Chapter V — Two Witnesses
IN the long history of the church, subsequent to the apostolic days, there have been many saints who have held and taught physical healing by the alone power of God. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen and Clement proclaimed the fact that the age of miracles had not passed, and that God was still prepared to heal the bodies of sick saints. Augustine, Luther, Melanchthon, Baxter, Bengel, Edward Irving, Bushnell, Grotius, Lavater, Hugh McNeil and Thomas Boys favoured in teaching and practice the doctrine of healing by prayer and faith. Dorothea Trudel, Pastor Blumhardt, Pastor Otto Stockmayer, Pastor Rein and Dr. Cullis are individual Christians whose ministry is associated, by common consent and on the basis of well-authenticated facts, with the divine gift and power of physical healing. And there have been companies of Christians, such as the Moravians and early English Methodists, which have encouraged their members to accept miraculous physical healing as a divinely established truth, and, it may be admitted, "with signs following.
The ministry of the apostles, under the guidance of the Comforter, is the exact facsimile of the Master's. Preaching the kingdom and healing the sick; redemption for the soul and deliverance for the body - these are its great offices and announcements, Certain great promises of the gospel have this double reference to pardon and cure. The commission for the world's evangelization bids its messengers stretch out their hands to the sinner with the message, 'He that believeth shall be saved,' and to 'lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.' The promise by James, concerning the prayer of faith, is that it 'shall save the sick, and if he have committed sins they shall be forgiven him.' Thus this twofold ministry of remission of sins and remission of sickness extends through the days of Christ and that of the apostles.
This promise given in Mark emerges in performance in the Acts of the Apostles. But it is significant and to be carefully observed, that the miraculous gifts are not found exclusively in the hands of the apostles. Stephen and Philip and Barnabas exercised them. These did not belong to the twelve, to that special and separated body of disciples with whom it has been said, that the gifts were intended to remain. It was not Stephen an apostle, but 'Stephen a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost,' 'Stephen full of faith and power' that 'did great wonders and miracles among the people' (Acts 6:5, 8). We in these days cannot be apostles: but we are commanded to be 'filled with the Spirit,' and therefore are at least required and enjoined to have Stephen's qualifications. According to the teaching in Corinthians it is as members of Christ's body and partakers of His Spirit, that we receive these truths.
Dr. Simpson, in The Gospel of Healing, writes as follows:
Man has a twofold nature. He is both a material and a spiritual being. And both natures have been equally affected by the fall. His body is exposed to disease; his soul is corrupted by sin. How blessed, therefore, to find that the complete scheme of redemption includes both natures, and provides for the restoration of physical as well as the renovation of spiritual life! The Redeemer appears among men with His hands stretched out to our misery and need, offering both salvation and healing. He offers Himself to us as a Saviour to the uttermost; His indwelling Spirit the life of our spirit; His resurrection body the life of our mortal flesh.
It would take entirely too long to examine in detail the countless records of His healing power and grace, or tell how He cured the leper, the lame, the blind, the palsied, the impotent, the fever-stricken, all 'that had need of healing'; how He linked sickness so often with sin, and forgave before He spake the restoring word; how He required their own personal touch of appropriating faith, and bade them take the healing by rising up and carrying their bed; how His healing went far beyond His own immediate presence, and reached and saved the centurion's servant and the nobleman's son, and how often He reproved the least question of His willingness to help, and threw the responsibility of man's suffering on his own unbelief.
These and many more such lessons crowd every page of the Master's life, and still reveal to us the secret of claiming His healing power. And what right any one can claim to explain away these miracles as mere types of spiritual healing and blessing, and not as specimens of what He still is ready to do for all who trust Him, is quite inexplicable. Such was Jesus of Nazareth.
Jas. 5:14: 'Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.'
Now, let us notice first who gives this commission. It is James who had authority to say, in summing up the decrees of the Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15:19): 'My sentence is,' - the man who is named first by Paul himself among the pillars of the church (Gal. 2:9).
Again, observe to whom this power is committed. Not the apostles, who are now passing away, not men and women of rare gifts and difficult of access, but the elders, the men most likely to be within reach of every sufferer, the men who are to continue till the end of the age.
Again, notice the time at which this commission is given. Not at the beginning, but at the close of the apostolic age; nor for that generation, but for the one that was just rising, and all the succeeding ages. For, indeed, these New Testament Epistles were not widely circulated in their own age, but were mainly designed 'for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come.'
Again, observe the nature of the ordinance enjoined - 'the prayer of faith,' and the 'anointing with oil in the name of the Lord.' Now, this was manifestly not a medical anointing, for it was not to be applied by a physician, but by an elder, and must, naturally, be the same anointing of which we read (Mark 6:13 and elsewhere), in connection with the healing of disease by the apostles themselves. Any other interpretation would be strained and contrary to the obvious meaning of the custom, as our Lord and His apostles observed it. In the absence of any explanation here to the contrary, we are bound to believe that it was the same - a symbolical religious ordinance expressive of the power of the Holy Ghost, whose peculiar emblem is oil. The Greek Church still retains the ordinance. It is a beautiful symbol of the divine Spirit of life taking possession of the human body, and breathing into it His vital energy.
Peter also states that 'his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree . . . by whose stripes ye were healed.' In His own body He has borne all our bodily liabilities for sin, and our bodies are set free. That one cruel 'stripe' of His - for the word is singular - summed up in it all the aches and pains of a suffering world; and there is no longer need that we should suffer what He has sufficiently borne, Thus our healing becomes a great redemption right, which we simply claim as our purchased inheritance through the blood of His cross.
But there is something higher even than the cross. It is the resurrection of our Lord. There the Gospel of healing finds the fountain of its deepest life. The death of Christ destroys sin - the root of sickness. But it is the life of Jesus which supplies the source of health and life for our redeemed bodies. The body of Christ is the living fountain of all our vital strength. He who came forth from Joseph's tomb, with the new physical life of the resurrection, is the Head of His people for life and immortality.
Not for Himself alone did He receive the power of an endless life, but as our life. God 'gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body.' 'We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.' The risen and ascended One is the fountain of our strength and life. We eat His flesh and drink His blood, and He dwelleth in us and we in Him. As He liveth in the Father, so he that eateth Him shall live by Him. This is the great, the vital, the most precious principle of physical healing in the name of Jesus. It is 'the life also of Jesus manifested in our mortal flesh.'
It follows from this that the physical redemption which Christ brings, is not merely healing, but also life. It is not the readjustment of our life on the old basis, leaving it thenceforward to go like a machine upon the natural plane, but it is the imparting of a new kind of life and strength. Therefore it is as fully within the reach of persons in health as those who are diseased. It is simply a higher kind of life, the turning of life's water into His heavenly wine.
Therefore, it must also be kept by constant abiding in Him, and receiving from Him. It is not a permanent deposit, but a constant dependence, a renewing of the inward man day by day, a strength which comes only as we need it, and continues only while we dwell in Him.'
Few Christians can read such words as these without being strongly and deeply moved by them. They are brave words, in days of moral cowardice; they are uplifting words, in days of spiritual declension; they are revealing words, in days when the person and power of Christ are greatly obscured. No wonder then, that hundreds and thousands of Christians have found in them comfort, hope and even healing. When a dead Christ is made a living One; when a far-away Christ is made a near One; when an impotent Christ is made an allpowerful One, what other results may follow? And these things Dr. Gordon's and Dr. Simpson's words have brought to pass.
Ernest B. Gordon writes of his father as follows:
'There were indications of a coming break, as of a straining beam upon which additional pressure is being constantly placed. His work during the month of January was continuous and intense. One might almost have believed that he was trying to illustrate the proverb. 'The more light a torch gives, the less time it burns.' An idea of his ceaseless activity can be obtained from a mere catalogue of his engagements for the brief two weeks of the sickness which followed. He was to give addresses at Philadelphia, at Newark, at the mid-winter convention of Dr. Cullis's church, at the conference of the Christian Alliance, Boston, at Mount Holyoke College, and two addresses at Rochester, N.Y. This is addition to his church cares at home. 'I must get out from under these burdens for a little,' he would say. Yet when suggestions were offered and plans perfected for rest he could never be induced to stop. His system was thus depleted and prepared for the entrance of the disease which was to prove fatal.
Monday, January 21st, was his last day of service. In the evening he attended the annual meeting of the Industrial Home, and went thence to address the Young Men's Baptist Union on the subject of missions. Never did he speak with more delicate humour, with more captivating grace, with greater earnestness; but the lines were deep on his face, as if the graver overwork had been more active than ever, and those who sat near could clearly see that he was far from well. The next day he was unable to leave his bed. The physician was called and the disease pronounced to be grippe, with tendencies to bronchitis. Then for days did he struggle on as in a blinding storm. The fever became violent and was accompanied with intermittent delirium. Night after night he lay in the agonies of a prolonged insomnia. He complained of 'the ceaseless storm, the incessant noise as of great raindrops on a window-pane,' though all the while the air outside was as still as an Indian summer. He would groan at 'the sudden bursts of blackness' which overwhelmed him 'as if he were felled with a club to the ground.' Often in those night hours could we hear him whispering John Angelus' hymn:
'Jesus, Jesus, visit me; How my soul longs after thee! When, my best, my dearest friend, Shall our separation end?'
For with all the intense physical suffering there went along a sense of isolation and of desertion. On the Wednesday night before his death this feeling seemed to be overpowering. He asked that every one might leave the room that he might be alone and face to face with Jesus. Then followed such a heartrending confession of unworthiness, such an appeal for the presence and companionship of the Saviour, such promises, with strong crying and tears, of renewed consecration, of greater diligence and devotion in God's service, as are rarely heard. It was as if the Gethsemane prayer were again ascending.
The next morning it was clear that he was worse. The long period of sleeplessness was fast wearing him out. Toward evening the doctor, coming in, said in a cheery voice, to rouse him from his lethargy, 'Dr. Gordon, have you a good word for us to-night?' With a clear, full voice he answered, 'Victory!' It was as if, after the typhoon-like sickness, he had passed the last range of breakers and had been given a glimpse of the Eternal City gleaming beyond.
This was his last audible utterance. Between nine and ten in the evening the nurse motioned to his wife that she was wanted. As she bent over him he whispered, 'Maria, pray.' She led in prayer; he scarce followed sentence by sentence, trying at the close to utter a petition for himself; but his strength was not sufficient for articulation. Five minutes after midnight on the morning of February 2nd he fell asleep in Jesus.'
A. E. Thompson writes of Dr. Simpson as follows:
In the following January (1918) he was announced as one of the chief speakers at a Jewish Mission Conference in Chicago, but after the conference had commenced he wired his life-long friend, Mrs. T. C. Rounds, Superintendent of the Chicago Hebrew Mission, who was secretary of the convention, expressing his regrets that he found himself unable to attend, It was a great disappointment, for every one knew that a message for the hour was burning in his heart.
During the rest of the winter he engaged in very little public ministry, and most of his other duties were laid aside. He submitted to urgent solicitation and, accompanied by Mrs. Simpson, spent a few weeks with his friends of other days at Clifton Springs, New York. He did not, as some have suggested, take medical treatment. Dr. Sanders of the
Sanitarium was an old friend and a former attendant at the Tabernacle, and thoroughly understood Dr. Simpson's position.
When the Annual Council of the Christian and Missionary Alliance assembled at Nyack in May, 1918, Dr. Simpson called upon Mr. Ulysses Lewis, Vice-President of the Society, to preside, though he himself attended most of the sessions.
Dr. Simpson had lived, as he tells us in the story of his life crisis, a lonely life. One of the secrets of his success was that he had taken his difficulties directly to the Lord, and even his immediate family knew little of the burdens which he bore from day to day. He attempted to continue to meet the pressure that was upon him during the early months of his physical decline as he had always done. The great adversary, against whose kingdom he had so valiantly warred, attacked him in his weakness and succeeded in casting a cloud over his spirit.
Even yet he did not call his brethren to his spiritual help until one of them, a short time after the Council, asked for the privilege of staying with him at night, at which time the pressure was most severe. For several weeks one or other of the brethren enjoyed what they will ever regard as the unspeakable privilege of this intimate fellowship. He would kneel at his bedside with one who was with him and pour out his heart unto the Lord. After retiring they would lie in sweet communion, quoting the great promises of Scripture and softly singing the hymns which have been endeared to the church, or the yet richer Psalms of David in the old Scottish metrical version, which he, and at least some of these friends, had sung in childhood. When the brother would say, 'Dr. Simpson, you must sleep now,' he would say, 'Yes, yes, but we must have another word of prayer.' By this time that rich consciousness of the indwelling Christ, in which for forty years he had never failed to compose himself for sleep, had returned in some measure to him, and presently he would be sleeping as a child. When he awakened in the morning, addressing the one beside him with the affectionate familiarity of a spiritual father, he would express the hope that he had not disturbed him. Again in 'psalms and hymns and spiritual songs' the day would be begun, till the brother left for his daily duty. So several weeks were passed.
One day two of the brethren, who had been greatly stirred by the Holy Spirit for his complete deliverance, bowed with him in his library. They prayed a prayer into which he earnestly sought to enter with a real Amen. The brethren knew, as did Dr. Simpson, that they wrestled 'not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in heavenly places.' Presently they knew that victory had been given, but they longed and hoped that it also might mean perfect physical deliverance. Before they rose from their knees he said, 'Boys, I do not seem to be able to take quite all that you have asked. You seem to have outstripped me - but Jesus is so real'; and he began to talk to his Lord as only a man who has known the intimate love-life of the Man in the Glory can do.
Just before the Annual Council in May he suffered a slight stroke of paralysis, which prevented him and Mrs. Simpson from going to Toccoa where the Council was held that year; but he recovered so rapidly that none of the brethren was detained at Nyack. He sent this telegram to the Council: 'Beloved brethren assembled in Council at Toccoa: I regret not being able to meet you this year to look over the blessing of the year gone by. Although turmoil and strife have ruled the world, God has held us by His mighty hand from the many trials and evils which have surrounded us. Blessing has been poured out upon the work and the workers as they have been guided by Him. We praise His name forever. My prayer is that God will rule this blessed work which was begun in sacrifice and consecration to Him, for the spreading of the gospel into all lands. I hope soon to meet you all again as He will. My text today is John 11:4 - "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God." We are with you in spirit if not in body.'
On Tuesday, October 28th, he spent the morning on his verandah and received a visit from Judge Clark, of Jamaica, conversing freely, and praying fervently for Rev, and Mrs. George H. A. McClare, our Alliance missionaries in Jamaica, and for the missionaries in other fields, who were always in his mind. After the Judge left him he suddenly lost consciousness and was carried to his room. His daughter Margaret and a little group of friends watched by the bedside with Mrs. Simpson till his great spirit took leave of his worn out body and returned to God that gave it, early on Wednesday morning, October 29th, 1919.