Bible healing prayer book : authoritative compendium of the gospel of Bible healing

Front matter

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CGEXRIGHT DEPOSIT

AUTHORITATIVE COMPENDIUM

Section I. The Teaching

1. Healing- Testimony of Ancient Judaism . 11

2. Bible Healing- in the Atonement of Christ 24

4. Healing Testimony of Great Modern Minds 40

5. Bible Study of Sickness and Healing . 45

6. Hidden From the Wise — Revealed Unto

Babes 50

7. Gathering Momentum . . . . .55

8. No Hopeless Cases 58

9. Objection and Instruction . . .61 10. Technique for the Ministry of Bible

Healing 66

Section II. The Services

1. Service for Public Worship . . .75

2. Service for Baptism . . . -. 77

3. Service of Holy Communion

4. Service for Marriage

5. Service for Healing Intercession

6. Service of Dedication for Ministry . . 89

7. Service for Funerals 94

8. Service of Reception into Membership . 97

9. Service of Healing Hymns . . . 101 10. Service Sermon Outlines . . . . 121

Section III. The Devotions

1. Public Scripture Reading with Prayer . 133

2. Personal Scripture Reading with Prayer . 178

3. Topical Scripture Reading with Prayer . 230

4. Sundry Prayers, The Master Key, Etc. . 261

Section IV

I. Psalms

a) Morning Prayers

b) Evening Prayers

PREFATORY NOTE npHIS Book of Prayer, an outgrowth of the -*■ Bible Healing movement holds out an aid; offering inspiration and a challenge, to every person professing Christianity. This takes in the church; and clergy too. It takes in students for the ministry; and indeed all who desire to follow Jesus. The life-spirit of Jesus is written plainly in the Bible. But we encounter the tragic fact that organized religion has had a woeful misconception of Christianity and cannot without virtual self-delusion, claim to have followed Jesus. The Bible invariably represents Him aside from preaching the Kingdom, as healing the sick that He met up with and without a question of the possibility of it, as carefully commanding His followers never to neglect it. But sadly nonetheless, they have neglected it. Many churches indolently neglect it today, and many ministers practically ignore it — though not all. That is why this movement and this book are called into being, and the Supreme Proposal of this Bible Healing movement is to aid and challenge the courage and endeavor, of those who will now follow Jesus, whatever be their name or denomination, in the great conception of the two-fold gospel — Preaching the Kingdom, and Healing the sick — as He held it; which surely would not be gainsaid.

The Bible Healing movement of today is the one articulate voice of this vital interdenominational Christian Healing activity, which is nothing less than infinite in its possibilities. It is God's own system; and His plan is infallible. The Lord has distinctly commanded the work, and the main object of this movement is to obey Him, and to restore the healing ministry in Christ's Church.

The zero hour has arrived, in organized religion. Christianity now enters its new phase and development. Bible Healing strikes the note for which this age has been breathlessly listening. It is weary of war and turmoil and hatred — in the state, and sick of selfishness, smugness and hypocrisy — in the Church. It is shell-shocked and shattered and rent asunder, and it wants peace and healing. That is to say. it wants Love; and it will have it. The age and the race will have it ! The only question is who will furnish it? Will the Church of Christ grasp its opportunity and now demonstrate the unlimited power of prayer, — in healing? We believe she will. That is what the present work hopes for. It designs to inspire the followers of Christ in the world, to give the real peace and the real healing to the people, as the Bible offers it. This is the church's great opportunity to retrieve the precious years, and to save to herself the scores of thousands who are streaming into various cults and isms and mental religions which are offer-

PREFATORY NOTE 7

ing healing of soul and body, as the church herself ought to offer it if she still makes even a pretense of following Christ or obeying Him. He insistently commands it. He continually practised it Himself, and His adherents also followed His example for several centuries.

The present definite revival has grown up and spread spontaneously from a group of earnest people of different denominations who had prayed or practised, thought, read or written upon the subject, and from which the larger movement developed.

The Bible itself is the one absolute authority; herein the Lord has provided a definite program for the Healing Ministry, including public healing services; and a system for the private use of those who are suffering, and who can herewith practise self-healing. The habit of reading the Scripture daily will also in itself be of untold benefit.

This Bible Healing ministry is indisputably one of the primary features in the program of Christianity. Its policy is quite safe and sane, as it is based upon God's Eternal Word. Every evangelical Minister, or religious student who feels his achievement cramped and futile, and who desires to count more for the Lord, ought to take this movement up and practice it. He may be assured that the increase in his usefulness will be a hundred-fold. Surely we can make no mistake in the principle of it. The gospel of Christ advocates this ministry. Preach the gospel, heal the sick — is sounded forth with almost monotonous insistence in the Bible.

Further; hungering, yearning or suffering souls — who have heretofore despaired of joy or health, will find in Bible Healing the greatest help both for soul and for body. Bible Healing accepts as absolute the old Testament promise, "I am the Lord that healeth thee," (Exo. 15: 26) and the New Testament promise, "These signs shall follow them that believe . . . they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." (Mark 16: 16).

And Jno. 14: 14, "If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it."

With these precious and eternal promises from the Lord Himself, His church possesses a power which we believe can transform the sombre conditions of this present world into a veritable heaven on earth. May she as His true ambassador, now make the most of her opportunity!

CHAPTER I. Healing Testimony of Ancient Judaism

"I am the Lord thy Healer." Ex. 15-26

T*HE Bible is, above all else, the Eternal Book ■*■ of Healing, just as Jehovah is the Eternal God of Healing. The greatest need of humanity is this very healing. We all require healing of body and of soul. If humanity then, shall come into the right relationship, acceptance, and understanding of this great Author and this great Book, the need of healing will be met and satisfied completely, — its highest' happiness in earth or heaven will have been attained; namely, health of body and of soul.

Accordingly, from the Scripture itself, the system of Bible Healing has been culled out, and here set forth; a system which is infallible, and always succeeds when the conditions are fulfilled. The results are as sure as God Himself. His promise and His character are the guarantee we have.

Through all the ages of Scriptural history God has demonstrated His healing power, and the wondrous deeds and lives of the faithful attest that He has been their Healer and Physician. From beginning to end, the Bible shows how God directly heals the body as well as the soul through faith and prayer, and we are proceeding solely on this claim.

Furthermore, ye multitudes, to whom this Bible Healing message will appeal as fundamental truth, you will have courage and strength in the absolute confidence that you also belong to Him.

Many earnest supporters of the Church, of late, have become concerned over an apparent indifference to the daily needs of people in the life that now is. The Church for so many centuries, aided by clergy and priesthood inculcated the platitude that "God wants your soul" and "the Lord delights in a joyous emancipated surrendered spirit,"' that the people of the world as well as the people of the Church had come to believe that this was an end of it, and to conceive that the church existed for this alone. The oratorical, verbal, preaching of righteousness seemed to be the only objective of the Church, and the only enterprise in which she purposed or pretended to engage. But verbal preaching is not the only business of the real Church of God. Not by any means! Rhetorical effort is not the only duty of religion and never has been its only duty in spite of the fact that it is the only one that organized religion has accepted, recognized or performed in any universal way, and the time has come at last, when in many cases the people themselves have gone ahead of even the priesthood or the clergy in their study and application of the Great Book of Religion, and have answered back to the Church and clergy that, "if God wants your soul, He also wants your body." "If the Lord delights in a joyous emancipated surrendered Spirit, He just as plainly and just as ardently delights in a joyous emancipated surrendered body also." The Word of God Himself tells us this. To those who have not considered the subject, this position and statement may seem sweeping and dangerous, but when one reexamines the Bible, with this thought in view, he invariably finds it to be simply saturated with this, the Healing Gospel, — and this Healing Gospel for the Body. Numbers of desperate ' and often ludicrous attempts have been made to spiritualize, aerialize, or explain away, every Scripture reference to physical healing and every deed of bodily cure. Many such are set plainly forth in the Bible in words which should not be misunderstood by any intelligent student. But some way, habit gets tenacious hold upon us, and we take the line of least resistance, both in thinking and in action, and the centuries of race-thought and custom, although at times mistaken, are extremely difficult for us to shake off, even though as individuals we may mentally recognize the error in such thought and practice.

If the Church today is really founded upon God, and His Word, then we are face to face with this dilemma of logical consistency. Either turn we take we needs must change our ways. The Church must either take up and embrace this great neglected portion of religion — or else it would appear the Church is virtually discarding the Word of God, from the place of the sanctuary, — for as sure as the Scripture is true, Bible Healing seems to be an essential and persistent and undownable part and parcel of the Book of Books. And the Church and the clergy are facing the answer to the question, "Is the Bible to be believed and followed, or not?" The answer must come soon, because multitudes of cults and isms are springing up on every side, and by use of the dynamic of that very Bible, which these pepole are affirming to be true, they are drawing away the good and regular members of the Church, not only by the thousands, but by the tens of thousands. Thus, they challenge the Church. Ay, they rebuke the Church. They place us where we can no longer straddle the fence. We must accept the whole gospel or we weaken it all.

It is for this reason that the present work and treatise is ushered in; namely, to make it manifest by the internal evidence of the Book itself, that it is primarily a Healing Book, the Word of God — the Healer, than which there is none other, and therefore, the summum bonura of a suffering, agonizing humanity in physical bondage and pain — as well as spiritual.

The lessons of this Book are in every case grouped about the central truth, and founded on the basic fact expressed in the words, "I am the Lord thy Healer," Ex. 15-26. (Original Hebrew, Jehovah-Ropha) or as translated, "The Lord that healeth thee."

We are now commencing a solemn search to see whether the Bible teaches that God does heal His children. We are examining the pages of God's Word itself, to really find out whether He invariably desires us to trust Him for Healing. We are investigating as with a microscope, a religious field which though it has been so frequently neglected by the modern church that it is practically forgotten, yet it is still a vital issue and is destined to be heard from mightily. It is an issue so full of vitality that it can hardly longer be ignored. Is it too much to hope or ask that if the reader or the student should perchance upon investigation be convinced that Bible Healing is a fundamental doctrine of the Scripture; that salvation of soul and healing of body do go hand in hand, and that both are absolutely required in the full teaching of this Book — he should go forth and practise it and preach it at whatever cost? Is this too much? "If ye know these things happy are ye, if ye do them," says the Great Teacher in the Great Book. It is the one and only answer to the riddle of life.

Otherwise we deny the Fountain of Life. If one be not willing to follow the truth, and to be guided by the light; to go where God leads him through the compelling power of His Word, then he may as well go no further now, for his conscience will be made uneasy and his life uncomfortable. Glory ineffable waits that soul — and power and joy and prosperity and salvation and healing — who will persist and follow truth.

In the very first book of the Bible God shows His Healing Power. "In the beginning God." He shewed it to the first man whoever prayed to Him in faith and worshipped Him in sincerity and in truth. That man was Abraham. And strange coincidence as it might appear, that first worshipper was named the Father of the Faithful. Without faith it is impossible to please God. But with faith we not only please Him, but we become partakers of all His blessings and all His benefits. God says, "Ask and it shall be given you." "All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer believing, ye shall receive." Abraham believed. He was essentially a man of faith. Consequently he obtained promises, — and surely it is significant, that way back here in Genesis, in the first book of the Bible, and with the first faithful Jehovahworshipper in the whole world, that God Himself should be the one who healed, and who did it directly, instead of counselling resort to earthly physicians, or medicine, if any such thing existed in that day. Long before the great prophet Moses led his people out of bondage in Egypt — yes — long before those people were even in bondage, that primitive-minded, simple, spiritual, faithful man, Abraham, had the vision and the courage to pray to God in time of need, and thus he made the first discovery that the outcome of prayer actually was "according to your faith, so be it unto you." Thus the first place that the word Healing is ever mentioned in the Bible, is in connection with Abraham and Abimelech.

When Abraham was journeying from Ur of Chaldea, he was traveling toward the south, and finally he came upon the little principality of Gerar, over which a prince by the name of Abimelech was the local king. But on account of certain sin in his life, Abimelech was stricken with an affliction and he was sorely disconcerted. He and Abraham had become acquainted. In the affliction of the King, this man of supreme faith, this Father of the Faithful of the world, talked again to God and asked the Lord that his new acquaintance, King Abimelech, might be healed of his affliction, and God answered the effectual fervent prayer of the righteous man. As we are told in the 20th chapter of Genesis, the 17th verse, Abraham prayed unto God, and God healed Abimelech. What now can the doubter say? What can the skeptic answer who maintains that the Lord granted healing only in the days of Jesus and His apostles; and only then because of the special necessity of giving stimulus and authority to His new religion? This was four thousand years before the Christian Era. He will surely be compelled to find some better argument than this. The Bible holds God heals out of love and that continually. Abimelech was afflicted, Abraham prayed unto God, and God healed Abimelech. All kinds of arguments, excuses, and evasions will be met with, and the scoffer or the skeptic can always move from one untenable point to another, but the fact still remains that whether it was in the case of a plague or a pestilence, a famine or a disease, an affliction of the body or the soul;

right from the very entrance and beginning of this divine revelation of God's power and love to His people, we are promised and repeatedly told that He did heal His people and He will heal His people whenever they call upon Him in prayer and faith, and when they keep His Commandments — regardless of whether the healing they need, be of body or of soul! Repeatedly these two are put on equal ground, and the blessing equally promised. God's blessings are all appropriated by faith. And this case of Abraham is most inspiring, not alone because it proves from the beginning that God does answer the prayer of faith and does heal the body directly, but because it shows also the unselfishness of the prayer of faith. Moses was not here even asking anything for himself. He was willing to pray for this other man who was almost an enemy and stranger, and had done him a wrong. And God is ever willing and anxious, as this Book will little by little reveal, to answer and fulfill the generous wholehearted believing prayer.

But we need not dwell long upon the book of Genesis, because the whole of the Pentateuch or body of the law, is just as clear and positive upon the subject. Bible Healing stands out in just as bold relief in the lives of all of the great religious leaders, and the glorious fact of it can scarcely be evaded. That God was the Physician of the people of the Bible, cannot be genuinely or sincerely denied. In the only two or three times that the use of other physicians is mentioned in the entire Bible it seems to be shown in even a displeasing and unfavorable light. See II Chron., 16: 12; Mark 5: 25, Luke 8: 43.

In the unfolding of God's providence in the Bible, we find the next book — the Exodus — or the going out from Egypt — to set forth the most important event in the life of the Jewish nation. Abraham has passed on. The prominent figure now, is Moses. For many a long year, yes and decade, this heroic man is not alone God's onl}^ emancipator and saviour to the people, but He is also God's only human instrument in the Healing of the people, and this through faith and prayer alone.* Their idea of God was so vague and hazy that they had difficulty in grasping the conception of Jehovah, and consequently He had Moses to stand in His stead, thus to be their Saviour and their Healer. When they left the shores of the Red Sea, just after their miraculous deliverance from the oppressive hand of the Egyptians, they found themselves directly in the wilderness of Shur, — a hot and barren desert of sand and drought. This conglomerate army of travelers for three long days and nights could find no water, and they had no bread. They were famishing of thirst. And finally they came to a place called Marah, and there at last they found water. Ah, yes, water! but when they tasted it, it was poison, foul, and bitter water, — and the people were sick, fainting and dying. What an irony was that, and what a mockery! Water that they could not drink, when perishing of thirst! But here God's emancipator knows the heavenly secret; and without hesitation he asks the Lord in faith for guidance and deliverance and a solution to his problem, and God immediately commanded him to take a tree and cast it into the waters; and that obedient man of faith cast the tree into the bitter waters of Marah, — and they became sweet; and thus Israel's lives were saved. Is there not an infinite significance in the fact that the very next verse contains God's wonderful assurance and promise, "I am the Lord that healeth thee?" Ex. 15: 26.

The bitter waters of Marah in the dreary wilderness of Shur, are nothing more or less to us than emblematical of the dreary barrenness of human hopes and mortal life upon this earth. If we take things as they are — if we look facts in the face, existence is after all a pretty sombre thing. Taken by and large, men and women too, have fairly little in this life to be exuberant over. "Unto the woman, He said, 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.'" Gen. 3: 16. "And to Adam He said, 'Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face, shalt thou eat bread.'" Gen. 3: 17. And it ever has been so.

Passing down the street of any city, and gazing upon the human spectacle that it presents is a rather grim and saddening experience. Even from that dreadful, fearsome hour of childbirth, through the years until the coffin comes, it is a veritable nightmare. Every other face is one of pain. Every tenth man is a cripple. Numbers even of the boys and girls are so pathetically maimed from infantile paralysis and spinal meningitis, that they become most soul-rending to look upon. The deformed, the hunchbacks, the hobbling, limping multitude, the blank and sightless eyes, the twisting mouth, the palsied hands, — to say nothing of the numbers upon numbers who are nursing some secret hidden pain or sorrow, some foul disease or dreadful remorse, or guilt, — some domestic trouble or wretchedness — it is nothing less than heart-breaking to any one with a heart of human sensibility. On the face of things,'

the waters of our human actual experience are bitter indeed — bitter as Marah! — the water of death, — and the outlook is not hopeful. No, if you accept the figures of .the adding machine only, the resources will not equal the terrible liabilities. God knows the game is hardly worth the candle.

And yet, somehow, from away back yonder in Eternity, God always has a tree, — and somehow, inscrutable to us, — the leaves of that tree are for the healing of the nations, as He said. And so, just as Moses found the Marah waters sickening, bitter and poison, until at the command of God the tree was cast into the waters and instantly they became sweet and healthgiving, pure and life-giving; so into our sincursed existence, into our dull-gray, sombre and embittered lives the only cure or hope of healing lies in the same provision as before, when from Eternity God provides some Rugged Tree, and it is cast into the bitter desolateness of human life, the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations and the people. Fellow traveler; the only hope that you and I possess of sweetened life, of pardoned or forgiven souls or of restored and joyous bodies lies in that great tree of healing! "Cursed is the ground for thy sake. Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out," is God's verdict for disobedience and sin. Deut. 28: 19. "The Lord shall make the pestilence cleave unto thee. The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption and with a fever, with an inflammation and with an extreme burning," Deut. 28: 22. "The Lord shall smite thee with madness and blindness and astonishment of heart, and thou shalt grope at noonday." Deut. 28: 28. "If thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God." Deut. 28: 15. These are the curses of the law. But

TPJSTIMONY OF ANCIENT JUDAISM 21

way over farther in the Book, we read God's glad promise that He "hath redeemed us from the curse of the law." I am the Lord thy healer. "If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His eyes, and wilt give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have put upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord that healeth thee." Ex. 15: 26. All these human diseases constitute the age-long curse, yes, but He hath redeemed us from the curse. As David says in Psalms 103: 3, "He forgiveth all thine iniquities, He healeth all thy diseases." Beloved, did not God's plan, then, provide for both?

Moving on to Leviticus, the third book of the Pentateuch of Moses, we find the same. The language here is so formal and so ceremonial that it is more difficult to quote the passages, which prove beyond a doubt that God Himself is the healer and He alone the physician of the people — sometimes to be sure, through means of His spiritual representative the priest — but never through any other means. His rule for the cleansing of leprosy was the same ceremony as ever; the anointing with oil in the name of the Lord, "And the priest shall offer the burnt offering, and the meat offering upon the altar, and the priest shall make an atonement for him, and he shall be clean." Lev. 14: 18, 20. This unequivocally means he shall be healed. In Lev. 13: 8, in connection with a man with boils coming to the priest, the terminology used is, "It is healed." The priest or the Godly man was the only human means used of the Lord. He did the doctoring Himself. He is "The Lord thy healer." And His word is the Book of Healing from very beginning to very end.

In the book of Numbers we again have the Lord Himself handling the serious case of Miriam. The Lord's servant did as He is invariably commanded to do. Moses prayed and cried unto Jehovah, saying, "Heal her, Oh God I beseech Thee." Numbers 12: 13. And then there sounded back to the faithful, righteous Moses that promise coming from the Eternal Voice, which He had heard beside the bitter waters of Marah, "I am the Lord that healeth," if thou wilt keep my statues. "Heal her, Oh God, I beseech Thee," cried Moses. And Jehovah shamed Miriam for a time, and she was shut up without the camp during that time for seven days. And the march was stopped. And Miriam was found completely healed of the leprosy — and then the camp moved on. Truly, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much, as the Bible says. It has been so, as long as man has existed and has been true and faithful unto God. That healing Book certifies it all.

In Deuteronomy, the last book of the Pentateuch, relating the last days of Moses' life, we find again even more clear and definite assurances of God's intention and desire to heal His righteous children. In this book He distinctly states to the righteous ones the blessed words, "I heal." Deut. 32: 39. "He will be merciful unto His land and to His people." Deut. 32: 43.

From these earliest Bible days, all through Moses' time, — religious people always believed in God, not merely as a Saviour of the soul, but also as a Saviour of the body. This was one of the most blessed fundamental doctrines of Judaism, and if God's people have gotten away from it today, surely they are the losers. Even this earliest portion of the Bible revelation strongly and constantly recognizes God, and

God only, as Creator, Redeemer and Healer of the bodies and the souls of men. Therefore, if we believe in that same God and His true and Eternal Revelation, we must also accept His Word and take up this almost forgotten truth and revive and reclaim it, allowing it to once again do for us what it did for them, viz: to vitalize religion as almost nothing else has been able to do in all the centuries of history. All the rest of the Old Testament is just as full of Bible Healing also as are the Books of Moses.

And so the Pentateuch, the original Book of the Law, closes as it opened, with God supreme. "And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses whom the Lord knew face to face, in all the signs and wonders which the Lord sent him to do." Deut. 34: 10.

BIBLE HEALING IN THE ATONEMENT OF CHRIST

Chapter II

"He cast out the spirits with His word and healed all that were sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet saying: 'Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.'" Matt. 8: 16.