Holy writ teaches of three paths to being healed from that which prevents us from being whole. The first is when a person exercises great faith and is firm of mind in every form of Godliness. Such a person can lay hold upon the gift to be healed. The second is to ask someone who has the gift to heal if they will give to you a healing blessing. Along with this path is a subcategory of those who unite their faith and prayers in behalf of you or another. The third path is one of using the great gifts God has placed upon this earth to help strengthen the mortal tabernacle. Holy writ teaches that herbs and mild foods are to be used to strengthen the body in times of weakness, to thereby better enable the body's healing processes.

A subcategory of this pathway includes using any appropriate gifts such as those offered by the various healing modalities of conventional and alternative medicine. But in all of these things we are to let God's Spirit guide us and not the fear of man. King Asa, a nearly perfect man in the Old Testament, died from a sore disease in his feet when he exercised his agency to trust his physicians more than God. God will allow us to do whatsoever we choose, and if we do not humble ourselves before him sufficient to get and receive answers from him, and choose to follow man's wisdom over his, then the outcomes of our choosing lessor wisdom are just, whatsoever they may be, including the outcome King Asa experienced for choosing lessor wisdom. Just because he was nearly perfect, he was not exempt from the consequences of choosing a path that could not heal him. Therefore, we must be wise.

When exercising healing gifts whether it be the gift to heal or the gift to be healed, it is the spirit of God who distributes the power by which healing occurs. He does so according to his perfect wisdom, mercy, truth, justice, and judgment in our behalf, or in other words, according to that which will best help us to progress eternally to become like God. He never extends to us beyond that which is for our best good.

The question has been asked, “Didn't Christ heal everyone and shouldn't those who have the gift to heal do the same?” We often speak in terms of using our gifts of the spirit to do this or that, when in reality the Spirit possesses us (dwells in us) and only if we are worthy. The best that disciples of Christ can do, as they exercise gifts of healing, is to pray to God, in the name of the Son, with words that are uttered by the power of the Holy Ghost.

The Holy Ghost determines the result of such prayers and blessings. As we pray to God in the name of the Son, Jesus is our advocate to the Father who asks for mercy in our behalf, which he can do  because he satisfied the demands of justice in our behalves through his atoning sacrifice for us. As we pray to the Father with faith in his Son, Jesus becomes our advocate and pleads our cause with the Father. And only because Christ has met the demands of justice in our behalf is the Father able to then send to us the Holy Ghost, who then does God's will in our behalf, which mercy again could not be extended were it not for the sacrifice of God's only begotten Son.

And under the direction of the Father the Holy Ghost then blesses us according to his perfect wisdom, mercy, truth, justice, and judgment. When through the merits of Christ's atonement, God and the Holy Spirit sovereignly choose to heal a person, then and only then will such a person be healed. The gift of healing is not something we own like a toy. God alone determines to whom he will extend his power to be healed. According to God's wisdom some people are healed instantaneously, and some gradually, and some not at all; but all who come to God in faith, be it in personal prayer, or through the prayers, faith, and authority of others, experience God’s love and grace.

But, the timing and nature of God’s healing work is always his sovereign choice, and he chooses perfectly in our behalf. For example, numerous times, Peter walked through the Temple gate and passed a crippled beggar, but on one particular day Peter was filled with God's power for the glory of God came upon him. Peter touched the broken man and he stood up and walked (see Acts 3:5). 

No doubt other sick people were also begging at that very gate on that very day, but God, who judges each of us perfectly, chose to heal only that one man on that particular day.  Not many years ago, a man who had been dead for three days received a healing blessing under the hand of a humble and chosen vessel of the Lord. This occurred in a local hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. The words uttered were exceedingly simple, but God's power or glory rested upon the man who was giving the blessing and although the words were simple and brief, with God's power that attended the blessing, the words were sufficient that the dead man was healed immediately and rose from his deathbed.

A sister of the dead man, who was hundreds of miles away and who could not fly out to be with her dying brother, and who also knew he had been dead three days, called on the telephone the moment the healing occurred and asked to speak to her healed brother. By the same Spirit that healed her brother she received "knowledge" that her brother was made alive again. 

Some have suggested that Jesus always healed everyone who came to him in faith, and that those who possess the gift to heal ought to therefore do similarly. However, this assumption is untrue; in John chapter five, Jesus visits the Pool of Bethesda where crowds of sick people laid—blind, lame, or paralyzed—each laid on the porches. Of the many who laid there afflicted on that day, an invalid who had lain there thirty-eighty years was the only one that was healed by Jesus.

There is no indication that anyone else was healed at that location on that day.  Jesus said of his experience, “I assure you, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does” (John 5:19). The Father, by his sovereign choice and his wisdom, mercy, truth, and justice, only chose to heal the one person on that day. We need to learn that as we come with unwavering faith before God, our faith is not directed toward a specific outcome, but toward our knowledge that all that God chooses to do in such moments will always be for the best good of the recipient of that blessing, and for the best good of those who witness the event. Therefore words uttered to God in the name of the Son, must be uttered only according to the Spirit. Any other words or prayers are vain.

Both ancient and living prophets who have received the authority and power from God to do all things Christ did and greater, similarly act as the Son. They act only according to God's will and do not go about raising all the dead and healing all the sick. All that they do is according to God's perfect wisdom, mercy, truth, justice, and judgment. This is the pattern of all holy men and should be the pattern that we also follow in our prayers and administrations to the sick. 

My great, great, great grandfather, who had been a seaman from his early youth until just over 20 years old, had never known God. He grew up in Scotland where he had been taught as a boy that God punishes naughty boys like him and sends them to eternal burnings where they suffer forever. The rod was not spared upon this young man and he was often beaten. He assumed that those who beat him were much like the mean God spoken of by the minsters of religion and he wanted nothing to do with God or them.

In fact, it was to avoid a beating that he first ran away from home and stowed away on a ship, where he then lived for many months as the captain's boy before returning home to Scotland. On his return visits to home he never stayed long upon the land and would return to sea within weeks of coming home. 

On one return trip to Scotland he was taught by missionaries of a loving God who worked only to bless the lives of his children, and that the bad that occurred in life is part of opposition to the ways of light that we experience here on earth, that we may come to know the bitter from the sweet. He was able to witness these missionaries blessing and healing others through God's power, a portion of which was extended to them as they went about doing good, according to the will of the Master.

My great, great, great grandfather was amazed by what he was taught and witnessed regarding this loving God whose only objective is to help each of us progress eternally according to our desires and willingness. He learned that he is not a God of compulsion, but allows us to exercise our agency to either believe in him and to follow him in faith, or to disbelieve and to do our own will in all things.

For the first time in his life he came to love God and believe in him. The God taught to him by these missionaries was a God he wished to devote his whole life and soul to. Not long afterwards he returned to the sea and took a voyage to China. He thought much about God during the many long hours at sea and spoke of God's love to shipmates, and even helped a preacher who was traveling on the ship to better understand the true nature of our living God.

But on that trip he and several of his shipmates were taken by consumption and became very ill, nigh unto death. Those who were sick were left ashore in China in the hands of a doctor, but no hope was given that my great, great, great grandfather would survive. It was expected that he would live at most a few days before passing. While he lay dying he felt a desire to go to the sea one more time for one last look; he received the strength to do so. When he arrived at the harbor he felt a desire within him to board a ship one last time; he received the strength to do so and boarded an empty ship that lay in the harbor. He then felt a desire to ascend into the crows-nest of the ship one last time; with great struggle he managed to do so and there in the crow's nest he looked out upon his beloved sea one last time.

He then paused and looked heavenward and prayed for the first time in his life. He said, "Oh God, I have fought, swore, and drunk much in my lifetime, but I've never been a truly mean or bad man. I'm dying and there are no missionaries here to heal me by your power. But I figure that if you are strong enough to heal me through them, then you have the power to do so all by yourself. If there is anything you want me to do before I die and you can make it known to me, I promise that to the best of my ability I will do it. But I am dying and will not be able to do anything you might want me to do unless you choose to heal me. If my life is meant to be over, then I gladly come back to you, the only God whom I have ever loved or believed in. If there is more you want me to do, then I ask you to heal me and make known to me what it is you want me to do so that I may do it." 

God judged the intent of his heart to be real. He knew the young man desired more than anything to trust himself to do God's will, whatever it might be. And God in that very moment sent his power from heaven through his spirit to fall upon the man. A great pain passed up through his chest and out of his body. He was healed of consumption in that very moment.

He lived another 70+ years without ever experiencing sickness again or the ill effects of consumption, something unheard of in his day. Rather, he was given great strength and physical endurance, and the means necessary to take his family and extended family to America to help settle Utah. And because of his great knowledge regarding men who were of the rougher element, he was asked to be the main foreman of all the construction of railroads, damns, canals, civic buildings, and virtually all outdoor contracts in Utah.

From his years of working among the roughest elements of men, he had learned a way to influence all men that they gladly followed him. God was able to use him to do work that needed to be done. God judged his intent, his need, his willingness and capacity and healed him instantaneously. God also gave him an endowment of strength that enabled him to do much good in his lifetime and to live long.

Perhaps what is most valuable about this true story is that it teaches about the gift to be healed. When we exercise great faith in God's perfect wisdom, mercy, truth, justice, and judgement in our behalf, and when we are firm of mind to do God's will in all things, then we put ourselves in a position wherein God can extend great power to us. In such moments, we receive exactly that which will best enables us to do his will and to become more like him.

1. We are to exercise great faith and be firm of mind in every form of Godliness that we may lay hold upon the gift to be healed. To study the various forms of Godliness, see Doctrine 1 in A Tabernacle of God.
2. We are to use mild herbs and foods with judgement, prudence, and wisdom. Consider God's seven counsels and promises regarding that which we are to consume.
3. We may also request the faith of others to operate in our behalf. And as we petition the Lord's blessings and healing power we are to do so with unwavering faith that he will proportion his healing power to us according to his perfect wisdom, mercy, truth, justice, and judgment, or according to that which will enable our greatest good.  

The Straight and Narrow Way

There are many paths that we can follow in life, but only one path leads to Eternal Life. The Lord instructs us concerning how we are to “preach,” “learn,” and walk in the ways of truth. He teaches us how to receive light and to continue in God to receive more light until that light becomes perfect within us. He also teaches us how to chase darkness away from us, and how to not enter into the broad way and the false paths that do not lead to Eternal Life. What has he taught?

There are many false spirits that have gone forth in the earth deceiving the world. Satan seeks to deceive and prevent us from walking in the straight and narrow way. Deceivers are those who have been overcome by the world and they include both hypocrites in and out of the church who give the adversary power over many. God will bring deceivers to judgement, and those who have been deceived will be reclaimed, while the deceivers shall be detected and cut off, either in life or death, for they are overcome by the world.

We must all be aware lest we do that which is not in truth and righteousness before God. And what is it we are to do? We are to preach the gospel by the Spirit, even the Comforter which was sent forth to teach the truth. We are not to receive spirits we cannot understand, or receive them to be of God, but we are to preach and receive truth by the Spirit of truth alone. This is the straight and narrow way and there is no other way. False spirits that seek to deceive lead men into the broad paths of destruction, which paths are many.

Being led by any spirit other than the Spirit of truth or the Comforter leads us out of the way of Eternal Life. By comparison, he that receiveth the word by the Spirit of truth receiveth it as it is preached by the Spirit of truth. And he that preacheth and he that receiveth, understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together. And that which does not edify is not of God, and is darkness. That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day.

All who are ordained of God, and who have become purified and clean, are appointed to be the greatest, notwithstanding they are the least and the servants of all. They are the possessors of all things; for all things are subject unto them, both in heaven and on the earth, the life and the light, the Spirit and the power, sent forth by the will of the Father through Jesus Christ, his Son. They shall ask whatsoever they will in the name of Jesus and it shall be done. But, it shall be given to such to know what they should ask; and as they are appointed to the head, the spirits shall be subject unto them. (consider this as a healer).

Therefore, only through the Spirit of truth are you led in the straight and narrow way or the pathway to Eternal Life, and that which you receive by any other spirit will lead you into darkness. Go forward then, from grace to grace, and as the Father and Christ are one, inasmuch as you receive the Lord, you are in him and he is in you. He is in your midst, and is the good shepherd and the stone of Israel. And if you build upon this rock, you shall never fall. And the day cometh that you will hear his voice, see him, and know that he is. Watch, therefore, that you may be ready. Even so Amen. 

Why have we included such a section on this website? It is because all who walk in this path, by this path's very nature, will be led to become healers. As you walk in the way, or the one and only true path, by the very nature of this pathway you will become a healer. To further explore the doctrines of Christ by which anyone may become a healer, and may come into the presence of the Lord to see his face, carefully ponder the booklet, A Tabernacle of God. This booklet helps to understand how to lay hold upon these sacred gifts. The requirement is that you become of great faith and that you are firm in every form of Godliness. Such receive ministering angels and may ask for and receive the various gifts of God, including the healing gifts.

This new page of our website is dedicated to explore the three manners of healing, or in other words, the gift to be healed, the gift to heal, and the use of the many physical gifts God has placed upon this earth, such as herbs, mild foods, traditional and alternative medicinal modalities, each of which serve in one way or another to strengthen the body and lead it to be made whole.

As all of God's gifts are free, we hope that many of you will share your knowledge and gifts freely with others on this site, that all may be edified and blessed together. What follows below is just the beginning of a Table of Contents to future possible site content (videos, articles, pdf books, and so forth) that will help to more broadly enable the various healing gifts. Please list in the comments section below healing topics you would like to see included. Also let us know of your personal gifts or those of others who may help to build this forum. 

Table of Contents

1. See Gentle Remedies for Healing the Digestive Tract Here (coming soon).
2. Natural Cleansing of the Body
3. Probiotic foods; how to make them and what they each do.
4. The power of love, where it comes from, and how to feast upon it always.
5. The power of going about doing good continually.
6. Add Your thoughts to the comments section below...