The Second Preaching Tour

149:1.1By the time the camp at Beth­saida had been bro­ken up, the fame of Je­sus, par­tic­u­larly as a healer, had spread to all parts of Pales­tine and through all of Syria and the sur­round­ing coun­tries. For weeks af­ter they left Beth­saida, the sick con­tin­ued to ar­rive, and when they did not find the Mas­ter, on learn­ing from David where he was, they would go in search of him. On this tour Je­sus did not de­lib­er­ately per­form any so-called mir­a­cles of heal­ing. Nev­er­the­less, scores of af­flicted found restora­tion of health and hap­pi­ness as a re­sult of the re­con­struc­tive power of the in­tense faith which im­pelled them to seek for heal­ing.

149:1.2There be­gan to ap­pear about the time of this mis­sion—and con­tin­ued through­out the re­main­der of Je­sus’ life on earth—a pe­cu­liar and un­ex­plained se­ries of heal­ing phe­nom­ena. In the course of this three months’ tour more than one hun­dred men, women, and chil­dren from Judea, Idumea, Gal­i­lee, Syria, Tyre, and Sidon, and from be­yond the Jor­dan were ben­e­fi­cia­ries of this un­con­scious heal­ing by Je­sus and, re­turn­ing to their homes, added to the en­large­ment of Je­sus’ fame. And they did this not­with­stand­ing that Je­sus would, ev­ery time he ob­served one of these cases of spon­ta­neous heal­ing, di­rectly charge the ben­e­fi­ciary to “tell no man.”

149:1.3It was never re­vealed to us just what oc­curred in these cases of spon­ta­neous or un­con­scious heal­ing. The Mas­ter never ex­plained to his apos­tles how these heal­ings were ef­fected, other than that on sev­eral oc­ca­sions he merely said, “I per­ceive that power has gone forth from me.” On one oc­ca­sion he re­marked when touched by an ail­ing child, “I per­ceive that life has gone forth from me.”

149:1.4In the ab­sence of di­rect word from the Mas­ter re­gard­ing the na­ture of these cases of spon­ta­neous heal­ing, it would be pre­sum­ing on our part to un­der­take to ex­plain how they were ac­com­plished, but it will be per­mis­si­ble to re­cord our opin­ion of all such heal­ing phe­nom­ena. We be­lieve that many of these ap­par­ent mir­a­cles of heal­ing, as they oc­curred in the course of Je­sus’ earth min­istry, were the re­sult of the co­ex­is­tence of the fol­low­ing three pow­er­ful, po­tent, and as­so­ci­ated in­flu­ences:

149:1.51. The pres­ence of strong, dom­i­nant, and liv­ing faith in the heart of the hu­man be­ing who per­sis­tently sought heal­ing, to­gether with the fact that such heal­ing was de­sired for its spir­i­tual ben­e­fits rather than for purely phys­i­cal restora­tion.

149:1.62. The ex­is­tence, con­comi­tant with such hu­man faith, of the great sym­pa­thy and com­pas­sion of the in­car­nated and mercy-dom­i­nated Cre­ator Son of God, who ac­tu­ally pos­sessed in his per­son al­most un­lim­ited and time­less cre­ative heal­ing pow­ers and pre­rog­a­tives.

149:1.73. Along with the faith of the crea­ture and the life of the Cre­ator it should also be noted that this God-man was the per­son­i­fied ex­pres­sion of the Fa­ther’s will. If, in the con­tact of the hu­man need and the di­vine power to meet it, the Fa­ther did not will oth­er­wise, the two be­came one, and the heal­ing oc­curred un­con­sciously to the hu­man Je­sus but was im­me­di­ately rec­og­nized by his di­vine na­ture. The ex­pla­na­tion, then, of many of these cases of heal­ing must be found in a great law which has long been known to us, namely, What the Cre­ator Son de­sires and the eter­nal Fa­ther wills IS.

149:1.8It is, then, our opin­ion that, in the per­sonal pres­ence of Je­sus, cer­tain forms of pro­found hu­man faith were lit­er­ally and truly com­pelling in the man­i­fes­ta­tion of heal­ing by cer­tain cre­ative forces and per­son­al­i­ties of the uni­verse who were at that time so in­ti­mately as­so­ci­ated with the Son of Man. It there­fore be­comes a fact of rec­ord that Je­sus did fre­quently suf­fer men to heal them­selves in his pres­ence by their pow­er­ful, per­sonal faith.

149:1.9Many oth­ers sought heal­ing for wholly self­ish pur­poses. A rich widow of Tyre, with her ret­inue, came seek­ing to be healed of her in­fir­mi­ties, which were many; and as she fol­lowed Je­sus about through Gal­i­lee, she con­tin­ued to of­fer more and more money, as if the power of God were some­thing to be pur­chased by the high­est bid­der. But never would she be­come in­ter­ested in the gospel of the king­dom; it was only the cure of her phys­i­cal ail­ments that she sought.