Anoiinting Oil to Heal the Sick

 

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Psalm 119:143 Holman Christian Standard Bible

¹⁴³ Trouble and distress have overtaken me,
but Your commands are my delight.

 

In August of 2016 I took the Better Than 50 Club to see the San Bernardino County Museum in San Bernardino; I felt bad enough so that I sat down on a bench in the entryway and waited for the group to tour the museum. That is the last I remember. A day or two later Sylvia had me in the emergency room at the Parkview Hospital. It took them three weeks to diagnose my disease—West Nile Virus. That’s the same disease that killed my colleague Charles Teel in five days. Once they knew what it was, they sent me to a Rehab Hospital, where I stayed for another five weeks. While I was there, my memory started to return. My urologist, Edward Yun, came by to see me. “When you get out of here, you need to come by and see me. We’ll start you on prostate cancer treatment!” were his “comforting” words.

After he left, I lifted up my eyes to heaven and queried God, “Why didn’t You let me die with WNV?! Why did You save me for more cancer treatments?!”

The Bible[2] encourages us to have the brethren anoint and pray over us when we are sick. Adventists are loathe to use this anointing and treat it almost as the Catholics do the last rites. However, I determined to follow James’s advice, and several of the church elders made the effort and came over to the Arlington Gardens Care Center and, at my request, anointed and prayed over me. According to His promise[3] God has raised me up.

I realize that there are many occasions when the Spirit of God determines that the best thing to do for some people is to forgive their sins and lay them to rest until His Great Second Coming. As several dear saints have told me, “God must have something He still wants you to do!”

I encourage you, when you are sick, follow God’s command in James 5 and ask for anointing. Let’s give God a chance.

Lord, help us to use the healing advice you have given us in the Bible.

 

 

 

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[1] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/X21O5MfH33s/maxresdefault.jpg

[2] James 5:14 (Holman Christian Standard Bible) “Is anyone among you sick? He should call for the elders of the church, and they should pray over him after anointing him with olive oil in the name of the Lord.”

[3] James 5:15  “The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will restore him to health; if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.”

He Endured Opposition

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 Hebrews 12:3

Common English Bible

³ Think about the one who endured such opposition from sinners so that you won’t be discouraged and you won’t give up.

 

It was not in my job description, which was to teach science and mathematics. Yet, the maintenance of the entire school plant, including teacher’s homes, fell on my shoulders. I was working upwards of 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Believe it or not, I thrived under the regimen. I still found some time to read and to chat with my wife. Without a vehicle of any kind, we were stuck on the mission, so this brought no variation to my activities.

One year under a new principal, however, things came to a head. He liked to micromanage everything. He would ask me to do something. I would get my workers (students) working on the project and then go and do other pressing things. On occasion he would visit the project while I was away and demand that the workers do something different. When I returned to check on progress, I would find them tearing down what they had done. Stunned, I asked why. They would look a bit confused and then tell me the principal had told them to. When I spoke to him, he would say simply, “I want it done a different way.”

When I disciplined a student in my class, he sometimes reversed the discipline but never told me. Then in front of the class, the student would inform me that the principal had told him that what he was doing was okay. This, of course, had a serious effect on the decorum of the class.

Then one of my student helpers forgot to add more oil into a diesel engine, that powered our water pump, I was in charge of. The lack of oil severely damaged the crankshaft of the engine. The cost of a replacement crankshaft cost more than half the replacement of the entire engine. I reported our problem to the principal. He showed up the next day with a mechanic he had hired from town. He introduced him to me: “Now here is a real mechanic. You go down and see how he fixes it!”

“Good!” I said, “But no real mechanic wants an amateur looking over his shoulder.” I didn’t remind him that fixing things was not part of my job description and that I was doing this merely to save the school a lot of money. The “real” mechanic put some shims in the bearings and ran the engine. It died within eight hours. Then he told the principal, “The only way to fix the engine is a new crankshaft or a new engine. The principal was careful to never mention the event to me again. We parted as friends.

I guess I was discouraged. I gave up and turned in my letter of resignation. This scared the principal. He came to me personally and begged me to stay the two more months to the end of the school term. Then a new principal would take over, and he was going to another job.

Because I was working so much, I had not kept my eyes on the One who had suffered continual opposition and died on account of it. I did not give up but stayed on for a couple more years, until my tour of duty was over. That year was merely preparation for my final year when the opposition came not from the administration but from other directions. That time I was prepared and kept my eyes on Jesus Christ and finished in triumph.

In this current age when a raging pandemic threatens to destroy our lives and an enemy threatens to destroy our democracy, Lord, we rest our future in Your capable, loving hands!

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[i] https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/File:Im201402DL-Lister1930s-2cyl.jpg