When a sick person dies, Christians will sometimes say, “They’ve received the ultimate healing in Heaven.” But is death really the ultimate healing? Learn more in today’s Little Lesson!
If you are regular viewer, you know that for the past several Little Lessons we’ve been talking about themes related to divine healing. If you’ve missed all 20 of those previous lessons and you just happened to find yourself watching this right now, you’ve missed a lot of teaching that would be relevant if you’re looking for healing or if you know somebody who’s looking for healing. You can view the previous Little Lessons about healing in the atonement here and how to know if it’s God’s to heal you here.
A statement that’s often made within Christian circles is when a Christian becomes ill or diseased and everybody prays, because there’s this idea that if we can just get enough people praying, that’s the ticket. But I can tell you from experience and from the Bible, that’s not the ticket.
You know, Jesus never said to anyone whom he healed, “You got enough people praying for you, buddy. You reached the quota, so I’m going to heal you.” You can’t find anything in the Bible like that. “We reached the quota, the prayer quota. Enough people prayed, bombarded heaven. We needed at least 10,000 prayers, and we reached that. Now I’m going to do something.” No. Isn’t it funny how we think that? I don’t know why we think that, trying to get as many people as we can to pray. No. Jesus most often credited people’s faith when it came to healing, and we’ve talked about that over and over again. It’s not numbers of prayers, but it’s the kind of prayer, the prayer of faith. Now, there’s much more to be said about that. In fact, in my next lesson, I’m going to talk about praying for other people to be healed because that’s a very important subject because we probably all know people that we’d love to be healed, and so we’re praying for them.
I want to talk about what is commonly heard in Christian circles, people who are sick or disease and they pray, but they die, and they didn’t get the healing. Then someone will inadvertently say, “Well, they got the ultimate healing. They went to heaven.” Is that true? Well, I’d say yes. In one sense, it certainly is. You know, when you leave your body behind, you’re not sick or diseased anymore. You’re not in your body anymore. You’re in heaven if you’re a believer in Jesus, see. I guess you could call that the ultimate healing. The best thing that could happen to any of us right now personally is that we would die and go to heaven, and that might not be God’s will for us right now. Obviously, it’s not God’s will because he has a purpose for us remaining here, and it’s because he wants us to be a blessing to other people. All right? It’s not your time. You don’t want to go before your time.
That’s one reason. That’s one motivation to want to be healed, because I want to bear more fruit. Once I’m in heaven, I don’t have a chance. I’m no longer in the world with the people that are in darkness, who need the light that I have. I’m up there with all the people in the light, in glory, walking the streets of gold. That’s one reason I want to be healed, so I can stay here and serve others and give God more glory here on this earth. When you die, do you get the ultimate healing? Well, yes. It’s a wonderful thing. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints,” Psalm 116:15. I believe the Bible tells us that at the death of one of God’s people, there is an angel or are angels that escort them to heaven.
It’s a very important thing to God and very precious. It is the ultimate healing. Nevertheless, the will to live is very strong, of course, in every human being. If you’re terminally ill and you’ll say, “Well, I’ll just get the ultimate healing and go to heaven,” okay, but if you’ve watched the last 20 Little Lessons, you know there’s a good reason for Christians to look to the Lord for healing. Again, if faith is a component, which it obviously is, as we’ve discussed over and over again, then it would be certainly better I would think rather than just to say, “Well, I’ll just take the ultimate healing and go to heaven, let this sickness take its course or this disease take its course.” How about just be healed. Right? Then you get more time to serve the Lord here on this earth and glorify his name, and you’ve got a great testimony once you’re healed. Right? Right.
That could even make you all that much more effective in sharing Jesus with other people. Now, someone will say, “Yeah, but the most important thing is forgiveness of sins and not healing.” Well, you’re right. You’re absolutely right. Who would ever argue with that? You know, the body is just a temporary container and the spirit, the soul, we’re talking about eternal things now, and it’s much more important that we believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior and receive eternal life and forgiveness of sins than it is that we receive physical healing for any sickness or illness in our bodies. Then, people say, “We all have to die of something.” Well, that’s what you think. Of course, on every death certificate I guess they put the cause of death or they’re always looking for a reason, “Why’d he die? Well, his heart stopped beating. Well, that’s a heart attack. Well, a blood vessel in his brain burst. Well, that’s a stroke.”
Yeah, we can’t stop death, and I’m not claiming that and, again, I don’t imagine anyone’s claiming that. “The outer man is decaying,” Paul wrote, “The inner man is being renewed day by day.” The outer man, that’s why I’ve got gray hair. See, I don’t have faith to not have gray hair. That’s why I’m wearing reading glasses. I don’t have faith that my eyes are going to be like they were when I was 20 years of age. The outer man decays. I know I’m going to die. Something’s going to probably go wrong in my body, and I pray that it happens quickly, no long protracted illness and so forth.
I’d rather be a believer than a doubter, and I’d rather for God just to say, “You know what, it’s time for you to come home, David. Let’s just stop your body from functioning or let’s just get your spirit out of your body, and your body will cease to work.” Right? Right. You don’t have to have protracted illnesses or an illness to die. You can just slump over, and there are people that do that, and they’re gone. There might be some little malfunction in their body, but it’s not any protracted illness or disease. Well, there’s much more to be said. I got one more thing. I want to talk about praying for healing for other people. It’s an important one and hope you’ll join me for that lesson. God bless you.
