Greetings! In today’s class, we shall continue our study on health habits, and character.

The Gospel of Health

If there is a God, and if the laws of nature are His, it follows that His desire must be that we know and keep His laws, and it is inevitable that He’d be working to that end. Consequently, if He has a Gospel being proclaimed in the earth, it must include this because these laws of life are an expression of His desires. The Gospel must have within it the “Gospel of Health.”

Miracles And Obedience

Those who seek Heaven to bestow a miracle should do it in a consistent way. They should:

1. Believe and follow the Scriptures.

2. Know and observe the laws of health.

3. Use all possible means as He has specified to aid nature (such as treatment and surgery, if needed), but no poisonous drugs; and then

4. Submit and say, “If the Lord wills.”

Someone may ask, “Why say, if the Lord wills?” Because it may not be His will that everybody recover. If you are surprised, remember that the apostles who healed so many all died at last. It may not be His will that we recover but, it is His will that we keep His laws whether we get a miracle or not. The call to obedience is absolute and is of first importance, because disobedience is disloyalty, and loyalty develops character. Miracles are of relative importance and are given only upon conditions.

Christ’s Miracles

You may ask, “Why then did the Master heal everybody so promiscuously? I answer, “To prove His divinity” (John 20:30, 31). And you ask, “Why not have the miracles now to prove His divinity?”

His divinity is established, we passed that point almost two thousand years ago. You say, “But science questions that.” Yes, I know. You say, “Most of our preachers are Modernists and they question His divinity.” Yes, I know. You say, “Atheism scoffs and there are but few people who believe His divinity.” Yes, I know all that and yet repeat, it is not needed now to prove His divinity for that was accomplished nearly two thousand years ago. as you will see presently.

Christ’s Achievements of Three and a Half Years

Dr. Sherwood Eddy says:

“Men are usually made by their environment, limited by the circumstances of their lives. In some strange way, Jesus transformed and transcended the limitations of His life.

“His race was probably the most hated and persecuted, the most bigoted and provincial in the world. Yet, though a Jew, He becomes the one universal man, uniting Orient and Occident, appealing equally to East and West. In Him there is neither Jews not Gentile, bond nor free, male nor female. He becomes the symbol of unity and university.

“His family was that of a peasant carpenter, yet for all time He gives a new infinite content to the words ‘father,’ ‘son’ and ‘brother.’ He widens the thoughts of the family to a universal communion of love, a commonwealth of mankind.

“Let us note how He transcends His time and place. He had less than three years of public life in which to do His work in the world; less than any other world leader. Socrates taught for some forty years; Plato fifty; Aristotle had a long life and filled libraries with his learning. Jesus seems to outlive time and founded an eternal kingdom. His place was a little, conquered, Jewish province in despised Galilee, as small as an American or English county, yet He embraced the world in His thought and plan.

“He was no moralist, and yet He stands supreme in moral sphere. It is He who creates the world’s highest moral standard. “He was no profession religionist or priest, yet He stands supreme in the realm of religion.

“He was no writer, yet He is more quoted that any other author in history, and His words are repeated to the very ends of the world. They are being read today in a thousand languages and tongues, and form the one universal Book of humanity. No man has ever laid down his life in Africa to translate Aristotle, Kant, or Hegel, nor any other great leader of thought, but hundreds have died to carry the words of Jesus to the ends of the world. More than two hundred languages have been reduced to writing in order to embody His life-giving message.

“He was no architect, yet the Carpenter of Nazareth has somehow become the Master builder of time.” “He was no artist, yet the works of the great master were dedicated to Him.”

“He was no poet, yet He made poetry the possession of the common people. He lends a new rhythm to live and teaches the human heart to sing.” “He was no musician, yet Haydn, Handel, Beethoven, Bach, Wagner, Mendelssohn, often reached their highest in the hymns, symphonies, and oratories in His praise.

“He had no home, yet He creates the Christian family and secures its sanctity and its safety through a new conception of marriage. Before the degeneracy of Greece and Rome, the bestiality of paganism, the sensuality in some of the ethnic religions, and the growing laxity of modern divorce, He holds up the highest ideal conception of marriage, not as legalized licentiousness, but as what ‘God hath joined together.’ It is an original relationship divinely ordained.

“He had no wide human opportunity of culture or travel. He was no versatile Greek nor cosmopolitan Roman, no citizen of Athens, or Alexandria, but lived His life in the isolation of village farmers and fishermen. Yet no one in all history has such strange power or self-identification with all mankind — with the suffering, the poor, the sinful, with little children, with men in all walks of life, in all times, in all nations. All claim Him as theirs, and seek to vindicate their position by appeal to His standards.

“Who then is this? Can we deny that God was in Him in some unique way? Was He a mere village carpenter? Or in truth the Christ of Humanity? As we ask Him, with His judges and persecutors of old, ‘Art Thou the Christ, the Anointed of God?’ He answers clearly and simply, from the depth of His consciousness ‘I AM.’ And as He questions us like Simon Peter, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ are we not contained to reply with Simon, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God‘? As we feel the influence of His life upon us, shall we not rise up as He calls, ‘Come and follow Me’? Not in abstract reasoning or empty theory, but in actual experience, as we seek to follow Jesus’ way of life, we shall find Him indeed the supreme manifestation of God.”

Grab a friend and share the wealth, from what you’ve learned in the School of Health! In our next class, we shall continue our study on, Health Habits & Character. God bless!

Previous Lesson: Part 1, Part 2