17. Methods and God's Glory

Chapter 17 Methods and God’s Glory But God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things that are strong; and the base things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose [yea] and the things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are: that no flesh should glory before God (1 Corinthians 1:27-29).

God’s methods will always be considered foolish, weak, base, and despised by the world and the worldly church. I inherited from my father a chronic weakness in nasal, sinus, and inner ear infections. By the time I came to the Lord, my eardrums had burst many times because of these infections. I dreaded this because it was very painful. My hearing was impaired due to scars on my eardrums. Also, as did my father, I carried nasal spray with me almost year-round to open up my sinuses. This had destroyed the lining in my nose, which made the problem worse. Because of this, I started using saltwater as a nasal spray, which did not work as well. Penicillin became useless and vitamin C, too.

Shortly after I came to the Lord I discovered that I did not have to seek healing any more because 2,000 years ago I was healed by Jesus’ stripes. I threw my nasal spray and my vitamin-C away by faith. My nose and sinuses have not stopped up since, even when I have had a cold. I have had no more burst eardrums, either. This testimony has been given to many who also came to faith and were healed. At the end of all of my works to save myself by man’s methods, God gave me faith to see His works. God’s method was faith in Him combined with my own weakness. He said, “my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Faith is foolish, weak, and base to the world but it brings God’s power.

Before I knew the Lord, I applied for a job at Exxon. Their physical showed that I had hearing loss from scarred eardrums and a non-functional heart murmur, which I had from childhood. They almost did not hire me. A few years later after I discovered the Lord and His method, they called me in for another physical. There was no sign of hearing loss or heart murmur. My poor attendance record caused by sickness also made a complete turnaround. Worldly methods failed me, but faith in the promises brought the most awesome deliverance. Glory to God!

Recently, I watched a report on antibacterial soaps on the national news. They reported that the net effect was that they were not wiping out bacteria, but making it resistant. What did penicillin do but make antibiotic-resistant bacteria for which there is no medical cure on the horizon? Poisons on the crops to try to destroy the curse go into the water supply and cause a multitude of diseases. Read your toothpaste tube; fluoride is a deadly poison. The Journal of the American Medical Association Vol. 284 July 26, 2000, reports that doctors are the third leading cause of death in the U.S., causing 250,000 deaths every year from iatrogenic causes! Iatrogenic is defined as induced in a patient by a physician’s activity, manner, or therapy, used especially of a complication of treatment. If this is what their organization admits, what is the truth? The numbers are much higher. If, as some believe, this is God’s preferred method of healing today, He is surely making a lot of mistakes. I have a good doctor friend named John Farmer, who prefers to not use drugs. He has told me how he prays for patients who will believe, with results. The problem is that most are not interested in deliverance from their curse if it takes repentance and faith so he does what he can. My mother took a drug for years. One day she was reading an article by Reader’s Digest on the side effects of medicines. The side effects of the drug she was on were breast cancer and glaucoma, and she had them both. That was a terrible trade. My father’s favorite doctor told him after an examination, “One thing I am sure of, you are not going to die of a heart attack. You have the heart of a much younger man.” About a month later, he had a serious heart attack. I became convinced it was because of a drug he was taking to put oxygen into his blood because he lost a lung to smoking. Two close friends took a drug that had a side effect of damaging their kidneys. Their doctors admitted this in both cases. Man shifts the curse around and sometimes multiplies it, but he cannot deliver by his own efforts. If he could, then Jesus’ death was for naught. I believe it is God’s purpose that we understand that there is no permanent deliverance from the curse except God’s deliverance through Jesus Christ. The world’s deliverance is a deception, because, ultimately, their gods fail them. God wants us to see through that.

We have been told that God now uses modern methods for delivering us from the curse. God’s method is always free. It is salvation by grace, which is the unmerited, unpaid for, favor of God. Neither Jesus nor His disciples charged anything for healing, deliverance, or any other form of salvation. The world’s method always costs. The poor often go untreated until they die. In God’s kingdom, all are treated on condition of faith. God desires to use the same method He used in Scripture, the Word of Faith, because it is the only one that does not give glory to man. For instance, if a Christian receives a recovery from some disease while under the care of doctors and medicine, everyone wants to know what the medicine was or who the doctor was. God will not share His glory with another. I am not condemning those who use doctors or medicine. I am offering the good news that Jesus has already healed you almost 2,000 years ago. All we have to do is read the New Testament once to find out that God did not use the methods of man. In the coming wilderness we will need to understand this.

Soon God’s people will not be able to buy or sell with the world. Then all will be forced into a wilderness experience where there will be no idolatry with the gods of this world. For the people of God there will be a great lack of doctors, medicine, lawyers, bankers, psychiatrists, insurance, public assistance of all types, food, clean water, and everything else. Then we will see God’s power in man’s weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). The church’s methods of obtaining provision today are the same as the world’s methods and are therefore acceptable to the world.

God has a peculiar method for ministering deliverance from the curse that costs nothing, gives no glory to man, and proves His sovereignty. (1 Corinthians 1:28-29) And the base things of the world, and the things that are despised, did God choose, [yea] and the things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are: (29) that no flesh should glory before God. We see here that God chose to use something that does not exist in the physical realm in order to destroy the things that do. The “things thatare not” are the promises in the Word that we do not see fulfilled. The “things that are” are the cursed things of sin, sickness, and lack, which God wants to “bring to naught”. For instance, if you are sick, that is a thing that is; but “by whose stripes ye were healed” is a thing that is not in the physical realm. God chose faith in this promise that is not in order to bring to naught the sickness. Jesus and the disciples used God’s method for dealing with the curse by “calling the things that are not, as though they were” (Romans 4:17). They just commanded it done according to the promises. They did not choose the things that are, like doctors, medicine, psychiatrists, and such to bring to naught the things that are, like sickness, torment, poverty, and such. The things that appear in this cursed realm are the things that are. (Hebrews 11:3) By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear.

God’s method is to use the Word and not the physical things that appear, just as in the Gospels and Acts. In anointing with oil, it is obviously not the oil but the faith that heals. Oil is just a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Paul’s handkerchief did not heal; it was the power from his faith (Acts 19:12). Some might think that once Jesus also used things such as when He made clay with His spit to heal a blind man in John 9:6-7. It was not the clay that healed his eyes, but the washing it out of his eyes; clay symbolizes the Adamic nature and the things that are (Job 10:9; Job 33:6; Isaiah 29:16; Isaiah 45:9) just as man was made from clay. In other words, our eyes must be cleansed of seeing through eyes of clay. We need the spiritual eyes to see the promise as done by faith. (2 Peter 1:3) Seeing that his divine power hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life (Greek: zoe, “God’s life”) and godliness…. To have spiritual eyes, we must see that Jesus has already given us His life and blessings. We need to be cleansed of fleshly eyes that keep us from God’s blessings. The natural man (of clay) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, and he cannot know them because they are spiritually judged (Greek: “examined” or “seen”) (1 Corinthians 2:14). By the way, the spit from Jesus’ mouth symbolizes that which comes out of the mouth of the Lord that gives life to man, the Word or manna (Deuteronomy 8:3; John 1:1-3; John 6:33, John 6:51).

I once knew a preacher who said, “The reason Paul did all those miracles was because Luke the physician was with him.” Wrong! Not in one verse do we see Luke using physician skills, which could never result in a miracle. The Greek word Iatros is falsely translated “physician” and just means “healer”. Iatros is also used of Jesus as “healer”. Translators put their modern ideas here. “Physician” means “one who practices medicine,” which Jesus and the apostles never did. The term used for drugs or medicine in the Greek is pharmakia (English: “pharmacy”) and is translated “witchcraft” or “sorcery,” which Paul called a work of the flesh in Galatians 5:20. The nations are deceived with pharmakia (Revelation 18:23). Luke was a healer in the same way Jesus and the other disciples were.

It should seem strange to these people that Jesus and his disciples did not use “the things that are” to administer healing or deliverance. If Paul’s handkerchief had the power to heal, why could it not heal before he touched it? It only acted as a medium to carry the healing anointing to the sick by faith. I have prayed over handkerchiefs, water, or people as mediums and seen healings. A brother, whose wife was very sick, came into our meeting. He was very troubled and on the edge of tears about this. The brother was not yet convinced that he needed to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Asking the Lord in my thoughts what to do, it came to me to pray over him to impart healing power to him, which we did. Then I said, “Now brother, go lay hands on your wife, and she will be healed.” He was not convinced that healing was our right today, but he went home to lay hands on his wife. When he did, she was healed, and he came back excited. You see, it is not the medium; it is the healing power manifested through it, or in this case him, by faith. Jesus imparted authority to the disciples to heal before they received the Holy Spirit. So how do we use God’s method of “the things that are not”? By “calling the things that are not as though they were”(Romans 4:17). In other words, agree with the promise and call it done. God chooses to use “the things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are: that no flesh should glory before God.” (1 Corinthians 1:28-29). God does not desire to use man’s inventions so that only He can brag. God’s salvation is not by our works. It is by getting our eyes off the problem and on the promise. 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 teaches that our affliction will be temporary if “we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.” When the Israelites got their eyes off the snake bite (curse) and on the serpent on the pole (Christ who became our curse [John 3:14]), they were healed (Numbers 21:4-9). As we saw, Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” had nothing to do with sickness but a demon that was bringing him into humbling circumstances where he was weak to save himself so God’s power was present to save him. His advice to Timothy puts a question in some concerning the use of remedies. In the text we can see that sin is the subject before and after the verse in question. (1 Timothy 5:22-25) Lay hands hastily on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure. (23) Be no longer a drinker of water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities (Greek: asthenia; meaning “weaknesses”). (24) Some men’s sins are evident, going before unto judgment; and some men also they follow after. (25) In like manner also there are good works that are evident; and such as are otherwise cannot be hid. The word sometimes translated "infirmities" is actually “weaknesses” and is clearly seen in other texts where the same word is correctly translated. (1 Corinthians 1:25) …The weakness of God is stronger than men. Now we know that God is not infirm or sick so this word has to be “weakness.” (2 Corinthians 13:4) For he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth through the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but we shall live with him through the power of God toward you. We know that Jesus Christ was not crucified through infirmity, but weakness because He would not defend Himself when He was brought before Pilate and the Jewish leaders. Timothy had spiritual weaknesses for which the only cure was the spiritual wine of the nature of Jesus. The stomach or belly was spiritually considered the seat of rulership for the carnal man. It represented being driven by the lusts (Greek: “desires”) of the flesh, driven by sin. (Php 3:19) Whose end is perdition, whose god is the belly, and [whose] glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. Peter called those who returned to their sins, “the sow that was washed to wallowing in the mire.” The sow best identifies those who are servants to their flesh appetites. On the other hand, wine was considered the cure for bondage to sin. Wine represents the blood of Jesus. (Matthew 26:27-29) And he took a cup (of wine), and gave thanks, and gave to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; (28) for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins. (29) But I say unto you, I shall not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom. Through our own blood we have inherited the lusts of the sinful flesh and through Jesus’ pure blood that nature is destroyed. (Leviticus 17:11) For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life. His blood is in us to the extent that we repent and partake of the life of His Word. (John 6:53-54) Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood (wine), ye have not life in yourselves. (54) He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life: and I will raise him up at the last day. Partaking of the blood or wine is a matter of walking in His Word by faith in His blood that was given to us. (1 John 1:7) But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin. The combined fruitful faith that resides in the true body of Christ is the answer to the question of why Isaiah commanded a cake of figs for Hezekiah’s boil. (Isaiah 38:21) Now Isaiah had said, Let them take a cake of figs, and lay it for a plaster upon the boil, and he shall recover. The figs here represent the Body of Christ or Israel as in Jesus’ warnings about bearing fruit. (Luke 13:6-7)And he spake this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit thereon, and found none. (7) And he said unto the vinedresser, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why doth it also cumber the ground? (Revelation 6:13) and the stars of the heaven (Abraham’s seed) fell unto the earth, as a fig tree casteth her unripe figs when she is shaken of a great wind. Jesus identified the righteous as being under the fig tree when He saw Nathaniel there as an Israelite without guile (John 1:47-50). Notice that in the verse before the “cake of figs” was laid on the boil, faith was expressed to God by the body for Hezekiah’s healing as the saints in the “house of Jehovah” were praising God for this. It was the figs’ faith that sucked the poison out of the boil. (Isaiah 38:20) Jehovah is [ready] to save me: Therefore we will sing my songs with stringed instruments All the days of our life in the house of Jehovah. The cake of figs was a natural parable that represented a spiritual happening just as in Jesus’ parables of planting wheat and corn, etc.