Healing

1 Peter 2:24 says, "Who his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes you were healed."

If you know no other healing Scripture in the Holy Bible except the one above, it is enough to get you healed, if you know the story behind it. It is what the Apostle Peter said of the Lord Jesus Christ (Yeshua), who submitted to God's plan for Man's redemption. Yeshua is the Word, the Son of God, by whom God made the universe. God thought it, the Word spoke it (His words carrying life), and the Holy Spirit performed it.

God the Son (the physical expression of God) came to Earth, conceived by the Holy Spirit's non–physical fertilization of an egg in the womb of a Jewish virgin, in the same way that the Earth was restored back to life by Holy Spirit fluttering on the face of its frozen waters when God spoke, as recorded in Genesis, the first book of the Holy Bible. God spoke (through the angel Gabriel) and Mary, the virgin, received that word in her heart and it brought life into her womb, in the same way that God created the universe out of nothing; His word is more than enough to do whatever He wills.

Yeshua started His life on Earth as a helpless, little baby, identifying in this way with our vulnerability. He lived a sinless life; He never let darkness get inside Him. In the garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem, when Yeshua was 33 years old, He struggled with revulsion at the thought of taking the filth of the world on His pure soul, but finally said to the Father, "Not my will, but Yours be done," thus overcoming the temptation that overtook the first human, our forefather Adam, in the garden of Eden where he chose his own will over God's.

This struggle in Gethsemane was where the major battle was fought. This is where the victory was won. The rest was necessary, but as good as done in the Father's eyes, for He knew His Son would carry out the plan to pay the ransom for our souls, so that we could be reunited with Him.

Yeshua knew in advance all that was to occur afterwards. The soldiers came to arrest Him, but they fell backwards when He spoke His holy Name, which is I AM. This Name means that He has existed forever and will continue to exist forever.

When the Apostle Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of one of the men who came to arrest Yeshua, Yeshua told him to put his sword away and then He healed the man, whose name was Malchus, touching the bloody gash. The pain left and another ear grew in its place, leaving the severed ear to be trampled into the ground. Then Yeshua went willingly with the soldiers and their mob, though He could have called upon legions of angels to slaughter them and everyone else on Earth who was against Him.

He submitted to being questioned, mocked, stripped, whipped, punched, and spit on, though He did not deserve any of that abuse. He endured it with a patience never before seen under such harsh circumstances, not responding with either pleas for mercy or cursing at His tormentors. There was only love in His heart for them, as He was willing to undergo this treatment for each one of those men (indeed for us all), in order that He could redeem them (us) and heal them (us) of the damage that satan had inflicted upon their (our) souls.

Standing before the Roman governor, Yeshua confessed that He is the Son of God, which shook up the governor, but he permitted Yeshua to be tortured, hoping it would satisfy the religious leaders who had delivered Yeshua to him out of envy and spite. He brought a bloodied Yeshua forth in a scarlet cloth draped around Him with a crown of thorns upon His head, and addressed the mob, announcing that he found no evidence that Yeshua had any faults, never mind guilty of crimes, and offered to release Him.

The mob that the religious leaders had gathered to intimidate the Romans demanded Yeshua's death and said they wanted the governor to release a prisoner named Barabbas. It was the custom to show tolerance for the Jews' religion by freeing a criminal of their choosing in celebration of their Passover festival. Barabbas, which is a generic name meaning "son of father," thus a prophetic sign of mankind's guilt and the ransom God paid for us, was a thief and a murderer, who exercised his evil inclinations towards violence and greed by taking on the role of a guerilla leader in rebellion against the Roman government.

The governor was astounded that the religious leaders preferred the release of a wicked man, instead of the noble one who helped the poor, healing their diseases and releasing them from emotional and spiritual torment. He conceded to their demands in order to prevent an uprising, as well as accusations against him to Caesar that he supported Yeshua as the true Emperor of the world, but he washed his hands in front of them to symbolize that he did not agree with putting Yeshua to death. Regardless, he was still guilty of being party to Yeshua's death and of ordering the torture of a man whom he knew to be innocent of crimes.

The Roman soldiers yanked off the scarlet robe from Yeshua's body and tossed His own clothes at Him, then led him through Jerusalem, making Him carry the cross to which they were going to nail Him. His face was bruised, cut, swollen, His chin and cheeks raw from having His beard torn out, His eyelids puffed and purpled, blood from the crown of thorns dripping on them and hanging off His eyelashes. He could barely see; He could barely walk. The cross rubbed cruelly into His gouged and lacerated back, for He had been vigorously whipped 39 times with a scourge that had sharp pieces of bones and metal affixed to the ends of its leather strips. A pilgrim from one of the provinces, who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, was forced to carry the Messiah's cross when He fell to His knees under its weight.

At an escarpement that resembled a skull, Yeshua was stripped and stretched upon the cross where Roman soldiers, accustomed to behaving cruelly, but fueled by an extra surge of demonic control, gleefully pounded nails into His hands and feet. His pain increased as they lifted the cross and jammed it into a square–shaped hole that had been carved out of the rock where prisoners were executed. Signs were placed in recesses carved out of the escarpement behind Him, proclaiming His crime, as He was the principal attraction of the three men who were crucified that day. In Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, the signs read, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews."

The religious leaders protested the title "King of the Jews," for they were not willing to acknowledge Him as such or to submit to His rule. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, was tired of their self‐righteousness and how they had manipulated him into killing an innocent man who was a threat to their influence. He refused to change the signs. If they were going to watch Him die and glory in it, they were also going to have to consider the possibility that this Man really was their Messiah, the holy leader their people had been anticipating for centuries.

Yeshua was mocked as He hung on the cross. He was offered an anesthetic, that could relieve His pain only slightly, by one who had more compassion than His detractors, but He refused it for His suffering required Him to take the full brunt of it, in order to release us from our suffering. Later, when He finally received some vinegar in response to His request for liquid because He needed hydration in order to say His last words, He died moments later.

Two thieves, who were crucified on either side of Him, in their pain, joined in reviling Him, but then one of them felt shame at persecuting a man in whom the governor had found no fault, but was executing anyway. Yeshua may have groaned, and even screamed at times, in response to pain, but He otherwise did not show anything but patience in response to His treatment. The thief observed the tears and wails of three women who loved the innocent man, one of whom was His mother. He saw the young man who stood with them, silent and tense with horror, shock, and sorrow, the one disciple (John, the son of Zebedee) who stood near the cross to witness Yeshua's death.

Yeshua spoke to John, giving Mary to him and him to Mary, for Yeshua could no longer be her son. Mary needed Yeshua to be her Saviour. Like the rest of us, she had sins that needed to be washed away in His blood. Yeshua did not make a new connection between John and Mary because He was concerned about who would look after her. She had other children, conceived after she gave birth to Him, who would take care of her in her old age. God had chosen her to bear the Messiah, not because she was perfect (she wasn't), but because she was descended from King David, had DNA that was pure human, loved God, was willing to deal with being misunderstood and persecuted, and she would do a fairly good job of looking after Yeshua when He was a child. John took her into his own home and she went with him because they both understood that Yeshua had given John the position of eldest son in the family.

The thief realized that Yeshua was the Messiah, that the manner of His suffering was predicted in the Holy Scriptures, and that, even while dying, He could grant him forgiveness of sins and eternal life. He changed sides at once and rebuked the other thief for his hardness and irreverence towards God in his persecution of an innocent man. He acknowledged that both he and the other thief deserved their punishment for they were sinners, then he asked Yeshua to remember him when He came into His kingdom, for he knew in his soul that Yeshua would not only go to Paradise after His death, but also that He ruled it. Yeshua assured him that he would be with Him in Paradise that very day, that he would not go to Gehenna (Hell), for Yeshua knew there was true repentence in his heart, a genuine faith in Him, and the record of his sins was thus erased.

The worst part of Yeshua's suffering was when all the sins of the world were rolled onto His soul and God the Father turned His face away from Him. Yeshua had always been connected to His Father. There had always been complete oneness with Him. Now upon His pure soul that had never known sin, the septic tank of the world's evil was dumped on it. Even the least bit of sin is totally repulsive to God, but all sin, including the most vile, was rolled onto Him, and He took the punishment of it, which was not just torture and death, but also separation from God. For the first time in His life, Yeshua felt the Father's absence and He could not endure it for more than the brief moment that was required of Him.

He cried out His agony at the Father's rejection, confused now, asking, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" He still trusted the Father, though, and said, "Father, into Your hands, I commend my spirit." Thus His heart ruptured from sorrow and He died, but of His own will, not because of the wounds inflicted on His body. Nobody could take His life from Him. As He said in Scripture (John 19:11), He could not have even been arrested, unless Heaven had granted permission for the purpose of performing the redemption of mankind. If Yeshua had not yielded up His spirit of His own will, even the loss of blood could not kill Him, because it is so powerful and full of life that it would have multiplied in His veins forever.

Darkness fell as soon as Yeshua died and an earthquake occurred. Torches were lit and a Roman centurion looked upon His battered body and declared that surely He was the Son of God. Why else were all these bizarre things happening? He had never seen a mob so enraged and contemptuous of a person sentenced to die, even of men who were vile sinners and abundantly deserved this cruel death.

Perhaps this centurion had witnessed Yeshua performing miracles. He certainly must have heard of them, for all Jerusalem buzzed for the last three years about the miracle–working prophet from Galilee. Why would a man who had done so much good be treated so cruelly by His own people and also by the soldiers? The latter had excelled themselves in brutality over this prisoner, yet this man, in spite of his terrible suffering, had prayed to Heaven for His persecutors to be forgiven. To cap it off, nature itself was protesting and grieving the travesty of His degradation, torture, and death.

Yeshua's blood trickled down into a crack that the earthquake had caused at the base of the cross. It made its way through the broken mound of rock into a cave twenty feet below where the Ark of the Covenant was hidden by the prophet Jeremiah during the siege of Nebuchadnezzer¹ hundreds of years ago, in preparation for this event. The Ark was placed in a stone box, but the lid was broken and Yeshua's blood fell directly onto the Mercy Seat, as was foreshadowed for centuries in the animal sacrifices that were offered with the blood placed upon the Mercy Seat when it sat behind the veil, where only the high priest was allowed to enter.

To signify that this was the sacrifice that ended all those ceremonies, the veil of the Temple was rent in two from top to bottom at the very moment of Yeshua's death. Through Yeshua, God made a way for us to be made clean and reconciled to Him. Through Yeshua, we can come into the Father's holy Presence without shame or fear of punishment.

Yeshua's body was carried away after a wealthy man, who was one of His followers, pleaded with the governor to release it to him. Pontius Pilate was surprised that Yeshua was already dead, as it usually took days for crucifixion victims to die, but he granted permission after it was confirmed to him that Yeshua was dead.

One of the soldiers had spitefully plunged his spear into Yeshua's side when he perceived He was dead, and blood and water flowed out, which indicated that Yeshua's heart had burst. It was that blood and water flowing from His side that partly explains the verse in 1 John 5:8, "And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one."

The previous two verses say, "This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."

The water referred to in verse 6 is the amniotic fluid in Yeshua's mother's womb, indicating that the Son of God gained legal entry to Earth through human birth. The blood mentioned indicates that His birth was not enough, that His death was also required for the rescue of mankind, which was fulfilled. In verse 8, water was supplied by His own body, to testify upon the Mercy Seat the legality of His sacrifice, alongside the finality His blood.

Wow! What an amazing and loving Creator we have that He came down to Earth as His Son to redeem us from satan, whose hand we sold ourselves into through committing sin. He gives us the chance to start over, to become a new creation in Him, when we repent of our sins and receive Jesus Christ as our Saviour.

The Holy Bible says that Yeshua's body was washed, wrapped in linen, and placed in a tomb that the rich man had purchased for himself, as he was in ill health. I suspect that man did not remain in ill health, for healing was about to be made available through Jesus Christ for as long as Time remains.

Yeshua's soul went to Paradise, where those who had trusted in the Messiah and lived accordingly, awaited Him. They had a joyful reunion. Then satan, having assembled his gruesome crew with the chief of them occupying the front seats, commanded Yeshua to come out. He thought that because he had managed to put Yeshua to death, He now had to obey him. He intended to torture Yeshua; all the fallen angels were drooling for it. Boy, were they in for a shock.

Yeshua came out and stood before all the assembled evil spirits because it was His will to do so. Then He blasted them with fire and their faces melted, destroying the last of the beauty they had possessed in Heaven. He stripped satan of all the jewels that God had embedded in his body when he was one of His chief angels, the one who led the worship in Heaven. Finally, He tore from satan's gnarled hand the keys of Hell and Death.

Yeshua returned to the dimension of Time and the surface of the Earth, leading the way for the departed saints so that they could now make their abode in Heaven. Some of them stopped off in Jerusalem and looked around at how it had changed since the last time they were there before they continued their journey. Witnesses testified afterwards that, three days after the crucifixion, they saw people they knew who had died, and some who they recognized from historical description. Perhaps some of the witnesses saw the first of the resurrected pass through the walls of their tombs, garbed in pristine white and glowing with health and exceptional beauty, to go off to briefly explore the city.

In the meantime, Yeshua's soul and spirit entered back into His body and He passed out of the linen bindings, leaving them like a shell, though He neatly folded the linen napkin that had covered His face and set it to the side. He could have also passed through the stone that sealed the doorway, but He needed it open so that witnesses could see that He was no longer in that tomb.

And earthquake shook the stone and it rolled aside. Temple guards outside the tomb fainted at the sight of angels who had come to perform the quake and supply Yeshua with garments suitable for a workman. When the soldiers were able to rouse themselves, they ran away to inform the religious leaders about what had happened, but those wicked men still did not repent of their mischief. They paid the soldiers to lie and say that Yeshua's disciples came and took away His body.

Yeshua walked outside in the garden, admiring the flowers. With His back turned as He stooped to smell their scent, one of His close friends who had come to His tomb to anoint His body with spices, Mary Magdalene, did not recognize Him. But she was not expecting to see Him; she thought He was dead, so she assumed that Yeshua was the gardener and pleaded with Him to show her where His body was. When Yeshua turned and spoke her name, then Mary recognized Him and fell at His feet in worship. She would have clutched at Him, except He told her to not touch Him, as He still had to ascend to Heaven to apply His blood to the original Ark of the Covenant, which is in Heaven. The Ark that is concealed beneath Jerusalem in Jeremiah's cave was made after its pattern.

Yeshua told Mary to run and tell His disciples that He was alive and she did so, her heart pounding with excitement. If anyone thinks that Yeshua favours men over women, the fact that the first person who saw Him alive after His resurrection was a woman refutes that claim. Yeshua chose twelve men as His core group, but women travelled with them, not just cooking and doing the laundry, but also listening to His teaching. God chose a woman to bear the Messiah, keeping men out of the conception process because it was a man who sold the human race into bondage.

As close as John, the son of Zebedee, was to Yeshua, closer than any of the twelve, it was a woman who knew Him better and perceived that He was serious when He said He was going to die, and prepared His body for burial by pouring costly ointment on His head. The two times that He said to tell about this kind of devotion wherever His story was told, it related to women whose sacrificial acts were criticized by men, but He held those women in high esteem, cherishing their tenderness of heart, spiritual insight, and extravagant worship. And it was for a woman that He lingered in the garden so that she would be the first person to see Him after His resurrection and carry the news to His chief disciples.

Yeshua appeared to 500 of His followers after His resurrection, to bear witness of it throughout the world. He empowers all who believe that testimony and receive Him as their Lord and Saviour to do all the miraculous works that He did during His Earth life. He said that they who follow Him would do even greater works than those because He was going to His Father to place His blood on the Mercy Seat in Heaven, and He would send the Holy Spirit to indwell the redeemed, to teach, instruct, and comfort us.

The power for healing and all other miracles that God has ordained for mankind is in the blood of Yeshua. In the Old Testament, it says that by His stripes (which He suffered for us), we are healed. In the New Testament, it says that by His stripes, we were healed. In the first case, it was described in the present tense, though the event had not yet occurred. God's people could access the results of that future event, regardless, by faith. Now that His sacrifice has been made, our healing has been taken further. It is already done, past tense. It is up to us to enforce Yeshua's victory, to outwardly manifest the spoils of it, by faith.

I have experienced God's healing several times. When giving birth to my first child, my contractions slowed down and the doctor called for an obstetrician to use forceps, as my baby's heart was starting to slow down and he was in distress, but the obstetrician's services were not needed. The baby was born by the time the other doctor got to the delivery room and my regular doctor declared it was a miracle.

Earlier in my life, when I was a baby, I was allergic to baby food and tiny for my age, as the only food I could handle was milk. My mother's doctor prescribed a medicine and I was allergic to that, too. It nearly killed me, but "something" (my guardian angel, no doubt) told my mother to check up on me. She saw me turning blue in my crib, grabbed me, and ran outside for help. Between my body being jarred and it being windy that day, I got my breath back. Afterwards, I was able to eat baby food and soon caught up to being a normal size.

I injured my knee in 1985, stretching the ligaments. Several people prayed for me, as the knee had a tendency to swell after a couple of hours of walking or standing, and I could not run or jump without it popping out of place, but my healing did not manifest until after my pastor gave a word of knowledge that I would receive my healing that day. Receiving that word healed my knee probably about 80 per cent, as my faith was not pure enough to take it all the way to full restoration, but the knee served me well for ten years while I worked as a waitress, went hiking with my friends, and danced in church during praise and worship.

My knee deteriorated eventually to the point where it kept slipping out of place, even when I barely moved, because it was not totally healed that first time. Four days before I was to see a specialist about getting an operation to correct it, God showed me in a dream how to enforce my healing. I did not need surgery after all, which is rarely successful anyway for that kind of injury. I was able to jump on one foot afterwards, using the leg that had been injured.

Years later, when I was doing volunteer work in an emergency ward, I ran into a doctor who had put my knee back in place one time before it got healed, when I needed laughing gas because otherwise it would have been too painful. He congratulated me on my healing when I told him about it and said it is really rare for a knee with that condition to heal on its own.

Well, it did not heal on its own. It healed only after I got serious about quoting over it, "By His wounds, I was healed," and "Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Until then, squatting down to fetch things was a tricky business, done slowly and carefully while holding onto something that was steady. After my healing, I could squat swiftly and rise without holding onto the edge of the counter at work when I needed to get items from a lower shelf.

I was healed of carpal tunnel syndrome in 2003. The pain in my hands and wrists was so bad it made me cry. I sent emails to a couple of ministries, asking them to pray for my healing, and it manifested a few weeks later. I was able to work as a secretary, doing a lot of typing, without any pain, whereas when I sent those emails for healing, I was barely able to move my fingers on the keys.

I was healed of frozen shoulder and God showed me a sign that it was not the result of my body's natural healing abiiity. The very same day my healing manifested, an issue with Revenue Canada was sorted out. They had sent me a letter saying I owed them $1000.00, but after I sent them four letters of my own, and did not stress out about the situation, they sent me another letter saying that it turned out I owed nothing, but the government owed me $10.00. God was doing things for me that day.

When I was forty, my eyes frequently stung and teared up; it was a nuisance, as well as a driving hazard. An eye specialist did tests and concluded that nothing could be done, as my eyes were drying out due to aging. I thought, "Well, we'll just see about that; God gets the last word." As the Bible suggests in Isaiah 53, "We shall believe the report of the Lord." The first verse in Isaiah 53 indicates that His arm of strength is revealed to those who believe His report about the Messiah's suffering and the victory He won by what He endured.² The stinging and tearing cleared up in a short time and I have not had that problem for the last 20+ years.

My jaw went slightly out of alignment, and it became increasingly painful. I got prayer for that, too. Still, the pain increased steadily to the point where I was about to start taking Tylenol for it, but then my jaw suddenly went back to its former alignment and the pain ceased.

I suffered from menstrual cramps until the year before I went into menopause, after receiving prayer for healing. I sure wish I had gone for prayer for that a lot sooner. PMS went away with the hard cramps.

I suffered from night sweats, chills, and miserable hot flashes for a few weeks when I went into menopause, but a friend prayed for me and the night sweats and chills instantly stopped. The hot flashes were shortened to only ten minutes duration each time, which made them a lot more bearable.

I have personally met people who have experienced greater miracles than these. One was a Pakistani woman who was healed of blindness and increasing deafness due to a disease that caused her sight and hearing to steadily diminish. I heard about her miracle and then got to hear about it from her own lips when she came to a church service in Vancouver.

I got to chatting to her in the ladies' room and asked her where she was from. When she said she was from Victoria, I asked if she had heard about the woman there who was healed of blindness and deafness. She nodded her head enthusiastically, grinned, and said, "That was me!" She told how she felt her life was over and she was contemplating suicide. Her husband nagged her to go to services where Charles Nfidon, an evangelist from Africa, was preaching, but she kept refusing. He got angry and said, "If you don't go to that meeting, you will miss your miracle!" To get him off her back, she went. She was healed of blindness first, while Charles was still preaching, then of deafness two days later in another of the revival services.

When I was sixteen, I met a man who was raised in the same cult that I was, which does not believe that miracles like the Apostles performed occur today. He had gone away from this church and was living a worldly life when he was severely injured in a car accident that killed his girlfriend. Her head was sheared off when his convertable crashed into the back of a semi–trailer and his face was ripped up. Along with other injuries, it appeared that he was dead when the ambulance arrived.

Larry was being carried to the morgue on a stretcher when one of the attendents noticed his hand move. They took him to the hospital instead. He became conscious and heard a doctor tell a nurse that he was not going to make it. He passed out again and his face was stitched up carelessly, resulting in big wads of skin on his face, as the doctors did not believe he was going to live. Yeshua appeared to him as a light coming from the wall and spoke to him. He left the hospital after being there only a week, completely healed, with never having any plastic surgery. He looked fine. I had to get very close to his face to see the faint red lines that were the only remaining traces of his injuries.

I am also deeply impressed by the testimony of a woman who was raised in the same cult that indoctrinated me with doubt and unbelief in miracles when I was a child, known to outsiders as the "two by twos" or Cooneyites. Ann's husband Stafford suffered an aneurism and, by some miracle, survived. However, it rendered him blind and paralyzed. They had five children and Ann was stretched to her limit trying to cope with all those kids and a sick husband. One day, in exasperation, she said, "Lord, You gave me this man, but what good is he?" Stafford was instantly healed.

I marvelled to Ann about her faith and asked her how she thought it was that a Cooneyite could have such a miracle. She said, "I think it's possible for those who study the Bible for themselves, instead of just believing everything the workers (their preachers) say." Ann is right about that. The Bible is a potent tool for building our faith and fighting the forces of darkness.

Larry, Ann, and Stafford became Pentecostal/Charismatic after their healings. It is not a good idea to stay in a church that generates doubt and unbelief in what the Bible says we can do and have in Christ. Even Yeshua steered clear of people who were filled with doubt and unbelief when He prepared to heal someone. The faith of the people who needed healing would have otherwise been diminished by the negative atmosphere of doubt and unbelief. We need to attend services where faith in God and His Word is taught and practiced, so that our soul can flourish with the abundant life that Yeshua said He came to give us.

It is pure faith, not large faith, that receives miracles. Yeshua said only a tiny bit of faith is required to move a mountain. However, it has to be undiluted. Yeshua said that fasting and prayer can get rid of spirits of unbelief. Disappointments can open us to unbelief, if we dwell on them. Bitterness develops inside our hearts and causes us to falter in our faith, but we can repent of opening ourselves to that and get rid of it.

It has been said that FEAR stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. It is the dark room where negatives develop, but Faith is the bright room where we develop positives. A mighty woman of God, Corrie Ten Boom, said that FAITH stands for Fantastic Adventures In Trusting Him. Faith is just another word for trust. Whose words are we going to trust? God's declarations that He wants to bless us and can do it through the power of Jesus' Name? Or satan's accusations, condemnations, and dire threats of catastrophe? His powers are nothing in comparison to God's power, and he is an incorrigible liar, as well.

I have plenty of other things I need to see healed. I don't accept aging as legitimate cause for illnesses and conditions to develop. Aging is itself a disease, a breakdown of the body. There is no good reason to die sick. Moses was in full health when he went to the peak of Mt. Pisgah at 120 years old and expired because he was not allowed to enter Canaan at that time. Enoch and Elijah went to Heaven without being ill; in fact, it wasn't even required of them to die. When it is our time to go, God could allow us to be martyred, be killed in a fatal accident, or just gently remove our breath and a coroner would not be able to find any reason whatsoever for our death.

It is important, though, to not die before our time. Everyone has work that needs to be accomplished before we go to our rest and rewards. When we keep our eyes on Yeshua, we will not fear death nor put ourselves in a position where we trigger an untimely death.

The Bible says that we make our way prosperous by meditating on His Word. The word for meditating means to mutter, to verbally rehearse the truths of God's Word so that they drop from our mind into our heart. We need to ponder His Word continually and speak it aloud. If a person is mute, a dispension is made for that. They can write it out, or rehearse it in their mind, if they are unable to write. For those of us who have a voice, we need to declare the Word of God to ourselves, and to God's angels who listen for us to speak the Word so that they are released to act on it, and to the powers of darkness to let them know where we stand and on what we stand – God's Word.

Say that healing verse at the top of this page over and over. Think with appreciation and reverence on how our healing has been provided. It cost Yeshua more than we can know to purchase our salvation and its benefits. Explore the Word of God and note other references to healing, and how it was that ALL who came to Yeshua were healed, thus revealing that the Father's will is always to heal, for Yeshua said that He came to reveal the Father's heart and to destroy the works of the evil one (satan).

I have found it very useful towards building my faith to read Roger Sapp's book about healing, as well as watching Andrew Wommack's teaching videos that can be accessed from his website. It also feeds faith to listen to the testimonies of people who were healed through his ministry. There are some amazing stories there. And Sid Roth's videos of his show, It's Supernatural, are a rich source of inspiration. Many of those videos are on YouTube, as well as on his website in his TV Archives. I have downloaded a lot of them to my computer so that I can watch them over and over, even if I am not hooked up to the Internet.

God did not create the world and us, then place us in it to walk away afterwards, leaving us to cope the best we could manage. If He had, the world would have been wiped out long ago, for satan's nature is to kill, to steal, and to destroy.

We lived in God before He made the Universe, as little spirits who were waiting to be provided with earthly bodies. He is called the Father of lights, meaning the Originator of all spirits. As soon as He thought of us, we popped into existence inside of Him and enjoyed the riches there. We were eager to be born and bring glory to Him on the Earth. Our particular tribe, humans, are destined to become the closest to God and rule the other tribes of angels and animals and whatever else He has made, if we choose to be redeemed³ and hold to Him in faithfulness to the end. He made us to become His Son's Bride.

It was for His Bride that Yeshua gladly gave His life. Do you think that a man who is emotionally healthy would withhold healing from his beloved, if it was in his power to heal her? Of course he wouldn't. Yeshua yearns for us to receive the healing and other blessings He has provided for us through His suffering, death, and resurrection. It is manifested either through our faith or the faith of those who are willing to stand in faith for others when they are too weak to access it on their own. The best way to go is to exercise the measure of faith He has given us, the same measure He has given everyone who receives Him, take our healing, and work at helping others to get the benefits He won through His suffering and death.

God is not stingy. He is not ill–tempered and capricious. He is Love. He is overwhelmingly, willingly generous, but it requires faith in His goodness and wisdom and power to please Him and receive His blessings. Faith is like a railroad track. Without it, there is nothing to take the trainloads of His blessings from the storehouses of Heaven through to Earth to meet our needs. Faith comes by hearing a word from God. He has plenty to say and is speaking all the time. The Holy Bible is a mother lode of His knowledge and wisdom.

Luke 12:32 says, "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."

Romans 8:32 "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?"

---

¹The Ark of the Covenant's hiding place was supernaturally, divinely revealed in the 1980s to a man named Ron Wyatt. The Israeli govenment gave Ron permission to excavate the site; his food, lodgings, and laundry service were paid for by Israel's antiquities department. He gathered friends to help him excavate, but he was the only person God's angels allowed to enter the cave.

The angels who guard the cave permitted Ron to take samples of the blood found on the ceiling of the cave and the Mercy Seat below. When it was examined in a laboratory in Jerusalem, the technicians discovered that the blood was still alive, though it was ancient, and that it showed the mother's x chromosones, as well as one y chromosone, indicating that this was the blood of her son, but it had no other y chromosones indicating that the person had a human father.

Two other labs, one in Germany and one in America, came up with the same results. The reports were examined by a documents expert and determined to be genuine.

Ron found the tables of stone with the Ten Commandments written on them inside the Ark, looking like they had been written with a finger in soft butter. An angel placed the tablets on a ledge in the back of the cave, and Ron left alongside it a video tape he made of his activities in the cave, to prove that he had been there. There were other treasures from Solomon's Temple in the cave. Ron broke off an ivory pomegranate from one of the artefacts and gave it to Israel's Antiquities department. It was placed in a museum with a card explaining it is the only item that remains of Solomon's Temple. When the cave is reopened, the pomegranate will be a perfect match to the place from where it was taken.

The Israelis have tried to enter the cave, sending six Levites into the tunnels, but the six men died in the tunnels and nobody wanted to risk their life to retrieve their bodies, so they asked Ron Wyatt to do it. He agreed and they gave him a basket with rope tied to it to help him bring the bodies out. Ron did not disclose to anyone the location of the cave, which he was able to access through a door that was sometimes there and sometimes not, depending on whether God wanted him to enter it. He did not want anyone else to lose their life trying to get into the cave before God's appointed time. The death of the Levites is reminiscent of an account in the Old Testament when a Levite touched the Ark outside of God's will, and was immediately struck dead. (2 Samuel 6:6,7)

There are fascinating videos on YouTube about Ron Wyatt's successful searches for the Ark of the Covenant, the real Mt. Sinai, which is Jabal al Lawz in Saudi Arabia, and Noah's Ark in Turkey, as well as videos made by honourable men of good reputation who vouch for Ron Wyatt's honesty and integrity, such as Henry Gruver and Dr. David Kim. The latter was a personal physician to a Saudi prince and was given access to the mountain of Moses (near Al Bad), and he visited it 12 times in six years, sometimes for as long as two weeks. He also speaks Arabic and was able to glean a lot of information from the locals relating to Moses' activities in the area, and they showed Dr. Kim artefacts they had collected from around the mountain with menorahs engraved on them, proving that the Israelites stayed in that area during their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.

²Isaiah 53 "Who has believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? 

For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he has no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. 

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opens not his mouth. 

He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.

And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he has put him to grief: when you shall make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he has poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

³For those who choose to be redeemed from the bondage of sin, a guide to praying for salvation can be accessed at this LINK.