In April of 1847, in the maternity ward of Vienna General Hospital, one out of every five mothers who gave birth walked in healthy and left in a coffin. Down the hall, in the ward run by midwives instead of doctors, the death rate was a fraction of that. Same hospital. Same complications. Same city. But wildly different outcomes.
A young doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis noticed it and asked why. He found his answer: the doctors were coming straight from autopsies to the delivery room without washing their hands. He ordered every doctor and student to scrub in chlorinated lime before touching a patient.
The next month, the death rate dropped from 18 percent to 2 percent. Then to 1 percent.
That was not two witnesses. That was not three. That was hundreds of women walking out of that hospital alive, month after month, an entire body of evidence testifying to one plain fact: being made clean — in this case, hands — leads to health and life. More on this in a moment.
Dr. Johann Klein, the man who ran that department, looked at the numbers and refused them anyway. He would not accept that a doctor’s own hands could carry death. Semmelweis was mocked, pushed out, and eventually locked away in an asylum, where he died — ironically, of an infection.
It took another twenty years, and Louis Pasteur, before the world accepted what the evidence had been shouting the whole time.
Healing Is God’s Will
God says, “By the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established” (Deuteronomy 19:15). On the matter of healing, He didn’t give us two or three witnesses. He gave us twelve.
* Moses called Him “the Lord who heals” (Exodus 15:26).
* David said He “heals all your diseases” (Psalm 103:3).
Solomon called God’s word “health to all our flesh” (Proverbs 4:22).
* Isaiah said He — the Messiah — “bore our griefs—the Hebrew word khol-ee’, which literally means sicknesses or diseases—and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4).
* Jeremiah heard the Lord promise, “I will restore health to you” (Jeremiah 30:17).
* Malachi saw the Anointed One rise “with healing in His wings” (Malachi 4:2).
* Matthew watched his Rabbi bear “our illnesses” in His own body (Matthew 8:17).
* Luke recorded that Jesus healed “all who were oppressed by the devil” (Acts 10:38).
* Peter testified, “by His wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24).
* James tells those who are sick to call the elders, promising “the prayer of faith will save the sick” (James 5:15).
* John prayed that you “prosper in all things and be in health” (3 John 1:2).
* Paul listed “gifts of healings” among the gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:9).
Twelve men. One verdict, established in the scourging, beating, bruising, and wounds of our Savior.
If you believe the blood of Jesus cleanses you from all sin, then believe also that he cleanses your body of every disease.
Believe the testimony of the men who witnessed the goodness of God and saw the compassion of Jesus up close. He took your sickness into Himself so you would not have to carry it another day.
Do what the paralytic on the mat did when four friends tore through a roof. Place yourself at the feet of Jesus.
Then take up your mat, and go in the healing He’s already provided.
Listen to Pastor Hope deliver this message: https://youtu.be/ELntG8hYQaY