9 - A New Discovery

“ONE NIGHT,” during the summer of 1898, “lying awake with pain and fatigue, I faced the future and saw possible years of invalidism before me, and the horror of it came over me worse than it ever had before,” recol­lected Miss Wing. “I was trying to be resigned to God’s will, as I understood it then, but I very often asked God to hasten my death. That night, however, in a sudden anger with my sickness, which was shutting me out from service to God, I sat up in bed and prayed earnestly some­thing like this: ‘My Father, heal me, heal me and let me live for Thy service. I know it cannot be Thy will that I should drag out my life a useless burden to myself and to everyone else. It is all nonsense for me to try to make myself believe I can glorify Thee by my miserable sick­ness. Give me health, and let me work in Thy vineyard and atone for my years of idleness.’ “I was instantly and perfectly healed of a serious or­ganic trouble from which I had been suffering intensely….This ought to have taught me that God would do all the rest for me. But I was ignorant of His will and full of false theology and teaching, and instead of seek­ing further and testifying to His goodness, I kept silence. I even allowed my sister to wonder at the change in me and attribute it to all kinds of impossible causes. I did not wish to seem ‘queer’ and ‘fanciful’ (by believing that God really answers prayer). Although I was daily learn­ing more of God, I could not believe the evidences of my own senses, and would persuade myself that this marvelous change could not last. Of course, the inevitable result was that I lost my healing; but I had it long enough to have tested its absolute reality. “When, some weeks later, I felt the old symptoms re­turning, symptoms which I had suffered more or less since childhood, I said in my ignorance, ‘There, I knew it must surely return. Suppose I had been so foolish as to have told how I happened to be free from the trouble.’ I some­times wonder how God ever thought it worthwhile to en­lighten such stupidity. But He is merciful.” In November Martha Wing’s mother, on her way to Chicago from Davenport, came to see her daughters in Sand Spring. During the course of her visit she told Mattie that Mrs. H. E. Penley, a woman known to both of them, had been healed in answer to prayer. Prior to her healing Mrs. Penley “had not been able to leave her bed for a year, as a result of an injury received nine years before.” Then she had heard of a minister in Chicago, Dr. John Alexander Dowie, who with associate ministers conducted a home called Zion — where “the sick children of God who are seeking Him alone for healing in the name of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit” might go to receive “instruction in God’s way of healing as set forth in the Holy Scriptures” and to be prayed for. Mrs. Penley determined to be taken there, “and the first time she was prayed with she received strength enough to go to the dining room and eat with the rest of the guests.” Her strength steadily increased until she had been perfectly healed. Her testimony, in brief, was published in Dr. Dowie’s weekly periodical, Leaves of Healing. “Although I had heard of Mrs. Penley’s prolonged and serious illess and had expected her to die, when my mother told me that she had been healed at Zion, I said flatly that if Mrs. Penley had been healed by that means, she was never sick,” Miss Wing later stated. “I believed myself to be at this time consecrated Christian. I had yet to learn that consecration does not mean using myself for God, but it means permitting Him to use me; that it does not mean thinking right thoughts for His service, but letting Him think for m So instead of asking God’s opinion of Dr. Dowie, I presumed to have my own opinion and not only refused to investigate, but so opposed the work that my mother went to Chicago and remained there three months without going to Zion Tabernacle or Home.” Meanwhile, Miss Wing returned to Davenport, Novem­ber 24, 1898, to be with Nettie for the winter months. “I suppose, because I was really sincere in my desire to serve God, He gave me another chance. Mrs. Penley vis­ited me with Leaves of Healing, and I read it, partly out of curiosity, partly in order to tell her I had done so, and because, down in my heart, there was a little hope. “The testimonies were so miraculous I found them in­credible. I was fond of saying that the days of miracles were past. I prided myself on sufficient, sound common sense to keep me from believing any exaggerated ‘wonder tales.’ As I read the testimonies and saw that they were said to have been given in the presence of hundreds and even thousands, my common sense told me that such a tremendous fraud could not be long carried on. The people could not all be deliberate liars, I thought, nor could there be gotten together such a large number of marvelously stupid people. But I was afraid of getting into something absurd and fanatical. “My skepticism and slowness to believe all through stood in the way of God’s work in me. It began to dawn on me that I might be mistaken myself; that God was trying to teach me something that I was putting away from me without looking to Him for guidance. “My sister and I took it to God in prayer. We asked that I might do exactly what God willed in the matter. I asked that I might accept all the true and reject all the false (if any). “I then sent for reading matter. I carefully studied and prayed, looking to God for full light. It was my in­tention to be strictly impartial, but so prejudiced had I been against all so-called ‘faith cures’ that I combated every point not in accord with my own ideas or early teaching. I would search the Bible through and through, trying to disprove statements Dr. Dowie made in his ser­mons, and only succeeded in proving them. When I saw the evidence plainly in the Bible, often not even then being able to fully believe in my own heart, we took it to God and asked for full light to accept any truth He wished me to. “After I had spent a week or two in this deliberate search for knowledge (nearly all the time I was out of bed I was seeking for the truth in God’s Word), I had a good deal of conceit taken out of me. I found that instead of knowing the Bible as well as I had supposed I did, I had only a mass of false theology which I called Bible knowledge; for, with many other Bible students, I had made the Bible fit the facts of experience and practice, instead of trusting God to fit the facts to the Bible. “Having awakened to my own ignorance, I was willing to be taught, and under God’s direct guidance I began a new and prayerful study of His Word. Those weeks were a revelation to me of how God will open the under­standing to the truths of the Bible if we will trust Him instead of ourselves. My convictions concerning Divine Healing, after this study, were deeply founded. I feel that it was my firm stand on this matter which enabled me to go the full way through all the discouragement Satan brought to bear upon me, for I still had very much to learn.” In the weeks after Martha Wing returned to Davenport she “again badly overdid.” “I was getting discouraged,” she relates, “and especially after a severe relapse at the holiday time [1898-1899], from which I never even slightly recuperated until God healed me.” During these same weeks Miss Wing had been studying the Bible, as she tells, and the result of this was that she had decided to trust God for healing. “Having fully decided to give my body to God, I sent to Dr. Dowie about January 1, 1899, setting a time for prayer. My sister and myself prayed at the same hour. I was not helped. “I prayed and studied further, and again sent for prayer, and again apparently God did not hear. “Knowing that He would hear me, I claimed the prom­ise, ‘Seek and ye shall find,’ and went on seeking, de­termined not to give up until I found. I learned very much about prayer during the following period. I learned that lying all night and clamoring after God in tears and anxiety was not prayer, and the abuse of my physical nature brought on exhaustion and violent headache. Hezekiah’s description of his ‘soul chattering like a crane always reminds me of that stage of my experience. “When I found my prayers and even Dr. Dowie’s un­availing, I realized, although I was truly given to God, that I yet lacked something. I asked God to show, and then Dr. Dowie’s teaching on repentance began to give me increased light. Repentance, as Zion [taught] it, was unknown to me. “I then asked if any sin stood in my way and promised, if there were, I would gladly and instantly confess. I thought I meant what I said. When God clearly and distinctly chose from my past a seemingly small thing which I had done and said, ‘Confess this sin,’ it seemed to me that the one thing which I could not do had been given to me. Instead of going instantly and gladly with the confession, I struggled over it for nearly three weeks, seemingly losing all the ground I had gained. I begged that I might keep this thing silent, and I would tell any­thing else. I got so I could not pray. It was like the old struggles over consecrating myself to God. It came to where it was a question of giving up all or obeying. At last I yielded and made the necessary confession, and after I had done so it seemed so easy, and my relief was so great I could not forgive myself for the delay, nor fail to regret the loss of the blessing which instant obedience brings. “I thought that now all was right. I looked into the past and my own heart, under God, and felt that all was clear before Him. “But He was not through with me. When I again set a time for prayer, and apparently God did not answer, I began with greater humility than I had ever yet known to search further for that weakness or sin in me that so delayed the fulfillment of God’s will. I asked God to show me myself as He saw me, and in answer to that prayer He gave me such a glimpse of myself as I shall never forget. “For the first time I felt my need of Christ’s atoning blood. I saw the meaning of His death for our sin. I saw that all my consecration and obedience — if it were possible to be perfect in this — were not sufficient to cleanse my heart. I saw that what I had regarded as an upright, and even Christian, life was very dark in God’s eyes. I know now that this revelation was what I needed to bring me into the right attitude toward God. By this time I knew there was so much to learn that the only thing for me to do was to keep on seeking step by step, as I had been doing, trusting God to take me the full way. How thoroughly God dealt with His seeking child about this subject of repentance is seen from the “thought weav­ings” in her journal. In the first, February 26, 1899, she wrote: “Repentance is the ‘beginning of the gospel.’ When one truly repents one does not measure his sins by the sins of others. He begins to see himself as God sees him; begins to measure not merely the sin, but the temptation, the causes, the lack of excuse. He begins to understand that the sin of his own that has seemed trivial may be greater in God’s eyes than the crime of his neighbor. The true penitent must see himself in a light that humbles him. There must be conviction of sin. The true penitent desires this conviction. He does not want peace until God has shown him all and cleansed him from all. He does not begrudge the suffering; rather, he welcomes it.” To this she added, “Repentance is getting a square look at one’s self.” Then, two or three weeks later, she wrote out a rather full discussion of: Repentance Suppose in the course of a busy morning’s work you have soiled your face. You do not know of the stain upon it until someone entering presumes to mention it. In all probability you are too busy to pay any attention. You say, possibly with impatience, that you don’t care, you haven’t time to bother about that now. After a while someone else comes in and tells you you have a black spot on your forehead. You haven’t time to stop to cleanse your face, you say, until the work is done. But presently someone more outspoken than the others exclaims, “My, but your face is dirty!” Very likely you are irritated. You say you don’t care if your face is as black as soot, you have not time to attend to it. But when one and then another tells of a stain on the fore­head, the cheek, the ear, you begin to think perhaps your face is most unpresentable. If a guest should step in at that moment, probably the first thing you would do after he was gone would be to hurry to a looking-glass. Immediately you are dis­mayed and humiliated by your own appearance. You find Yourself exclaiming, “Why didn’t someone tell me!” “Why didn’t you make it stronger!” “I didn’t suppose my face was so dreadfully soiled as this!” “What must our guest have thought! etc., etc. It goes without saying that your first and immediate desire is to get water and wash away the stain. The work can go. You are too disgusted with your own uncleanliness to think of anything else until the stains are removed. What would be your consternation if you should dis­cover the stains were so deep you could not remove them? So I think it is with a repentant person. You may know your spirit is stained with sin, you may even be told so, but you need to get a good view of yourself in God’s looking-glass before you feel any keen desire to be cleansed. You may go on for many years through your busy life, knowing yourself unclean, adding stain to stain, “too busy” to attend to “that now.” You will in all prob­ability have some intention of allowing yourself to be cleansed in a vague, comfortable “sometime.” When the rush of your life work is over, when you have “time for religion,” then you will be cleansed from your sin’s de­filements. At times you may be troubled over your own uncleanliness; you may make spasmodic attempts to im­prove. You don’t think so much about washing away the present stain as you do of avoiding adding any more. But knowing the stain of sin is still upon you, it is so easy to commit the same again. Its blackness beside the already dark stains does not show up very plainly. But some day, (happy for you if such should be the case) some providential incident, some God-sent message or circumstance leads you to look into God’s great looking-glass, and you see yourself as your Saviour sees you, — all filth, all blackness. Oh, the horror, the dismay, the humiliation of that first, clear view. You cry, “I never dreamed I was so vile. I never dreamed my life was so base. I thought I was liv­ing almost as I ought to live. I did not see my own sins. Now your first desire, after seeing yourself thus, is to be cleansed. I cannot conceive of a man turning away from that mirrored self, saying, “I will stay in my sin. I will live in this filth. I will not be clean.” Your one great desire is to get away from that filthy soul, to have it cleansed and made new. Just so long as you remain where you can see yourself (see yourself as you are, not as you have thought yourself, not as the world sees you, but as you are), you are going to hate yourself. The principal reason why men do not turn away from their sins is because they fail to realize them. A man might turn his back on that terrible sight of himself, might close his heart and head and conscience, might persist in his wickedness, but I cannot conceive such a case. But you, after that view, cry out for cleanliness. “What shall I do? How can I wash away my stain? How shall I become clean?” And the answer will come to such a cry, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.” Then just as soon as you yield to that cleansing, just as soon as you permit that cleansing power to cover your spirit, you are clean. You understand now how the blood of Christ “cleanseth whiter than snow.” The verse has had no particular meaning before. But this is not all. Repentance is a “turning away” from sin. Your cleansing will be nothing if you begin again to soil yourself with sin. The truly repentant will not — al­most cannot. What one has suffered for, and sought for, will not be easily given up. Your prayer is changed, but there is still a prayer. No longer “Make me clean,” but “Keep me clean” is your petition. If through old habits old temptations come upon you, soil your white purity, again comes the cry, “Wash away the stain, Father.” † “Meanwhile, during these two months I had been grow­ing physically worse. Instead of regaining any strength, or recovering from the severe relapse caused by over-exertion at the holiday time, I had been growing steadily weaker and suffered much. In addition, my liver trouble, from which the latter part of my sickness I had been comparatively free, returned in a severe form. My side was swollen, so that my clothes would not meet within two inches under my loose-front wrapper. I was com­pelled to lie in one position, slightly on my left side be­cause of the extreme sensitiveness and soreness. Every movement was painful. “It seemed as if Satan had chosen the one thing that might tempt me. It was the only trouble which had at any time been consciously relieved by medicine. Medi­cine had in a measure temporarily relieved me, and it came to me again that it would be wiser to take a little of the medicine which had benefited me than to run the risk of being entirely confined to my bed and perhaps alarm those who had the care of me and so lead to a physician being called against my will. “I am glad to say it was not at any time a real tempta­tion to me, for I recognized from the first that absolute dependence on God was the secret of the prayer of faith. I determined that death was preferable to disobedience, although I had no fear that God would fail to keep His promise to me. This condition of my body had lasted for some weeks, and I finally became so ill I saw that I should be confined to my bed. I knew that in my con­dition I was unable to endure one of the severe attacks of pain to which I was subject. The probability of a doctor being called grew stronger. “My sense of absolute helplessness brought a fuller sur­render than I had yet known. Unconsciously, I think, I had still been clinging to my self, my own faith, and prayers. I threw myself on God and left the responsi­bility to Him, knowing He would not permit me to be tempted above what I was able to bear. “In this frame of mind I arose one afternoon at 3 o’clock for the purpose of having prayer with my sister. It was with difficulty, because of the pain and soreness, that I knelt. As we prayed, a singular sensation passed over my side as if something rolled slowly away from it. I rose to my feet with perfect ease and without pain. I did not know what had happened, and put my hand to my side. To my amazement I found there was no soreness. It was not even sensitive to heavy pressure. The swelling and pain had also left instantly, and my clothes fastened loosely about me. “From that moment, in February, 1899, the healing which occurred [was] perfect. Stomach, liver, and kidneys [were] in healthy condition. This was very wonderful to me, as I had no recollection of a time when my side was not sore and sensitive to the touch, or was free from pain. Of course this wonderfully strengthened me physically and increased my faith, but I was far from being perfectly healed, as these troubles were only a part of my many ailments. I was still weak in many ways and had no vi­tality. I went on seeking.” During this period of seeking, about two weeks after this “instantaneous deliverance,” Martha Wing wrote on March 14, 1899: “Having patience with our own sickness is a good deal like a lazy housewife sitting down in her filthy, dirty house and saying, ‘See the trials I am compelled to en­dure. But I am resigned. I make no protest against it. I am patient.’ “But if one were compelled to come into such a house, fretting and worrying would only make matters worse. “The only possible way of solving the difficulty would be to clean out the filth. “So it is with our bodies. Our spirits should be patient while in the filthy house, but not content to so remain. There is power that will cleanse, so that a clean spirit need not dwell in an unclean body.”