Eustache Le Sueur, Christ Healing the Blind Man – 17th Century
Source: Wikimedia
by Brian Shilhavy
Created4Health.org
People brought all their sick to him and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed. (Matthew 14:35-36)
Medical practice here in the 21st century is primarily chemical based, with a strong educational foundation built upon Darwinian evolutionary biology. Yet, the products produced by the pharmaceutical industry are known to cause over 100,000 deaths per year, and injure millions more. As a result, many are returning to more natural healing methods.
An older system of healing than the modern chemically-based pharmaceutical products revolves around the use of energy. Sometimes referred to in modern times as “energy medicine,” these healing practices look at the body’s energy fields, understanding that even the physical elements in creation have specific energy patterns.
Perhaps one of the oldest forms of using energy in the body for healing is the Chinese practice of acupuncture, which has gained more wide-spread acceptance recently even in western cultures. A more modern form of energy-based healing would be homeopathy, which at one point early in the history of the United States was the more common practice used by “physicians,” until pharmaceutical-dominated trade unions like the American Medical Association drove most of these physicians out of business in favor of the more profitable pharmaceutical products. (See: American Medical Revolutions: How the AMA Took Over America.)
The purest form of energy healing, however, centers around the healing “touch” of Jesus Christ. The verse from the Bible quoted above from the gospel of Matthew shows that when Jesus walked the earth in human form, that simply touching him brought about healing. Here are a few more examples:
When the sun was setting, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them. (Luke 4:40)
Because of the crowd he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him, to keep the people from crowding him. For he had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him. (Mark 3:9-10)
And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, “Who touched me?'” But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
(Mark 5:25-34)
The superiority of Jesus’ energy to provide healing is easily understood when we consider who Jesus claims to be. The writer of the book of Hebrews in the Bible states:
In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. (Hebrews 1:1-3)
In direct contrast to Darwinian evolution, Jesus is presented as the Creator of the universe. Not only is Jesus the Creator, he is also the sustainer of the universe through his “powerful word.” Thus, all energy is created energy which originates in Jesus Christ.In addition, Jesus’ energy holds together the universe.
As we observe those who are healed by the touch of Jesus, they all have two things in common:
1. They had an encounter with Jesus. When Jesus walked the earth in human form that encounter was in real space and time and a physical encounter. Later, after he returned to heaven, that encounter was through his power (energy) flowing through his followers:
God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them. (Acts 19:11-12)
As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed. (Acts 5:15-16)
2. The people seeking healing believed they would receive it from Jesus.
I do believe “energy medicine” will continue to gain popularity in western culture here in the 21st Century, but it is not “new-age” or “new” anything. It is as old as the universe itself. What is new is the chemical-based pharmaceutical model, which ignores energy completely.
So if you want to experience healing through “energy medicine,” which would you prefer? A practioner manipulating the created energy patterns, or the one who created it to begin with?
