 |  |
Salvation" for Peter is comparing the immediate physical healing of the lame man, with
"the Healing" or "the Salvation" of which the miraculous cure was but a type.
The critical questions which we now ask are: Where is the lame man now? Where is
the man born blind, who was cured, as recorded in John 9:? Where is Lazarus, who
was raised from the dead? Can we not re-word the question of Eccles. 2: 16, where he
says "How dieth the wise man?" and the answer is "as the fool" for "one event" awaited
both. Those who use Isa. 53: 5 as a proof text for the healing of the sick, can they ever
point to one solitary example of anyone thus healed and say "This corruptible has put on
incorruption", "This mortal has put on immortality", "Mortality has been swallowed up
of life"? This is "the healing" of Isa. 53: 5 which is full, complete and undying, as is
the deliverance from our transgressions and our iniquities. The "healings" of Pentecost
were "signs", not the real and final "healing" of Calvary. The Hebrew Christians had
"tasted of the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come", and this is what
the healing miracles really were. Instead of avoiding or escaping the "groan" of creation,
we read:
"For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until
now, And not only they, but ourselves also which have the FIRST FRUITS of the Spirit,
even we ourselves groan within ourselves WAITING for the adoption, to wit, the
redemption of our body" (Rom. 8: 22, 23).
The hope of resurrection is weakened not only by the doctrine of natural immortality
and of the disembodied intermediate state, but by this transfer of the temporary sign gift
of healing, the properties that belong to the standard set by the "no more" of Rev. 21: 4.