We read in the scriptures about people raised from the dead. We read of blind men and lame men instantly cured of their afflictions. And we read in church history of miraculous healings by early leaders like Joseph Smith. <\/p>\n
Fast forward to the present:<\/p>\n
When a family member of friend or ward member has a disease, we annoint and bless her. And then we wait. She gets regular medical care. Perhaps she gets better, perhaps she doesn’t. If she gets better, we applaud the miracle of healing. If she doesn’t we console ourselves that it must have been God’s will. <\/p>\n
What is distinctly lacking is the instantaneous healing aspect of it all. We apparently don’t expect people to take up their beds and walk anymore. What ever happened to instantaneous healing?<\/p>\n
It seems to me that there are a few different possibilities:<\/p>\n
1. Germs these days are just too tough<\/em>.<\/p>\n An unlikely reason. If we believe that the Priesthood really carries the power to raise the dead and cause the blind to see, then it ought to be able to get past antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Right? <\/p>\n 2. Were things really instant, even back in the day<\/em>?<\/p>\n Perhaps it’s always been this way. Perhaps the writers of scriptural accounts and early church history were condensing time frames, to achieve better dramatic effect.<\/p>\n 3. Changed plans<\/em>.<\/p>\n Maybe there is a Priesthood power of instantaneous healings, but at some point God decided to turn that power off. He’s given us a lot of other tools, and we should be happy to use them instead. Who needs instant healing when we have penicilling and quinine and AZT?<\/p>\n 4. I’m not righteous enough<\/em>.<\/p>\n Most instant healing is shown as being done by extremely righteous people. So perhaps the reason why I haven’t experienced it is because of my own lack of righteousness. <\/p>\n 5. Well, we can’t heal everyone, can we<\/em>?<\/p>\n Maybe we’re just expecting too much. Maybe instantaneous healing isn’t supposed to work very often. In the past, a high degree of infant mortality was accepted as normal. Nowadays, we seem to think that we can save everyone. But if priesthood blessings always worked, all the time, we would rapidly become overpopulated with healthy nonegenarians. <\/p>\n Anyway, those are my initial thoughts on the subject. But I’m sure that there are obvious points that I’m missing. What does everyone think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We read in the scriptures about people raised from the dead. We read of blind men and lame men instantly cured of their afflictions. And we read in church history of miraculous healings by early leaders like Joseph Smith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}