Part 1 (1/2)
The Lord for the Body.
With Questions and Answers on Divine Healing.
by A. B. Simpson.
Foreword.
In publis.h.i.+ng this Colportage Series, the one purpose is to disseminate widely the pure Gospel of Christ. America is being flooded with literature that is designed to turn hearts and minds from the faith of our fathers. Much of the popular reading of the day is either shallow and irreligious or erroneous and misleading.
The volumes in this series are selected because of their lucid presentation of Jesus Christ as the all-sufficient Saviour of mankind. In cheap but attractive form the cream of the writings of great preachers and teachers are offered to the public. No profits will accrue to any one through these books save the spiritual blessing that comes to the readers and the satisfaction that comes to the distributors who thus serve G.o.d and their fellowmen.
Evangelical Christians everywhere may a.s.sist in broadcasting these messages with the a.s.surance that every word will ring true to the integrity of the Scriptures, the vicarious atonement of Christ, and the world's only hope in His coming again.
The Christian Alliance Publis.h.i.+ng Company
Preface.
IN 1903 Dr. Simpson first issued a little volume under the t.i.tle of ”The Discovery of Divine Healing” in which he set forth the teaching regarding healing as unfolded in different Books and in the experiences of various Biblical characters. This early volume was not intended to be an exhaustive treatise of this important theme, but was rather a presentation of helpful expositions that gathered around the lives of outstanding witnesses to the possibility of supernatural life for the body.
The present volume is an enlargement of the early edition. Important chapters upon ”Paul and Divine Healing” and ”Natural and Supernatural Healing” have been added; also one of Dr. Simpson's strongest pamphlets on ”Inquiries and Answers Concerning Divine Healing” has been included.
This contains clear and logical replies to questions that usually arise in the minds of sincere inquirers after the truth. We are confident that this book will prove to be one of the most illuminating and widely appreciated works from the gifted pen of Dr. Simpson. The personal testimony of Dr. Henry Wilson, the a.s.sociate and intimate friend of Dr. Simpson, has been added as an appendix. Dr. Wilson wrote this testimony when, as he states, he had come to his majority, having pa.s.sed twenty-one years of glorious renewed life through the acceptance of G.o.d's provision.
Because the subject of the Lord's Healing is now so widely discussed in Christian circles, it is hard to realize that only a generation ago but few teachers ever touched upon this phase of Scriptural doctrine. Probably no one teacher of recent years has been so much used of G.o.d in this connection as Dr. Simpson. In the minds of mult.i.tudes his name is inseparably connected with teaching about Divine Healing. Yet it is well to remember that Dr. Simpson consistently maintained that he was not the founder of a healing cult, nor did he wish to place healing before spiritual blessing and the salvation of the lost.
He preached Christ, the living, all-sufficient Saviour. His dominant purpose was to make Him known in all the neglected lands of earth. His heart yearned over the lost and neglected at home and abroad. While faithful to the whole truth of G.o.d, he nevertheless placed soul-saving, the instruction of believers in deeper spiritual truths, and earnest missionary efforts before any ministry of healing. His teaching is best summed up in one of his own poems.
”Once it was the blessing, Now it is the Lord; Once it was the feeling, Now it is His Word; Once His gift I wanted, Now the Giver own; Once I sought for healing, Now Himself alone.
All in all forever, Jesus will I sing; Everything in Jesus, And Jesus everything.”
Walter M. Turnbull
Introduction.
These delightfully interesting studies come us as fresh and winsome as when they first fell from the lips of the honored servant of G.o.d, whom many of us held as the Moses who led us through the wilderness of perplexity, the Joshua who inspired us to cross the Jordan into the land of decision.
Some who stood loyally with him in the early years of his wonderful ministry, like the disciples of old, went away. A few to utter repudiation of the truth they had learned through him; others to hold it with cautious reservation. But he lived through all the heartaches which accompanied such departures, sweet and patient, trustful and loving, ever ready to receive them ; for he, himself, never varied in the conviction that healing as he was moved to present it could not be divorced from the message of salvation. If our blessed Lord is the very life of His own, that life must be related to every department of our being.
With him, the espousal of this much-disputed doctrine was not a matter of novelty that would in time wear away and be replaced by other novelties. It gripped his whole being; it compelled his entire devotion; it absorbed his heart and mind. And we who saw the workings of his methods and life could not other than confess that he was moved by a complete surrender to the Holy Spirit.
If only he could be found yielding to His behest in every turn he had to take, it was enough. The critics might pierce the atmosphere in which he lived with the arrows of poisoned unbelief; he was immune from infection. He literally was hid in G.o.d. It was this that made his messages so sacred to us.
The painful fact that teachers of Christian healing are subtly introducing psychology, that evident antagonist to the Holy Spirit, calls for the highest commendation of his manner. For he never permitted his teaching to be intinctured with any element of self-effort, selfintrospection, self-poise. To him, the truth of healing lay absolutely in the gift of G.o.d to His own, by simple acceptance and childlike following in the way of G.o.d. Faith, unalloyed was his foundation. And the death of self that Christ might live was the superstructure of his teaching and experience.
They who did not know him in the flesh, may well pursue these studies with deep appreciation. For thus they will learn to know the man as well as to accept the truth he held so precious.
Kenneth Mackenzie
CHAPTER I.
THE DISCOVERY OF DIVINE HEALING.
”And the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet; there he made for them a statute, and an ordinance, and there he proved them, and said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy G.o.d, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord that healeth thee” (Ex. 15:25, 26).
This was the discovery to Moses of Divine Healing. The branch that was cast into the bitter waters had been there before, but undiscovered, and now the Lord showed it to him and the waters were healed.
A WONDERFUL DISCOVERY.
What a wonderful epoch it marks in our lives when we discover the hidden promises whose reality and power we had never dreamed of before! Henceforth life becomes all new. How wonderful to find that ever since the Saviour died our complete redemption has been purchased, and only waiting for our faith to claim it; and how we wish that all the world might know the treasure it is losing and the hidden resources of help and blessing which lie, like undiscovered wealth of some secret mine, beneath our thoughtless feet. The branch which Moses found simply represents the promise of G.o.d. Our Bible is full of such promises, and all we need is the divine illumination to show them to us and then the faith to claim them and apply them in the hour of need.
The sweetening of the bitter waters of Marah is closely connected in this pa.s.sage with the ordinance of healing which G.o.d immediately proceeds to give to Israel. It is evident, therefore, that the healing of the waters was intended to suggest the other healing covered by the divine promise and what a promise it is! It lays the deep and solid foundation of the Lord's supernatural life for all our physical need. What a difference it makes in our lives when we truly find and fully understand this strong and sure foundation for faith to rest upon.
G.o.d'S PRIMARY SCHOOL.
One should not fail to notice how early this experience came into the history of ancient Israel. Like a fond mother who first cares for her baby's body and afterwards attends to its education, so G.o.d first provides for Israel's physical needs, and a little later puts His infant people to school at Mount Sinai and through the deeper lessons of the wilderness.
The Lord Jesus began His ministry with physical healing, and so the youngest and humblest child of G.o.d ought to know the healing power of the Saviour. It is not surprising, therefore, that it comes natural to our simple-hearted converts in heathen lands, who know no better than to trust the Lord for both body and soul.
OLDER THAN THE LAW.
It must also occur to the thoughtful reader that this ordinance of healing in the fifteenth chapter of Exodus is much older than the Law of Sinai, and, therefore, it has not been superseded even by the pa.s.sing away of the Law. Just as Paul tells the Galatians that the covenant with Abraham could not be annulled by the later Law of Moses, so the ordinance of healing stands even after the pa.s.sing away of the Mosaic inst.i.tutions. The very terms ”statute” and ”ordinance” express permanency in this divine provision; and so it stands today, unless we can find in the New Testament some authoritative statement revoking it, which certainly we shall not find; for all the teachings of Christ and His apostles are but the echo and the fuller expression of the deep truths so well expressed in this ancient Law of Healing.
A TEST QUESTION.
It is announced emphatically in the narrative that this was to be a test question with G.o.d's people. There ”He proved them”; and what a test it is today of Christian life and Christian faith! How few there are that dare to stand it, and how it proves the people of G.o.d! How it brings us up to His heartsearching light and compels us to walk in holy fellows.h.i.+p and obedience if we would find the promises true in our bodies. How rigidly it demands an obedience as deep and spiritual as the profoundest teachings of the New Testament require.
It is not enough that we do our best and sincerely follow the light we have, but we must ”diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord our G.o.d.” We must take pains to understand His will. We must have a yielded, willing and responsive conscience that fears to offend and jealously feels its way into all His will. And so, while divine healing is the privilege of the youngest disciple, it will not suffer us to continue immature or careless, but will impel us to the deepest spirituality and the most earnest and diligent conformity to all the will of G.o.d. There is nothing that has so chastening, humbling, heartsearching and sanctifying an influence over our spiritual life as to live a life of dependence upon Christ for our bodily strength from day to day.
CONTINUOUS HEALING.
There is another deeply spiritual truth connected with this discovery. Dr. Young translates the last clause of the pa.s.sage in the continuous present tense: ”I the Lord am healing thee.” This is the aspect of divine healing which the Apostle Paul so frequently emphasizes. It is not a mere or incident occurring occasionally in life, but it is a life of constant, habitual dependence upon Christ for the body; moment by moment abiding in Him for our physical, as well as spiritual need, and taking His resurrection life and strength for every breath and every step.