in us, than he who is in the world".


This part of healing and understanding the deliverance from the adversary of souls, is essential, because it means that we are not enslaved to what his power can do in our lives, and it is monstrous: there is a way out. It means there is recourse, even when we confront the terrible destructions he is capable of wreaking on nations and persons. Madeleine L'Engle in a novel "Wind in the Door" describes the process in metaphor as 'un-naming' and uses the name 'ecthroi', for the destroyer. The things in life, such as loss and horror which leave us in utter despair can be his work: our power over them, and hence healing, lies in our knowledge and belief, of the indwelling power of the HOly Spirit: dunamous, which grants us God's authority over even Satan.

Power Over Hell

Lastly, the Power Over Hell, is in line with the power over death and Satan: once our citizenship or conversation is in the Kingdom of Heaven, we are not going to Hell, the entropy which lasts forever. Our fear of death is a fear of what happens next, and when we are encompassed in our own flesh and sinfulness, without Christ, we cannot rest easy even if we seldom consider hell or heaven. Today, in the slight belief that is out there, there is a very erroneous assumption that all are going to heaven because God is Good. This is not the teaching of the Torah or the Gospel: both teach the need to abide in God. While God is a god of Love, He is also a God of Justice: and the wicked, and those who choose unbelief, enter at death by their choosing and His assignment, a place of intense suffering. One has to have the indwelling life of God inside at death: what is of God will go to live in the presence of God, in bliss, and what is apart from God, will live apart from God in eternity. It is not a matter of what we think is 'fair' but of what actually will happen. Jesus showed such power on earth that we can hardly doubt that His knowledge of the afterlife is in error, and He taught about hell, warning that it was better to go limbless than to suffer there. His concern was so great, that He willingly laid down his life for the Way out. His call away from that suffering, pain and diseased state, condition and place was continuous: He could see beyond the limits of earthly life. Once we are healed via the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we have rest and peace: death and hell, Satan and the powers of hell can no longer harm us. It is a place of surrender, which affords us the ability, even when facing the most horrible events of life, to be healed and whole, while others fragment and find twisted adaptations to this life. The healing is so great, we can face a willing death in peace.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Healing and Deliverance : Part III



THE DELIVERANCE AND HEALING OF THE CROSS
The Deliverance from Death, Hell and Satan.

While we have already alluded to the primary importance of the healing of Salvation, the act of Messiah, that very black afternoon two thousand years ago on Golgotha, has fallen into such repetitiveness and sameness, that we often fail to see the depth and wonder of what was done there.

The first thing which needs to be seen, is the nature of the Choice that Jesus, Yshua, had to make: It bore several characteristics:

1.) Though he expounded it several times to His disciples, it was a choice no one understood, so it was a critical choice, made terribly alone to bring about the Will of God for the rest of human history

2.) It was a painful choice: the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, was human and divine agony, like none before or after. He willingly chose to obey and lay down His life, but counted the severe cost. I do not think it was only the mere surrender of will appointed and anointed since the beginning of time, but I believe He saw and had knowledge in His Spirit, of what it meant, though unseen, to take on the one war
no one else could fight, for His nature alone in history was different from other men. The painful surrender came in the light of what it meant to endure, taking on all the darkness, pain, suffering, sin and separation from God, since the beginning of man, in order to bring back the healing of the human race, starting with Israel, in a way only a rabbi could, who was completely human and completely divine.

3.) It was a choice which could not be turned away from in a person who while agonized from His human nature at the pain and loss it would require, was also beset by divine Love, so intense, that there was no other choice, for though Israel had turned for the umpteenth time to their own way, away from God, He could not withstand losing the ones He loved. He counted the cost.

The 'all in all' of His choice, was to heal man back to God. The disease of the Fall of Man had reached a point so severe, that if a healing did not come, the cancer of sin and separation had become so metasticized, that a complete cutting off [karet] would be necessary: it was then or never.

How Could a Crucifixion Bring Healing?

Promised and shadowed since the beginning, the idea of a healing sacrificial death was made clear from Genesis on. [e.g. Ps 22, Isaiah 6, 53 and others] Already mentioned is the sometimes baffling passage in Isaiah, "it pleased the LORD to bruise Him"---the idea that a severe suffering and wound, could please God seems anathema to a loving God, but the desire was towards an infinite healing. But the wounding of Golgotha, and the 'stripes' [see Section 1] in which our healing was found, represented first and foremost our healing to God from the 'crack in Creation' that occurred at the Fall, and secondarily the healing of every kind we would need for this life or the next. True healing was not possible outside of the events that day: healing had been seen occasionally in the Prophets in the Old Testament, such as Elijah and the widow's son

1Ki 17:23 And Elijah took the child, and brought him down out of the chamber into the house, and delivered him unto his mother: and Elijah said, See, thy son liveth.


Like other gifts of the Holy Spirit, in the days before the Cross, it was not that God did not operate in the same way in His communication with man, but it was not available to all at all times, but given in part for the purposes of God attendant at the time. The fullness came at Pentecost, but was made possible by the death of the Cross. The deliverance of healing given on Golgotha, through the Stripes and through the accomplishing death and blood sacrifice, brought first, the healing and deliverance we call 'Salvation'. It was the healing through deliverance from

1. Death
2. Darkness
3. Hell and Satan

Healing from Death

Monday, July 30, 2007

Healing and Deliverance: Part II


, as we have discussed, has the characteristic of 'deliverance' which we have continued discussion. The layers of meaning and understanding of healing, though are not mutually exclusive: it is much more like the 'blind men and the elephant', in that as we examine from different vantage points, we see different aspects and colors of healing in the Word.

I am parenthetically stepping aside from building this 'descriptive apologetic' to remark on what I have seen recently in covering the various aspects of healing in the Word of God. I have tried to be very careful and discerning, since the practice of healing, while one of the fundamentals of the Christian life, has fallen prey in this day and time to perversions and even 'showmanship', but really is now as always, a gift of God to set back his Creation in right order on every level from the body, mind and spirit, to marriages and nations. While I will cover the topic later, we need to understand that while we bandy the word "salvation" about freely, telling all they need it, we must come to see Salvation in its fullness. When Jesus,[Yshua] died on Golgotha, laying his life down freely in the ultimate surrender to God's Will that the 'second Isaac [Ihtzak]' only could perform, He became the stick thrown in the waters of Mara, which healed the stream. He first and foremost healed man to God: it had not been possible before that Moriah. With His blood bought and anointed salvation, that High Priest carried the covering all the way into the depths of Heaven, and Life, Chaim, was opened and available to all. From there, afterwards, all healing was possible, in fullness, not in portion.

DELIVERANCE FROM PAIN, SUFFERING AND DISEASE

Turning again though to our continued discussion, we have talked about the need for 'deliverance' from the pain and suffering of DISEASE and malfunction, which healing encompasses and results in. While we have covered at least lightly deliverance from disease and malfunction, we can see this aspect of healing in the healing of Peter's Mother-in-Law who was near death from an illness. When Jesus[Yshua] healed her, she did not just say 'that's better' but got up and in gratitude began to serve the guests.

And when Jesus was come into Peter's house, he saw his wife's mother laid, and sick of a fever. And he touched her hand, and the fever left her: and she arose, and ministered unto them. Matthew 8:14-15.


Healing was not just 'feeling better', but a real release, a sense of a return to a right state, and rest and peace, and the gratitude wrought service. This is also seen in deliverance in healing from

2)Malfunction:

Withered hands are made whole, the blind are made to see, the deaf/mute to hear and speak, a definitive sign of Messiah! (John 9) The result most often is either gratitude or joy, as in the following passage:


And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother's womb, who never had walked:
The same heard Paul speak: who stedfastly beholding him, and perceiving that he had faith to be healed, Said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet. And he leaped and walked. Acts 14:9-10
or again:

Act 3:7-9 And he took him by the right hand, and lifted [him] up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.
And he leaping up stood, and walked, and entered with them into the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God:


It is the sense of deliverance in the physical healing of disease and malfunction which makes the healed person rejoice and even dance [leap] or shout or praise. Partly it must be the miracle, the experiencing of the real truth of God's power over the 'natural order' of things: persons of faith often persevere through terrible wildernesses of faith, trusting God but not "seeing" evidence, and when the fruit of faith shows itself through an abundant healing, deliverance begets joy. Deliverance also brings a sense of newfound freedom and a return to a peaceful stress free state: in healing there is a deliverance from pain, stress and anxiety, and constant cumbersome circumstances which the diseased or malformed encounter: the lame cannot run or climb or walk until healed and must compensate with crutches, arm strength and so on such that every task is an arduous one: once healed, a literal freedom also ensues.

SPIRITUAL 'DIS-EASE' AND MALFUNCTION

A form of malfunction is also spiritual or what the world calls 'psychological' i.e. mental, cognitive and emotional trauma. Examples are replete: for example the Boy delivered of evil spirits in Mark 9:24-26.

And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.
When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, [Thou] dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him.
And [the spirit] cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead.
But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose.


HEALING OF SOUL AND SPIRIT

Other examples abound, and we will look at psychological and spiritual healing in Scripture in a further lesson, but even more than with physical healing, the healing of the soul and spirit, involves deliverance which is most often described in both old and new testaments as deliverance from evil spirits. Even one psychologist , Dr. Rollo May acknowledged the idea of the 'demonic' although he of course does not describe it Biblically. He described a psychological phenomena of the 'demonic' as something that 'overpowers' a person. This is not unlike the biblical view, except it falls short of a complete descriptions and remedy. The demonic or 'devils' overpower a person incapacitating them in some form including limiting reasoning, sanity, or usual behavior. This will be discussed later, but the deliverance aspect of healing is even more prevalent in possession of similar afflictions than the other, for the others involve a deliverance from hardship and physical bounds, but the healing from 'devils' involves a virtual setting free in which the person returns to an unbound condition.

II. DELIVERANCE FROM OTHER: HEALING CONFLICT AND CONTENTION


We have already mentioned that we must be healed to others: friendships, marriages, children an dparents, families, and more: we need healing in fragmented relationships, especially ones in covenant and purpose which are ordained of God. But sometimes, to be healed we need deliverance FROM others: constantly in the Wars of Israel, Israel prayed and obeyed and were delivered from the enemy, healing the land and the nation in victory.

An example of a prayer for this kind of deliverance is

Gn 32:11

Deliver me I pray thee from the hands of my enemies"

Israel after deliverance was healed back to the land in peace and rest, the reward and outcome of a God bought victory. Acts 7:25 mentions

God would deliver them..



In the trials of daily life, we find ourselves both in microcosm and macrocosm having to be deliver 'from' other people in order to be healed in our spirits and minds to peaceful and restful living. A person who has a boss who is constantly critical, listing faults non-stop, and constantly calling insufficiencies into question, creates a state of feeling unsafe and unworthy: this makes the person feel unwhole, uneasy, anxiety ridden and fearful, and generally without rest. For some it becomes so great that a job change is required. Home situations can present the same problem: until they are brought into the pattern and order the LORD has given, there may be in extreme cases, even for the Christian a need to be 'delivered' from another person in order to be healed. I am not advocating divorce, in fact far from it, for even in cases of extreme dissension and occasional violence, the underlying causes are often healed by bringing the marriage back into its right purpose and order.

Healing, Deliverance and Marriage


Many marriages, for example, in which division and even hatred take hold, are often marriages out of order: women tend to want control over men, to the point that they overthrow their headship, which in turn makes husbands either wish to escape the relationship, or over-exert headship to the point that it becomes domination. When that happens, all sorts of havoc and chaos occur, turning terribly uncomfortable for all parties concerned including children. Violence can ensue, affairs, hatred, division, substance abuse and ultimately the end of the marriage. The marriage state, and order, has been disrupted and lost its equilibrium. Most Christians are aware of God's commands and order in marriage: loving surrender and submission of both parties, with the husband as head, and the wife as not a lesser human being, but surrendered to the role of support and upbuilding. When this order is correct: neither minds it: one position is not less than the other, but both work together for the benefit of both and family, in loving surrender to God's order, as a type and kind of the Church and her Redeemer, where love is the central value for both. While the wife is not the 'head' her position is not less, but necessary and critical to the excellent working of the family. Problems arise today in view of secular views of marriage in which if a woman surrenders to the headship of a man, many have redefined the nature of that surrender to being 'unliberated' but the truth is, that when it is correct, it is actually freeing to both husband and wife, and instead of a competition, the marriage becomes a loving cooperation for the benefit of both. Some women have no trouble in accepting the Christian command of 'dying to self' or 'counting one another better than oneself', but they seem to add a codicil of 'except for my husband'. Husbands on the other hand, if they loved their wives 'as Christ loved the Church' would not find a constantly rebellious, arrogant and cutting spirit, or cruel competitiveness which often ruins a marriage. A marriage is often healed by bringing correct views and order back to the relationship.

On the other hand, carrying through with the idea of healing as deliverance from others, some marriages, as with jobs, and other relations reach a point of no return, and in order to be healed a person has to be out of the relationship. Even Jesus spoke of a few exceptions while teaching that "God hates divorce". He mentioned fornication as one---he does not require a wife or husband to be subject continuously to extreme abuses. Remarriage may be debated in the House of God, but by in large, unless life is threatened or spiritual health and obedience, God's principle is first the healing of the household by delivering the partners into right relationship, and failing that, to deliver a person from for example a cruel or even violent person. Descriptions of the holy order of marriage are described in the book of Ephesians. But real, self-sacrificing love, on the part of two people surrendered to each other and the LORD, is not only the greatest principle, but the mainstay of healing.

Deliverance as a means of healing, from others, can be as mentioned as small as issues between friends in mundane issues, or range to nations and wars against enemies. In the case of the Concubine which was beaten and raped to death by men from the tribe of Benjamin caused such consternation in Israel, that a civil war started, so bloody it claimed thousands before the other 11 tribes subdued Benjamin.
The healing of Israel in that case came only at the hands of intense prayer and supplication. We will later look at God's plan and teaching regarding the "Healing of the Nations" and how patterns and healing which apply on minor levels work also even internationally.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Healing of Deliverance


IN the last study we talked about one of the first definitional 'mainstays' of Healing: being made 'whole', and the idea of wholeness and perfection in a state of 'equilibrium' which is 'as God created it to be'. The fragmenting or dissolution of that 'right' state necessitates healing, and the dunamos power of God, brings back the compromised person or thing to its 'right state'. While that sounds a little 'jargon-laden', the previous study shows it to be Biblically correct.

The second 'mainstay' of healing is Healing as deliverance, or deliverance as healing.
When we are delivered from something we are

1) Made safe
2) Turned from distress to peace
3) returned from instability to stability
4) Turned from fear to a lack of fear
5) Turned from a captive state to a free state


Safety we understand, most of us covet it: we seek to be free from danger and trouble and save for a few we like to be apart from feelings of insecurity and distress. Distress characterizes a need for deliverance, we do not like to feel apart from a sense of well-being. When we enter in to states of "dis-ease", whether they are physical or emotional, we immediately look for ways to return to an equilibrium. Likewise, when we are in need of 'deliverance' we are in a state which is 'unstable'-
our course is not certain, our path not clear. Our condition is unsettled and could go more than one way. Fearfulness characterizes the undelivered: we feel in danger---in real life circumstances there are often real objects of fear, in cognitive and emotional states wanting deliverance, the anxiety which is often experienced is an undefined fear as well. When we are delivered of these states, virtual or what the world calls 'psychological', or even spiritual, we cease from fear. Further, when we are need of deliverance, we are not free, whether it be a 'real-world' experience or an internal one. A great hallmark of deliverance is the sensation and state of being free, for when we are bound by a lack of it, we feel anything but free: we also, simultaneously feel unable to make decisions and plans so beset by whatever is before us causing the harm.

Healing and Deliverance

As we talked about a return to wholeness characterizing the Healing of the LORD, we turn not to a totally separate aspect of healing, but a concomitant one. Deliverance as healing can take the form of:

1. Deliverance from disease and malfunction, spiritual, mental or physical
2. Deliverance from Others and danger
3. Deliverance from sin, death and Hell

DELIVERANCE [HEALING] from DISEASE AND MALFUNCTION

When we get sick, we want to get well, when we face a life-threatening illness, we want to go back to the way things were before: we wish to be safe, content, and the same as we have always been.

Our most familiar repeated prayer, the "Our Father" contains a reference to the deliverance from a spiritual adversary: 'temptation' or trial, :

Deliver us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil


That famous passage points to a setting free, and hence, making whole and right the person from the danger which confronts them. In this case, it is the danger of righteousness falling to 'sedition'--of coming undone and being shattered with wrong choices. Deliver us from trials and temptations we pray, that we might continue in a whole state. Most of the time it is good to seek back the state at rest, but occasionally, God confronts us with trials and temptations, even evil, for many reasons, e.g. to try our faith, or to lead us to a higher state of being and relationship with Him. This is at the heart of modern discussions of 'why bad things happen to good people' or why bad things happen at all---one of the reasons is the re-forming of the person into something better by what scriptures call the 'furnace of affliction'. It is like a physical breaking a bone to reset it, so that it can heal properly, for if he allowed the natural growth in the condition it was in, it could cause the limb not to work properly later.

to be continued....

Monday, June 11, 2007

Mind of Christ: Healing: IV- types of Healing

Three Shades of Healing

I have noticed in my readings of the Word four 'categories' or broad aspects of healing:

1. Being Made Whole [to God, others and self]
2. Deliverance [from disease, and malfunction, and spiritual infirmity, from others, from darkness and the demonic, and from death, and
3. Rescue and
4. Freedom



Healing is much bigger than the mere idea of 'getting well': we have mentioned that before. Healing, divine healing entails not only a 'feeling better', but many aspects of something that is askew, corrupted or wrongful being made right, perfect and complete. In the Garden of Eden, when man walked perfectly with God, all was right, perfect and complete. There was perfect health, no shame or sin, no disease, hatred, and the communion with God and rest was excellent. When sin came, and man fell from Grace, we often acknowledge the hardships, pain in childbirth, toil and work and so forth that the Word mentions, as a result, but in truth, what one author called a 'crack in creation' took place, and everything which was formerly perfect in God's way, time, and place began to unravel and come apart. Instead of communion, there was separation from God and unbelief, or difficult belief. Instead of peace and rest, and tending the Garden there was work and briars and suffering. Instead of health and well-being there was disease, discomfort and illness. All of healing, including and foremost, the healing Salvation brings, is a 'making right' and healing back to God, in the way things are supposed to be and work.

An example of this, in disease, is that when disease occurs, the normal function of the body is in disequilibrium: it is apart from its normal work and health. When the body heals, it goes back to its natural, unaltered state: cells performing their normal function, a lack of discomfort, inflammation disappears, etc. Even in nature we see this: when trees become diseased they do not bear fruit, or their leaves become mottled, etc. When the are watered cared for, and tended, they return to their natural state, and the 'goodness' of the tree comes to bear. Divine healing must be seen in these terms, because it is a setting right, a return to the right ways of God, and a 'putting back together' the thing that was right and fully functioning. This applies to all kinds of healing whether it be the healing of emotions, souls, diseases, dysfunction, bodies, relationships, or even nations.

Being Made Whole

The idea of 'being made whole' is found clearly in Scriptures. Being made whole may be seen in
1. The Healing to God [Salvation]
2. Healing to Others [Reconciliation] and
3. Healing of the Soul/Self


Healing to God [Salvation]

The whole Word of God is replete with references about our need for salvation, or healing back to God in the way God had always intended, to be safe from grave danger and from wrath, and imputed righteousness, where our perfection is not ours but his.
It had to be God imputing righteousness to us, because the progress of the Fall from the first had caused a condition which made it impossible for man to ever attain the 'goal' of getting back right with God. So in Old and New Testament [e.g.Psalms, Romans] we see God performing the act which would bring back the righteousness needed to be in communion with Him. The most famous passage regarding healing and salvation we have already mentions:

"with his stripes we are healed", or

"Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.


Being Made Whole: To Others

When we are made 'whole' and 'right' with others, it is Reconciliation, and there ar e many mentions of it in the Scriptures: it is right to be made one with those we are separated from, both in the house of God and out, with friends, spouses, relatives, acquaintances and others. When there is a rift between ourselves and others, it causes the whole church to suffer, as well as us in our personal lives. Forgiveness is such a central concern for the believer that it hardly bears mentioning: it was among the last pronouncements of Yshua on the cross "Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do." When we 'fall out' with others, for example in a church, it is never in a vacuum: it is like a small tear at first in a seam, but before the rift is ended, the entire garment can be torn to bits. When we reconcile with others, we solidify the body of Christ as a whole and healthy thing; when we reconcile with a spouse, or child, or parent, we cause healing in all lives involved and blessings which would not otherwise have risen. Examples of reconciliation are seen in 2 Cornithians 5:20, and Romans 5:10 ( reconciled to God):

Rom 5:10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech [you] by us: we pray [you] in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.


The Bible also talks about reconciliation and the house of God:

And so thou shalt do the seventh [day] of the month for every one that erreth, and for [him that is] simple: so shall ye reconcile the house.Eze 45:20

and in Matthew 5:24, we see a call to be reconciled to one another:
Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.


The healing of relationships one to another in right order is a critical part of Church unity and daily healing in life in general. Many marriages have partners who love each other, but are unwilling to accept God's order in the relationship: husbands confuse headship with domination, or wives subvert headship, and many do not understand the difference between order and an equality in Christ. When a marriage is healed in proper order, both partners are free and at peace, an oft indicator of
the 'right' or healed state. When Church members at war with one another make peace with one another and find reasonableness and love, the work of the Lord goes forward.
See I Cor 1:7. Again, the knitting together of those previously at discord, involves a 'making whole' and re-establishing order and 'rightness'.

Healing, Being Made Whole and The 'Self'

The whole realm of human experience we study under the rubric 'psychology' could rightly be assigned here more than to any disease process: what is today called the Self, but was traditionally called 'soul' [although theologians will argue endlessly about that] is the 'glue' that holds our self-experience together. Ask 100 psychologists what 'self' is, you will get 100 different answers. What we do know is that when 'self' begins to fragment and come apart, we see troubling behavior and thinking, and usually a great deal of pain. Freeman and Melges in the 70s looked at aspects of self-disintegration in relationship to drug use and other states of altered consciousness, and found that as a sense of time disintegrates, so does a sense of body boundaries and 'self', and vice versa. How God has put us together in time and space, though, which we probably can never understand, is less important than the very important lesson that as the natural right order of a person's sense of his self, of who and what he defines himself as, comes apart or disintegrates, a state of disequilibrium occurs and we define this as 'mental illness' . Hence when we see troubling patterns, such as 'clinical depression', psychosis, gender confusion etc, there is some portion of the person which is 'coming apart' and deviating from the the right order when the person like other healed things is in a state of peace and rest and 'integrated'. This does not mean that there is one 'normal' for all healthy people- people differ as often as the number of them---it does not define a set of behaviors or beliefs as 'normal'---what it does is show that unrest in the person however mild or severe, is the self turning on the self or coming apart: deviating from a right order. So psychological [as we call it] healing, should involve returning to the order in which God made it. [and in proper relation to Him].
Examples in scripture are not all directly stated but implied. For example: in Mark 2:17, it speaks of "they that are whole". In Mark 3:5 a hand restored to wholeness is mentioned. Mark 5:28 states

If I may touch but his clothes I SHALL BE MADE WHOLE.


Much of this is related to bodily healing, but several other passages devote themselves to this concept of wholeness:

Mark 5:34 Go thy way daughter, thy faith has made thee whole
or
be whole of thy plague.


to be continued....

The Mind of Christ: Healing III

Having established the idea of the act of healing and the power behind it, which is no less than the 'dunamous' power of the HOly Spirit, we also see that healing is part and parcel of Salvation, and that the Laying on of Hands is a foundational doctrine which must not be ignored, even in the modern Church. In the last section, we considered that the Laying on of Hands, in both the Old and New Testament conferred:

1. Authority & Sanctification [setting apart]
2. Blessing and Comfort
3. Anointing Purpose or Gifting and
4. Healing


Before we move into the Types of Healing, though, it must first and foremost be noted that the First and Greatest, and utterly pre-eminent Healing, is that of Salvation, of the healing of man to God. Since the Fall of Adam, there has been what one author called a 'crack in Creation', a wounding, a separation so great from God that man began to die. (Gn 3) We have since that time, been insufficient in our sin condition to heal that breach or stop that separation or the curses which have attended it since: instead of a Garden Paradise, we have made of the world a sorrow and heartache of every suffering, of fruitless labor, of tearing, enslavement and death. In our need, God saw since before the Fall a need we would have which we could never repair or heal, and since the beginning, when a Son of Adam was promised who would come to bruise the serpent, sin and death, putting the curse we brought on ourselves, forever under His divine foot.

Man in his separated condition, usually never gets close enough to God to obey Him even in the smaller things---and in our lost state, it was impossible even if we could to obey Him to a point of repairing our broken Covenant with Him. More than that though, the painful truth was that even if we could have obeyed, even if we could have listened and heard, it was not within our nature, purpose or ability to heal that sad abyss between man and God. Those of us who know Messiah, understand immediately, that the obedience required, and the Blood Atonement, required a divine son, not just 'of' God, but God himself, 'with God', of God, God". [Isaiah 9:6; John 1]

The greatest Healing then, took place in Salvation, the Salvation of the Jews, when our Messiah took upon himself the task, or indeed the War against the destroyer, to bring about our Salvation and healing to God, to heal the breach between Man and God, to destroy the curse of Sin which before redemption is a hard and impossible taskmaster, and to restore God's plan and Paradise, the Heaven of God and the New Jerusalem, to those who would believe.

Jesus, or Y'shua was about healing and Deliverance: He came to buy back the Bride of Israel, in an act of divine obedience only He and no one else could accomplish. His very Name carried the connotation of healing and salvation:

"and she shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call His Name JESUS for He shall
SAVE his people from their sins"


The word 'save' in Greek is 'Soza' and means to save, rescue, deliver and heal. This name chosen not by man but by God, showed the Savior's healing purpose, and He became the unsung King of Israel that day, Israel's Deliverer, the Meschiach, the rescuer of the Bride of Israel and all who would believe and be grafted on to her vine, and the great Healer of Israel, restoring His Bride to what her God-Given Glory demanded, to who she was, who she would be and to the purpose chosen before time at the foundation of the World, to bear His glory. So the first lesson regarding Divine healing, must always begin with Israel's healer, 'Jehovah Rapha', in the person of Yshua, or Jesus.
Indeed, most of His ministry before the Cross, was one of healing disease, pain, deformity, spiritual problems, and ultimately souls: He turned Israel back to their God, and away from the disease of mistrust and hardheartedness that the corruption of big business religion had caused, which even back then, had sold Israel to her enemies.

The Healing of His Stripes

The Word teaches in both the Old and New Testament:

"by His Stripes we are healed" Isaiah 53:5 and
"By whose stripes we are healed "I Peter 21:24


I used to wonder at this passage and one other:

"It pleased the LORD to bruise him",


The words for 'stripe' and bruising are similar: in the Old Testament, 'habbura' means a bruise welt, wound , injury, stripe or hurt, as used in Isaiah 53% and the greek word in I Peter 21:24 is 'molops' which means the same: wound, welt, bruise.
The ways of God though are not the ways of man: we think in far too limited a fashion regarding how far Love can go, especially the Love of God. Our momentary sufferings, even the cruel and bitter and unbearable, in God's hands often accomplish a major HEALING. The ultimate healing, our salvation was brought about not in a King's Palace or cool comfort, but on a brutal darkening day with the horror of crucifixion, nails, spears, beating, stripping and humiliation. The purposes of man though were forcefully overturned by God that day, and our healing became real.

The Old Testament word used in the Isaiah passage is 'rapa' or 'rapha', which carries the connotation not only of physical healing but of 'making whole', curing and recovering. This idea of restoration and making something perfect and complete, restoring 'wholeness' carries throughout scripture: we are told of the healing of nations, the healing of bodies, the healing of spirits, and lives. The New Testament word used in I Peter, is iaoma, which means healing and making whole, and 'freeing'. With healing comes freedom in some form or another, whether it be freedom from oppression, pain, the tyranny of another, a binding circumstance, or emotional pain and suffering. We become free to do God's will and purpose. We feel upon healing, a renewed vigor, outlook, strength and meaning in our lives.

The Wounding of the Cross

His woundings on the Cross led to our healing:

1. Within ourselves- psychological [whatever that is], spiritual and physical
2. Without: between us and others
3. Made whole and healed to God.


These great divine accomplishments were why it 'pleased the LORD' to bruise Messiah for our sake, and though the treatment He received in this diseased world was unbearable to even consider, the healing he wrought was everlasting. Our healing with God is the starting place of all healing: it is our 'soterion' our Salvation.
The King of Israel's accomplished purpose was noted even before his coming, when it was noted that He was risen with healing in His Wings.

Salvation, or soteria carries also the same purposes and connotations as that of its author: deliverance, safety, rescue and healing. Blueletterbible.com defines it thusly:

1) deliverance, preservation, safety, salvation

a) deliverance from the molestation of enemies

b) in an ethical sense, that which concludes to the souls safety or salvation

1) of Messianic salvation

2) salvation as the present possession of all true Christians

3) future salvation, the sum of benefits and blessings which the Christians, redeemed from all earthly ills, will enjoy after the visible return of Christ from heaven in the consummated and eternal kingdom of God.


Strong's describes it as "the State of believers being safe from Righteous Wrath in proper relationship with God, and deliverance, a state of 'not being in grave danger'. This first and great healing, makes the other 'wonders' of healing seem small and comparitively incidental.

Three Shades of Healing


I have noticed in my readings of the Word four 'categories' or broad aspects of healing:

1. Being Made Whole [to God, others and self]
2. Deliverance [from disease, and mafunction, and spiritual infrimity, from others, from darkness and the demonic, and from death, and
3. Rescue and
4. Freedom

These will be discussed in the next segment.

Monday, May 14, 2007

The Mind of Christ: Healing and the Laying on of Hands: II

We have already laid the foundation for the observation that Healing and the Laying on of Hands is a fundamental tenet of belief for both Christians and Jews, so in this study, we will begin to systematically outline types of healing and the ways prophets, Jesus and the apostles approached them. One must remember that healing both in the Old and New Testament are a gift of God and a manifestation of His power, but in the New Testament, the gift of healing was among the gifts of the Holy Spirit given in fullness and in power, which would endure in the believer to whom it was given for the benefit of others.

One of the first distinctions is between the healing itself and the 'power' behind the healing. The act of healing, is readily seen most of the time in this century in healing ministries as well as in others, where an act of healing takes place in a physical way. Acts of healing can also be spiritual or mental, but the process takes place in a transformation between a former state and a new state.

The power behind the healing is implicitly God's, and in Scripture is associated with the breath of God, or the Holy Spirit of God, acting usually through one believer for the benefit of another. We find the word 'morday' for healing which encompasses the process of something being made whole, or restored to a right state, and even in Salvation, we find that one of the Greek words for salvation--- soterion, carries the meaning of health or healing about a third of the time in Scriptures. The power of God which heals, is both used directly as Holy spirit power, or dunamous
and is included in such passages as when the woman with an infirmity touches the hem of Jesus's garment, and is healed. Jesus notes that virture is gone out of Him but the word for virtue is also 'dunamous' in the Greek.

Mar 5:30 And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?

Monday, March 12, 2007

MIND OF CHRIST-Healing and the Laying on of Hands


When I was a younger person, I liked the idea of healing: especially of the healing of painful emotions- I suppose I was somewhat more sensitive to such things, and over time wanting to see people healed of suffering led me to study Psychology rather than Philosophy. As an unbeliever, I shared alot of the ideas that many unbelieving professionals share, that healing emotionally can come about merely by 'understanding' whatever confronts us, or by learning about it---but the 150 or so years of psychological or quasi-psychological approaches have not faired well: rather than having developed a healing profession called "Psychology" we instead have hundreds of small to moderate theories and models of people and how they act and think and feel, often contradicting one another? Are people made whole? Largely, no, unless they are really motivated, young, self-directed and other characteristics which would have made them change anyway. So for our years and years and billions of dollars and countless treatments, people fare about as well now as they did before Psychology, save for the fact that many are more self-obsessed.

But Growing in Christ after 22 years, I have come to understand, that mere introspection and understanding, much to the field's dismay, does not lead to emotional or physical healing. I would not argue that there are not emotional components to even physical healing, but to divorce the person from his or her creator, who made and heals both body and spirit, is to seriously miss where healing comes from.

Salvation and Healing

Our first and foremost healing, without which all other healings are fruitless and meaningless, is that of Salvation. Today, too often, people hear words like "salvation" and they picture staid older church women telling them they are just no darn good. [forgive the darn] and they need to 'git saved'. Well the truth is, we all do, but it is a good and wonderful gift, the 'good news' the Angels announced to the poor shepherds in the field, the announcement that God still loves us, is still with us, and paid a price so great that we could have His righteousness, and live in love in His presence forever! But we had to be healed to Him and His Way, to be made whole again, infected as we are with the Edenic sin which cursed the world and separated us from God because we, as Adam and Eve, just didn't want it God's way, just wanted to be in charge with His power instead of our own, the creation rebelling against the creator. The root of the word is the same as salve, a healing balm, and Jesus, who bought our Salvation and healing [by His Stripes we are healed] with His blood, and He is called the 'Balm of Gilead'. That healing though, is not just a 'getting right with God' or 'getting religion' [who wants that?]---but a new birth, being born once again from above, and becoming a new creation one day to live forever in His presence. New mind, new heart, new world view, new Father, new citizenship and Kingdom, and the wondrous peace and rest in His accomplished salvation. That is the foundation of healing.

THE LAYING ON OF HANDS


Hebrews, though, when urging Christians to grow deeper in the things of the LORD, lists some foundations of life in Christ which are so basic, that Paul simply expects the Christian of some time to already know these things. They are:

1.Repentance from dead works
2. Faith towards God
3. Doctrine of Baptism
4. the Laying on of Hands
5. the Resurrection of the Dead
and
6.Eternal Judgment.



Of all of these, the basic teachings accompany Salvation and receiving and trusting Jesus' atonement as full payment for our sin: but the one of this list that is not simply introducing the new Christian to the beginning of belief, is the one which involves the gift of healing and authority: the Laying on of Hands.

Some churches today relegate the laying on of hands for another time, or assign it to gifts which they declare are no longer operative, but the gifts, like the gift giver has continued. The 'laying on' of hands though, is not only a New Testament concepts: it is a very Jewish one, mentioned since early times in the Old Testament. Thompson's Chain Reference Bible notes that the laying on of hands is used in Old and New Testament in

1. The Consecration of an Offering: Lev 1:4; 3:2; 4:15; and 16:21 in which a burnt and/or sin offering was consecrated by placing hands on the beast's head, to appoint it for a purpose before God. This included the Priest laying hands on the Azazel, or scapegoat of Israel and sending it out into the desert, imbued with the sins of the nation. A corollary practice is in
2) Ordination Ordination by the laying on of hands is seen in both the old and New Testament. The first Covenant saw the laying on of hands for the conveying of purpose, authority and anointing in Numbers 8:10 , in the anointing/appointment of the Levitical Priesthood:

the children of Israel shall put their hands upon the Levites:


or when Joshua is anointed for leadership in Israel:

And the LORD said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom [is] the spirit, and lay thine hand upon him;And set him before Eleazar the priest, and before all the congregation; and give him a charge in their sight.And thou shalt put [some] of thine honour upon him, that all the congregation of the children of Israel may be obedient. Num 27:18-21
(also in Dt 34:9)

This type of 'laying on of hands' commands purpose, authority to do a work or hold a position, and anointing or power to do it. In the New Testament it is commanded for the appointment of Church offices and gifts and the sending forth of disciples in the Great Commission. [Acts 6:6; 1 Tim 4:14; 5:22; 2 Tim 1:6]. This kind of laying on of hands, is still done in most Churches, from fundamentalists to pentecostals, and often in 'high' churches or liberal Churches which practice only a 'social' gospel or Christian philosophy. In fact in 1 Timothy 5:27, Christians are warned to take this transmittal and consecration seriously warning them to "lay hands suddenly on no man". It is interesting that the hands are usually laid on the brow and on the top of the head, which is both a comforting posture, and one indicating authority: the head is often mentioned as a symbol of authority of the body of Christ, the Church, a marriage, etc, and the brow is the place in the end time, when we choose either to bear Christ's mark or Satan's and the world's. It is also reminiscent of our role as children: when our children are young we often without thinking in affection and protection lay our hands on their heads: it speaks authority and love, not oppressively, but rather like the presence of a loving fortress. God's love, protection and anointing is not less.

3. Blessings
Even in the Old Testament we see the laying on of hands of a blessing: the great story of Jacob and Esau involves an aging father laying hands on whom he thinks is his firstborn to convey the power and authority and inheritance of a firstborn. It is also essentially the consecration of a will, a bequeathing. Joseph also blesses his children, and Jacob blesses his: the blessings of the tribes in scripture convey purpose and descriptions: their place in God's plan and history is coupled with their unique 'style' both in their perfections and decided imperfection.
[Gn 48:14] Matthew 19:15 denotes the famous passage of Jesus blessing the children, the disregarded little ones cherished by Christ, their God and Father, whom all others neglect and degrade:

But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.And he laid [his] hands on them, and departed thence.
Matthew 19:15

So blessings, like the appointment of authority and anointing have to do with power, purpose, mercy and good will in the order of God, but the great gift of healing and the laying on of hands remains.

4. Healing and the Laying on of Hands
What we usually think of when we speak of the 'laying on of hands, is exactly this: healing. Jesus, many times in scripture, laid hands on people and they got well.
The Greek for 'laying on ' in this matter is 'episthesis', which is a literal 'laying on' and can cannote touching, although when Jesus lays hands on dying or just dead children or adults, or the sick or possessed, it is according to the age old Hebrew tradition coupled with the power and authority and love of God. In fact the hallmark of Jesus' Messiahship comes when in John 9 he heals a man blind since birth- a sign of Messiah as is the healing of a deaf man. A noteworthy point, is that He does not have to touch the ill, infirm, possessed, because as with Jairus' daughter, merely faith and His Word will do, but His Jewishness and His 'fatherly love' often are characterized in this ancient Hebrew comfort.

This blog on healing and the laying on of hands, will continue with the next entry.ekbest

Sunday, February 25, 2007

MIND OF CHRIST: Prophecy vs Divination


This is a short interlude into an important topic. One of the aspects of the Mind of Christ which we have not explored in this blog, is that of 'walking in the Spirit' although, in a sense, everything we have spoken of is related directly or indirectly to walking in the Holy Spirit because to have the Mind of Christ formed in you requires it. The Gifts of the Spirit are fairly well known to most believers:
For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit;
To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit;
To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another [divers] kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues: But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will. 1Cr 12:8-12


The Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Church Over the Past 50 years.
In the past 50 years [technically 100], perhaps more than any other time in Western Culture, there has been a revival of 'Full' or Complete Gospel Worship: while Churches for centuries kept precepts and general moral commandments and even basic doctrine, sometimes even admirably, the teaching of 'walking in the Holy Spirit' and the outward manifestations of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit was largely neglected [and still is] in mainstream or 'visible' Christianity. With the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, sometimes within and sometimes outside traditional denominations, a focus on the gifts was brought back.

The 'movement' [which should not be a movement at all but a general practice] has been fraught with difficulty and division for several reasons. One is that several heresies were allowed to fester with Churches that practiced the gifts in which some went far from Scripture and some more aberrant Churches even claim that with the gifts the scripture is unnecessary, or limited, which is not only heresy but blasphemy. Churches even practicing the gifts, but apart from the firm anchor of the Word of God, got into 'holy laughter' phases, think and grow rich gospels, and a variety of other aberrations.

On the other hand, Churches without any practice of the gifts, or which teach the gifts are dead or for another time or dispensation, are often found to be legalistic, without love and without the power and Grace of God. Some even teach that the outward working of the gifts are demonic, a dangerous and blasphemous position which comes to close to one of the only ways Salvation can be lost which is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which includes attributing the works of God through the Holy Spirit to the demonic.

There is also though, emulations of the things of the Spirit, which can be very deceiving and so that straight and narrow road is vividly required to have a discerning Spirit. A few principles I have found have helped:

1. Never point a finger at what even looks like the works of the Holy Spirit and cry demonic without knowledge or testing the spirits: this is too great a risk. One can pray and ask God for discernment, pray and ask Him to prosper the true gifts and thwart the ones which are not true, etc. Too many preachers however in the flesh, not wanting to break with age old ways of doing things in the church of man, cry foul without discernment.

2. Go the Word. Always the Word. The Holy Spirit who wrote the Word of God over 5000 years through many voices, will not disagree nor depart from the Word in Gifts. Sometimes, the thing one is given in a word of knowledge, or prophetic utterance may seem a little askance , but recall that prophets and disciples are often asked to do unusual things: stand in the middle of the Gaza desert, for example, or shave off half their beard and scatter it to the wind.

3. Pray, stay in the Word, stand on the Word, and do things decently and in order: God created the universe decently and in order, and His Church is to work that way. If Scripture says that tongues are only "as the Spirit giveth utterance" then it is not self-initiated. If it says that an interpreter is to be present, then massive chaotic prayers do not line up, and though they may edify the individual they do not add to faith or build up the Church. Not only are the gifts given and described in scripture, the prescription for their use is given.


Carefulness and caution with prayerful Bible Study are like the guard rails on a steep highway to a mountain top: its good to get to the 'mountain tops' where we meet with God in fullness, but its good also to have a safe journey upwards! All of this brings us though to the central topic in this section, which is How to discern the veracity of prophetic utterance, or a Word of Knowledge or wisdom from that which is not of the LORD. I have found a few things that will help.

Divination vs Real Prophecy

Perhaps the premiere example in Scripture of the difference between 'Divination' and true gifts, is found in the book of Acts in the case of the young woman who is known for a spirit of divination, off of whom her masters make a lot of money, who when the true apostles appear, begins for 3 days to follow them around saying
"These men are the servants of the Most High God that shew unto us the way of salvation." Acts 16:17.


The apostles call the wrongful spirit out of the woman which causes her merchandisers much dismay as they lose their free income. As a younger Christian , I wondered at this passage because it seemed that she was saying the truth, these truly were the servants of the Most High God [El Elyon], and they really were lifting up Jesus Christ our Messiah and showing the way of Salvation, so I was earlier unsure why the spirit was 'unclean'. There are few other instances in scripture which mention false prophecy as well, for example, in Jeremiah, around the time Jeremiah prophesies to Zedekiah and Gedaliah, a few local prophets of the time, unhappy with his "doom and destruction" message and call for repentance, take the core of his message and turn it into 'all is well', peace and happiness for Israel. They and others then condemn Jeremiah, and even the princes discuss what to do with the recalcitrant prophet who will not water down or restate the prophecy. Rather than kill him, which they note was done in the past (Jer 44), he is thrown into the dungeon, which is a curious event because even though they are punishing him, the King still sends to hear if he has a Word from the Lord as Babylonian armies march in to destroy Jerusalem! They knew the true from the false but did not like the truth.

To get back for a moment to the first example though, the Spirit of Divination mocked and emulated the true workings of the Holy Spirit and the Scripture rather tightly: but there are a number of differences which are alluded to in scripture which help discern the true from the false.

1. Definitions: Divination, is called literally in the Greek in this passage the "Spirit of Python". By definitions derived from the roots and meaning of the word Python, it bears several characteristics, which the woman who followed after Paul and Silas. It was:
A. Repetitive: over and over (ha) without control -it went on for 3 days.
B. Numerous
C. Pressured. [it is curious that some mental 'illnesses' are characterized by pressured speech, but this is often confused with dialectical concerns]

2. Divination is equated with witchcraft, readings, reading animal 'entrails' casting lots and other things: Joseph in the Old Testament has a 'divining cup'. While some servants of God before the Cross used certain of these practices, it appears not to be the best way, can be harmful and destructive and displeases God. Even the apostles remaining after Judas in choosing a new apostle, use the casting of lots, and get Matthias, but many feel it was God Himself who really appointed Paul to the last position, because Matthias is not mentioned again after the lot selection. An example of serious divining or witchcraft is when Saul visits the witch of Endor and she reluctantly calls up the 'spirit' or at least the image of Samuel. This is against the law, and the dead do not return to earth outside of a few which God revives, so the sin was serious and resulted in the fall of the house of Saul.

3. Soothsaying, is a form of divination, qwasam in hebrew, and manteuomai in the Greek, refers to a form of 'oraclism' which is staccato, given in short and repetitive bursts. It is used definitively in the passages about the young woman in Acts who followed the apostles, who can be seen to bear the repetitive and choppy sayings, but it also involves communicating with the dead [BLB] Saul was to stay away from the Witch of Endor, after he himself outlawed such practices, but desperately went to an occultist after the death of Samuel, because God's wisdom had departed from him. People throughout history have gone to 'soothsayers' or oracles of a false nature to hear what they want to hear: soothsaying seldom involves the truth when it hurts. Soothsaying can also refer to prophets of strange nations. True prophecy again, flows more like a babbling and refreshing brook, is always the truth, always in line with the word, never involves communication with the deceased, is given by the utterance of the Holy Spirit (not man's inquiry or self-produced) and will not lie even to the prophets own hurt.


True Prophetic Utterance and Prophecy
True prophetic utterance often bears a number of characteristics also: it is from the LORD, it is through the Holy Spirit in the way chosen. Several words in scripture are used in connection:

1. Propheteuo: (Greek) which according to Strong's refers to "encouraging obedience", foreseeing the future or warning of the future, warning to prepare for the future or admonishing continuing obedience. There are 28 mentions in this form.

2. Episkiadzo-this is not directly prophecy and yet it is, it is like an announcement, as when the heralding angels confront the Shepherds in the field, or when the Angel Gabriel overshadows Mary. The key word in English is "overshadowing" or to cloud over: this describes at least the experience of the prophet who usually describes his experience as been overwhelmed, overtaken or the like in a number of words. Daniel talks about this overshadowing of control (although not the same word) when he confronts an Angel of God who shows him the things of Israel to come.

3. Naba describes the same indicating encouraging, restoration of the Covenant, faithfulness, the telling of future events, or encouraging obedience or the warning against disobedience, only in Hebrew.

4.and Natap- (Hebrew) which is used in conjunction, and interestingly coincides with what the voice of God is described as by prophets: to pour down, gently fall, drip, drip words, preach, prophecy, drop, dropped, dropped down or prophesy.

So true Prophecy or utterance, has many characteristics which divination and imitations do not, even when the same words are said. To begin with it is TRUE, but often not popular, as with Jeremiah. The prophetic encounter, is often followed by exhaustion: spiritual and physical---Daniel is so exhausted that he cannot even stand but is picked up and set upright. On a lesser note, many pastors will tell you that after preaching the Gospel, they are not merely tired from a morning's 'work' but often fall asleep, not just napping but in a spiritual exhaustion. Our encounters with the living God are not mundane! Our limited existence and physical nature, though made by Him, are so minute next to His Glory that even small tastes of that wondrous fruit depletes our being. Great Prophecies are often preceded by intense prayer, often with fastings and length, including Repentance, both individual and corporate: Daniel prays for weeks regarding the sins of Israel, repenting of the very sins which the Prophet Jeremiah and Isaiah and others declared as the reason for captivity 70 years before. Lastly although not exhaustively (we will return later to this topic), as with tongues, prophecies and words of knowledge are under the sovereign direction of God: as the Holy Spirit gives utterance. Forced tongues or prophecies, forced words of wisdom, are often incorrect and quench the Holy Spirit and defy God's sovereignty. I have noted that even in the harshest rebukes God gives us in the Spirit, even for persons gone far into sin, it is most often countered with comfort as one would a straying child.

God is our Parent, our Father, nuturer, and the love of our life. God is Life and Love and Jesus is described as the Way the Truth and the Life, and no man comes to the Father but by Him! (Jn 14:6). His prophecies and words to us are for our benefit and upbuilding---for our learning and it is one of His ways of fitting us for Heaven.
A true prophecy will be in love, even the solid rebuke, because it is so a part of God's nature that it is felt: and His love is so far above ours! We do not treat each other in love that great not even the best of us. His pleadings with Israel in the Babylonian exile to turn back, to repent is like a father who though angry and heartbroken at seeing children walking towards a cliff, begs them, warns them, berates them not to go any farther near the cliff of their destruction. The discernment between true and false prophecy is often not that difficult: though real prophecies may be lengthy, and a few major points repeated, they are not vain repetitions without substance or belief, but the dear and precious calling of Children to walk with a loving God into Eternal Life.
May the Love of the LORD Jesus Christ be with all.
2. 3. 83. 84.