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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Healing Christ (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 28. The Need the Measure of Power
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The Need the Measure of Power
It becomes of intense interest to turn back and note the extent of Christ's healing in the Gospel days.
The list of healings there has a few acute cases, but most of them are the absolutely incurable incorrigibles. A man blind from birth is included, with the possibility that the eyeballs were not fully matured or developed.
One summary actually says that the maimed were made whole. There is only one meaning when that word "maimed" is used, whether the Greek or English word is examined. And that is, that a limb or arm or foot, or some other part, that had been lost was replaced by a new one.
That would be distinctly creative power at work. But the meaning of the language used is quite beyond question.
And then the last word in extremes is said in the raising of the dead, even Lazarus dead four days.
And the same sort of thing is repeated in the Acts. The beggar man in Jerusalem at the gate of the temple had been lame from birth. Now he leaps up, and walks. There's an abundance of strength, where there had been none at all.
The Lystra man had never walked. And, even here, there are the two dead raised. There's Dorcas near the beginning of the Acts, and there is the Troas young man toward the end, when some might think of the extent of power as possibly waning.
There can be no question about how far healing was actually experienced in these early days. The need was the measure of the power. The seriousness of the case didn't affect the power available.
There were degrees of disability. But there were no degrees in the power at Christ's command, and in response to the disciples' Spirit-led actions.
The power was always abundant, not scanty. The power was sufficient for the worst case. But what about now? How far may healing be expected today? Up to the limit of real need?
It seems like a very difficult question, at first flush, unless indeed it is answered at once by some with a positive negative.
Yet, there's an answer. And it is an answer that really answers. It is not a piously rhetorical evasion.