healing

148:2.1In con­nec­tion with the sea­side en­camp­ment, El­man, the Syr­ian physi­cian, with the as­sis­tance of a corps of twenty-five young women and twelve men, or­ga­nized and con­ducted for four months what should be re­garded as the king­dom’s first hos­pi­tal. At this in­fir­mary, lo­cated a short dis­tance to the south of the main tented city, they treated the sick in ac­cor­dance with all known ma­te­rial meth­ods as well as by the spir­i­tual prac­tices of prayer and faith en­cour­age­ment. Je­sus vis­ited the sick of this en­camp­ment not less than three times a week and made per­sonal con­tact with each suf­ferer. As far as we know, no so-called mir­a­cles of super­nat­u­ral heal­ing oc­curred among the one thou­sand af­flicted and ail­ing per­sons who went away from this in­fir­mary im­proved or cured. How­ever, the vast ma­jor­ity of these ben­e­fited in­di­vid­u­als ceased not to pro­claim that Je­sus had healed them.

• kingdom cannot be built upon

145:5.4For more than four hours Je­sus en­deav­ored to ex­plain to these three apos­tles what had hap­pened. He taught them about what had tran­spired and ex­plained the dan­gers of such man­i­fes­ta­tions. Je­sus con­fided to them the rea­son for his com­ing forth to pray. He sought to make plain to his per­sonal as­so­ciates the real rea­sons why the king­dom of the Fa­ther could not be built upon won­der-work­ing and phys­i­cal heal­ing. But they could not com­pre­hend his teach­ing.

• John’s apostles anointed with oil for

150:0.2Among the many mat­ters con­sid­ered by this joint con­fer­ence was the prac­tice of anoint­ing the sick with cer­tain forms of oil in con­nec­tion with prayers for heal­ing. Again did Je­sus de­cline to par­tic­i­pate in their dis­cus­sions or to ex­press him­self re­gard­ing their con­clu­sions. The apos­tles of John had al­ways used the anoint­ing oil in their min­istry to the sick and af­flicted, and they sought to es­tab­lish this as a uni­form prac­tice for both groups, but the apos­tles of Je­sus re­fused to bind them­selves by such a reg­u­la­tion.

• works of faith come not forth from unbelief

158:5.2When Je­sus had lis­tened to this recital, he touched the kneel­ing fa­ther and bade him rise while he gave the near-by apos­tles a search­ing sur­vey. Then said Je­sus to all those who stood be­fore him: “O faith­less and per­verse gen­er­a­tion, how long shall I bear with you? How long shall I be with you? How long ere you learn that the works of faith come not forth at the bid­ding of doubt­ing un­be­lief?” And then, point­ing to the be­wil­dered fa­ther, Je­sus said, “Bring hither your son.” And when James had brought the lad be­fore Je­sus, he asked, “How long has the boy been af­flicted in this way?” The fa­ther an­swered, “Since he was a very young child.” And as they talked, the youth was seized with a vi­o­lent at­tack and fell in their midst, gnash­ing his teeth and foam­ing at the mouth. Af­ter a suc­ces­sion of vi­o­lent con­vul­sions he lay there be­fore them as one dead. Now did the fa­ther again kneel at Je­sus’ feet while he im­plored the Mas­ter, say­ing: “If you can cure him, I be­seech you to have com­pas­sion on us and de­liver us from this af­flic­tion.” And when Je­sus heard these words, he looked down into the fa­ther’s anx­ious face, say­ing: “Ques­tion not my Fa­ther’s power of love, only the sin­cer­ity and reach of your faith. All things are pos­si­ble to him who re­ally be­lieves.” And then James of Safed spoke those long-to-be-re­mem­bered words of com­min­gled faith and doubt, “Lord, I be­lieve. I pray you help my un­be­lief.”

• impossible except in accordance with Father’s will

158:6.4“How long will it take you to learn that you can­not time-shorten the course of es­tab­lished nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena ex­cept when such things are in ac­cor­dance with the Fa­ther’s will? nor can you do spir­i­tual work in the ab­sence of spir­i­tual power. And you can do nei­ther of these, even when their po­ten­tial is pres­ent, with­out the ex­is­tence of that third and es­sen­tial hu­man fac­tor, the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of the pos­ses­sion of liv­ing faith. Must you al­ways have ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions as an at­trac­tion for the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom? Can you not grasp the spirit sig­nif­i­cance of my mis­sion with­out the vis­i­ble ex­hi­bi­tion of un­usual works? When can you be de­pended upon to ad­here to the higher and spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom re­gard­less of the out­ward ap­pear­ance of all ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions?”