The Healing Ministry of Dr. John G. Lake

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God's Way 0f Healing

by John G. Lake

God's way of healing is a person, not a thing. Jesus said. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." And He has ever been revealed to His people in all the ages by the Covenant Name, Jehovah Rophi, or, "I am the Lord that healeth thee," (John 14:6 and Exodus 15:26)

The Lord Jesus Christ is still the healer. He can not change, for "He is the same yesterday, today, and forever," and He is still with us, for He said, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." (Hebrews 13:8 and Matthew 28:20.) Because He is unchangeable, and because He is present, in Spirit, just as when in the flesh. He is the healer of His people.

Divine Healing rests on Christ's Atonement. It was prophesied of Him, "Surely He hath borne our grief, (Hebrew, sicknesses) and carried our sorrows, and with His stripes we are healed," and it is expressly declared that this was fulfilled in His ministry of Healing, which still continues. (Isaiah 53:4,5 Matt. 8:17)

Diseases can never be God's will. It is the Devil's work consequent on sin, and it is impossible for the work of the Devil ever to be the will of God. Christ came to destroy the works of the Devil and when He was on earth He, "healed every sickness and every disease," and all these diseases are expressly declared to have been the "oppression of the Devil." (1 John 3:8 Matt. 4:23 and Acts 10:38.)

The gifts of Healing are permanent. It is expressly declared that the "gifts and callings of God are without repentance,"' and the Gifts of Healing are amongst the nine Gifts of the Spirit to the Church. (Romans 11:29 and 1 Corinthians 12:8 – 11)

There are four modes of Divine Healing. The first is the direct prayer of faith: the second, intercessory prayer of two or more: the third, the anointing of the elders with the prayer of faith; and fourth, the laying on of hands by those who believe, and whom God has prepared and called to that ministry. (Matthew 8:5-13 Matthew 18:19 James 5:14,15 Mark 16:18.)

Multitudes have been healed through faith in Jesus. The writer knows of thousands of cases and has personally laid hands on scores of thousands of persons. Full information can be obtained at the meetings and Healing Rooms, 340 Rookery Bldg. Spokane, Washington. Also at the Masonic Temple meetings each Lord's day at 11 A.M. and 3 P.M. and in many pamphlets which give the experience, in their own words, of many who have been healed in this and other countries.

"Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” You are heartily invited to attend and heat for yourself.

HEALING CONSCIOUSNESS

By: Dr. John G. Lake

Chicago, Illinois

July 16, 1920

I am going into the history of the Old Testament. It is surprising how ignorant people are of the Word of God.

God made a covenant of healing with the children of Israel after they crossed the Red Sea, and they lived under that covenant four hundred and fifty years, unbroken, and there never was an Israelite for four hundred and fifty years, so far as the record goes, except Asia, who ever took one dose of medicine. One backslider went back on God and called the physicians like the heathen did, but the people trusted God, and God alone for four hundred and fifty years, or until Solomon got into polygamy. He went down into Egypt and married Egyptian wives, who brought their heathen physicians with them. Eventually the whole nation had fallen from grace, and gone back again and were taking pills and medicine and dope, just like some Pentecostal heathens do.

Do you want to get on God’s territory? Cut it out. It belongs to the devil and the heathen, and the great big unbelieving world.

When you can see those holy flashes of heavenly flame, once in a while, in a person’s life, as we observe in our Sister Etter, when someone is healed, it is because her consciousness and Christ’s are one. She is fused onto God. I saw a dying, strangling, woman healed in thirty seconds, as Mrs. Etter cast out the demon. The flame of God, the fire of His Spirit, ten seconds of connection with the Almighty Christ at the throne of God, that is the secret.

Oh, I would like to get you in touch with the Son of God for five minutes. I would like to see the streams of God’s lightning come down for ten minutes! I wonder what would take place.

A few months ago I was absent from the city of Spokane, and when I returned we discovered Mrs. Lake was not at home. It was just time to leave for my afternoon service. Just then, someone came in and said, “Your secretary, Mrs. Graham, is in the throes of death, and your wife is with her.” So I hurried down to the place. When I got there the wife of one of my ministers met me at the door and said, “You are too late, she has gone.” And as I stepped in I met the minister coming out of the room. He said, “She has not breathed for a long time.” But as I looked down at that woman, and thought of how God Almighty, three years before, had raised her out of death, after her womb and ovaries and tubes had been removed in operations, and God Almighty had given them back to her, after which she had married and conceived, my heart flamed. I took that woman up off that pillow, and called on God for the lightnings of heaven to blast the power of death and deliver her, and I commanded her to come back and stay, and she came back, after not breathing for twenty three minutes.

We have not yet learned to keep in touch with the power of God. Once in a while our soul rises, and we see the flame of God accomplish this wonder, but beloved, Jesus Christ lived in the presence of God every hour of the day and night. Never a word proceeded from the mouth of Jesus Christ, but that which was God’s Word. “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.”

When you and I are lost in the Son of God, and the fires of Jesus burn in our hearts, like they did in Him, our words will be the words of life and of spirit, and there will be no death in them. But, beloved, we are on the way.

I have read church history because my heart was searching for the truth of God. I have witnessed with my own eyes the most amazing manifestations of psychological power. I knew an East Indian Yogi who volunteered to be buried for three days, and he came up out of that grave well and whole. I saw them put a man in a cataleptic state, and place a stone fifteen inches square on his body, put his feet on one chair and his head on another, and strike that stone with a twenty five pound sledge seven times, until it broke in two. I watched these things, and I said, “These are only on the psychological plane. Beyond that is the Spirit plane and the amazing wonder of the Holy Spirit of God, and if God got hold of my spirit for ten minutes, He could do something ten thousand times greater than that.”

Jesus was the triumphant One. Did you ever stop to think of Jesus at the Throne of God? I like to think of the twentieth century Christ. Not the Jesus that lived in the world two thousand years ago. Not the humiliated Jesus. Not Jesus dying on the cross for my sins, but the glorified, exalted Son of God at the throne of God, who stands declaring, “I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forever more; and have the keys of hell and of death.” Blessed be God!

That is the Christ that breathes His power into your soul and mine, and that is the consciousness that is breathed from heaven in the Holy Ghost when it comes to your heart. Amen.

God purposed that the Christian Church should be the embodiment of the living, blessed Son of God! Christ is living not in one temple, Jesus, but in multitudes of temples, the bodies of those yielded to God in holy consecration. God’s real church, not in name only, but in power. Many members, one in Spirit, one divine structure of divine faith and substance. Man transformed, transfigured, and transmuted into the nature, the glory and the substance of God.

RESULTS OF BELIEVING PRAYER

By: Dr. John G. Lake

February 7, 1923

HEALED OF INSANITY

A woman, holding the infant baby of Mrs. Lloyd McLaughlin, was asked to stand.

Mr. Lake:

This baby is just one month old. When the baby was born the mother was given Twilight Sleep, which resulted in insanity, as it so often does. This church has been praying for the dear woman. On Monday a group of our people went aside to particularly pray for this dear mother. I called them on the phone about five o’clock and asked one of the sisters, “What is the answer from heaven?” She replied, “Well, brother, we have the answer. Our hearts have the victory, and we know the woman is healed.” Yesterday morning the woman awoke, healed! Praise the Lord!

CHILD HELPLESS & DUMB HEALED

There was another case I wanted to present at this time, but the mother is delayed. This dear mother comes from Grangerville, Idaho. Her baby was injured in the birth, due to the child being delivered by instruments. The principle object of instruments these days is the $25.00 extra that is charged. God has had babies born for five thousand years without any of their accursed use. This little one had the usual thing that takes place in such cases; an injury so terrible that the child was never able to walk or speak. Apparently it was a partial detachment of the spinal chord from the brain. The mother testifies that the baby has begun to walk and talk now!

PARALYSIS IN PROCESS OF HEALING

A dear young business man of the city, who has been paralyzed from the neck down for six years is walking now.

HEALED WHEN TOTALLY PARALYZED

Some of you will remember Mr. Kelly who was totally paralyzed from the shoulders down. Himself, his wife, and their new baby, were present in the meeting last night and he testified to his perfect healing.

THE HEALING OF MRS. RAYMOND

We have inquiries regarding Mrs. Raymond, who was dying of tuberculosis, just day before yesterday. She was out for three and a half hours, yesterday, for the first time! Her mother says she is healed! She was delivered from very death!

ANOTHER DELIVERANCE

We have a dear mother in Worcester, Massachusetts. Four years ago her son broke down and went out of his mind. We ministered to him, and the Lord healed him. Recently, almost the same thing has taken place with the daughter. Here is a telegram asking us to pray for her. The daughter is greatly recovered since we prayed for her, but the mother says she still suffers from bad dreams, fear of fire, and fear of death. (Rev. Thompson was asked to present this case to the Lord).

SCRIPTURE READING WITH COMMENTS

Numbers 12: “And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married, and the Lord heard it.”

A great many people lose the blessing that they might have had, by sticking their nose into other people’s affairs. The Lord has been trying, from the very beginning, to get folks to learn this truth. This is one of the most severe lessons in the Word of God on the disadvantage of sticking your nose into other people’s affairs. The Lord somehow succeeds in looking after most people who put their confidence in Him, and regulating them fairly well. You like to be governed by the Spirit of the Lord Himself, and so do I, so we must accord the same privilege to the other party.

“Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.” (verse 3.)

No other man in all history had so many reasons to get puffed up, if he had been puffable. The little fellow puffs up. The big fellow puffs down. No man ever listened to such words as the Lord spoke to Moses. No one was ever dignified by the same commission that God gave to Moses. When God called Moses to His service and sent him to Egypt, He spoke these most startling words to him, “Thou shalt be as God.” He was endowed with all the authority of God, and was sent with the commission to deliver His people from the hands of Pharaoh. His word became the Word of God, his action became the action of God.

“Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.”

Aaron, was the brother, and Miriam, the sister of Moses. When Moses was “called” at the Burning Bush, he began to make excuses because of his slowness of speech, and God gave him his brother Aaron, saying, “He will be thy spokesman unto the people.”

“Behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow. And Aaron looked upon Miriam, and, behold, she was leprous.” (Verse 10)

Some time ago I was called to minister to a leper in the State of Montana, former Senator Willets, who had been in confinement several years. It was the first time since leaving Africa that I had been given a chance to examine a leper with care. So I went with him to his rooms and had him strip. The leprosy was as white as snow. His fingers were dead and swollen three times the normal size. When he would put wood in the fire he would burn his fingers and would not know it. His feet were in the same condition. He wrote me afterward that the first evidence of healing he noticed was in his toes. The color and feeling returned!

“The cloud departed from off the tabernacle; and behold, Miriam became leprous, white as snow; and Aaron looked upon Miriam, and, behold, she was leprous. And Aaron said unto Moses, ‘Alas my Lord I beseech thee, lay not the sin upon us, wherein we have done foolishly, and wherein we have sinned. And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, “Heal her now, 0 God, I beseech thee.”

Moses’ prayer is characteristic of so many of the prayers in the Bible. It is brief. It contains only eight words: “Heal her now, 0 God, I beseech thee.” But with Aaron’s wholehearted confession, the heart of Moses was moved even as the heart of God.

LECTURE ON PRAYER

I want to talk to you a little about this subject of prayer. It seems to me that this prayer of Moses is a wonderful example of that remarkable teaching of Jesus on the subject of faith, in the eleventh chapter of Mark. After the cursing of the fig tree, Jesus utilized the instance to give voice to His marvelous teaching of faith in God. He said, “Verily, verily.” When an oriental used the words, “Verily, verily”, he raised his hand, and it gave it the solemnity of an oath. “With the solemnity, of an oath, I say unto you, What things so ever ye desire, when ye pray, BELIEVE that ye RECEIVE them, and ye shall have them.” Mark 11:23-24)

The Revised Version gives greater force to it. “When ye pray believe that ye HAVE received.” When? Why, bless your soul, “when you pray.”

HEALING OF APPENDICITIS

Mrs. Ferguson, will you kindly stand? (Woman stands) A week ago Saturday, Brother Wiggens, Brother Doogan, Mrs. Lake and I, were just leaving the Healing Rooms on our way to Forest Grove, Oregon, when a gentleman came in and told us of this woman’s suffering and begged us to come. We went, knelt by her bedside, laid hands on the woman, and in one minute the Lord delivered her. I put my fingers into her side, holding the appendix between my fingers, to demonstrate the perfection of the healing.

Observing how the Lord had touched her body, she said, “Brother, I want to give my heart to God.” So we called in her sons, and the other man, a cousin, and our sister gave herself to the Lord. Last Sunday she became a member of the church, and today is present to give a public thanks to God for her salvation and healing.

“When ye pray, believe that ye receive, and ye shall have,” or “believe that ye HAVE received.” You have it: that is what it means.

We used to have a little Englishman in our evangelistic party, who would say to the people when they were praying, “Now let us stop praying for five minutes and BELIEVE God, and see what happens.” It is perfectly amazing the wonderful things that will happen when people believe God.

THE SOUL CRY OF A BROTHER

There is an attitude of faith, an opening of the soul to God, a divine laying hold in the Spirit. I can imagine the soul cry in the prayer of Moses under these circumstances. Miriam, His own sister, now smitten and leprous, white as snow! What were the feelings of his heart? I sometimes have thought that, there is no other circumstance in my own life, that ever called out so much faith in God and determination of soul to see God’s will done, as in the healing of a sister. One of my sisters and I had been chums from our childhood. ,She was a little older that I. ,The vision of the Christ as the Healer was just opened to my soul. She was dying of an issue of blood. My mother called one night and said, “John, if you want to see your sister alive, you must come at once.”

When I arrived my mother said, “You are too late, she is gone.” I stepped to her bedside and laid my hand on her forehead; it was cold and dead. I slipped my hand down over her heart, and the heart had ceased to beat. I picked up a small mirror and held it over her mouth, but, there was no discoloration. The breath was gone. I stood there stunned. Her husband knelt at the foot of the bed weeping and her baby was asleep in a crib on the opposite side of the room. My old father and mother knelt sobbing at the side of the bed. They had seen eight of their children die; she, apparently, was the ninth. My soul was in a storm.

Just a few weeks before, my wife was healed when almost dead. Just a few weeks before my brother had been healed after having been an invalid for twenty-two years. A short time before my older sister with five cancers in the breast, who had been operated on five times and turned away to die, was healed.

As I looked at my sister I said, “God, this not the will of God, and I cannot accept it!” It is the will of the devil and darkness. He that hath the power of death, that is the devil.”

I discovered this fact, that there are times when your spirit lays hold of the spirit of another, and they just cannot get away from you. Somehow, I just felt my spirit lay hold of the spirit of that woman.

I prayed, “Dear Lord, she just cannot go.” I walked up and down for some time. My spirit was crying out for somebody with faith in God that I could call on to help me. That was twenty five years ago when the individual who trusted God for healing was almost insane in the mind of the church and the world. Bless God, it is different now.

That is the advantage of having people who trust God, and walk out on God’s lines, come together, and carry one another’s loads, and form a nucleus in society which has some force for God. I have no confidence or faith in these little efforts that people run after here and there. Most of them go up in a vapor. If you want something done for God and humanity, put your hearts and your hands together and your souls together. Organize your effort.

That baby’s mother, (referring to the baby in the audience), would have not been healed, except that a little nucleus determined to pray until the woman was healed! And they stayed in prayer all day! Monday, at five o’clock, they had the victory. It took them all day! I wish we had spirituality and faith enough to look through the mists and see what was taking place all that day long, until the powers of darkness were dispelled, and the healing came.

As I walked up and down my sister’s room, I could not think of but one man that had faith on this line. That was John Alexander Dowie, six hundred miles away. I went to the phone and called the Western Union, and told them I wanted to get a telegram through to Mr. Dowie, and an answer back as quickly as possible.

I sent this wire:

“My sister has apparently died, but my spirit will not let her go. I believe if you will pray, God will heal her.”

I received this answer back:

“Hold on to God. I am praying. She will live.”

Oh, God, I have said a thousand times, what would it have meant if instead of that telegram of faith I had received one from a weakling preacher who might have said, “I am afraid you are on the wrong track”, or “Brother, you are excited”, or “the days of miracles are past.”

It was the strength of his faith that came over the wire that caused the lightnings of my soul to begin to flash, and while I stood there at the telephone and listened, the very lightnings of God began to flash in my spirit. I prayed, “this thing of hell cannot be, and it will not be. In the name of Jesus Christ, I abolish death and sickness, and she shall live.”

And as I finished praying, I turned my eyes toward the bed, and I saw her eyelids blink. But I was so wrought up I said, “Maybe I deceived myself.” So I stood a little while at the telephone, and the lightnings of God’s Spirit were still flashing from my soul. Presently I observed her husband get up and tip-toe to her head, and I knew he had seen it. I said, “What is it, Peter?” He replied, “I thought I saw her eyelids move.” And just then they moved again. Five days later she came to Father’s home and the Lake family sat down to Christmas dinner, the first time in their life when they were all well.

PERSISTENT PRAYER SOMETIMES NECESSARY

Beloved, it is not our long prayers, but believing God, that gets the answer. However, I want to help somebody who finds persistent prayer a necessity, as we all do sometimes. We have not the least idea, Paul says, of the “powers of darkness” we are praying against.

“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Ephesians 6:12)

And sometimes you have to lay hold of God, and stay before God, and stay through the blackness and through the darkness and through the night of it, until the faith of God penetrates, Bless God, and the work is done.

DANIEL’S EXPERIENCE

Do you remember the experience of Daniel, one of the finest in the Book? He had to hear from Heaven. He fasted and prayed for twenty one days. On the twenty-first day an angel came to him right out of heaven, and the angel said, “Daniel, a man greatly beloved, from the first day thy prayer was heard.” Not the last time you prayed, but the very first.

“0 Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright, for unto thee am I now sent. Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before God, thy words were heard, and I come for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days; but, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, and I remained there with the kings of Persia. Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days.” (Daniel 10:11-14)

Michael is spoken of again as the warrior Angel. He made war against the devil and cast him out of heaven. Get the circumstance. Daniel had prayed, and God heard his prayer and answered it by sending an angel messenger, but the messenger himself was held up on the way by some other power of darkness, until reinforcements came, and God dispatched “Michael” one of the chief angels to his help. I wonder what was necessary to be accomplished in the minds of those interested, before God could answer that prayer? You are praying for somebody, you are praying for your friend, or your brother, or your son, or your daughter who needs your love and faith. Beloved, have you the faith in God to stay and pray until the Spirit has a chance to work out the problem? That is the issue. Keep right down to it. Do not let go. It is the will of God, you have a right to an answer. There is a ministry of intercession that comes from heaven.

Oh, it is prayer by the Spirit of God. It is entering into the prayer spirit of the Holy Ghost. He prays, for you, He prays for me, “with groanings that cannot be uttered.” Our spirit in union with HIS, we enter into oneness of faith, reaching out into the ether of God, and the love of His Spirit, and taking that power into the soul’s desire.

A lot of folks stop when half through. You hold on to God and pray through.

Then, there are times like the one when my sister was restored, when the faith and power of God comes like the lightning flash, and to Moses when he prayed; “Heal her now, 0 God, I beseech thee,” and the healing is instant.

There are times when it’s only your humanity that prays. You know these times yourself, when your soul does not enter into prayer, much less your spirit. There are times when your soul prays. People these days do not even have much conception of the realm of the soul, or psychic. It is a marvelous realm. People pray in the psychic. Then, there is a prayer in the Spirit, that deeper quality of your life, deeper than the psychic or soul. Oh, bless God, there is still a prayer where the spirit of man and the Spirit of God unite and become one.

Now, one can imagine as Moses prayed that day how his soul must have been stirred. Here is his own sister, the woman that had stood by the river side when he was a babe, had put him in a basket, hid him in the bulrushes and watched over his welfare. Don’t you think she was interested in him? Sometimes I have sympathized with Miriam. She had a sisterly and motherly affection for Moses. She wanted to keep him straight. She was afraid he had made a great mistake in his marriage.

Say beloved, you are a father probably, or you are a mother, or a sister or brother, and you have laid hold so tight on the other one, that you are afraid to leave them in the hands of God. That is one of the hardest things folks have to learn, to just take their hands off the other and let God have them. There is no record that God had any quarrel with Moses about his wife.

THE EXPERIENCE OF STEPHEN MERRITT

Stephen Merritt was a godly old undertaker in the city of New York. His dear old wife and himself had lived a godly life. They had raised one son, Charley. Charley would get into some disreputable affair, and the police would come and say, “Charley has done so and so. It will take so much money to get him out of the difficulty.” The next week another would come along with something else, and so it went on and on. And the two old gray heads were praying and pouring out their tears for that boy’s salvation. Stephen Merritt had a habit of receiving people into his office and helping them. John G. Wooley was one that he helped. He handed Wooley five dollars and said, “You meet me at such and such a camp around.” Wooley was a drunkard. He had not been accustomed to being trusted with money, and he met the old man there and found God. One day as he sat in his office he was praying about his son, and the floor was wet with tears, when he heard the voice of God saying, “How long have you been trying to save Charley?”

“So many of us are trying to save Charley, and we have gotten in the way of the Lord.” He replied, “Lord, a long time.”

The Lord said, “Now if you are through, I will undertake.” The old man considered, and it worked out in his soul this way.

The police came and said, “Charley did so and so.” He asked, “Who is Charley?”

“Why he is your son.” “No, I have no son Charley.”

“That day as he knelt there he said, “Lord, he is not my son any more. I give him over to you until he is saved.”

So he told the group, “No, I have no son.” They looked at him and shook their heads. Then they sent another officer. But, it was no use to go to him any more. It looked as if the old man had gone crazy. About nine months passed, and one day an officer came and said, “Charley has jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and finished.”

He wanted the old man to have the river dragged to obtain the body. But he said, “Oh, no, I have no son, Charley. Drag the river if you want to.” So, they dragged the river, but the body they found was not Charleys.

Three months more passed, and one day a clerk said, “There is one of your friends in the office.” And when he came in it was Charley. He was beautifully dressed, clean faced, everything indicating the light of God, and when the old father came in the son fell at his feet, kissed them, and asked his forgiveness. He said in explanation, “Three months ago I was saved in a mission, but I did not want to come and see you until I came as a man.”

THE HUMAN CLUTCH

Not only is it so in your prayers for others, but in your prayers for yourself. Some of you are holding to your sicknesses or difficulty with such a clutch, and are so everlastingly conscious of it that God cannot get it out of your hands. You are in the very place, spiritually, where old Stephen Merritt was. He was so determined to save his boy that he was just doing it himself, and God was not getting a chance. Open your hands, let go of the old difficulty.

I was praying for a woman who had an appendicitis, and as I prayed I saw she was holding on to it mentally so hard. I had to do something. So, I told one of the craziest stories I ever told, and finally she burst out laughing in spite of the pain, and when she got through, the pain was gone. She just opened her clutch.

Maybe you are holding on to sin with that same clutch. Maybe you are holding on to disobedience to God with that same clutch. Maybe it is your sickness. If there is something that is keeping you from being blessed, let clear go and let your hands and heart open.

When I was a boy I used to visit the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, where my home was. One day a sailor, who was up in the masts, lost his balance and shot over the ship into the water. Another sailor stood on the railing of the ship and watched him. He went down and came up, and went down and came up again, and everything was in foam around him. Still the fellow stood there. Then the chap went down the third time, limp, and just as he was disappearing he shot down into the water and came up with him. A couple of gentlemen were standing by and one remarked, “That fellow has taken men out of the water before.” He just waited until all the kick was out of him. Otherwise both might have drowned. A lot of us have to thresh and struggle and fight until the kick is all out of us before we are ready to let God take us.

As a young fellow I was proud as Lucifer. Every Lake I ever knew was. Robert Burns wrote, with his diamond on the window of a Highland Inn, “There’s nothing here by Highland pride, Highland pride and poverty.” It did not make any difference how poor they were. The hardest thing I had to do was to make my surrender to God.

I heard Riley tell the other night of having been a dope fiend, and gambler, and of how God saved him. I never knew anything about that kind of life. Never touched whiskey in my life, never used tobacco, never committed an unholy act in the moral sense, but that proud heart of mine had to struggle like a drowning man until I was ready to say, “Lord, you save me.”

The final consummation came when I knelt behind an old elm tree and poured my heart out to God, and made my surrender to Him. The light of heaven broke into my soul, and I arose from my knees a son of God, and I knew it. Let God have you. Quit sweating, quit wrestling.

About the most difficult class in the world to get healed is Christian Scientists. Why? Because they are working at it so hard. They have been reading so many lessons and concentrating their mind on healing, until they are almost exhausted. You have to lead them away from it all to that place where, “It is not TRY but TRUST.”

That is the secret of Christ’s healing; that is the secret of Christ’s salvation. It is trusting Him for it, and believing Him when He says he will do it, and the mind relaxes and the soul comes to rest. There is a wonderful help in disarming people.

I read a story of Sam Leake. He had become a most notorious drunkard. He bought whiskey and buried it until he filled his whole lot with buried whiskey. It was a mania. Everybody who tried to help him would say, “Leake, just make one promise, that you will not drink any more.” Finally, he went to a woman who was wiser than the others. Before he went out of the room she said, “I want you to promise one thing.”

He said, “I will promise you anything, except that I will not drink whiskey. I’m nearly crazy for a drink now.”

She said, “I want you to promise that every time you feel like taking a drink of whiskey you will do so.”

“Sure I will.”

Do you get the secret of that? She disarmed him right away. The thing he was clutching all the time was the fear that someone was going to make him promise not to drink whiskey.

One morning when he awoke he discovered that the cursed appetite was gone. Say, dear hearts, let go! Open your clutch! Let God take you. Let God have you, whether it is for your spirit, whether it is for your soul, whether it is for your body.

No matter what, just let go. “It is not TRY but TRUST!”

As rowers in a boat turn their backs to the shore, and trust to the man at the helm, whose eye is fixed upon it; so should we proceed in duty through life, turn our back from our anxious cares for the future, and leave the guidance of them all to God, who guides the helm. -- Bowes

We lie to God in prayer if we do not rely upon Him after prayer. -- Swinnock

The nearer the soul is to God, the less its perturbation; as the point nearest the center of a circle is subject to the least motion.

For he that is entered into His rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His. Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest. -- Hebrew 4:10-11 Have you entered that rest?

God bless you!

SCIENCE OF HEALING

By: Dr. John G. Lake,

Chicago 1920

“In Him was life, and life was the light of men.” (John 1:4)

There is a difference between Christianity and philosophy. (I presume some folks are inquiring why it is that there is always that key note in my addresses.)

God gave me the privilege of living in the heart of philosophic South Africa, where we have one million five hundred thousand, who are ministered to by Buddhist, and Brahman priests. Every imaginable cult has its representatives there. I was amazed to discover that the whites were gradually assimilating the philosophy of the East, just as we Westerners are assimilating the philosophy of the East, and have been doing so for a long time.

When you take the philosophies, Christian Science, New Thought, and Unity today and examine them, you discover they are the same old philosophies of India, Egypt and China from time immemorial.

The difference between philosophy and religion, particularly the religion of Jesus Christ, is in the words I have quoted from the Scriptures, “In Him was Life, and the life was the light of men.” Philosophy is light. It is the best light the individual possessed who framed the philosophy. But it is not a LIFE GIVER.

But from the soul of Jesus there breathed holy, living life of God, that comes into the nature of man, quickens him by its power, and by the grace of God he has the life of Jesus in him, eternal life. Many of the ancient philosophies have a marvelous light. One of the Indian philosophies, Bavgad, was written five hundred years before Isaiah. In it they predicted the coming of a Son of God, a Redeemer, who was to come and redeem mankind.

Buddha presented his philosophy five hundred years before Jesus. Pathergoris wrote four thousand years before Jesus Christ. In each one of them you will find many of the teachings of Jesus. The teachings of Jesus were not unique in that they were all new. They were new because they contained something that none of the rest possessed. It was the divine content in the word of Jesus Christ that gave His teachings their distinguishing feature from the other philosophies. That content (element) is the LIFE of God. “In Him was LIFE, and the LIFE was the light of men.”

Beloved, the real Christian, and the real Christian Church, undertakes to bring to mankind the life of the Lord Jesus, knowing that when the LIFE of Jesus comes, the light of civilization and Christianity will follow, but the LIFE is the first thing.

As men traveled from God, and as the world traveled from God, men naturally fell into their own consciousness and soul states, and proceeded in the common way of the world to endeavor to bless the world through LIGHT. But LIGHT never saved a world. Light will never save the world. There must be a divine content from on high that comes to the soul to enrich it and to empower it, to illuminate it, and to glorify it, and more--to deify it! For God’s purpose through Jesus Christ is to deify the natures of men, and thus forever make them like unto, not only in their outward appearance and habits of life, but in nature and substance and content, in spirit and soul and body, LIKE THE SON OF GOD.

Jesus never intended Christians to be an imitation. They were to be bone of His bone, and blood of His blood, and flesh of His flesh, and soul of His soul, and spirit of His Spirit. In this He becomes the Son of God, a and Redeemer forever.

In my youth I took a course in medicine. I never practiced medicine, for I abandoned the whole subject a few months before the time of my graduation, when it came to the piece where diagnosis became the general subject for examination. It was then that I discovered that the whole subject of diagnosis was very largely a matter of guesswork, and it so remains.

Consequently, throughout my life, there has remained in me somewhat of the spirit of investigation. It has never been easy to accept things readily, until my soul stepped out inch by inch and proved them for myself.

When I approached the matter of baptism, I did so with great care, but I approached it as a hungry soul; my heart was hungry for God, and one day the Spirit of the Lord came upon me. God flooded my life and baptized me in His Holy Spirit. Then, began in my heart, a new and powerful working of God, which has gone on for fifteen years, until Christ has become to my soul a divine reality.

Having had former acknowledgment as a medical student, it is still my privilege to attend a medical clinic, which I frequently do. I submitted myself at one time to a series of experiments. It was not sufficient to know that God did things, I had to know HOW God accomplished these things.

So, when I returned from Africa, at one time I visited at the John Hopkins institution, and submitted myself for this series of experiments.

First, they attached to my head an instrument to record the vibrations of the brain. This instruments had an indicator that would mark according to the vibrations of the mind. I began by repeating soothing things, like the Twenty-third Psalm; then I repeated the Thirty-seventh Psalm and then the thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, the ninety-first Psalm; and Paul’s address before Agrippa. Then, I went into secular literature, and I repeated the Charge of the Light Brigade, Poe’s Raven, with a prayer in my heart that somehow God would connect my soul in the Holy Ghost. My difficulty was that while this was going on I could not keep the Spirit from coming upon me, and when I got through with Poe’s Raven, they said, “You are a phenomenon. You have a wider mental range than any human being we have ever seen.” But it was this, that the Spirit of God kept coming upon me in degree, so I could feel the moving of the Spirit within me.

But I prayed in my heart, “Lord God, if you will only let the Spirit of God come like the lightnings of God upon my soul for two seconds, I know something is going to happen that these men never saw before.”

So I closed the last lines. All at once the Spirit of God struck me in a burst of praise and tongues, and the old indicator on the instrument went to the end of the rod and I haven’t the least idea how much further it would have gone if there had been an indicator to record it. The instructors said, “We have never seen anything like it!” I replied, “Brethren, it is the Holy Ghost!”

Now in order to get the force of what I want to tell you in this next experiment is something of the processes of digestion. I want to explain the assimilating power of your nature, your capacity to assimilate God and take the life of God into your being, and keep it in your being. I am not talking to you about what I believe. I am talking about what I know.

For twenty-five years God has kept me so that sickness, nor the devil, were able to touch me, from the day that I saw in the ninety-first Psalm a man’s privilege of entering into God, not only for healing, but HEALTH, and having God and the life of God in every fiber of his being.

Scientists tell us that in a single inch of a man’s skin there are one million five-hundred thousand (1,500,000) cells. They have almost doubled that statement now. But be that as it may, I want you to see that the whole structure of man’s life is one wonderful cellular structure. Your body, your brain, your bone is just one great cellular structure.

In the process of digestion it is something like this. The food we eat is reduced to vegetable lynch before it is absorbed by the body. But no scientist in the world has ever been able to satisfactorily explain what it is that changes the lymph and makes it life. Something happens when it is in the body that changes it to life.

I want to tell you what grew up in my soul, and how I proved the fact. I could feel sometimes in the attitude of prayer, just as you have felt hundreds of times, the impulse of the Spirit moving down through your brain and your person to the end of your fingers just little impulses of God’s presence in your life. And I have said, “If there was an instrument powerful enough I believe men could see the action of the brain cells, and see what took place.

Here is the secret of digestion. When from the spirit of man, and through the spirit of man there is being imparted to every cell of your body waves of light, waves of life. It is the movement of your spirit. Spirit impulses passing from the cortex cells of the brain to the very end of your fingers and toes, to every cell of your body. And when they touch that vegetable lymph it is transformed into life. That is common transmutation.

In the material world you can dissolve zinc and attach a wire, and transmit it to the other end of the wire. They dissolve that zinc, and the battery at the one end, and transmit the zinc to the other end of the wire, where it is deposited. How is it done? There is a process of transmutation. That is what it is called. There is change from one form to another.

My brother, you listen to me, if that is not true in the spiritual world, there is no such thing as divine LIFE. There is no such thing as salvation through the Son of God. For that which is soulish must be transformed by the Spirit of God in us, until it becomes spiritual, until it is of God. Jesus sat with His disciples and ate with them, both bread and fish. He went to the mount and ascended before them to Glory. What happened to the fish and bread that He ate? I tell you there is a transmutation. That which is natural becomes spiritual. That which was natural is changed by the power of God into the life of God, into the nature of God, into the substance of God, into the glory of God.

So when I returned to this country this time, I submitted myself for this experiment. They attached to my head a powerful instrument that could take some kind of picture one after another, in order to see, if possible, what the action of the brain cells would be. Then I repeated things that were soothing and calculated to reduce the action of the cortex cells to their lowest possible action. Then I went on into the scriptures to the better and richer things, until I came to the first of John, and as I began to recite that, and the fires of God began to burn in my heart, presently once again the Spirit of God came upon me, and the man who was at my back touched me. It was a signal to keep that poise until one after another could look through the instrument. And finally when I let go, and the Spirit subsided, they said, “Why man, we cannot understand this thing, but the cortex cells extended so that we can hardly imagine it possible to a human brain.”

Oh, I’ll tell you, when you pray, something is happening in you. It is not a myth. It is the action of God. It is scientific that the almighty God comes into the soul, takes possession of the brain, lives in the cortex cells, and when you will or wish, either consciously or unconsciously, the fire of God, the power of God, that life of God, that nature of God, throbs through your nerves, down through your person into every cell of your being, into every million five-hundred thousand cells in every square inch of your skin, and they are alive with God.

Men have treated the Gospel of Jesus Christ as though it were a sentiment and foolishness. Men who posed as being wise, have scorned the simple things that were taking place every day. But I want to tell you that no dear old mother ever knelt before the Throne of God, and raised her heart to heaven without demonstrating the finest process of the wireless of God that ever was produced.

In these days they are now able to transmit by wireless from six to seven thousand miles -- and even twelve thousand miles recently (1920). Once again they have been able to demonstrate that in one-tenth of a second they can transmit the first section of thought twelve thousand miles. Think of it! There is practically no such thing as time.

Beloved, the very instant your soul moves with your heart cries, that yearning of your soul, it registers in the soul of Jesus Christ, and the answer comes back.

I said to them, Gentlemen, I want you to see one more thing. You go down in your hospital and bring a man who has inflammation in the bone. So they brought up a man with inflammation in the bone. I said, “You take your instrument, and attach it to that fellow’s leg, but you leave enough space to get my hand on his leg you can have it attached on both sides.” So when the thing was all ready, I put my hand on that man’s shin, and I prayed just like Mother Etter prays. No strange prayer, but the cry of my heart to God. I said, “God, kill this devilish business by the power of God, let it live in him, let it move in him.” Then I said, “Gentlemen, what is taking place?” They replied, “Every cell responds.” All there is to it is that the life of God comes back into the part that is afflicted, and right away the blood flows in, and the work is done.

My soul has grown tired long ago of men treating the whole subject of Christianity as though it were child’s play. We have our physical sciences, we have our psychological sciences, the action of the mind, taught in the great schools of the land, but there is something greater. One of these days there is going to be a new chair. It will be the chair of pneumatology--the science of spirit, by which men will undertake to discover the laws of God. And by the grace of God, men shall know that God is alive, and the living Spirit of God is no dream.

In my healing rooms at Spokane, there came one day a dear woman whose name is Lamphear. She is the wife of a merchant in the city. She had fallen down a stairs, causing a prolapses of the bowels and stomach. She had been an invalid for eleven years. On top of that she had become tubercular. On top of that the poor thing developed inflammatory rheumatism, until she was terribly deformed. She was going to die. The doctors said there was nothing they could do for her. They advised that she be taken to Hot Lake, Oregon, and perhaps that would do her some good. So they put her in hot baths there and she suffered just as much as ever. So they thought they would try super-heated baths. They put her in water hotter than any human being had ever been in before. The results was that instead of having any healing effect, the left leg developed an abnormal growth, and it became three inches shorter than the other leg. It is a simple condition of sarcoma. The foot became an inch longer. She came away from the institution worse than when she went. She got as far as Portland, Her parents were living in the Dalles. She wanted to see her parents before she died. Her husband carried her in his arms onto the ship. As he did so, a Pentecostal missionary stepped up and said, “Dear woman, we understand now why God told us to take this boat. The Lord told us last night to take the eight o’clock boat for The Dalles.” He had called up on the telephone and found the fare was $1.80, and as that was all the money they had, they went without their breakfast so as to be able to take the boat.

As she lay crying with her suffering, they said, “When we get to The Dalles, we will pray for you.” (They were timid folks.) Eventually they reached The Dalles and went to a hotel. The two knelt to pray for her. She says as they prayed and put their hands on her knees, their hands became illuminated until they looked like the hands of Jesus, their faces looked like the face of Jesus, and she was afraid. But something happened. The pain went out of her.

Strangely, she retained the tuberculosis and the struggle for breath. The leg remained the same length. When she examined herself, she was surprised that it was not shorter. She said, “Pray again that the Lord may make it the same length as the other”, but the poor missionary was staggered. He said, “Dear Sister, the pain is gone. You be satisfied and give praise to God.

So she went on three and a half years coughing her lungs out and with her leg longer than the other. One day she came to the healing rooms and was ministered to by Mr. Westwood, and she felt relieved. She said, “Mr. Westwood, I saw breath clear down into my stomach.” He said, “I’ll pray for that.” “But,” she said, “the man told me I should be satisfied that the pain was gone.” Mr. Westwood said, “He had not grown up in God yet.” Mr. Westwood put his hands on that lump and prayed, and God Almighty dissolved that lump of bone, and that leg shortened at the rate of one inch a day, and she wears shoes like anyone else.

There is a difference between healing and miracles. Healing is the restoration of diseased tissue, but miracle is a creative action of the Spirit of God in a man’s life. And the salvation of a soul is a divine miracle of God. Every time Christ speaks the word of LIFE to a man’s heart there is a divine creative miracle of God in him, and he is a new man in Christ Jesus.

One day I sat in Los Angeles talking to old father Seymour. I told him of an incident in the life of Elias Letwaba, one of our native preachers, who lived in the native country. I came to his home, and his wife said, “He is not home. A little baby is hurt, and he is over praying for it.” So we went over and got down on our knees and crawled into the native hut. I saw he was kneeling in a corner by the dying child. I said, “Letwaba, it is me. What is the matter with the child?” He told me that it had hurt its neck. I examined it and saw that the baby’s neck is broken, and I said to Letwaba, “Why, Letwaba, the baby’s neck is broken.” I did not have faith for a broken neck, but poor old Letwaba did not know the difference, and I saw he did not understand; but he discerned the spirit of doubt in my soul. I said to myself, “I am not going to interfere with his faith. He will just feel the doubt and all the old traditional things I ever learned, so I will go out” and I did. I went out and sat in another hut and kept on praying. I went to bed at one o’clock at three o’clock Letwaba came in. I said, “Well, Letwaba how about the baby?” He looked at me lovingly and sweetly and said, “Why brother, the baby is all well.” I said, “The baby is well! Take me to the baby at once.” I went to the baby and took the little black thing on my arm, and I came out and prayed, “Lord, take every cursed thing out of my soul that keeps me from believing the Lord Jesus Christ.”

In my meeting in Spokane is a dear man who told us he was dying of Pellagra. He came from Dallas, Texas, to sister Etter’s meetings. Apparently, he died on the train and they laid his body at the station house and covered him with some gunny sacks, but, discovered in the morning he was still alive. So they carried him to Mother Etter’s meetings and she came down off the platform and prayed for him. That man is living, and has been preaching the gospel for seven years at Spokane.

Why, there is more science in the Son of God in five minutes than the ignorant old world ever knew. “In HIM was LIFE, and the LIFE as the light of men.” The LIFE of God is that which the mind of men, and the keenest of them, never knew, and never discovered. “The world through wisdom knew not God.” They could not discern His death nor understand the marvels of His life, until the Lord Jesus came and lived and died and entered into Hades and destroyed the powers of darkness and liberated the souls of men; liberated them from the chains of darkness and came forth into the world to speak God’s word and reveal God’s power and show God’s nature. And by the grace of God, we have been privileged to enter into the nature of Jesus, and the fires of God burn in his soul like they burned in the soul of Jesus. The scientific world has been startled by one of the English scientists who has come forward with a formula for transmuting the grosser metals into gold. It did not work. Years ago this knowledge was known to the world, but somehow it disappeared from the world. Recently men again have attempted to change lead, silver and iron, transmuting them into gold.

Beloved, that is the thing that Jesus Christ has been doing all the time. It is as old as Christianity, and as old as the Son of God. He has been coming to the hearts of men, taking the old base conditions of the nature, and in the mighty action of the Holy Ghost, they have been changed into pure gold of God. If there never was another blessing that came to the world through Pentecost but this one, all the price that men could pay would be as nothing for it. For I want to tell you there has been more real divine researching by the Holy Ghost into the nature of God and the nature of men in these last fifteen years that there ever was in the whole world. When anyone comes to me with the statement that there is nothing in the Holy Ghost but a psychological manifestation, I say, “Brother, sister, come with me and see the gems of God and the beautiful gold that has come out of the dross and the dirty lives, and then you will know.”

In my assembly at Spokane is a dear little woman who was totally blind for nine years. She had little teaching along the line of faith in God. She sat one day with her group of six children to discover that the dirty brute of a husband had abandoned her. A debased human being is capable of things that no beast will do, for a beast will care for its own. You can imagine what that little heart was like. She was broken and bruised and bleeding. She gathered her children around her and began to pray. They were sitting on their front porch. Presently the little one got up and said, “Oh, Mama, there is a man coming up the path, and he looks like Jesus. Oh, Mama, there is blood on His hands and blood on His feet!” And the children were frightened and ran around the corner of the house. After a while the biggest one looked around the corner and said, “Why, Mama, He is laying His hands on your eyes!” And just then her blind eyes opened.

And Beloved, if we could have seen the reason, we would have seen that there were some Christians at Zion City or some other place who were praying the power of God on a hungry world, and Jesus Christ in His search, rushed into her life and sent her forth to praise God and teach the Gospel of Jesus.

I would not have missed my life in Africa for anything. It put me up against some of the real problems. I sat upon the Mount of Sources one night, and I counted eleven hundred native villages within the range of my eyes. I could see the color of the grass on the mountains sixty miles away. I could see the mountains one hundred and fifty miles away. Then I began to figure, and I said, “Within the range of my eyes there lives at least ten million native people. They’ve never heard the name of Jesus. In the whole land there are at least one hundred million people, perhaps two hundred million. They are being born every day at a tremendous rate. Do you know there are more heathen born every day than are Christianized in fifty years? When are we going to catch up by our present method of building schools and teaching them to read? Never! I tell you it will never come that way. It has got to come from heaven by the power of God, by an out pouring of the Holy Ghost.

That is the reason that in my heart I rejoice in the blessed promise. “In the last days,” saith God, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” And every last one of the two hundred million poor black people are going to hear and know of the Lord Jesus Christ. And beloved, I would rather have a place in the kingdom of God to pray that thing into existence, and to pray the power of God upon them, than anything else in the world.

Africa is said to be the first settled country in the world, and we believe it is six thousand years old. Africa has been settled for five thousand years. Two hundred to four hundred million have died every century. Split the difference, and say that three hundred million have died every year for five thousand years.

I began to pray. I said, “Has God no interest in these people, and if He has an interest, why is not something done for them? What is the matter with God?” My heart was breaking under the burden of it. I said, “God, there is an explanation somewhere. What is it, Lord? Tell me about this thing.”

After a while the Spirit said, “The Church which is His Body,” and

I knew that was God’s answer. I said, “Yes, the church should have sent missionaries and built schools and done this and that. “ The Church, which is His body. And I sat and listened to that voice repeat that sentence for a half hour. I said, “My God, my soul begins to see. The Church is the generating power of God in the world; the Church has been negligent in one thing. She has not prayed the power of God out of heaven.”

Then I saw that which has become a conviction in my soul from that day. There never was a soul born to God in the whole earth at any time until some soul in the world got hold of the living Spirit of God and generated that Spirit in saving grace and creative virtue, until it took possession of a soul, no difference if it was a million miles away.

When I try to induce men to forget their little squabbles and little differences and go praying it is because my soul feels the burden of it. Mother Etter has been like a marshal for fifty years. The sick have been healed, people have been converted and blessed. But beloved, when I heard of Brother Brooks shutting himself up night and day to pray the power of God on a world, I said, “That is where she gets her fire; and from where it comes to my soul; that is from where it comes to every other soul.”

Look how beautifully this hall is lighted. Do you know the world lived in darkness for five thousand years and they had no way of lighting a place except by torches. But there was just as much electricity five thousand years ago as there is today. Somebody found how to handle it, discovered the laws that govern it. To this day there is not a man who can tell us what electricity is, or what its substance is. We know we can control it this way and guide it that way, and make it do this and that, but what it is, nobody call tell us. But down somewhere on the river there is a thing that is called a dynamo, and its draws the electricity out of the air, and transmits it over the wires, and these days they are even sending it wireless.

Do you know what prayer it? It is not begging God for this and that. The first thing we have to do is to get you beggars to quit begging until a little faith moves in your souls. PRAYER is God’s divine dynamo. The spirit of man is God’s divine dynamo. When you go to pray, that spirit of yours gets into motion--not ten thousand revolutions or one hundred thousand. The voltage of heaven comes to your heart, and it flows from your hands, it burns into the souls of men, and God Almighty moves on their behalf.

Over in Indiana some years ago was a farmer who used to be a friend of Brother Fockler and myself. His son had been in South America, had a dreadful case of typhoid fever, had no proper nursing and the result was a great fever sore developed until it was seven inches in diameter. The whole abdomen became grown up with proud flesh, one layer on top of another layer, until there were five layers. The nurse would lift up those layers and wash then with an antiseptic to keep the maggots out of it. When he exposed the body for me to pray for him, I had never seen anything like that before. I was shocked. As I went to pray for him, I spread my fingers out over that sore. I prayed, “God, in the name of Jesus Christ, blast this curse of hell and burn it up by the power of God.” Then I took the train and came back. The next day I received a telegram saying, “Lake, the most unusual thing has happened. An hour after you left the whole print of your hand was burned into that thing a quarter of an inch deep, and it is there yet.”

You talk about the voltage of heaven and the power of God. Why, there is lightning in the soul of Jesus. The lightnings of Jesus heal men by its touch, sin dissolves, disease flees when the power of God approaches.

And yet, we are quibbling and wondering if Jesus Christ is big enough for our need. Let’s take the bars down. Let God come into your life. And in the name of Jesus your heart will not be satisfied with an empty Pentecost, but the light of God and the lightnings of Jesus will flood your life. Amen!

THE MINISTRY OF HEALING AND MIRACLES

Divine Healing is Scientific

By: Dr. John G. Lake

Atonement through the grace of God is scientific in its application. Jesus used many methods of healing the sick. All were scientific. Science is the discovery of how God does things.

Jesus laid His hands upon the sick in obedience to the law of contact and transmission. Contact of His hands with the sick one, permitted the Spirit of God in Him to flow into that sick person.

The sick woman who touched His clothes found that the Spirit emanated from His person. She touched the “hem of His garment” and the Spirit flowed into her. She was made whole. This is a scientific process.

Paul, knowing this law, laid his hands upon handkerchiefs and aprons. The Bible says that when they were laid upon the sick, they were healed, and the demons went out of those possessed. Materialists have said this was superstition. It is, however, entirely scientific.

The Spirit of God emanating from Paul transformed the handkerchiefs into “storage batteries” of the Holy Spirit power. When they were laid upon the sick they surcharged the body, and healing was the result. (Read Acts 19:12)

This demonstrates firstly, that the Spirit of God is a tangible substance, a heavenly materiality. Secondly, it is capable of being stored in the substance of cloth, as demonstrated in the garments of Jesus or the handkerchiefs of Paul. Thirdly, it will transmit power from the handkerchiefs to the sick person. Fourthly, its action in the sick man was so powerful, the disease departed. The demonized were also delivered. Fifthly, both the sick and the insane were delivered and healed by this method.

Men received Jesus Christ into their hearts, as one receives a lover. It is an affectionate relationship. Men obey Him because they have received Him affectionately. He has become their soul’s lover.

His love and power in them redeems them from sin and sickness, and eventually, we are promised in His Word, He will redeem us from death also. Redemption from sin, sickness, and death constitutes man’s deliverance from bondage of Satan and his kingdom, and establishes the Kingdom of Heaven.

MY FIRST YEAR IN SPOKANE

By John G. Lake

The first door God opened here, strangely, was a door in what is known as the Church of Truth, a new thought body. Their pastor was formerly a universal preacher. He had seen Christ through Christian Science teaching. He was a hungry soul. He invited me to preach at his church. I said to him, 'my message is not yours. I preach the Christ and Him crucified.'

He replied, "Brother, preach your message, and as much of it as you want to. You are in the hands of the Spirit of God."

After the first sermon, he invited me to take one of the healing rooms in their church, and pray for the sick throughout the week. God gave wonderful healings. The church was mightily moved. It was a new manifestation of the power of God to them. I was invited to teach their weekday classes on the subject of the "Baptism in the Holy Ghost," God showed me four persons in the church at that time who would receive the Baptism. We continued to minister there for about six months, then started our own work, Feb. 1, 1915

The first person from the Church of Truth to receive the Baptism in the Spirit was a lady. She received the Baptism at the first service we conducted in our own hall. At the close of the Sunday morning service the Spirit fell on her, and she was baptized in the presence of the congregation. She told me that five years before, while in great agony of soul, she fell on her knees and cried out for deliverance and light and help, saying "Oh God is there no one anywhere who can bring me the light my soul needs and show me God as my spirit craves?" And the Spirit spoke to her and said, "Yes, in Johannesburg, South Africa." On the day of her baptism and she was under the power of the Spirit, the Lord reminded her that He had fulfilled His promise to her, and that I had come from Johannesburg, South Africa in response to her soul's call and the soul call from others who needed God. Another lady was likewise Baptized in the Spirit. They have been beautiful souls, as also the other two have been.

In connection with our work we maintain the healing rooms, open from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. every day, where the sick and the otherwise needy come for prayer. We also have a hall connected with the healing rooms, where we have our weekday and weeknight meetings. Our Sunday services are held in the Masonic Temple. Sunday school in the morning, preaching at 11 A.M. and the large public service at 3 P.M.

Our work has been characterized with wonderful healings, and many of them.

When I wrote the stories of the wonders God was performing in Africa to America the people largely said., "We do not believe it." Satan tried in many ways to make the world believe it was not fact. But our work here has been under the eye of such competent witnesses of such high character, and so many of them, that Satan no longer can deny the stories of what God has done. The news has reached all the Pacific coast states. People are coming, not the sick only, but teachers, particularly among the Truth people of the coast country, to inquire what it is, and what is the difference, and what do we mean when we talk about the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, and how do you get it?

During the year 1915, 8030 persons were healed. Mr. Westwood ministers with me in the work, and has the adjoining healing room.- Mr. S. P. Fogwill, formerly a deacon of Zion City is also with me. He makes calls from home throughout the city with the Ford car. Usually we minister to one hundred persons per day, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Among the cases of healing are three of recent occurrence, which I want to give you. They are out of the usual order of healings, and in my judgment belong to the class of miracles of creative order.

One is Mrs. Pn., a trained nurse, a graduate of Trinity Hospital, Milwaukee. She was operated upon the generative organs were removed, womb and ovaries in July last. In November she was operated on again for gall stones. After the operation the bile broke loose and flowed from her body in quarts to such an extent that death became imminent. Indeed, during the time she was being prayed for she was passed into a state of coma, apparent death, and for about half an hour there was no evidence of life, and no breath passed her lips. Mr. Westwood was with her. He had been all night. It was about 4 A.M. The Spirit of God took gradual control of her being in such power that she was healed entirely of the gall stone difficulty. Her generative organs re-grew, and last month she became a perfectly normal woman. She is now the matron of our divine healing home.

The second case is that of Miss K., a victim of glandular tuberculosis. She was operated on 26 times, and was treated by 56 different physicians, and finally left to die. One after another abandoned the case. In one of her operations an incision was made in the lower abdomen. This was done in an endeavor to remove a great quantity of pus that had formed in the body. On account of the tubercular state of the flesh the wounds could not heal nor hold stitches. Three times she was opened up and sewed up, but without avail. The consequences was that a normal movement of the bowels could not take place. This condition lasted for six and one half years. While down in the city she fainted on the street. They were about to take her to St. Luke's Hospital for an operation when she became conscious, and she refused to go. She came to our home and spent the night with us. We prayed for her. On the next day, Sunday, as she sat in the tabernacle in the afternoon service while public prayer was being offered, she said it seemed to her as if a hand was placed inside of her abdomen, and another hand on her head. The voice of the Spirit spoke within her soul and said, "You are healed." She arose from her chair, and became perfectly normal.

Number three. Mrs. L, the wife of a main street merchant here, fell downstairs some ten or twelve years ago, which caused a prolapsus of the stomach, bowels, and female organs. She became an invalid. After suffering several years of operations and suffering she was attacked with rheumatics and became a helpless cripple. When the doctors had failed, she was recommended to take bath treatments at Soap Lake one of the hot lakes in Washington, where the water is very hot and very much mineralized. The treatment had this strange effect that the disease left her body and centered entirely in the right leg. A formation of bone, as large as a large orange came on the inside of the right leg and the bone of the leg began to grow until the leg was three inches longer than the other one, and the foot became almost an inch longer than the other one. Her lungs had fallen in through tuberculosis. She was prayed for one day in the healing rooms, and as soon as she went out to get into her car she was amazed to discover that her lungs were raising up, and her chest was filling out. She was perfectly and instantly healed of that.

Later while I prayed for her concerning the lump on her leg, the Spirit came upon her powerfully and she burst into a great perspiration, which ran down her person into her shoes. The leg which was 3 inches longer than the other one at the time, shortened at the rate of an inch a week and in three weeks were perfectly natural and the same length as the other. The foot also shortened in length, and now she wears the same sized shoes on both feet, and her legs are of equal length.

Our work has extended into the country round about. We now have a congregation in Bovill, Idaho, another in Moscow, Idaho, the seat of the State University, and another at Pullman, Wash. where the Washington agricultural schools are located. We have another congregation in the north part of Spokane, aside from the central work.

John G. Lake

Doing Just That

Winchester, Idaho

Winchester Journal of August 24th.

F.J. Hauptman of Winchester is a living example of the power of healing other than that of medicine, Three weeks ago lie went to Spokane encased in steel braces, suffering with an aggravated case of tuberculosis of the spine. He returned Tuesday evening minus the braces, showing an elasticity of step that accorded youth itself, The Lake system of Divine Healing is responsible for Mr. Hauptman's improved condition.

For the past two years Mr. H. has been a sufferer from tuberculosis of the spine. For a period of six months he was confined to his bed, and for the past five months wore braces in order that he might be able to stand on his feet even for a short time. He bad about given up hope of a cure when he was persuaded to try the Lake treatment.

After being in Spokane for six days he discarded his braces and the same day walked a distance of 15 blocks, not experiencing the least fatigue. Since then his recovery has been rapid and he returns home practically a new man.

Mr. Hauptman's recovery may be considered in the light of a miracle. The best medical skills available had failed to bring relief, but by the mere laying on of hands and the expression of faith, in a higher power the ailing man is made strong and an unbounded confidence in the creator made everlasting.

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