Health: Sickness & Healing #1

Fred R. Coulter—December 5, 2009

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This afternoon will be a little different than what we would expect in a sermon, from this point of view: We're going to talk about healing, or the lack thereof. We're going to talk about health, or the lack thereof. We're going to talk about time and circumstances, and so forth. Any comments that you have, raise your hand so I can hit the pause button. You can ask your question or comment, then I'll repeat it, and then we'll go on from there. So we can have whatever input you want, and so forth.

Let's first of all realize that in healing there are many, many different things that are involved, especially today. You sit down and you start thinking about what are the causes or the reasons for sickness; that is also categorized in the Bible as sin. Not all sin is spiritual sin. There is a physical sin which you can do, too.

Here's what I have written down. You may some other things that you want to add to it. The reasons for sickness and sin:

• Personal problems
• Personal sins: physical or spiritual
• Satanic or demonic (that can be a problem, too)

In today's world we have the

• Environment

We have the air, the water, the chemicals. That could be expanded out to almost volumes and volumes.

• Food supply

We also have the problem with the food supply. It's processed, chemical additives, have difficulties with that.

• Personal products

There are also personal things that people do, or personal products. You look at makeup that women have and a lot of it really comes from not too good sources. You also have some makeup today which is organic. I suppose that's fine seeing as how I don't wear makeup except a little when I do video, that's about it. You can have chemicals and problems in soaps and shampoos and deodorants and mouthwash.

• Processing of food

You can open up your kitchen cabinet and you can see a lot of things in there that if you start asking, is it food or is it not food. In the processing of food, even in your own home, you can take good food and destroy it, if you cook it with a microwave. Because microwave heats in such a way that the food is really not food and you don't get the nutrients out of it the way that you should

I've heard this several times, so I would assume it is a true report, that a nurse took some blood in these little pouches and in order to heat it up she put it in a microwave for just a little bit, and it was rejected by the person. I even heard one account that the person died.

• Genetically-engineered food

We also have genetically-engineered food. I've heard accounts where someone took some corncobs to give to some chickens and the chickens wouldn't even peck at them because it was engineered food, genetically-modified engineered food.

• Environmental work hazards

So we have all of those things. Then we have these things come into our system. You can also have work environmental hazards. You may work outdoors where there's a lot of smog. You may work in a factory where if you don't wear a mask, you can really get sick. How many have seen the series called Dirty Jobs? Some of that is pretty hilarious, but think about working in a sewer and having to get in and clean out all the gunk. That could present a lot of different things.

• Heredity

Then we have problems with heredity; problems with the third and fourth generation, the 'sins to the third and fourth generation.' I saw a program on, I think it was up in Sweden, where it followed on the grandmother's side every other generation something happened to one of the boys. I forget what it was, but it genetic. So you have that problem.

• Physical weaknesses

Then you have various weaknesses. You also have a difficulty that some people are born blind, some people are born deaf and look at the case with thalidomide babies, they were born without limbs, missing fingers, and things like that, so you have all of those take place.

• Parasites

Then another thing that is not spoken about very much is parasites, worms, and they are very easily contracted. I saw the account the other day on Discovery Channel where a couple six years ago went to Kenya where at Lake Victoria they went swimming in the lake. He picked up the eggs of a parasite and it didn't manifest itself for six years. All of sudden he started coming down with these headaches and got sick and could hardly walk and was vomiting, and all that sort of thing. The doctor at first made a wrong diagnosis—and what I found with parasites, they make the wrong diagnosis. The family doctor makes the wrong diagnosis about ninety-nine percent of the time. When they finally did their investigation and did an MRI, they thought he had a brain tumor right back in the cerebellum. So they went in and took a sample of it, and it was a parasite, a whole nest of parasitical worms in the back of the brain. So they didn't know what to do; they didn't know how to treat it, so they sent to the CDC, gave the information where he had travelled six years previously and then they sent him via the internet various pictures of different parasites. There are literally millions of parasites. They finally found out which one it was, finally treated him, and got rid of it.

It showed other cases where the parasites came in and two cases were because of unclean animals, one eating raw crawfish, and the other was a little child was playing in the playground. Then it came upon the child that it would sleep long every day and then longer and longer every day. It finally got where the baby couldn't—I think it was about eighteen months old—sit up and then the baby couldn't hold itself up. It would just lay back limp. It was losing its sight and they didn't know what to do. They ran all kinds of tests and the original diagnosis by the family doctor was not correct. So they finally hit upon that it must be a parasite.

Well, where did the parasite come from? So they found out the kind of parasite and the parasite came from raccoons. Well, where did the child get something from a raccoon? It was in the park where the child was playing on the ground. How did it get it? The raccoons, in their feces, drop a little feces around and in just one gram of feces the size of your little fingernail, can have 26,000 eggs of these parasites. So the little child going along, picked it up, put it in its mouth, and that's what happened. Another thing, too, with parasites: a lot of people have pets and they have them in the house and they treat them like people. You can get in trouble with that because pets can have parasites.

So you have all of these things, so one thing that we can't always be sure of is the cause of it. But regardless of the cause, some sin, whether done voluntarily, involuntarily, by someone else. For example: How many of you have got the flu? because you came around someone who had the flu and you shook their hand and didn't know it, and you came down with the flu. They didn't know, you didn't know, but you came down with it. So there are many, many different things.

We look into the more difficult diseases that are there, such as diabetes. Now diabetes is a big problem, because of all the genetically-engineered food because of the sugars that we have and because of high fructose corn syrup. Because of all the sodas, all the pops, all the candies, all the things that people eat, plus you throw into it what are called excitotoxins. The two main culprits of excitotoxins are MSG—how many here are allergic to MSG?—and aspartame and artificial sweetening. So a lot of these things can bring problems upon us that we don't even know. Once you begin to study and research, so I recommend that you study and research and get a lot of different books and read about health and diet and supplements and herbs, and different things like that, because that's all important information for us to understand today. In the final analysis, even though we need the help of doctors and different kind of doctors at different times, it's up to us to take care of our bodies. It's up to us to take care of our health.

Then you add on top of that emotional problems, which cause sickness; wrong thoughts, which cause sickness and even can cause diseases such as cancer or other severe things. On healing, it presents a very difficult situation. Please do not equate healing with conversion or healing with salvation. Let's ask a question:

How many thousands did Jesus heal?
How many were converted?

We can take one example that Jesus Himself brought out. Remember the ten blind men? 'Oh, Lord, heal us.' So He healed them and said, 'Go your say, show yourself to the priest.' The Samaritan didn't do it. He came back and fell at Jesus' feet and said, 'Thank you, Lord.' And He said, 'Were not ten healed? Where are the other nine?' They were healed, they retained their sight, but were they converted? No! So don't equate that in terms of salvation or conversion.

Also, because there are difficulties with some sickness and disease and people are not healed, do not equate that with a lack of faith. There may be other circumstances involved. It may be hereditary; it may be something they're totally unaware of; maybe they're trying everything that they can do. Now concerning cancer, there is a book out there called, Outsmart Your Cancer, which is an excellent book. What it does, it covers all the different kinds of natural therapies for cancer. Because not all natural therapies for cancer work for everyone, because you have different metabolisms, your ages are different, the severity of what you have is different. So what may work for one person may not necessarily work for another person. So in putting together this book, I forget the author's name, but it gives twenty-three different natural therapies for cancer.

Then you have another book there, what is it called? German Cancer Therapies. One good thing about the internet today, you can go on the Internet and you can find for cancer, for diabetes, for obesity, for all of these things, you can go online and you can find lots and lots and lots of material to handle it physically. Now, not all things are physical sins, but you need to handle it.

In some cases when you really get deteriorated and you're struggling with a problem and you don't handle it correctly, like I did with my hips. I had a lower back that the chiropractor could not get in and it wouldn't stay in. I couldn't keep going back to him. For awhile there I was going to the chiropractor three days a week and couldn't get it to stay in. And he didn't teach me one single exercise that I could do to strengthen my muscles in my abdomen and in my lower back so I could keep my lower back in. So I wore a wide lower back elastic back brace and I had it on too tightly and it cut off the blood supply to my hips, so my hips went down bone-on-bone. So I've got two artificial hips. You ought to see me when I go through the check out to get on the airline. Beep! Beep! I've gotten used to it. It's almost like that old ad they had on Southwest Airlines, where he was checked out, Beep! Still had to go through, so he went back and took off some more clothes and Beep! Took off some more clothes, and finally it showed him that obviously he was only in his underwear and it still went Beep! So that's kind of where I am with these hips. I even have to tell them when they're waving their wand and they miss the hips, I said, 'It's right here.'

If I didn't have these, just being strictly a physical thing and being my fault, chiropractor's fault, they went down. So I had them replaced. This one here had to be redone a second time and so since then I'm taking care of my hips very carefully, like pure gold, because I don't want any more operations. There are times when you need something like that. Doctors, in accidents, do tremendous things. They can put together the body, they can even do plastic surgery.

I think I mentioned this one time, you've heard of a cleft lip and palate—haven't you? Well, there was such a thing as a cleft face. A doctor put it back together. It took quite a few operations, and so forth. When you saw the picture of this woman that way, you think, 'Oh, how can anything be done with it?' It's like having an axe split right in the front of your face, and how are you going to bring that back together? Well, he did. He did a magnificent job. So even though doctors make mistakes, chiropractors make mistakes, acupuncturists make mistakes, osteopaths make mistakes, because they're all human. You make mistakes with diet, you make mistakes with therapeutic diets, etc, etc. You have successes with them, on the other hand, and so we have to keep all of these things in balance when we are talking about disease and the causes of it.

So let's look at a couple of other things here before we get into it. One comment: There are many cancer cures and you can go to cancertutor.com and you can find a lot about it.

I saw a picture of lung cancer where they went down with a camera and looked in the lung. Do you know what it looked like? Fungus! And cancer, from what I understand, is generally a fungus—is that correct? The comment was made about alkalizing the body, especially with baking soda. I know of people who have done that who have not been healed. There are other causes that need to be addressed as well. So we'll talk about that in a bit.

The comment was made that cancers can come from parasites. True! Hulda Clark's books seem to verify that. Just using innocent things like alcohol-based facial, mouthwash, puts the propyl-alcohol into the system which them facilitates the development of the eggs of parasites. The comment was further elaborated that viruses can cause cancer, that is true. And also the result of vaccinations because of the chemicals and things that they put in there can also lead to a susceptibility to cancer. Also because of the mercury that they put in there and mercury and nickel, those two metals, and lithium, I wonder what we're going to find out with all of these 'green' cars, when you're sitting on lithium batteries and you've got this magnetic field around you from the batteries and everything. I wonder what that is going to do? They also suspect that cell phones may add to brain cancer and things like that, so in this modern life we have a lot of things that come around.

So you can't say, 'Oh, you've got cancer because of this.' Well, you don't know what that person has gone through. You don't know their family heredity. You don't know their family background. You don't know their mental and emotional makeup. Cancer is a very complicated and problematic thing. There is no one silver bullet, which will kill cancer for everybody. Everybody's body has gone through different things.

The comment was made concerning high fructose that one time they paid to have a company come in and eliminate everything in a grocery store on their shelves that had high fructose corn syrup, which then is ethanol really. It took out more than a third of the store and ninety percent of the prepared cereals. Oatmeal with honey and butter and a little cream is the best. So you need to run your own experiments. When they make the corn syrup, it has a lot of fungus in it and traces of that stays in the high fructose corn syrup so you bring the fungus into your system and that demands more sugar to feed it and it's the same way when you take aspartame, since aspartame is a very high powerful protein. When you take aspartame, your body craves carbohydrates and what happens with that? Then you eat more and more carbohydrates and you tend to get bigger and bigger just like with the corn fructose syrup. You develop diabetes even though you are supposedly sugar-free with aspartame. When you take aspartame and artificial sweeteners they become acids in the system, formaldehyde, and wood alcohol. That gets the body all out of balance and paves the way for other sickness. When you do this over a period of years, year after year after year after year, you're steadily taking down your body's resistance and the immune system.

Why do I say that every sickness is a sin? By that I don't mean that you have sinned. That means that a sin has taken place in your body, whether physical, like the man swimming in Lake Victoria just innocently and the parasites entered into his system. That was a physical sin, which manifested itself later. He didn't go out and break the Ten Commandments, necessarily. I don't know what his standing was before God. But nevertheless, all sickness is some kind of sin because a law has been broken—whether it's a physical law or a spiritual law' whether it was done by the individual who came down with the sickness or whether contracted it from someone else, or in the case of parasites from the water or from the food, or from the pet, or whatever.

Question is: How could there be a physical sin associated with the man swimming in Lake Victoria? The curse of the land because of the sins of the people in general. He was there on vacation visiting, so it came upon him which resulted in a sin against his body. You can't say that it was not sin, because it went against the laws of his body, but that is not a spiritual sin unto losing salvation, if he was ever called of God. Physical sin, that's what I'm trying to distinguish. All sickness is sin‑‑physical or spiritual or satanic.

The comment was made: The origin of aspartame was they were developing ant poison to get rid of ants and if you want to get rid of ants in the house, you can sprinkle out some aspartame and that'll take care of them. But they couldn't make enough money selling it as ant killer, so they sold it as people killers. Speaking of high fructose corn syrup and aspartame and soda, let me ask the question. What did the world do before those were invented? They got along without them. So if you don't use them, it's no big sacrifice. The comment was made that many of these things that affect our food lie right at the giant corporations in the world that are making money.

Let's cover some other things then which get into the emotional and mental aspect of things. Addictions—to alcohol, drugs, or prescription drugs; also sexual sins and sexually transmitted diseases, since half of the female population of the young females today have contracted chlamydia. Half! There are going to be some tremendous things coming down in the future because of those sins, because sexually transmitted diseases stay with you and leave an effect with you like a scar. If you cut yourself and it heals, there's a scar. With sexual diseases there's a mental scar, there's an emotional scar, there's a physical scar, and that is compounded with sexually transmitted diseases. So we're going to see in the future, there's going to be a lot, a lot, a lot of problems that are going to happen.

Then you also have problems of lust, obsessions, pornography, fetishes; all of those things enter into mental and emotional things which can lead to sickness and disease or mental disruptions. So our whole modern lifestyle is really, really quite a situation that we have to deal with. Now we know of those who have been fighting cancer. Jim Hyles has done very well; he is cancer free. I think he's 79 now and he's been very diligent with his diet. He's followed various aspects of different diets combined as he's learned how to take care of himself. He's tried to pass that on to others. We know that even a couple brethren right here are suffering from the affliction of cancer and are trying to do what they can do. Also we'll talk about some of the mental and emotional things that tie in that a little later here.

Now let's look at the doctors for just a minute. There are MD's, naturopaths, osteopaths, acupuncture, Chinese herbs. There are also various different things you can do to detoxify the body and all of those together. Healing and overcoming sickness becomes quite a vast subject indeed. So let's see if we can narrow down some of this so we can make some sense out of it, and that we can begin to understand what we need to do.

First of all, let's come to Exodus 15:23 in relationship to God. Let's see the event here. This tells us several things, even associated with God healing us. Then we'll look at Deut, 28, and then you'll understand why all the things that are coming upon us with the sickness and diseases that we have amount to some kind of sin or other, whether it is personal sin, family sin, community sin, national sin, whatever.

Exodus 15:23: "And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah because it was bitter. Therefore, the name of it was called Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, 'What shall we drink?' And he cried to the LORD. And the LORD showed him a tree…. [Now I want you to pay attention to that.] …And when he had cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet..." (vs 23-25). So this tells us there are some physical things that we need to do. This ties in with Psa. 104 where it says that herbs are given for the service of man. So as we see here in Exo. 15:25-27 that God expected them to do something physical. That ties in with the use of herbs (Psa. 104). The waters became sweet. He made a law with them saying that if you diligently do what I ask you to do. Then He will put none of the diseases upon you which He put upon the Egyptians.

Now let's understand something. If you eat genetically-modified foods, you are ingesting sin into your system, physical sin. Now maybe your body will be strong enough to handle it for a while, but when will it come to a tipping point that it won't? So we're kind of stuck. How many foods are out there that are genetically-modified? Too many! You know the tomato sauce you get? Have you ever seen those trucks carrying big high loads of tomatoes to the tomato factory to make into the various tomato products? They're the roma tomatoes; they're very tough. They engineered them to be tough so they could put tons upon each other and not squash them. Now how that affects the tomato, I don't know. But then when they get it, what do they do? They put in high fructose corn syrup, so there you have it.

Just take a pizza. Pizza tastes good—doesn't it? But what do you have? You can have artificial cheese; you can have unclean foods on it; you can have the pizza sauce on it, which has all the things in it that I just mentioned. And it's made with a lot of wheat gluten that is really just something else and hard for the system. And yet you eat it and it tastes so good and it really doesn't do your body that much good. You might as well send the pizza back and eat the cardboard box it came in.

Here's what's wrong with us. Everyone wants the blessings. Everyone wants the blessings in spite of what they do. Deuteronomy 28:1. "And it shall come to pass, if you shall hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD your God to observe and to do all His commandments which I command you today, the LORD your God will set you on high above all nations of the earth." Then all the blessings would come:

• blessings of the land
• blessings of the body
• blessings of the offspring
• blessing of your livestock
• blessing of your basket and store
• you'll be blessed when you come in
• you'll be blessed when you go out
• when you have war (Lev. 26), five of you shall chase a hundred and hundred of you shall chase a thousand.

Let's come here to v 14: "And you shall not go aside from any of the words which I command you today, to the right hand or the left, to go after other gods to serve them…. [Not only other gods, but you can put in there, 'What is the god of the scientists?' Genetically-engineered food, genetically-modified this, modified that.] …And it shall come to pass, if you will not hearken to the voice of the LORD your God to observe and to do all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall be your basket and your store. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body… [genetic inheritance and problems] …and the fruit of your land, the increase of your livestock, and the flocks of your sheep. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. The LORD shall send on you cursing, vexation, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do until you are destroyed, and until you perish quickly because of the wickedness of your doings by which you have forsaken Me" (vs 14-20).

Living in the land where those things are going the way they're going, we suffer secondarily from all of these things—don't we? Yes! So let's look at it this way: Contrary to what people think, there is no such thing as a sin in isolation that does not affect someone else. If it affects you directly, and your attitude changes and everything like this and you sin, it affect everything: it affects your family, it affects you, it affects your children.

Now let's look at one example currently in the news. A famous golfer, Tiger Woods. People never ask the question when his game started going down, what happened to him? Now we know! Did that sin affect the whole family? Yes! Did that sin affect the whole nation? Yes! Always remember: no such thing as a sin in isolation. Did David's sin with Bathsheba affect everything in Israel? Yes! Did it affect his immediate family? Yes! So there we have it. We have all of these things that are upon us.

Let's come here to v 27. Compare that with what we read in Exo. 15. "The LORD will strike you with boils of Egypt, and with the hemorrhoids, and with the scab, and with the itch, of which you cannot be healed. The LORD shall strike you with madness and blindness and astonishment of heart. And you shall grope at noonday, as the blind gropes in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways. And you shall always be pressed down and spoiled forever, and no man shall save you" (vs 27-29). That's what we see happening right here in America today—all of these different diseases.

Let's come here to v 22: "'The LORD shall strike you with lung disease and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew. And they shall pursue you until you perish." That's why it's not healthcare, stupid, it's God. That's what it is! This nation and our people are suffering under tremendous curses. Unless there's some repentance by them, there's not going to be a holding back of it. We need to understand that. A lot of the things that we go through, we are suffering secondarily because of what's going on. Now we can help eliminate as much of that as possible, where especially here in California we can get organic food, we can get organic milk, we can get various things that are not processed.

Obviously this is a vast subject!

(go to the next track)

I have read a book; I'm not quite done with it. It's called A More Excellent Way by Henry Wright. You can get it on amazon.com. He is quite good. He is a Protestant and he falls into the category that we find in Mark 9. Remember when James and John came to Jesus and said, 'Lord, we saw a man casting out demons in your name. Should we stop him?' And Jesus said, 'No, those who are not against us are on our side.' So we need to keep that in mind.

He has a lot of good information concerning overcoming the spiritual roots of disease. He doesn't mention things like parasites, and so forth, which I think he ought to mention because that's quite a thing. I think that he needs to teach the people because he quotes Deut. 28, we need to keep His commandments, statutes, laws and judgments, and on the other hand he doesn't teach Sabbath and he doesn't teach about clean and unclean meats. I would have to say in the case of people like that, sooner or later he's going to come to a crossroad and when he does, then some of the knowledge that he has is going to slip away and some of the healings that he is experiencing will disappear. But nevertheless, he has had quite a good success and he is right in many of the things that he says.

Here's some of the sins that the Bible also talks about and in particularly in the book of Proverbs. These all affect your health and your immune system. Here they are. Here's some of the sins that we hold onto which are emotional and mental, which make us sick and keep us from being healed, both, which he lists as spiritual-rooted diseases. Here they are:

• Rejection

All these things you're going to face, but the question is: how do you handle all of these things. How do you handle rejection? How do you handle fear?

I saw an interview on Huckabee, I think it was Huckabee, by a man who wrote the book Fearless, because he was in the grips of fear, he hated himself, he didn't like life and finally he had to come to the point of view, 'I am not going to live in fear.' So these things don't just necessarily apply to people in the Church, they apply to everybody everywhere. So you think about this. As I go through some of these things, ask yourself the questions:

• Does this apply to me?
• How have I handled it?
• How am I overcoming it?
• Have I repented of it?

And we're going to see another thing: Forgiveness and judging others is vitally important to understand correctly.

• Rejection
• Anger

Paul wrote, 'Be angry and sin not. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath.' Get over your anger. Don't hold it. Get over every one of these things!

• Hatred
• Self-hatred

You don't like yourself, because you don't like the way you look. You compare yourself with others and find you're lacking in this and that or the other. The Bible says those who compare themselves among themselves are not wise. And in women it's manifested especially with makeup, cosmetics, breast implants, etc., etc. With men it is in competition, it is with size of body and muscles and things like this. That can affect a person's attitude. So self-hatred—you must accept yourself for what you are, and what God has made you and called you in whatever weaknesses and deficiencies that you have. Do not be angry and bitter about it. Do not be hateful about yourself concerning it, but rather repent.

• Bitterness
• Unforgiveness

Now God has quite a bit to say about that. We'll see about this in a little bit here.

• Guilt

Guilt is good to lead you to repentance, but going around with a guilty conscience all the time and feeling guilty, inadequate—don't do that. Those things translate into thoughts, which actually create toxic chemicals in your system and can cause sickness. Change your thoughts! Change what's going into your body.

There's another aspect of this, which is true. So your stomach, so your brain! So your brain, so your stomach! They work hand-in-hand. Just like there are neuro-nerves in your heart, there are neuro-nerves in your guts and they work in tandem with your brain, with your thoughts, with your emotions. You need to understand that. God can handle all of these things through repentance and His Spirit. If you're fearful, stop being fearful, because Christ will help you. If you're frustrated, if you're anxious, Jesus said, 'Don't be anxious over anything.' Look at the birds of the field, God feeds them; you're much better than the birds. God will take care of you. God will watch over you. Don't be fearful!

• Anxiety
• Stress

We all have stress. Just living in this world creates stress. Just driving home tonight you may be under quite a bit of stress, especially if you're in a traffic jam. It's not wrong to have stress, but all of these things amount to this: How do you deal with it? How do you handle it?

• Husband/wife relationships

How do you deal with your problems with each other? Do you have resentments? Do you have things in the back of your mind? Do you have sayings to your husband or your wife, 'There you go again,' etc. We're going to see how forgiveness fits into this to take care of every one of these things.

In his book, Henry Wright, he said there are three things which cause spiritual blocks which create diseases in us. That is:

• Separation from God
• Separation from self

That means you're not accepting yourself for what you are. God made you for what you are. He made each one of us for what we are and all of us have individual talents and abilities so we can succeed regardless of who we are or where we are, if we apply ourselves with God's Spirit and His laws and are diligent doing it.

• Separation from others

—by all of the things that I have mentioned here.

Let's come to the reconciliation part of it. Let's come to Matthew 18:21, a very important chapter. "Then Peter came to Him and said, 'Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Until seven times?'…. [Now you can put any name you want there—brother, sister, mother, father, wife, husband, boss, minister, deacon, whatever.] …Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you until seven times, but until seventy times seven'" (vs 21-22).

So in your personal relationships remember this: forgive, forgive, forgive, and FORGIVE!—490 times, if necessary, in one day. Now I don't know of anyone who's going to sin that many times. That's a key. Lack of forgiveness because of jealousy, bitterness, hatred, all of those things are pent up. All of those things cause you to think and react mentally and emotionally and spiritually in certain ways that are going to cause you to have ill health. In some cases even severe diseases.

Now he brought out an example of a woman who had cancer on her face and in talking with her and counseling with her, she had fear and self-hatred. When she repented of that, shortly afterwards, the cancer disappeared. Now I will have to say this: Those who have been in various Churches of God have been abused from the pulpit; have been beat upon by ministers with vitriolic sermons; have been put into fear by the ministers and therefore, you see unfortunately, too many sick people in the Church of God, because they are not taught love, grace, and forgiveness. That's what we need.

Whenever something comes up remember: forgive, forgive, forgive, FORGIVE! Do this: If you're lying in bed and something comes into your mind that you're still holding against someone else and you can't go to sleep, don't waste the time. Get up out of bed, go get on your knees, forgive that person, ask God to help cleanse it from your mind that you have no hatred, no bitterness, no resentment against anyone. Remember this if you think, 'Oh, that's too hard to do.' Remember Jesus when He was dying, hanging on that cross. He said, 'Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing.' You need to get those things reconciled.

You might ask, 'Well, what if this minister did something to me years ago and I don't know where he is. Besides, how can he come to me and repent?' Well, you be ready to forgive; you forgive before God, ask God to cleanse your mind with the washing of the water of the Word, get it out of your mind, out of your emotions, forgive that person. Put them in God's hands and go leave it alone. That's what we need to do with these things.

How many people from past church experience—think of the Catholics who have been abused by priests! Think of those who have committed adultery and fornication and sodomy in various churches. If you've been a victim of it, you go around victimized. How are you ever going to get your mind and your emotions squared around? You have to forgive. 'Oh, I can't forgive.' Well, is it a forgivable sin? Yes! Does God expect you to forgive? Yes! Was it mean? Was it nasty? Was it terrible? Was it dirty? Was it surreptitious? Did it cause mental and emotional problems with you? Yes! Do you want to get over them? Forgive! Put them into God's hands. That's what Jesus said.

Let's also understand as we go along here, He gives a parable of the one who owed ten thousand talents, had nothing to pay with. He was forgiven. Then what happened? He went out and found someone who owed him a hundred silver coins and says, 'Pay me all that you owe me.' What happened? The Lord heard what happened. Then He said, 'I forgave you, but you didn't. So all that you owe me is now due. I'm casting you into prison until you have been there long enough to pay me.'

Now notice, He says here v 32: "Then his lord called him and said to him, 'You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt, because you implored me. Were you not also obligated… [That's the word in the Greek. We have an obligation to whom?

• God
• the person

—right? Yes!] …were you not also obligated to have compassion on your fellow servant, even as I had compassion on you?' And in anger, his lord delivered him up to the tormentors, until he should pay all that he owed to him. Likewise shall My heavenly Father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother's offenses from the heart" (vs 32-35).

So whether it's brother, sister, father, mother, aunt, uncle, minister, deacon—why should you go around and have your life mentally and emotionally tormented because you're constantly fighting this battle in the back of your mind? Every time you see that person, it wells up in you with resentment and bitterness. Or maybe you had a great disappointment in life and was never fulfilled. Maybe that wasn't the will of God. So you have to accept everything the way that it comes. Ask God to help you and bless you and get rid of those things.

Read in the Proverbs. It says, 'Do not keep company with an angry man lest you become like him.' Proverbs says, 'Bitterness is the rottenness of bones.' So you tie jealousy in with that and maybe you can help answer the question: Why do so many women have osteoporosis?—more than men! Because they're more prone to jealousy; they're more prone to bitterness. Besides, why would you want to have all of that baggage hanging around? Can God forgive you for it? Yes! Does He want you to repent of it? Yes! Does He want you to love Him and reconnect with Him that way? Yes! Well, that's the solution.

Now I know you can't take a 300-page book and condense it down into half an hour, what I'm covering here. That surely doesn't cover it all, but what this does this helps give you what we should say then is a spiritual foundation and platform on which to approach many of the problems in your life and many of the relationships that you have with others. And you will be amazed how it will give you relief of mind, peace of mind, and reconnect you to God, to others, and acceptance of yourself as you are. Let God with His Spirit do the changing and healing and improving with you.

All of us are confronted sometimes with long-term problems that are not solved immediately. So what do you do? You pray every day until the answer comes. You pray every day until the solution is presented. Remember the parable which is right here in Matt. 18, too. The one sheep that went astray, went out looking for it, he left the ninety-nine, went out looking for the one, found it and rejoiced. Look at the same way with your problems. Get those big problems, one at a time out of your life through prayer and forgiveness. Forgive the one who offended you, or that you offended, and ask God to forgive you for holding it within. You want God to forgive you all your sins? Absolutely! I do, you do. You want God to help you with all these problems to over come them? Yes!

Then ask yourself the question: Why should I drag this baggage along with me all the time? God wants you to give it up. Think about that! It's going to take a deep repentance in many cases to really accomplish it. Christ paid the penalty. He said, 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,' when they were the ones who crucified Him. None of us have gone through anything like that. Can we not say, 'Father, forgive them,' and mean it from the heart as it says here? Forgive each one their offenses from the heart, not just to verbally say, 'I forgive you,' but just wait until next time. That's not what God wants.

Now I'm sure there are many, many more things I could cover on it. There are books written on sickness and disease and healing. The medical professions are built around it. You have psychological and psychiatric things that the world tries to use to help, but the simplest thing to do is forgive, forgive, forgive. Don't hold grudges; don't hold bitterness; don't hold these things in. Ask God to forgive you for holding onto it. Besides, why would you want to do that anyway? What is it going to serve in your life? What if it makes you sick? What if it brings you down with a serious disease, like this poor woman had with cancer on the face? So anyway, I'll try and cover some more of this when I come down next time, see if we can get a little more into it.

The comment was made: Why do we not have more healings? I think that requires a longer answer than I can give in a few minutes. It can be part of it a lack of faith, part of it a lack of understanding, can be lack of faith on the part of the minister, can be lack of faith on the part of the one being anointed. It can be many different things, so next time I'll cover that.

There were some healings that were taking place. I know of others that didn't. I wouldn't necessarily equate our past church experience to being Philadelphians and now we're not Philadelphians. I would equate it that we're all Laodiceans and the Laodiceans became rich and increased with goods and the lack of faith, so there are many things involved in it. We have had lots and lots of healings. We have had some where there haven't been healings, but always remember this: The ultimate goal of the work that God is doing in us, that we be faithful unto death. That's the ultimate goal! Healing, in the meantime, is needful for continuing to living in the flesh, and so forth. There are many aspects that are connected with it, so I'm glad you asked the question.

Scriptural References:

• Exodus 15:23-25
• Deuteronomy 28:1, 14-20, 27-29, 22
• Matthew 18:21-22, 32-35

Scriptures referenced, not quoted:

• Psalm 104
• Leviticus 26
• Mark 9
• Proverbs

Also referenced:

Books:

• Outsmart Your Cancer by Tanya Pierce
• German Cancer Therapies by Morton Walker
• Hulda Clark's books
• A More Excellent Way by Henry Wright
• Fearless by Max Lucado

FRC:lp
Transcribed: 12-15-09
Formatted: 12-20-09