Christ Preaches and Heals with Power and Authority
READ Mark 1:14-15 and 21-22
What
does it mean that Jesus speaks as one with authority and not as the scribes?
He has “looked into heaven five minutes”
and has experienced what the scribes have only read about in books/scrolls.
The priesthood the priests held was dead,
due to the fact that they have sought to cover their sins in religious
trappings but inwardly are a “generation of vipers” (see D&C 121:36-37).
How
do the scribes speak?
They proof-text to back up their own
opinions; which then appear to be scriptural but are out of context (see the
Mishnah, rabbinical commentaries on the Torah).
They must appear to be credentialed –
lines of priesthood authority are vital to maintaining their position or
scholarly degrees; they hide behind analysis and language but do not have
actual spiritual experience.
This enables them to quote each other
(see the Talmud, commentaries on the Mishnah).
READ Luke 5:12-13
How
many lepers were normally cured in a year?
Usually none.
In Bible times, you needed the
intervention of priesthood power to cure leprosy – there are a few accounts of
this happening (Naaman the Syrian, and Miriam the sister of Moses are two) and
there was a ritual cleansing ceremony to perform AFTER one was healed, but it
was always a banishment and usually a long, slow death sentence.
How
does this knowledge change the leper’s faith in Jesus?
Christ had healed but not leprosy.
This man had faith to be healed of a
disease he had not heard that Christ could heal.
As
the leper says, his healing was due to the Lord’s will; why might He heal and
why might He not?
It is interesting that Christ healed all
that came unto Him seeking to be healed – IF THEY BELIEVED (or even if they
tried to believe).
As we will learn later, Christ comes in
the “4th Watch” to enable us to learn (see Mathew 14:22-25) -
sometimes we have a “thorn in the flesh” to “give us experience” (see 2
Corinthians 12:7-10; Ether 12:27-28).
READ Luke 5:18-25
Are
the Pharisees not correct – is god the only one who can forgive sins?
They are correct.
We must forgive each other for the hurt,
but men do not have the power to proclaim that someone has been forgiven of
sins – that is up to God alone.
What
is harder, to forgive sin or heal?
They are connected through the atonement
– everything that went wrong with Adam and the Fall (sin and death/sickness)
was paid for and put right by Christ in Gethsemane.
Ultimately, Christ’s atoning sacrifice
for sin gives Him power to control the elements, including diseased cells, so
forgiving sin is the harder of the two – or at least it is the one which
enables the other.
Why
does healing the man show that Christ has power to forgive sins?
One is a proxy for the other.
We can’t tell if his sins are forgiven
(the inward man) but we can tell if he rises out of his bed and walks (outward
man).
The outward man is broken (palsy) AND the
inward man is broken (sinner and natural man, as all of us are/were).
Christ uses the same High Priesthood
power for both.
READ Matthew 8:5-13
What
is unique about this healing?
The Centurion is a gentile.
Why
does Christ say that many will come from far away to sit with Abraham while the
“children” will be cast out?
God is no respecter of persons.
Neither blood/family relations or chosen
status or more truth will save you if you do not have faith and come unto
Christ in humility; those things may give one an advantage – but they determine
nothing (and if not acted on, they count against the one who has them).
READ Luke 7:11-16
Why
are the people afraid when Christ raises the widow’s son from the dead?
There hasn’t been a prophet with this
kind of Priesthood power (the High Priesthood) for over 500 years.
READ Mark 4:35-41
What
priesthood does Christ hold to calm the sea?
High Priesthood with the sealing power –
it has power over the physical elements.
What
is the relationship between fear and faith?
They are mutually exclusive – like light
and darkness – to the degree one is present, the other cannot be.
Why
are the Apostles so fearful?
They are beginning to wonder if there
really might be something to this.
For the same reason good people are
fearful when they first see an angel – this kind of power and glory is
unexpected in, and absent from, this mortal world, and we see our weaknesses
and sins more starkly in its light.
READ Mark 5:2-13
Why
does the devil recognize Christ?
Devils have no veil of forgetfulness over
their memories.
They have no veil that prevents them from
seeing spiritual things (refined energy or light) which our mortal eyes cannot
see.
Why
do the devils consider being cast out a “torment”?
Possessing a physical body is much
preferable to being only a spirit.
READ Mark 5:22-24 and 35-42
Why
do they say “why troublest the Master any further” when Jairus’ daughter dies?
They think that Christ can heal but
cannot raise the dead.
We put up stakes on God’s power and
attributes – “He can do this but not that” or “He will do this but not that”.
It is our faith, not His power, that
creates constraints – God can do ALL THINGS if only we will put away fear and
believe (see v36).
Be careful if you think you’ve got God
“pegged”; His ways are not our ways.
Virtue and the Woman with the Issue of
Blood
READ Mark 5:25-34
What
is the unique difference between the healing of the woman with the issue of
blood and the other healings Christ has performed?
He didn’t know about this one until after
it was accomplished.
We learn that she was healed based on her
faith in Christ and the “virtue” or power/light/glory that was in Him.
What
is implied by the fact that “virtue” or power left Christ when she was healed?
The virtue or
“spirit of life” or grace or light which emanates from God is given to every
person who comes into the world (see TPJS 316:3; D&C 84:46; 88:7, 11-13)
and sustains life (see Mosiah 2:21); in fact, that energy is what becomes the
matter of this whole universe when it changes from a superpositioned wave
probability to a physical particle, in time, when observed or manifested or
control by the Observer (God).
Even though it
can’t be seen by mortals with our limited visual light spectrum, virtue or
grace/light/glory/energy effects the physical, mortal world in demonstrable
ways, and can be seen in actions like healing and other miracles.
Virtue or
light can be shared from one individual to another (see Luke 6:17-19; Luke
8:43-48; 2 Peter 1:3-10); either by gift or “blessing”, or by taking, as in
this case where the individual siphoned off some energy or light/glory from
another without permission; when it leaves it is “missed”, implying that while it may regenerate itself or continue to
grow to a point of fullness by obedience to eternal law (God’s commandments or
aligning one’s behavior with truth/light), at the moment of “giving” it or
losing it to another, the giver feels a loss – they do not have as much
“virtue” or light than they had a moment before and feel a physical affect –
similar to exhaustion when physical effort is expended (see TPJS 316:3).
While
affiliated with the Holy Spirit which emanates from God, this virtue or light
is part of our own being; implied is that some have more of it than others (see
Alma 12:9-11; D&C 130:18-21) – in other words, while all things are made of
up quantum energy or Holy Spirit, some individuals have accumulated more of it
or a higher frequency of it than others within themselves.
God has a
fullness of glory and light/virtue; as Christ had not yet attained to the
resurrection of the dead (despite the fact that He had great power, even to the
raising of Lazarus from the dead), He felt the effect of “loss” when the woman
touched the hem of His garment; as God is the source of all light and it
emanates from Him/Them to fill the immensity of space, one can assume that He
does not feel a “loss” when that light is given to another for He sustains all
life with it anyway; this implies how connected we truly are to God – that the
light that sustains us, which He gives to us, He actually never loses because
we are connected to Him or “part” of Him in ways we do not understand. It also speaks to the idea of a “fullness”
and the fact that Christ did not have a fullness in mortality.
Think of the
light within you like a spiritual battery; aligning one’s life with eternal law
and living that law against the opposition of a telestial world out of God’s
presence is what enlarges that “battery” until it gets to a “fullness” or
perfect size; recharging that battery happens when the battery is put back in
direct contact with the source of energy which powers it: God; that is why
Christ would go into the wilderness to pray, He was abiding with God and
“recharging” His battery so that He could continue to heal, perform miracles,
etc; when one attains to the resurrection and accomplishes an atonement –
rising from the lowest depth to the highest height – one gains “life in
themselves” and becomes a source of light, which then emanates to others.
Another
metaphor is that of an electrical wire or circuit; to have a fullness of light,
we must be connected to God with as large a “wire” or linkage as possible; we
can also extend “wires” or chords or connections from us to others, to pass
light or virtue on from us to them.
Another
interesting implication here is the idea that for those who lack enough
“virtue” (glory/light/power) to heal someone, they must either gain more of it
within themselves (see Matthew 17:21) through prayer, fasting, repentance &
commandment keeping, and strengthening their faith by exercising it, or they
must become a vehicle through which God can heal them Himself with His Spirit
(like Fools Crow’s concept of the “little hollow bone”, see Fools Crow
Wisdom and Power by Thomas Mails).
The first
method seems to imply that individuals with a lot of spiritual power can act as
agents unto themselves; this is true but they will fall from grace if they do
this; servants of God will not seek their own will (use the light and energy
they’ve gained to do what they want to do) but submit to God’s will in all
things – implied is that they spend the time communing with God to obtain His
will.
The latter
method requires: a) that God’s will is that the individual be healed (the
prerequisite for all such uses of God’s power – see Helaman 10:5), that b) the healer
is pure/quickened enough to be able to act as a conduit through which God can
send His Spirit to heal the person, and c) that the healer has the faith to be
a conduit of the Holy Spirit in power.
Why
is the woman with an issue of blood healed by only touching Christ’s clothes?
Even His physical clothing contained
virtue or light/glory and her faith was sufficient that if she just touched the
clothing, she could claim enough of that light/glory to be healed.
It would
appear from this that the virtue or light within an individual extends outside
of their physical body and can be found within or upon their physical garments
and perhaps resides in places they have spent time, making it “holy ground” or
ground that has been quickened by proximity to light or glory of a more refined
(celestial, terrestrial, etc) nature.
If
“virtue” or light can be transferred from one person to another to heal or
bless them, can darkness also be transferred from one person to another to hurt
them?
Yes, this is a
“curse”.
Light can be
transferred from one person to another, either explicitly (a blessing) or
covertly (like the woman with the issue of blood who “siphoned” light from
Christ to heal her) or serendipitously (like when Peter had the Spirit with him
to such a degree that wherever he walked, people were healed and devils fled
just through proximity to the infusion of light he had within him but
manifested itself around him - see Acts 5:15-16).
Darkness can
also be transferred from one person to another either explicitly or
serendipitously via proximity.
This is why
shielding with the whole armor of God is important (see Ephesians 6:10-11,
13-18) to protect yourself from the “fiery darts” or curses from either unseen
beings or fallen mortals; “curses” can be intentional (like a blessing is
intentional) or unintentional, meaning the negative, angry, lustful, hurtful or
any dark emotion or thought directed at a person; it is interesting that
proximity plays a role with a curse in a similar way to how it plays a role
with a blessing – it is not required but strengthens the “faith” or belief in
the blessing (or cursing) of both parties; an example of an “unintentional”
curse is when someone becomes angry with you – while they may not intend to
“curse” you, they have dark feelings toward you, which can affect you
negatively.
Continuing in Prayer All Night
READ Luke 6:12
What
was Christ doing praying all night to God?
He was communing with God the Father.
He was “recharging” His “spiritual
batteries” through proximity to God.
How
does one part the veil and commune with God?
Focus and see the veil before you (see
discussion of Alma 34:18-27).
See it first with the eye of faith (see
Alma 5:15; Alma 32:40; Ether 12:19); do not worry about what is “real” to begin
with – as what is “real” anyway? Your
eyes “see” light reflecting on elements, all of which appear solid but are not
(i.e. principles of quantum physics) but you cannot see their true nature at
the subatomic level, neither can you see the full light spectrum; your brain is
just interpreting the limited waves it can see, so when what you see with your
eye of faith is as “real” as the real veil (which cannot be seen with natural
or telestial eyes anyway), you will see that real veil – with your spiritual
eyes but it will appear as if you are seeing it with your natural eyes as you
will not be able to discern whether you are “in the body” (natural eyes) or not
(spiritual eyes) – but it doesn’t matter, as both are seeing real elements on
the light spectrum.
In the meantime, proceed as if you were
blind, because you are effectively blind to all spiritual things – until you
are healed by the Lord and can see what is really before you in the full light
spectrum and at the refined subatomic level and beyond.
“Knock three times in prayer”.
Wait to be admitted into God’s presence;
a sentinel might ask you for signs and tokens – which are actually found in
your body as they are knowledge or truth or intelligence or light and
glory…gained from experience with heavenly beings.
And after being admitted into God’s
presence, you must again wait upon the Lord until you are “recognized” and
invited to come forward and approach the throne. As you wait, you will praise the Lord for His
greatness and goodness towards you, as unworthy a creature as you are; this is
a natural outpouring not a task on a checklist – you will praise the Lord as
your heart is filled with His love for you at the same time you discern plainly
your lack of worthiness in His presence.
When you are recognized and invited to
approach the throne, ask to obtain His will – inquire of the Lord and wait
again until He answers you; this waiting might be time in the spirit or it
might be over days, months or years of mighty prayer.
Inquire how you might be a tool in His
hand to accomplish His work – what sacrifices you are called to make or
intercessions you seek on behalf of another or reason together with Him to gain
further light and knowledge.
Abide or commune with God and be made
holy or sanctified by proximity to His glory.
