Sickness from God's Hand

( Written after reading a contrary statement). I. Direct Testimony from Scripture.

Lev. xxvi. 16: In threatening consumption and the burning ague, God says, “I also will do this unto you.”

Deut. vii. 15: “The Lord... will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt... upon thee; but will lay them upon all them that hate thee.”

Deut. xxviii. 27: “The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt,” etc. Ver. 35: “The Lord shall smite thee in the legs and in the knees,” etc. Ver. 59-61: “Then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful,... sore sicknesses, and of long continuance, moreover He will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt,... also every sickness and every plague... them will the Lord bring upon thee.”

2. Sam. xii. 15: “The Lord struck the child, and it was very sick.” -^ I

2. Chron. xxi. 18: “The Lord smote Him in his bowels with an incurable disease.”

“And the Lord smote the king so that he was a leper unto the day of his death” (2 Kings xv. 5).

Ps. xxxii. 4: “For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me.” It is an evident description of fever.

Ps. xxxviii. 2: “Thine arrows stick fast in me, Thy hand presseth me sore.” The context again shows this to have been severe sickness.

Ps. xxxix. 10; “Remove Thy stroke away from me; I am consumed by the blow of Thine hand.” The consuming in this and next verse again describes the normal effect of sickness.

Isa. xxxviii. 15: “Himself hath done it.” This needs no comment, enough if it stood alone in the Bible! *A -

Micah vi. 13: “Therefore also will /make thee sick in smiting thee.”

Acts xii. 23: “The angel of the Lord smote him.” (Herod.)

II. Indirect Testimony.

Ps. xli. 3: “Thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.” Does not this tender, sympathetic, and continuous care in sickness militate against the idea that sickness is from Satan, and therefore “not to be remained under!”

Ps. cxxi. 7: “The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil.”

1 will put the argument from this into two syllogisms.

(1) What is of Satan must be evil. God’s people are preserved from all evil. Therefore, God’s people are preserved from whatever is of Satan.

(2) God’s people are preserved from whatever is of Satan. They are not preserved from sickness. Therefore, sickness is not of Satan.

2 Sam. xxiv. 14. David expressly says that in accepting the pestilence he is falling into the hand of the Lord.” And the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel,” etc.

Ps. lxxxviii. *3, 4, 6. Ver. 3, 4, apparently imply sickness: “nigh unto the grave,” “no strength”; but David follows it with “Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.”

I suppose we all agree, and often tell others, that “all things,” in Rom. viii. 28, really means “all things,” sickness included; if we do, must we not equally say that in 2 Cor. v. 18 “all things” really means all things, sickness included!

“Chastening,” so far as I can recollect, is always spoken of as the act of God. But in Job xxxiii. 19 sickness is distinctly spoken of and stated to be chastening, ergo, from God. Also equally distinctly in Ps. cxviii. 18, from God.

(In passing, what a wonderful parallel that passage, Job xxxiii. 19-28, has with James v. 14-16.)

Luke ix. 1: Christ gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases, i.e. two separate things.

There are several similar passages. The way in which sickness is mentioned four times in Matthew xxv. does not seem to harmonise with the Satanic theory, though I cannot formulate it.

Similarly the mention in John xi. 4. — Leprosy is the typical sickness, and the one of all others which one would expect to be referred to Satan, and the one over which Christ especially displayed His power; but so far as I recollect, it is never once spoken of in connection with the devil, but always inferentially as from God Himself, this being expressly stated in 2 Kings xv. 5, already quoted. St. Paul would hardly have left Trophinus at Miletum sick, and spoken so very calmly of the fact, if he had believed that sickness to be from Satan, and “not to be remained under.”

That Satan may be permitted in special cases to be the direct instrument of sickness, e.g. Job, also the woman of Samaria (Luke xiii. n), is a very different thing, and seems as clear as that he is not the usual and normal instrument. The mass of instances on the other side, and the plainest Bible statements, surely preclude this.

June 2, 1878. F. R. H.