Are you sick?

Do you know anyone who is sick?

How are you processing that fact? Do you believe that, as concerns the Lord, we are essentially “on our own” in respect of sickness, apart from throwing up a prayer or two hoping to somehow get God’s attention?

For what hope have we got to be healed, many of us think, when, for example, our beloved Aunt Martha, who was a saint if there ever was one, died so quickly once her cancer was diagnosed?

Ever thought this way? Or do you secretly resent God because you believe He is holding back in respect of healing?

If so, please read on.

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Words I received from the Lord in a brief dream  on 10/21/19: “You are healed by the removal of the tree.”  As I heard these words, an obvious riddle (See Numbers 12:1-7), I was given a very foreboding picture of a large, dark, gray, gnarly, leafless, deathly old oak tree.

I believe the tree I saw to be the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, as it really is, not as seen by Adam and Eve in the Garden. It is the Tree of Sin and Death, not Life. It is the family tree of Adam.

Notice that since, according to the words of the Spirit, we “are healed by the removal of the tree”, a believer’s healing has been legally accomplished, past tense. This is because scripture makes plain that all believers, as offspring of Adam, have been severed from the family tree of Adam, the Tree of Sin and Death, and joined to Christ – the Tree of Life.

In other words, adopting the riddle employed by the Spirit, the Tree of Death has been removed from each of us. The Father then grafted us into Christ. We’ve been transferred out of the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of God’s dear Son (Col. 1:13).

In God’s Kingdom, where God rules, there is no sin, and therefore no sickness, for sickness and death came in through Adam’s sin. (Rom. 5:12) Sickness, however, is a primary feature of Satan’s domain of darkness.  We may think of sin, with sickness as its fruit, as the sap that courses through the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Since believers are no longer a branch of that tree, sickness should have no hold on us,… right?

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Brief Healing Theology Discussion

Humans were created to be a temple of God – a home for God’s spirit. (1 Pe. 2:1-4; 1 Cor. 6:19) Unfortunately, when Adam rebelled against God and joined up with Satan in his rebellion against God in Genesis 3, man became a slave of sin – a home instead for Satan and his demonic horde, utterly contrary to God’s purpose, to the Lord’s great dishonor. (Rom. 6:16-17; Eph. 2:1-3)

Each of Adam’s offspring – you and me and everyone else, was born into this world as a branch of the Tree which I saw in my dream – the Tree of Adam, a Tree of Sin and Death. All sickness is a subset of death, and, as stated above, we know that death came in to the human lineage through Adam’s sin (Rom. 5:12). All sickness is therefore a “fruit” of the Tree of Adam. A tree bears fruit strictly in accordance with its nature. A good tree bears good fruit, and a bad tree bears bad fruit. (Luke 6:43)

And sin, when fully grown, brings forth death. (James 1:15) For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. (Rom. 7:5)

After the events of Genesis 3, there seemed to be no legal way for God to free man, the slave, from Satan, the slave master, and his domain of darkness (Col. 1:13). You cannot educate a man out of slavery; you will simply end up with an educated slave. The slave nature, the defect in man, is the innermost part of the sons of Adam.

“Can a leopard change his spots”, the Lord asked Jeremiah (Jer. 13:23). Since we were born as slaves, our identity as slaves to Satan was set, because identity is set at birth in both the natural and the spiritual realms. The only way to get a new spiritual identity is to die out of the old spiritual slave life and undergo a new spiritual birth establishing a new spiritual identity as a free man – i.e., a brand new creation. (See 2 Cor. 5:17; Rom. 6:3-11; Rom. 7:1-6)

Thus, returning to our metaphor of the tree and the branches, for this new birth, this conversion to take place, the branch must first be separated from the old Tree of Adam and then be grafted (Rom. 11:17-24) onto the new tree, the Tree of Life – Jesus of Nazareth, ‘the second man’ or ‘the last Adam’. (1 Cor. 15:45-47)

The Father did this for each of us us when we came to Christ and believed.

The sap, then, from the Tree of Life, as long as it flows freely to the branch, causes the nature of the grafted branch over time to conform to the nature of the Tree of Life and begin to bear fruit consistent with the nature of that tree. Recall that we are each ‘predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.’ (Rom. 8:31)

In saying to me that “you are healed by the removal of the tree”, the Lord is communicating the fundamental requirement that a person/branch must first be separated from the Tree of Adam to cut off the deadly sap of sin, for ‘the sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law’ (1 Cor. 15:56).

In other words, the Curse of the Law is that it arouses sin in our flesh which results in our violating the Law, and we know from Deuteronomy 28 that one of the most severe ramifications of the Curse from violating the Law is ‘every disease’ on earth. See Deut. 28:58-63.

Did you get that? According to the Word, ‘every disease’ on earth is part of the Curse on mankind for its disobedience to the Law of God.

But praise God, for Galatians 3:13 tells us that ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us…’. Therefore, once we come to Christ and are born again through Him, we are no longer under the Curse of the Law which produced sickness in us. We have been transferred out of Satan’s domain of darkness, where sickness is a pillar of his oppression, and been transferred into the Kingdom of God’s Dear Son, where God rules and there is no sickness. (Col. 1:13; Luke 11:20)

Thus, for the last 2000 years, Satan has had no more legal right through Adam to put sickness on us! All sickness through Adam is now and has been illegal for believers. Satan’s oppression is unjust for those no longer in his jurisdiction! And that is every believer, for we have been removed from the Tree of Adam and joined to the Tree of Christ!

[Note: Satan can still oppress us with sickness on the basis of any agreements either we or our ancestors have made with him. This is why the use of Renunciations to break agreements is so crucial to successful healing ministry. “Agreements” means any words or actions engaged in by us or our ancestors (sins, unbelief, incorrect theology, ancestral witchcraft) which are binding upon us – i.e., they give legal rights to Satan to our life.]

When we see it in this light, the Gospel appears quite a bit more magnificent than many of us ever heard in church, or ever imagined…

By the Father’s doing the sap of sin has been taken away with the removal from us believers of the root and trunk of the Tree of Adam.

Matthew 8:14-17 describes it this way: And when Jesus entered Peter’s house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever. He touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she rose and began to serve him. That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.’

But if He took our illnesses and diseases, why do we insist on bearing them, often claiming that sickness is from God?

“Sickness/disease” in the New Testament is often translated from the Greek words, ‘exontas kakoos’, meaning  “having  evil”. In other words, there apparently is an evil activity going on in respect of sickness, according to scripture.

Would you give “evil” to your children? Why do we think God would do that to us, His children? Are we better parents than Him?

Unfortunately, we are often taught this lie about God in church, not understanding that it is not God but Satan, our slave master when we were in his domain of darkness, who still perpetuates this oppression against us, except now his actions are illegal. And that fact of illegality is a very big deal in the Kingdom of God where ‘the foundations of His throne are Justice and Righteousness’ (Ps. 89:14).

Moreover, if sickness really was from God, why did Jesus oppose God’s will at every turn in the Gospels when He healed ALL who came to Him? (See, e.g., Luke 4:40; Luke 6:19)

Wasn’t it Satan’s demons who Christ took authority over and often chased off in order to heal a person? Clearly, we know from the Curse of the Law in Deuteronomy 28 that sickness is a judgment of God to which men in their rebellion have been given over. But for believers, God’s judgment has been satisfied in Christ.

Therefore, sickness which afflicts believers is not from God.

So how can Satan continue to carry out his now illegal oppression against believers? Because he is a criminal and a terrorist, and is intent on preserving his own domain or kingdom. And being a criminal, he continues his criminal activities until he is stopped by one having greater authority.

You can pass a law making theft illegal, but thieves will still steal, until stopped by those with authority and power to back it up.

Jesus knew this, which is why, even though He took our sicknesses upon Himself, as stated above in Matthew 8, He understood that He still needed to give us believers this greater authority and power: “I give you authority over all unclean spirits and all diseases.” See Mat. 10:1; Luke 10:17-19; Luke 9:1.

Believers, therefore, have the authority and responsibility to fight demonic power to heal believers. (Mark 16:17)

The perfect metaphor for this is Joshua entering the Promised Land, which itself represents life in Christ. (See Hebrews 3:7-19; Hebrews 4:1-11) The Canaanites didn’t immediately pack their bags and head out when the Israelite army showed up at the border just because they heard that Israel’s God had given legal ownership of Canaan to Abraham and his offspring. They refused to respect the ‘law’, and defied and taunted the Israelites, as Goliath demonstrated.

It is the same with Satan. His demonic henchman walk to and fro over our minds and bodies, our thoughts and emotions, and challenge us to do something about their illegal sickness and emotional oppression.

Application

There is a time to pray and a time to fight. Prayer time is over when it’s time to fight. Then why does the church, instead of actually exercising the authority given us over demons and sickness in the body of Christ, continue to pray for healing, as if we already did not have that authority?

Prayer for healing is actually unbelief! For what we are effectually praying is that the Lord needs to do more than transferring us out of Satan’s jurisdiction, joining us to the Lord Jesus as one (1 Cor. 6:17; John 17:20-26), putting the whole Curse of the Law and all the resulting sicknesses on Jesus to carry away (Mat. 8:17), seating us at His right hand in Christ in a position of great power and authority in the Kingdom (Eph. 1:15-21; Eph. 2:6), and expressly giving us authority over the unclean spirits and diseases (Luke 9:1)!

It makes no sense. Praying for healing is a tradition of men that frustrates the truth and power of God, the likes of which Jesus forcefully condemned (Mark 7:7-9). There is no scriptural precedent for it. Healing is commanded in the Gospels and Book of Acts. It is not pleaded for, because it has already been accomplished and given by the Lord. Why insult the Lord by praying for healing as if He hasn’t done enough already?

Frankly, one of the main attractions of praying for healing is simply this: it is risk-free. If no healing ensues, then by strong implication, God is the one who failed, not us. We are no worse for the wear as far as the opinions we hold of our own piety, spiritual maturity, or power. Don’t we think that the Lord must see through all of this?

Therefore, the first step for anyone seeking to minister to the sick is to quit praying for your brother’s healing! Assume authority over your common enemy, as given to you by Christ, and proclaim it to the Enemy’s face, just as Christ and the disciples did. Healing the sick is “a sign of those who believe”, according to Christ Himself. See Mark 16:17.

But now taking the perspective of the sick person, we must ask whether every believer, as a spiritual branch of the spiritual Tree of Life, will always bear the spiritual fruit of healing? Whether a branch bears fruit depends upon whether it “abides” in the vine/tree. (Jhn. 15:1-4)

How does a natural branch “abide” in the vine? By receiving life-sustaining nutrients in the sap which are coming from the root of the vine or tree (Christ). If the capillaries bringing the nutrients are blocked thus preventing the sap from entering the branch, then the life of the branch will succumb to disease.

We abide in Christ, and receive the sap of healing, simply by believing His words as authoritative for our life (2 Cor. 10:3-5), which is faith that God has already accomplished our healing by the work of Christ in His suffering and death, just as His Word says (1 Pe. 2:24). His Words are Spirit and they are life, but they must be received, and they are received by being believed, with that belief demonstrated in actions which reflect our exaltation of His word over all contrary sensory input, including medical tests or doctor’s opinions. (2 Cor. 10:3-5)

We see this play out poignantly in the story of the ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19) who, being obedient to Jesus’ command, were healed ‘as they went’ on the road to the High Priest to be checked and certified as healed, despite the fact that their leprosy symptoms lingered after leaving Jesus.

Unlike the natural realm where seeing is believing, in the supernatural realm believing is seeing.

Because we are a branch of sin and death as grafted in, we must receive the living sap from our new tree of Life to become not only conformed to the nature of the Tree of Life, but to be healed when sickness afflicts. We are saved from hell by being grafted in and receiving the sap of salvation, that is, believing the salvation promises in the Word. We are healed from sickness by receiving the sap of healing, that is, believing the healing promises in the Word.

Again, Satan is a criminal, and will still try to put sickness on us to keep his reign of oppression intact, and to prevent us from living out of the truth of our ascendancy over him through the new birth to God’s right hand (Eph. 2:6; Eph. 1:17-21) as a Prince of the Most High.

We must understand that we will actually keep producing fruit for death when we fail to receive the sap of healing, being the Truth of God’s Word about our right to be free of the Curse of sickness. Our thoughts, words, and actions of unbelief can constitute a literal agreement with the Enemy to refuse to receive healing truth. When sickness comes, our refusal to believe the truth creates blockages thus stopping the sap, the life and healing of Christ, from feeding the branch. We choose to reject what God has for us and the Enemy is free to continue his torment unopposed.

Sickness remains on us because it is in our words and actions that we learned while a branch of the Tree of Death (. 2:1-3), as we continue to confess and agree with  Satan (Eph. 3:1-3), based on what our experience and our eyes tell us – that sickness is inevitable, and that there is absolutely no assurance of healing.

In other words, by our unbelief in or the failure to understand the Gospel and the fullness of what Christ has accomplished, not only in respect of heaven, but in understanding that we are a brand-new creation now with the absolute legal right to be free of sickness, we end up cooperating with the enemy in producing and maintaining sickness in us.

Healing must be received, and it will not be received if there is no will to receive it. Mark 6:1-6 describes those in Jesus’ hometown taking offense at Him and rejecting Him. As a result, in rejecting Him they confirmed their unbelief in what He came to bring and do, and, consequently, they retained their sicknesses.

Can seeking life in the world shut off life from the true vine of life? Yes, we know so. ‘He who loves the world the love of the Father is not in Him.’ (1 Jhn 2:15) To the extent we receive what the world has for us, we block and reject the sap of healing which God has for us in the Tree of Life.

Can disobedience, whether in the form of actual sin or failing to follow the healing method modeled by Jesus – the ministry of authority as reflected in the Gospels, also block the healing nutrients sent by the roots to the branch? Yes, we know so. Any disobedience “breaks” fellowship with the Lord and moves us out from under Him. When walking in disobedience we are not walking in Christ, so we are unable to receive from Him. The shade of protection He provides is UNDER His wings, not OUT from His wings. (PS. 91:1)

Christ’s Call For A Godly Violence

As stated above, and as demonstrated by the ten lepers, often for healing to manifest in the natural, it has to be lived out, or walked out. This is the exercise of our faith in His Word, regardless of all contrary natural, sensory input, which faith causes the Word to be activated and fulfilled. We must act like a healed person, as the ten lepers did, forcing the supernatural healing truth through all the satanic resistance in the natural, until we see the natural conformed to the supernatural.

It is a war…and war is violent.

It requires aggression, activism, righteous indignation, and all the weapons described in Ephesians 6:10-20, because the kingdom of heaven must be forced into the domain of darkness, as Jesus said, violently, “and the violent take it by force!” (Mat. 11:12) Praise God!

As a branch we align ourselves with the vine to receive the sap of healing/life by reckoning ourselves ‘dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus’ (Rom. 6:11), dead to the old tree and alive to the new tree whose fruit is not sin, disease, and death and the works of the law, but life, peace, rest, joy, and healing. In other words, we must walk out the truth of who we really are, now joined to Christ – the Tree of Life, whose ‘leaves are for the healing of the nations!’ (Rev. 22:3)

If you are sick, refuse any longer to believe that your sickness is ultimate truth. It is not. It must yield to the ultimate truth of God’s Word when you believe the Word and boldly exercise your authority against your demonic enemies, the purveyors of sickness and oppression.  Hbr. 6:12: ‘…[F]or all the promises of God are inherited through faith and perseverance.’

Let us then persevere in the truth and in our authority given by Christ and see our loved ones and ourselves healed!

Mark B. Meyers