Dominion of a Christian

John G. Lake

Divine healing is not a new thing; it is as old as the Book. I have chosen today the first chapter of Genesis with emphasis on the 26th verse.

“And God said, let us make man in our own likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”—Genesis. 1:26.

I want you to notice the 31st verse of the same chapter. “And God saw everything that He made, and; behold, it was very good.” I read that as a reminder of the fact that God made everything good, and there was not a man or woman with a cancer or a tumor, or tuberculosis, or Bright’s disease, or diabetes, or any one of the ten thousand things that afflict mankind in our day. Now, God said to this man and this woman that He presented to the world, “Let them have dominion.” Do you know that the word “dominion” is almost a lost word in the Christian’s vocabulary?

But in the soul of him who truly knows God and has been in touch with the Lord as his Savior and Healer, his first awareness is a sense of dominion. Dominion over his first awareness is a sense of dominion. Dominion over sin is the first thing the Christian soul becomes aware of, and in the truly God- enlightened soul, dominion over sickness likewise. Having been under the rule of sin, and having come into union with God, the dominion of the Spirit of God manifests itself over sin. And freedom, freedom of consciousness from the control and power of sin, is possibly, the first vivid and lasting consciousness in the soul.

I cannot imagine that when Adam wanted the cows or the sheep he went out with a dog or a club to get them. Living as he did in the place of God where God had the fullness of access to his nature, he had a better control of the cows and the sheep than that. I believe that when he spoke to the cows they came home; that when he wanted the birds he said “Come,” and they came.

It is good for man to know and exercise the authority of God. Usually we hear a good deal more about exercising the authority of God over everything else but ourselves. It seems that in these days men have studied about everything outside of themselves to a greater or lesser degree. But it is almost a sadness that men know so little about themselves. It is good to know the qualities that God has put within the mind and nature of men. Indeed the Scriptures enjoin us to exercise control of ourselves. “Taking every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” Not a rambling mind, but a mind controlled, a mind directed, a mind fixed on God, a mind with ideals of God’s holiness and wholeness of body, soul and spirit established there. A mind whose very structure contains God, and has the capacity to obtain, retain and utilize the greatest degree of the living Spirit of the eternal God. Blessed be His Name!

Suppose we could have lined up this whole audience a couple of years ago, and had them pass before this platform. What a sorry procession it would have been. Miss Celia Prentice would have to pass along in steel braces, with one leg two inches shorter than the other, having been that way from birth.

When she passes before the platform today, she walks on equal legs, and her feet are the same size and shape. That was not a healing—that was a work of creation, fulfilling the pattern that was in the mind of God, and bringing the structural form of that girl to where God saw “it was good.”

Mrs. Shields would have had to pass, a poor, dying, suffering wreck, as she was when she first came in contact with the gospel and the power of God. Mrs. Reed would have had to pass a poor, suffering soul, full of internal cancers. A sad procession. You can go on down the line and take one after another, and that is almost the story of each individual in this great audience.

But bless God, there was a day when there was not one to pass God’s platform with a cancer, nobody had a tumor, or any other form of disease. Our first parents were lovely, sweet and good. Every drop of blood in their body was perfect- 100 per cent pure. That is the thing that we are trying these days to get men to understand. God is trying to get them to separate themselves unto Him, so that that same pure life of God that came from heaven, and took possession of men’s lives, will come again. And its same divine sweetness and heavenly purity will be recognized in us making us sweet and pure and lovely, body, and soul and spirit.

God, seeing that men were in difficulty, and that sin, sickness and death prevailed, in order to save the race from extermination, was compelled to manifest the Redeemer and the redemption. Jesus Christ came to this world as God’s divine remedy. He has no other remedy, but the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s remedy is a person not a thing.

When Jesus Christ set up His method of healing in the world it was peculiar and distinct. The devil can manifest some other system, or man can evolve some other system and it may have power in a degree. But God has a particular method. Christ used it because it was divinely superior to every other, and would accomplish a result none other could. No man ever lived in the world who ever caused the eye to grow in a child that had no eyes, or a man that was born blind to see. No man ever created a remedy in the world that would make a girl’s leg to grow two inches, after she was seventeen years old, and had been born in that condition. God demonstrates the superiority of His system, and of His power, and His divine remedy, in that it will accomplish in man what nothing else will.

One of the difficulties that God has to remove from the mind of man on the line of healing is this wretched thing that often prevails in the best of Christian circles where healing is taught and practiced- the idea that divine healing is something disassociated or separate from Christ’s salvation. It is not.

Healing is simply the salvation of Jesus Christ, having its divine action in a man’s flesh, the same as it had its divine action in a man’s soul, or in the spirit of man. When Christ healed the body, He healed the soul. All man needs to do is to let God come in. His deficient spiritual eyes receive sight, his dormant mind becomes active, and his sick body is healed. I want to fix this thought in your mind. The healing of an individual is God’s demonstration to that soul that he has been forgiven of his sins. If he only has sense enough to believe it, he goes forth from the presence of God free in body, free in soul, free in spirit, healed within and healed without.

When James was discussing the subject he put it in this form: “Is there any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him. Anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick; and if he has committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.” Right there, right then, bless God, when the healing power of Jesus Christ comes from heaven, and testifies in that man’s soul by healing his body, his sins likewise are forgiven if he will only believe it.

Now beloved, that is the service that we are trying to perform. That when we unite and pray the prayer of faith, with the intelligence that the Word of God reveals in that holy Book, there will be a divine result of healing and forgiveness.

I want to get to you two outstanding facts this afternoon. First, in the beginning God had a perfect man, Adam and Eve were perfect people. They were not deficient in a single thing. Then man wandered into sin and degeneracy. There is a vital relationship between sickness and sin. That without sin in the race—not necessarily the individual, but without sin the race, there would be no such thing as sickness now. Does the Word of God stand up to that? “Through sin death entered into the world.” What is sickness? It is incipient death. I tell you beloved, that when you come to God for the healing of your body, it ought to be with a contrite repentance—“confessing your sins.” Not only sins, transgressions, but SIN. That state of the soul that causes you to transgress.

The condition that I have been discussing with you is more than a personal condition. It is a racial one. The whole race is similarly affected. The active principle of Bright’s disease, tuberculosis, and all that class of disease is the hellish germ in the system that has no right to be in the blood, and is asking for life and expression. The fact is, the race has been polluted through sin unto death. “Dying we die.”

Jesus spoke some very simple words. When the leper said to Jesus, “Lord if thou wilt thou canst make me whole,” he recognized that Jesus had the power but was not clear about His willingness. I have no objection to your praying that prayer, providing that you are as ignorant as he was of what the Will of God was. But you are not. Jesus said, “I will.” The Word of God is calculated to give intelligence as to what the Will of God is. And from Genesis to Revelation it emphasizes one thing, that the Will of God is to extricate the body, soul and spirit of man from sin, and the effects of sin which is disease and death.

And when the Will of God is fully wrought in the race, sin and sickness and death will have disappeared. The beginning of immortality is when God breathes His Life into you and me, and our spirits become the recipients of eternal life in Jesus Christ forever.

How simple it should be for the people who have this confidence and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His salvation, to add faith for the body as well as the spirit.

One of the most enjoyable freedoms in the world is the mental and spiritual freedom that comes with the escape from the bondage of fear. The fear of sickness. The fear of this difficulty and the fear of that difficulty. Our God says He is the Almighty One. He invites us to have confidence in Him because of His Almightiness. All things are possible to him that believeth. Isn’t that a beautiful relationship? A relationship so vital that the Almightiness of God comes into your soul Why? Because of believing faith. God bless you.