Jesus, according to the testimony of the authors of the...

Arena

Jesus, according to the testimony of the authors of the Gospels, made no distinction between functional and organic diseases. Indeed, no fact is clearer than that to him all idea of physical causation was subordinate to the idea of spiritual supremacy. He made no class distinctions such as those in the orthodox churches are to-day making in their attempt to cure disease in what they claim to be the primitive Christian way. To him the organic disease was no less amenable to cure through spiritual recognition of man's oneness with God and the dominion which he believed to be resident in the children of the All-Father who had been created in the image and likeness of God, when they recognized or realized their own divine nature and their oneness with God, than were functional disorders, leprosy, congenital blindness, and other diseases that by no stretch of the imagination could be called "merely functional," as well as the raising of those pronounced by the physicians dead....

Jesus did not seem to believe that any special gift of healing, such as cleansing the lepers and even raising the dead, was confined to him or to his twelve apostles. In fact, there is nothing in the teachings of Jesus more explicit than that the gift of healing was to be a mark of discipleship, and we are taught clearly his idea that God was a God of the living and not of the dead; that the Lord of Life was all-powerful and that it was not His will that any should suffer; that the All-Father was omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, All-in-all, and that those who came en rapport with Him, who learned to understand or realize their sonship with the God of whom they were the reflection or image, could accomplish all things and gain whatsoever they asked, so long as their hearts were pure and they kept en rapport with the divine Life or the great source or reservoir of Life and Love. For we are told that after this Jesus sent out other seventy, and commanded them when they entered a town to "heal the sick that are therein." Moreover, the seventy appear to have been quite as successful as the twelve apostles, for we are told that "the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name." Nor will it do to attempt to juggle with the facts by claiming that Christ only delegated this power to those with him during his earthly ministry; for his teachings and the subsequent New Testament narratives and injunctions, as well as the chronicles of the early Church, are all against this position. Moreover, what words in the Bible are plainer or more explicit than these from Mark, which it is represented were the final injunction of Christ after his resurrection and immediately before his ascension: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.... 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."

Again, Christ's teachings in regard to prayer are equally explicit, and reveal the same overmastering belief or conviction on his part that those who came en rapport with the divine Life, with the spiritual dynamo of the universe which we call God, became so spiritually positive that their supremacy over material limitations was absolute. On one occasion he said, "Therefore I say unto you. What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." Again he says, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

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June 27, 1908
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