The Power of Divine Healing

My soul used to be able to enjoy as much lightness in the Lord Jesus as anybody, but various processes of life reduced my capacity to enjoy jingle, and God brought me down into the solids of life. No man could live in the environment in which a large portion of my life has been spent, without realising that unless men can contact the living God in REAL POWER, power out of the ordinary, power sufficient for tremendous needs and unusual occasions, he could not live. Man could not live!

In South Africa some years ago, in a single night a fever epidemic struck the country for three hundred and fifty miles. As I rode through the section of that country I found men dead in their beds beside their wives, children dead in their beds alongside the living, whole families stricken, dying, and some dead. In one single month one quarter of the entire population of that district, both white and black, dies. We had to organise an army to dig graves, and an army of men to make caskets. We could not buy wood enough in that section of the country to make caskets, so we buried them in a blanket, or without a blanket, when it was necessary to save the blankets for a better purpose.

I had a man in my company who perhaps some of you know. God had appointed that man to pray, as I'd have never found anybody else anointed to pray. For days he remained under a thorn tree, and when I passed that way in the morning I would hear his voice in prayer, and when I returned in the evening I would hear his voice in prayer. Many times I got a prepared meal and carried it to him, and aroused him long enough to get him to eat it. I would say, “Brother, how is it? Are you getting through?” He would reply, “Not yet.” But one day he said, “Mr Lake, I feel today that if I had just a little help in my faith that my spirit would go through into God.” And I went on my knees beside him, joined my heart with his, and voiced my prayer to God.

As we prayed the Spirit of the Lord overshadowed our souls, and presently I found myself, not kneeling under the tree, but moving gradually away from the tree some fifty or one hundred feet. My eyes gradually opened, and I witnessed such a scene as I had never witnessed before - a multitude of demons, like a flock of sheep. The Spirit had come upon him also, and he rushed ahead of me, cursing that army of demons, and they were driven back to hell, or to the place from whence they came. Beloved, the next morning when we awoke that epidemic of fever was gone. THAT IS THE POWER OF DIVINE HEALING. God destroying Satan.

Now when you consider that I have been a man of some scientific training, you can understand what an introduction into a life where everything was made new, and of a different order, meant. Instead if being on the hard, natural plane of materialistic life and knowledge, suddenly introduced into the Spirit you can realise what a revolution has brought to pass in my soul, and how gradual discovery revealed the wonder of God and the mighty action of God through the souls of men. There is a little keynote in one of Paul’s epistles that gives the real key to successful prayer. In successful prayer there is a divine action, a divine interaction, an interaction just as real as an chemical interaction in any experiment in the world. Your bring two opposite chemicals together, and you realise a little flash or flame, an explosion. There has been an interaction, your chemicals have undergone a change. They are no longer the same properties they were before. For instance, oxygen and hydrogen united is water. So it is in the spiritual realm. Paul said in giving us this key, “The Word did not profit them, not being mixed with faith.” There is a quality and content in the soul of man, a necessary quality. That quality is the POWER OF THE SPIRIT. And when faith and Spirit come together there is an interaction. There is a movement of God. There is a manifestation of the Spirit. There is a divine explosion! FAITH AND GOD UNITED IS DIVINE HEALING.

When I was a boy a neighbour employed a chemist. They were trying to manufacture a new explosive of some kind. A section of the barn was being used for the experiments. Johnnie was strictly reminded that he had no business around the barn, but like many johnnies his curiosity was aroused. One day when they had gone to town he discovered that the door was not thoroughly locked. Just a little picking and prying and it opened and Johnnie was inside. There were some packages on the bench and some liquid on the floor. Presently Johnnie bungled; a package fell into a bucket of liquid and that is the last Johnnie remembered. When he came to himself he was some fifty or seventy feet away, and they told me I was carried there by a section of the wall. It just went off. That package in the liquid interacted.

We look at the wonderful powers in nature and marvel. A group of scientists not long ago compressed such a quantity of nitrogen in a solid block thirteen inches square that they declared if it could be placed in the heart of the city of Chicago and permitted to explode it would wreck the city. One can imagine somewhat of the terrific energy stored up in that little block of nitrogen thirteen inches square; and when you come to think of the marvel of the nature of God, the dynamic of His being, how staggering His almightiness becomes.

The world’s conception of religion is that it is a matter of sentiment, for in the minds of most men religion is just sentiment to them, it is not a thing of power. They do not understand the properties of the soul of God, nor the quality of His life, nor how it is that God moves in the nature of men to change their hearts, to dissolve the sin out of their souls, to cleanse them by His life and power, to heal their bodies, and reveal His light and life in them.

I believe the very beautiful thing we call SALVATION, and the holy statement of Jesus Christ, “Ye must be born again,” is itself a scientific fact and declaration of God’s divine purpose and intent, based on the law of being. We are inclined to think that God just desires, and our hearts are changed. But I want to tell you, beloved, that there is a process in a man’s soul that admits God into his life. Your heart opens because it is touched by the love of God, and into the heart, into the nature of man there comes the divine essence of the living Spirit, and bless God, it has an action in him. Sin dissolves from his nature and from the mind of man. The Spirit of God takes possession of the cells of his brain, and his thoughts are changed by its action. There is a new realisation of divine holiness. By the grace of God he discovers himself SANCTIFIED in deed and in truth because Christ in truth dwells there.

Beloved, Jesus Christ had His eye and His soul fixed on that one dynamic power of God, the HOLY GHOST. And His holy life, His death, His resurrection, His ascension to glory were all necessary in the process of soul development to arrive at the Throne of God where He could receive from the Father the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and have the privilege of ministering to your soul and mine.

So in my heart there has grown a wondrous reverence for the mighty Son of God, who saw beyond the ken of man, who visioned in the distance, who sought in His soul for the key to the mighty powers of the nature of God, who determined for our relief and for our benefit and salvation to leave the Throne of God, come to earth, be born as a man, take upon Him the nature of man (not the nature of angels). He looked to God as men do, overcome by His power, through reliance on His Word, and so believing, so advancing step by step in the nature of God and the likeness of God, one day
He stood forth, the Eternal Sacrifice before the throne of God, and received the eternal reward of His fidelity - the Holy Ghost. In life, Jesus the man was in the LIKENESS of God. In resurrection, the NATURE of God. In glorification, the SUBSTANCE OF God, and thus “became the author of eternal salvation.”

And the man or the woman who does not understand the Holy Ghost, and His magnificence and the wonder of His power, must turn his heart again heavenward and see the price that Jesus paid in order to secure Him for you and me, in order to give Him to the world that was in sin, sickness and death, to lift it out of darkness. I love that blessed old hymn, “Ye Must Be Born Again.” Can we not sing it?

A ruler once came to Jesus by night,
To ask Him the way of salvation and light;
The Master made answer in words true and plain;
“Ye must be born again!”

Chorus:

“Ye must be born again!
Ye must be born again!
I verily, verily bay unto thee,
Ye must be born again!”

Ye children of men, attend to the word
So solemnly uttered by Jesus the Lord;
And let not this message to you be in vain;
“Ye must be born again!”

O ye who would enter this glorious rest,
And sing with the ransomed the son of the blest;
The life everlasting if ye would obtain,
“Ye must be born again!”

A dear one in heaven thy heart yearns to see,
At the beautiful gate may be waiting for thee;
Then list to the note of this solemn refrain:
“Ye must be born again!”

There is a process of divine TRANSMUTATION. But beloved, by the power of God’s Spirit in a man’s heart, that process is going on every single day of your life, sister, where God takes that which is natural, that which is earthly, touches it by His divine power, moves upon it by His heavenly nature, and in the name of Jesus Christ you come forth no longer self and selfish, but now TRANSFORMED, changed, by the power of Christ, into the nature of the Son of God, into the likeness of the Lord, into His character and nature and understanding and knowledge. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!

“To us is given exceeding, great and precious promises, that BY THESE we may become partakers of the divine nature.” And being a partaker, in consequence “Escape the corruption that is in the world through lust.” Bless God, His divine purpose is not to whitewash the soul, but to change the character, transmute the life by the grace of God, make the man a christ and king, a deliverer and a saviour, in common with the Lord Jesus Christ, his elder Brother. If I am a brother of the Lord, then I am bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh, and substance of His substance, like my elder brother. The source of life is the same source of life that is in Him. The same purpose that is revealed in Him is His high purpose for you and for me.

Men have little understanding of the quality of faith, or what it accomplishes, because of the fact that they are not aware of the process by which that work is done. FAITH has the quality and power, with the Spirit of God, to do what a match does to powder. It is the touch of God. It is the touch of FAITH through us that ignites the Spirit and produces the divine action that takes place in the soul, when sin is rebuked and cast out, when sickness is destroyed and dissolved from the life, the nature set free, and man rejoices as a son of God, saved in spirit, soul and body.

One day there came to my healing rooms a little boy that we know on the streets as a newsboy; just one of the little ragged chaps. A lady had observed the little fellow on the street in an epileptic fit, afterwards took him by the hand and led him into the healing rooms. We talked to the little chap about the Lord, prayed for him, and told him to return again. The Lord healed him. He was a manly little urchin, and one day he said, “Mr Lake, I haven’t any money to reward you with now, but you are not going to lose any money on me.” We smiled and were glad to see the spirit of the little chap, and he went his way. About two weeks later, in the midst of a great meeting, he strutted in, marched up and laid five silver dollars on the table, and marched out again.

Then he got up against his first real problem of living his new life in his business. Every boy has a corner. He can sell papers on his own corner and it is up to him to keep all other boys away. He had given his heart to the Lord. One day he came around with a long face. He said, “It’s all off.” “Well, my boy, what’s the trouble?” “They were going to rush my corner, until I could not stand it, and I cleaned up the whole bunch.” The little chap was getting his first introduction into the real problem of being a Christian in this old world, under a competitive system, the outgrowth of human selfishness, devised by the devil.

One day a gentleman came along and wanted to buy a paper. His arm was disabled, and he could not get his purse. He said to the boy, “I have put my purse in the wrong pocket. Put your hand in and get if for me.” The boy said, “What is the matter with your arm?” He replied, “I have what is called neuritis. My arm is paralysed.” The little chap said, “Well, if the doctors can’t do you any good, I’ll tell you where you can get it fixed up. There are some men up in the Rookery Building that pray, and folks get well.” The man said, “How do you know?” He replied, “I used to take fits, and fall on the street, and they would carry me off to the police station. I was like that for four years, but I don’t take fits any more. If you want me to, I will take you up there.”

So he brought him up. He was the head of a great lumber concern; his name was Rose. He sat down and told me how he was moved by the child’s simple words, but he had no more idea of how God could heal a man or save man from sin than anyone. So we began to tell of the Lord Jesus and His power to save, and continued to minister to him each day. Three weeks afterward he returned again to the medical clinic, where two hundred and seventy-five physicians had declared four weeks before that they could do nothing for him. They re-examined him and found him perfectly well, healed by the power of God. THAT IS THE POWER OF DIVINE HEALING.

I went to the medical association and got a copy of the lecture that was given by Dr Semple on the seriousness of the disease, and the utter impossibility of medicine ever to help him, or change his condition. In so far as they were concerned, he was a cripple. The nerves were dead, atrophied. It would require a miracle, they said, to reproduce the original life and restore power in the tissue of the arm. But the miracle took place, because there is a Fountain of Life, the Life of God, available for every man. Bless His Name! THAT IS THE POWER OF DIVINE HEALING.

When the LIFE of Jesus comes in, the death of your soul ends. When the Spirit of God comes in, your DEAD nerves come alive. God, by the Spirit, takes possession of the blood, and the brain, and the bone. He dwells in the very cellular structure of your whole being. His quickening LIFE regenerates you, and generates LIFE in you, and by the Christ of God you come forth, not a dead senseless lobster, but a living man, a LIVING Christian.

Let me tell you a story to illustrate this point. They say a man died, and he appeared at the Beautiful Gate, and said to Peter, “I am from Philadelphia. I subscribe for the Ladies’ Home Journal. I have a bed of mint in the back yard, but I never drink intoxicants. Peter replied, “Go on to heaven and stay dead.” He was dead already. Some folks think you know that because they are not committing this sin and that sin that they are dutiful, beautiful children of God. But, beloved, there is an awful lot more to Christianity than delivering a man’s soul from the power of sin.

Professor Riddell tells this story; “I was walking along the Sea Beach and I encountered a lobster. I said, ‘Lobster, did you ever chew tobacco?’ ‘Never!’ ‘Lobster, did you ever stay out nights?’ ‘Never!’ ‘Say, Lobster, shake hands. We are both lobsters!’”

Oh, there is a negative thing, and that negative thing in religious life is what is killing the real power of God. That negative thing, when we are all the time NOT DOING this and that and something else. It is a religion of DON’T do this and DON’T DO THAT. My God! When Christ comes into the soul and into the spirit it is all changed. Instead of deadness, there is LIFE in God. Instead of in-action, there is POWER by the Spirit of God. The Christian is a MAN, not a lobster.

“Down in the human heart,
Crushed by the tempter,
Feelings lie buried
That grace can restore.
Touched by a loving heart,
Wakened by kindness,
Chords that were broken
Will vibrate once more.”

Oh, the grace of God is the lovely thing, the grace of God is the powerful thing. The grace of God is the life and Spirit of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And ministered to the soul, breathed into the heart, transmitted to the life, MAN becomes like Christ, because the Christ of God is moving in the heart of him, generating and regenerating, and man comes forth a finished product by the hands of the Lord, saved from sin, healed of disease, kept by the indwelling Christ, who is the power of God.

I am looking to God for some real finished products these days, real men grown up in the Lord Jesus Christ, established in the splendid solidarity of His Holy nature and divine character, beautified by His holy glory, enriched by His divine nature - LIKE THE SON OF GOD.

So, my brother, my sister, I want to bring your heart this afternoon into this blessed confidence, this holy truth, this divine reality. If religious life has been a sort of sentiment, let me tell you beyond it there is the power of God, the moving, dynamic, burning force of LIFE in Christ Jesus, waiting to come into your heart, to revitalise your thought and change your spirit, and indwell the very flesh and bone and blood of you and make you a new man and a new woman in the Lord Jesus. Say, Beloved, that is the POWER OF DIVINE HEALING.

On one occasion I was entertaining myself by examining some typhoid bacteria, as they developed in dirty water. A neighbour woman came one morning and was anxious for me to show her one of her hairs under the microscope. I told her I had the microscope set, and was waiting for the development of the bacteria, and would be obliged if she would come back another day, when my experiment was over. Instead of paying attention to what I said, she returned the next day with the same request. Again I explained to her, but the next morning she was back again, and finally the fourth morning I was annoyed and thought I would just take one of her hairs, let her see it anyway and not disturb the microscope. So I pulled it through under the microscope, and let her look. Presently she jumped up and hurried away, and never even said, “Thank you.”

When I came home that evening Mrs Lake said, “What did you do to Mrs B___?” I said, “I really do not know. Why?” She said, “Well, she has been on the back porch all day, and the servant has been drenching her hair with kerosene.” Why, she saw more crawling things than she ever saw before. She saw the bacteria and believed the crawling beasts were attached to her hair. Her hair and head were perfectly clean. The presence of the beasts she saw was explained in another way.

I want to bring home the truth of God. In the minds and lives of many, religion is simply an illusion. There is no divine reality in it. But, beloved, real religion is God’s divine reality, for it is the heart of God and the life of Christ. And when it comes into the soul of man it generates the same divine reality and heavenly power in him, and man becomes God’s new creature.

In my younger days, when I first touched the ministry of healing, and as yet had developed a very small portion of faith in God, a young lady who lived nine miles in the country had a tubercular limb. Her physicians had tried to build her up in strength so they could amputate the limb, but on final examination the disease was found to have made such progress that the amputation would not save her. One day we received a request to join in prayer for her the next morning at nine, and to invite all the people who knew God and had faith in Him, to unite with us. So I telegraphed all around the country to those I knew.

The Physician told me that the knee had become so decayed that he could put his finger through the joint. Her suffering was more than ordinary. It required three men to hold her in bed the night before she was healed.

But in the morning she desired to be left alone for the last half hour before prayer. She lay with her eyes closed and her body still, and after a while she said, “I opened my eyes and saw it was just exactly the time for the people to pray for me.” She said in soul, “It is time for the people to pray for me. It is the time I ought to be healed.” And letting her faith reach out to God, she said, “In the Name of Jesus Christ it is the time I AM healed.” And she made a motion towards the side of the bed and landed out on the floor, perfectly whole. She rushed downstairs, two steps at a time. Her sister-in-law had a tub of water on the floor. She stuck her diseased limb into it, and the entire mass of rotten flesh of the leg disappeared in the tub, and there was a new leg, as new as a newly born baby, both flesh and bone. That is the POWER OF DIVINE HEALING.

I travelled down to Chicago and met old John Alexander Dowie, and I told him. He said, “Do you know the facts in this case?” I said, “I do.” He said, “I want to see the woman.” And he handed me one hundred dollars, and I wired for her to come. Beloved, even in that man’s life he had never realised the creative power of God. He had seen wonderful healings, but here was the creative action of God making muscle and bone and flesh, by God’s power instantly.

Beloved, may every one of these holy demonstrations work out in your life, as they worked out in mine, a divine consciousness that God by the Spirit never comes to a man’s life to whitewash him over or smooth him over or clean him up, but God comes to him to make him NEW and give him a new heart, and a new mind, and a new spirit, new blood, and new bone, and new flesh, and to send in him out with a new song in his mouth, and a new shout of praise in his heart and a new realisation of holiness - a truly REDEEMED man.

 

Tongues and Interpretation

Thou God eternal, who lifts the soul of man from degradation and shame and sin, and exalts him in Jesus Christ, and lifts him by God’s grace into His presence and power, we pray Thee this day that Thy action in our heart will prify our souls forever, and illuminate our natures in God, and fill us by The Divine Spirit, and send us forth among men, not whitewashed, but WASHED WHITE with God’s power and God’s grace.


First commit your body and soul and spirit in entire, hundredfold consecration to God forever. Do not be satisfied with sins forgiven. Press on, press in, let God have you and fill you, until consciously He dwells, live, abides in every cell of Your blood, of your bone and your brain, until your soul (psychic) (mind), indwelt by Him, thinks His thoughts, speaks His word, until your spirit assimilates God, and God’s Spirit assimilates you, until your humanity and His divinity are merged into His eternal Deity. Thus BODY, SOUL and SPIRIT are God’s forever and forever. Amen. THAT is the POWER OF DIVINE HEALING.

Dr John G. Lake 1920


“THAT EVIL ONE TOUCHETH HIM NOT”

When the Spirit of God radiated from the man Jesus, how close do you suppose it was possible for the evil spirit to come to Him? I believe it was impossible for the evil one to come close to Him. The Spirit of God is as destructive of evil as it is creative of good. I am sure that Satan talked to Jesus from a safe distance.

John G. Lake 1913

“Behold I give you authority over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” Luke 10:19