A Doctrinal Sermon by Aimee Semple McPherson
"We believe that Divine Healing is the power of the Lord Jesus Christ to heal the sick and the afflicted in answer to believing prayer, and that He who is the same yesterday, today and forever has never changed, but is still an all sufficient help in time of trouble, able to meet the needs of and quicken into newness of life the body as well as the soul and spirit in answer to the faith of them who in submission to His divine and sovereign will."
—Foursquare Declaration of Faith
"The people had a mind to work."
How true that is of Angelus Temple! In no other church in the world, I think, has every member gotten so under the burden of the work as in Angelus Temple; and in no other place have greater miracles of Christian work been accomplished than here where every member is a worker.
When Angelus Temple was first opened I was simply an evangelist. Then thousands were converted and other thousands healed and all of them wanted immediately to go to work for the Lord!
I have always felt that the secret of a happy, unified group of Christians is to have every one busy, and my hands were so full with the rapidly growing work that I was happy for the earnest workers who so eagerly offered their voluntary services as Sunday School teachers, altar workers, prayer band members, musicians, etc.
The first thing I knew we had a church of thousands of members thronging the Temple and pleading to be told what to do to help.
"Just tell us what to do and how to do it, Sister," they said. "How do we go about pointing sinners to Jesus? How do we teach the sick about the Great Physician? How shall we conduct a tarrying service?"
So insistent and continuous has been the demand that, although we have from time to time conducted classes for personal workers, and I am giving a series of sermons which I hope may be of help to those wishing to do personal work. This one refers particularly to praying for the sick.
With a membership of fifteen thousand I cannot personally pray for all my own members, much less minister to all who call. If I were to try that, it would take more than all of my time praying for the sick alone, and this church needs a well balanced evangelist as well as a well balanced doctrine.
"But can any Christian worker pray for the sick?" you ask. Certainly. I have no personal power to heal the sick. I can only pray in God's will and with faith in my heart; and any earnest Christian can do that. It is God alone who can and will heal those who believe.
Only a short time ago a woman was converted here at Angelus Temple who had never read a Bible, apparently had no great knowledge of it. But she heard me say,
"Good night, God bless you! And as you go, remember you are to be winners of souls. Now that you are saved yourself, go to work, help others to get saved and healed and filled with the Spirit too."
She took me literally. The next morning, Monday, she was here about a quarter to eight o'clock. In her hand was a conspicuously new Bible as she presented herself at the church window and said,
"Is there anything I can do?"
"Why—What do you mean?" asked the surprised secretary on duty there.
"Sister said when we were converted we were to come back and go to work for the Lord," said the new convert.
"Oh! What can you do, dear?"
"Anything. Just anything that comes along."
"Sit down, then, and wait a little, and we will see what comes along."
In a few minutes an ambulance drove up. Just at that time a long distance telephone call had come in and the worker could not go to the ambulance, but said to the new convert,
"You go dear. Go and read a little bit of the Bible and pray with her. Point her to the Saviour first, if she is not a Christian, and then tell her about Jesus, the Great Physician,"
"All right. What shall I read?"
"Read something about Divine Healing."
"Read something about Divine Healing."
They opened the Bible and the worker quickly underlined some Scriptures. The woman went out, opened the ambulance and sat down beside the sick woman, who had been brought in from Long Beach to the Temple to be prayed for, as a last desperate measure; for there was no human hope for her living.
"I am the Lord that healeth thee," she read. ". . . with His stripes we are healed." "The prayer of faith shall save the sick . . ."
As she read, and marked and turned down passages, the next thing the worker in the office knew, the sick woman was up, out of the ambulance, in her kimono and slippers, and walked with the new convert down the Temple aisles. They knelt at the altar and in a few moments they both came back, brushing the tears away, and the new soul winner presented the other woman to the worker.
"Well, she is saved now," she said,"and she is healed too!"
"I thought the altar was the place to get converted," she said. And the woman truly was saved and healed as a result of a new convert preaching Divine Healing.
I want you to be able to pray for the sick and preach a Divine Healing sermon. There is one thing certain, this work has gotten too big for me; I cannot keep up with it.
Lately I have not been able to try to keep up every department —Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. They come from all churches to this Bedside Ministry Committee, I want you all to know how to pray for your own loved ones or for any sick who ask you to help them.
Now supposing you were going to preach Divine Healing to someone, where is the logical point of beginning? James 5:14? No. Matthew 8? No. Psalm 103? No. Exodus 16? No.
I would go back, if I were you, to the very beginning, to the Garden of Eden, to the Book of Beginnings—Genesis—and find the reason for sickness, how it came in, whether it is from God or the Devil. The first thing for you to know is the foundation upon which you may stand if someone asks you how you know Jesus can and will heal the sick.
Here we are brought face to face with this first fundamental fact—when God created man He created him perfect. He never created him in His own image. Looking over the work, as a master mechanic will, He pronounced it good and perfect. When He draws it back and plunges it into the heart of Jesus Christ, and we read that blood and water flowed mingled forth. As the blood went dripping down onto the ground it formed a fountain in which the sins of all the world may be washed away, if we but believe and trust Him. The sky overhead grows black. Clouds cover the face of the sun, and a storm is coming. The sun hides its face entirely. In that awful hour the Scarlet Threads are being bound together at Calvary.
Through the Devil. One day Adam and Eve opened the gate to the Devil and said, "Come in, Satan," and he came into this world through the gate of their hearts and lives, and when he entered he brought behind him a bad pair of Siamese Twins—sin and sickness. They came hand in hand. When sin came in and God, heartbroken over His wayward children, pronounced the curse which must fall on disobedience, He explained not only that "the wages of sin is death," but also "with travail and sorrow, shall you bring forth and earn your bread by the sweat of your brow," and "thorns and thistles shall the earth produce."
Sin, sickness, death, sorrow, came from the Devil! It was never found in the beautiful Garden before the serpent entered.
That statement is backed up by the Word. When Jesus put His fingers in the ears of the deaf and dumb man He said, "Come out of him, thou deaf and dumb spirit." When He healed the man of epilepsy it says He cast out the tormenting demons, or tormenting spirits, and the man was perfectly healed. It says He went about destroying the works of the Devil and healing the sick and releasing all those who were oppressed of the Devil.
I do not mean to infer that if you are sick you are necessarily filled with the Devil, but I do say sin, sickness and death came originally through the curse. When the Devil came in He brought with him that goes with it—sickness, pain, misery, sorrow.
The Devil can come in and fill a person full of temper, which may result in apoplexy or even paralysis. All kinds of disastrous results follow sin.
When God saw they had sinned and were hopeless and knew that His curse must descend upon their disobedience, He also promised that He would send a Messiah, a Deliverer who would pay the debt and cancel it all for them, who would bring them salvation. When sin is conquered, all its results may be wiped out, for God promised His people without equivocation or provision other than that they should believe on Him and obey His commands: and it was an understood fact He was to bring them also healing—
"I am the Lord that healeth thee."
Just as the Devil brought in sin and sickness, so when Jesus came, according to His promise, He brought the beautiful twin mercies of Salvation and Healing. Wherever Jesus went these two moved behind Him. He forgave them their sin and He healed their diseases, saying,
"Whether is easier, to say "Thy sins be forgiven thee," or 'Rise, take up your bed and walk'?"
Always when He commanded His disciples to preach the Word, He said to them,
"Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
Often the question is asked:
"Do you not think Divine Healing was only for Bible days? Don't you think you are stepping out of your bounds when you say that miracles are still performed?"
I will answer that question from God's Word. I know that divine healing is for today, first, because of the Bible; second, because I myself have been healed; third, because I have seen hundreds of thousands of people healed, and I know He answers prayer.
Despite all of the wonderful miracles I have seen performed by the Lord, the thing that settles it for me, and the thing I want to point out to you is:
"What saith the scriptures?"
The Cross stands in the middle of all time. The arms of the cross reach in two directions, one arm over B. C. and the other A. D.—before Christ and after Christ.
Now before Christ's birth the sick were healed. Four thousand years before Christ was born Abraham prayed for Abimelech and his family as related in Genesis, and they were all healed. Would God heal 4000 years before Jesus was born? If people could be healed even before He was born in the flesh by looking forward to Him who had ever been born in the flesh by looking forward to Him who was to come, shall not we be healed who have been born after He has appeared and has wrought the finished work of Calvary?
Consider God's dealings with the Children of Israel. When God brought them out of bondage He gave Moses that wonderful verse in Exodus:
"If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, 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 (that is, upon the followers of the Lord) (or upon the sinner, but thee)."—Exodus 15:26.
In other words, when you are come out of Egypt and say, "O Lord, here I am. I will follow Thee, my Saviour. I will follow all the way"—then you are a different realm, you are a different person. You are no longer a child of the Devil, subject to the Devil's rule. You are a child of God. You have bought the field with the pearl in it of eternal life and you can have the earnest right now of your inheritance. Divine Health.
"What do you mean, Sister?"
I mean that today when we sell a piece of land we give a scrap of paper to show we have sold it. In the olden days when they sold land they gave what was called an earnest of it. Suppose I bought an acre of land today, the seller would give me a receipt. In the olden days they would give an earnest. That is, the purchaser would stoop down, take a handful of earth, tie it up in his kerchief, take it with him, and that was his receipt for it. It was his receipt that that tract of land. It was his receipt for the earnest—he had the right to occupy it. It was his.
Now the field we are considering is eternal life. We are going to receive that over there when Jesus comes and the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed. There may come a time, ere He comes, when we shall fall asleep and die; but while we live we may have the earnest—we have the handful of earth tied up.
In other words, Divine Health, is the interest on our eternal inheritance. It is the receipt for the eternal life we have to come. Death must come to us all while we are in these mortal bodies; but while we live we may have the earnest of our divine inheritance.
While we are sinners we bear the Devil's yoke, but when we come out into God's field He says, "I will not put upon you the diseases I have brought upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord that healeth thee."
Have you faith to believe this? Can you receive this word that I bring you? If so, you can be healed right now, if you will accept it and take it to yourself.
We read the sequel to this marvelous Scripture in the Psalms.
"He brought them out with silver and gold, and there was not one sick or even weakly in all their tribes."
Among all the tribes of Judah not one was sick, not one was weak. The Lord healed them, they were perfectly whole. While they walked through forty years in the wilderness God kept them well except when sin came in.
Consider Miriam as an example of that. When she began to backbite and criticize God's children, she immediately was stricken with leprosy.
It is a terrible thing to backbite. It is far worse then getting drunk, it is far worse than cursing and swearing. It is pretty nearly as bad as committing murder or robbing a bank. Really, backbiting or criticism is one of the most ghastly, deadly sins right out of the pit of hell.
When God saw Miriam backbiting, He permitted the enemy to touch her and she became leprous, white as snow. There you are, sin and sickness came together. Moses and Aaron believed in Divine Healing. They believed on the Messiah who was to come. So they began to pray with all their heart to God to forgive and heal Miriam. It is interesting to note the wording of their prayer.
"Forgive her and heal her."
The two go together. As sin and sickness go together, so forgiveness and healing go together. They put her out of the camp for a short time to teach her a lesson, but she came back perfectly healed.
One day when murmuring had filled the camp, fiery serpents came. The people began to die. They fell down, filled with the most terrible agony. Their eyes were glazed, their bodies filled with flames of fever from the bite of these fiery serpents (so called because the peculiar feeling of burning to death that follows their poisonous sting).
Now when Moses said that because of sin this terrible physical result had come, he cried to God to forgive the people.
"All right," the Lord promised, "I will forgive them."
"Oh Lord, heal them, too."
So they got a pole and lifted up a brazen serpent upon a pole. "
Even as the serpent was lifted up, so Jesus took all the poison of all our sins and nailed it to the pole on Mount Calvary, and there is life for a look today.
Moses and Aaron cried to the people:
"Look and live! Look and live!"
To everyone who looked, two things happened. It was a double cure for a double curse. Their sin and sickness came together. So when they looked they were forgiven their sin and they were healed of their sickness. The glassiness went from their eyes, the fire went out of their veins, and they were perfectly whole.
King Hezekiah, when given up to die, turned his face to the wall and prayed for healing, and the Lord raised him up and added fifteen years to his life, and Hezekiah got up and went to the house of God to offer worship and praise.
You remember Elisha and Elijah prayed for the sick. In fact, in answer to their prayers the widow's son, who was dead, was raised to life.
Naaman the leper was healed before ever Christ was born. You say, "Sister McPherson, I don't understand that. How could the sick be healed before Christ was born in the flesh?"
For the same reason that we are healed today. Here stood the Cross in the middle of time. These folks in the Old Testament were healed by looking forward to Christ who was to come. You and I are healed by looking backward by faith to Christ who did come. The Cross is in the center, with one arm over the Old and one over the New Testament. Before Christ or after Christ, it is just the same to God; for His promise was made in the beginning. As truly as the ocean keeps on rolling, the winds continue to blow and the sun to shine—God's Word is true. Time is a relative term to God. One day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day to Him.
To me the troubling of the waters of the Pool of Bethesda is one of the sweetest and most touching incidents of Divine Healing in the Word of God, showing His willingness and His anxiety to heal His people. Malachi, the last of the prophets, was dead. There was a space of four hundred years without a preacher being mentioned, and Christ was not yet born. There was no Elisha, Elijah, Isaiah, Moses or Aaron to pray for them; yet there were sick people on the earth. So desirous was the Lord of healing them, that He sent an angel to stir the water of Bethesda's Pool. "I haven't anybody to preach it," the Lord must have said to the Angel; "but you go and trouble the waters. If there is not a man or woman to preach it, we will have to send an angel."
So the angel stirred the water and whoever stepped in was made every whit whole.
If God was so anxious to heal the sick that, I cannot believe He has changed His mind, or become one whit less concerned with the welfare of His people.
Then came Jesus!
Turn your mind back across the fields of memory and you will recall that wherever Christ went, His entrance and His stay was marked by the healing of the sick. They crowded about Him, they touched the hem of His dress, and we read, "As many as touched Him were made every whit whole . . ." He healed all manner of diseases."
It is just as easy for the Lord to heal as to save; and it is just as easy for Him to save as to heal. Salvation and Healing have walked together all through the Bible. They are cut to fit each other. If you belong to the Lord you can have not only your soul stripes we are healed."
Psalm 103: "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases."
When Jesus sent out His disciples He said,
"Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature."
In order words, He said, "Goodbye, Children. I'm going to Heaven now, but you go preach the Gospel."
"How long, Lord?"
"Until you have preached it to every creature."
Has that been done yet? No. There are still millions who have never heard the name of Jesus. There are millions in Africa, India, China, who have never heard that precious name. So at least until the Gospel is preached to every creature we are commanded to "lay hands on the sick," and we are promised that "they shall recover."
When Jesus went away there was no cessation or limitation of the miracle working power. Rather there was an increase of it, for it was even as He had promised, saying,
"Greater works than these shall ye do, because I go to the Father."
Greater works, because there was a longer time than three years to do it. Greater works, because of the facility of travel which should enable them to reach every end and corner of the earth.
"Greater works shall ye do."
For instance, we read in the Acts of the Apostles that several years after Christ had gone to Glory, Peter was walking along the street. They had brought the sick out in multitudes, on beds and couches, and laid them at the side of the road so that Peter's shadow would cover them. As he passed by and his shadow fell over them, they were healed, every one.
"But, Sister, wasn't that just for the disciples?"
Oh, no. There was Paul—he was "born out of due season," yet his life was completely wrapped up in Divine Healing. His experience with Christ was to become blind and then be healed of his blindness. He was stoned and cast outside the city gates for dead—bones broken, chest crushed, concussion of the brain, perhaps; and they dragged him out and threw him on a rubbish heap, there to be buried or picked to pieces by bands of roving dogs. But the disciples came out and stood around and began to pray for Paul. As they prayed the Lord healed him, he stood upon his feet and walked twenty miles to the next town to preach the Gospel.
One night Paul was preaching. He was going away in the morning, so they decided to have an all night meeting. One man climbed away up to the third loft. There was no other place to sit because of the large crowd. It must have been something like Angelus Temple crowds. Sometimes I look up and almost expect to see legs dangling from the cornice under the dome.
At any rate, this man sitting up there fell asleep while Paul was preaching. He fell out of the loft, clear down to the main floor, broke his neck, and they took him up dead.
"Just a minute now," I can imagine Paul saying, "Keep your seats, everybody."
He went down, laid hands on the man and prayed for him. The man was healed, stood up on his feet, and went back to his seat, and Paul went on preaching.
So the Lord certainly did heal the sick during Paul's ministry.
Then there was Dorcas, who died but was raised to life in answer to the prayer of Peter.
We find for forty years after Christ's ascension the sick continued to be healed. They were healed on down in the Dark Ages. They were healed in the days of Martin Luther. In John Wesley's book we find not only prayed for people but when his horse was lame he prayed for it, that his journey might not be interrupted, and the horse was healed.
From the time I started praying for the sick I have been surrounded by sick people. I have not been able to go anywhere but hundreds and hundreds of sick folks come and plead.
"Pray for me!" they say. "Pray for me! Pray for me!"
It almost broke my heart in the first days when people would cost?"
"Oh, please, do not talk like that! It does not cost anything expect that your heart and your life be given to Christ. Do not offer money: Look to Jesus. He is the Healer. I am just the little office girl to show the way in to Jesus."
I cannot heal anyone and I cannot save anyone, but I can tell you that there is a Saviour and show you the way through to Salvation. I can also tell you there is a Healer. It is Jesus. All power in Heaven and in earth belongeth unto the Lord; and He has commanded that His followers shall preach Him in all His glorious power.
"But, Sister," someone objects, "isn't it just imaginary diseases—nervous disorders—that are healed?"
No. I have seen cancers disappear from people's faces; I have seen cataracts fall off of eyes; I have seen dropsy and tumors go away in answer to prayer.
"But don't you think it is the power of mind over matter?"
I do not. I know it is not, for I have seen little babies healed. I don't think a tiny, helpless baby would have mind enough power of mind to be healed. It is Jesus who answers prayer. Jesus has the keys to the storehouse of God. In the beginning He breathed into a man's nostrils and man became a living soul. And He is just the same today.
In James 5:14 we have the New Covenant for Divine Healing:
"Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up . . ." Also "pray for one another that ye may be healed." We who are Christians should be able to pray for ourselves and to pray for one another that we may be healed.
Notice it says of Jesus, "As many as touched him were made every whit whole."
Now that is God's standard for the Christian—every whit whole.
He will make you every whit whole. Those eyes, those ears, those limbs will be healed. God's pattern is: Every whit whole. The only requirement is faith in God.
O Lord, let a wave of faith roll over the hearts of the people, let a wave of mountain moving faith roll over us. Lord, may the sick be healed, may Foursquaredom become every whit whole.
The promise is not only to the preacher. It says, "Pray one for another that you may be healed." The Christian worker is "one," and the one in need of healing is "another." Pray for one another.
Take to your heart these Scriptures. Place your faith on this foundation and then go forth to minister to others in the full faith that God will honor every word of His promise:
I am the Lord that healeth thee.
Himself took our infirmities and carried our sicknesses.
With his stripes we are healed.
Pray one for another that you may be healed.
The prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up.