The Science of Divine Healing

Extracts from John G. Lake's Sermon "The Science of Divine Healing"

Having formal acknowledgment as a student of science, it is my privilege to attend clinics, which I frequently do. I submitted myself at one time to a series of experiments. It was not sufficient to know that God healed; I had to know how God healed. I visited one of the great experimental institutions and submitted myself for a series of experiments.

First, they attached to my head an instrument to record the vibrations of the brain. This instrument had an indicator that would register the vibrations of the mind. So I began by repeating soothing things like the twenty-third Psalm, calculated to soothe the mind and reduce its vibrations to the lowest point. Then I repeated the thirty-seventh Psalm, then the thirty-fifth [chapter] of Isaiah, then the ninety-first Psalm, then Paul’s address before Agrippa. After this, I went into secular literature and recited Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” and last, Poe’s “The Raven,” with a prayer in my heart that at the psychological moment, God would anoint my soul in the Holy Ghost.

My difficulty was that while the reciting went on, I could not keep the Spirit from coming upon me, and when I got through with Poe’s “The Raven,” they said, “You are a phenomenon. You have a wider mental range than any human being we have ever seen.” 

In reality that was not so. It was because the Spirit of God kept coming upon me in degree, so I could feel the moving of the Spirit within me.

But I prayed in my heart, Lord God, if You will only let the Spirit of God come like the lightnings of God upon my soul for two seconds, I know something is going to happen that these men have never seen before.

So, as I closed the last lines, suddenly the Spirit of God struck me in a burst of praise and tongues, and the old indicator on the instrument bounced to its limit, and I haven’t the least idea how much further it would have gone if it were a possibility. 

The professors said, “We have never seen anything like it.”

I replied, “Gentlemen, it is the Holy Ghost.”

Now, in order to get the force of this lesson, it is necessary to give you the latest theory of the process of digestion. You will see the assimilating power of your nature, your capacity to assimilate God and take the life of God into your being and keep it in your being. I am not talking about what I believe; I am talking about what I know.

For many years God kept me so that sickness and death could not touch me, from the day that I saw in the ninety-first Psalm a man’s privilege of entering into God, not only for healing, but also for health and having God and the life of God in every fiber of his being.

I could feel sometimes while in the attitude of prayer, just as you have felt hundreds of times, the impulse of the Spirit moving through my brain and my person to the tips of my fingers, just little impulses of God’s presence in my life. And I said, “If there was an instrument powerful enough, I believe men could see the action of the brain cells and see what takes place.”

Here is the secret of digestion: from the spirit-mind of man and through the spirit of man, there is imparted to every cell of your body impulses of spirit, waves of life. It is the movement of the Spirit. Spirit impulses pass from the cortex cells of the brain to the very ends of your fingers and toes, to every cell of the body.

In the second experiment, they attached to my head a powerful X-ray with microscopic attachments in order to see, if possible, what the action of the brain cells were. Then I proceeded, just as in the former experiment. First, I repeated Scriptures that were soothing and calculated to reduce the action of the cortex cells to their lowest possible register. Then, I went on into the Scriptures to the better and richer things, until I came to the first of John; and as I began to recite that and the fires of God began to burn in my heart, presently, once again the Spirit of God came upon me, and the man who was at my back touched me. It was a signal to keep the poise of soul until one after another could look through the instrument. And finally when I let go, the Spirit subsided. They said, “Why, man, we cannot understand this, but the cortex cells expanded amazingly.”

Oh, beloved, when you pray, something is happening in you. It is not a myth; it is the action of God. The almighty God, by the Spirit, comes into the soul, takes possession of the brain, manifests in the cortex cells, and when you will and wish (either consciously or unconsciously) the fire of God, the power of God, that life of God, that nature of God, is transmitted from the cortex cells of the brain, throbs through your nerves, down through your person, into every cell of your being, into every cell of your brain and blood and flesh

and bone, into the million, five hunched thousand cells in every square inch of your skin, and they are alive with God. That is divine healing.

Men have treated the gospel of Jesus Christ as though it were a sentiment and foolishness. Men who posed as being wise have scorned the phenomenon taking place in the Christian every day. But beloved, no dear old mother ever knelt before the throne of God and raised her heart to heaven without demonstrating the finest process of divine wireless transmission.

Beloved, the very instant your soul moves with your heart cry and your nature yearns after God, it registers in the soul of Jesus Christ, and the answer comes back. So Jesus said, “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11:24), and “While [ye] are yet speaking, I will hear” (Isaiah 65:24).

I said to them, “Gentlemen, I want you to see one more thing. You go down in your hospital and bring the man who has inflammation in the shinbone. Take your instrument and attach it to his leg; leave space enough to get my hand on his leg. You can have it attached on both sides.” So when the instrument was all ready, I put my hand on that man’s shin, and I prayed just like Mother Etter prays, just as you all pray. No strange prayer, but the cry of my heart to God. I said, “God, kill the devilish disease by the power of God. Let the Spirit live in him; let it move in him.” 

Then I said, “Gentlemen, what is taking place?”

They replied, “Every cell is responding.”

Beloved, all there is to healing is that the life of God comes back into the part that is afflicted, and right away the blood flows, the congested cells respond, and the work is done. That is again God's divine science in healing.

My soul long ago grew tired of men treating the whole subject of Christianity as though it were child’s play. We have our physical sciences; we have our psychological sciences, the structure of the body and the action of the mind taught in the great schools of the land. But there is something greater. One of these days there is going to be a new chair in our universities. It will be the chair of pneumatology, the science of spirit, by which men will undertake to discover the laws of the spirit of man and the action of God through man. And by the grace of God, men shall know that God is alive and that the living Spirit of God is no dream; and its wondrous power in man and through man will be revealed.

The world lived in darkness for five thousand years, and they had no way of lighting a place like this except by torches or candles. But there was just as much electricity five thousand years ago as there is today. Somebody found how to handle it, discovered the laws that govern it, and learned to apply it to our need.

Prayer is God’s divine generator. The spirit of man is God’s divine dynamo. When you go to pray, your spirit gets into motion. Not ten thousand revolutions per minute, but possibly one hundred thousand. The voltage of heaven comes to your heart, and it flows from your hands, it burns into the souls of men, and God almighty’ s Spirit is applied through you to their need.

Over in Indiana some years ago was a farmer who used to be a friend of Brother Fockler and myself. His son had been in South America, had a dreadful case of typhoid fever and no proper nursing; the result was that he developed a great fever sore ten inches in diameter. The whole abdomen became grown up with proud flesh, one layer on top of another layer, until there were five layers. The nurse had to lift up those layers and wash it with an antiseptic to keep the maggots out of it. When he exposed the body for me to pray for him, I was shocked. I never had seen anything like it before. As I went to pray for him, I spread my fingers out wide and put my hand right on that cursed growth of proud flesh. I prayed God in the name of Jesus Christ to blast the curse of hell and burn it up by the power of God. Then I took the train and came back to Chicago. The next day I received a telegram saying, “Lake, the most unusual thing has happened. An hour after you left, the whole print of your hand was burned into that growth a quarter of an inch deep.”

You talk about the voltage of heaven and the power of God! Why, there is lightning in the soul of Jesus. The lightning of Jesus heals men by its flash; sin dissolves, disease flees when the power of God approaches.

And yet we are quibbling and wondering if Jesus Christ is big enough for our needs. Let’s take the bars down. Let God come into your life. And in the name of Jesus your heart will not be satisfied with an empty Pentecost, but your soul will claim the light of God, and the lightning of Jesus will flood your life. Amen.