Our Healing at the Cross And Beyond Three years ago I was diagnosed with liver disease, apparently one of the side effects of Fosamax, a medication I had taken for five years to strengthen my aging bones. I became jaundiced and my gall bladder was removed. At surgery they found cirrhosis completely covering the liver and, according to the surgeon, there was no indication the liver could possibly regenerate itself. According to him my liver was so filled with iron stores, it fairly glowed on CT scan. I began to pray... My most recent blood tests, taken a few months ago, were normal. The blood tests prior to that were not normal, so I rejoiced in the new tests, even though symptoms persisted, and I believed with all my heart God was healing my liver, if ever so slowly. A few weeks ago I asked the Lord Jesus, "I need understanding. If you took our sicknesses and diseases to the Cross, how is it possible they can still afflict us?” Bit by bit, little by little, understanding slipped through the fog and I began to piece together some of the answers I had asked for. It is true. Jesus bore our sins and all our sicknesses upon that rough and miserable Cross. Three days later it became a Glorious Cross, but in the process of our sure redemption, it was most assuredly a rough and miserable Cross. The weight of our sins steadily crushed His innocent flesh, slowly pressing His internal organs downward until He could hardly speak. It took great effort, a burst of superhuman and determined effort, to cry out from the Cross as He managed to do. On His back He bore the stripes and gashes of man's indignation against the Holy God of Heaven and Earth. Roman mockers had repaid the healings Jesus had brought to so many with 39 lashes of the cat-of-nine-tails. Thirty-nine times nine is 351. This meant He suffered 351 excruciating tears in His lean body from broken pieces of glass and metals. Each rip in the flesh represented a category of sickness and disease. In those 351 categories, even today, lie all the afflictions, deformities, sicknesses, diseases, and mental illnesses known to man. Jesus bore each of these categories on our behalf, and yet the children of faith still suffer them. Why? It is the question asked again and again by those with broken and aching hearts. The only thing we know for sure is that Jesus did indeed carry them in His own flesh, and He carried them willingly. It is a mysterious work of God we fully believe by faith but do not fully comprehend. Perhaps it was because, since the beginning, the Father has heard the heart cry of mothers and fathers weeping before their little ones, “I would gladly take your place, if I could…” And when His time came, Jesus did just that - He took our place. What does it mean? These are valid questions, and though I feel sometimes I weary Him with so many questions, I can't help asking for information only He can give me. I am sure there is more understanding to come and it will come when God wants to give it and not before. The Word tells us that Jesus was marred more than any man, to the point He was barely recognized by those that knew Him. He was so brutally beaten and torn, He was so disfigured and in such agony it is a mystery that He survived six hours on the Cross. Imagine a condemned criminal hanging on a cross covered with flies, mosquitoes and leeches, and no way for him to scratch his nose or knock them off his face. No - our Lord was not covered with these insects, thankfully, but the sins, sicknesses and diseases that covered and filled His flesh were just as repulsive and every bit as oppressive. It is difficult to say which agony was the greater – His beatings and the crucifixion itself, or the weight of our sins and diseases that repulsed and oppressed every fiber of His being. Try to imagine the agony of rheumatoid arthritis, charlie horses in the calves and thighs, and widespread cancer eating at your insides at the same time, with no analgesic for relief. Add to that burden the unrelenting anguish of the beatings and lashings. We forget all too often that, while He was suffering so, there were thousands of demons and Satan himself making up the main cheering squad, straining at the bit to lay hold on His soul at the moment He let go. The people attending this barbaric scene could not see the demons but they were there, taunting Him every second of His agony. They covered His eyes, they filled His ears, and they slobbered and slimed their supernatural nastiness all over Him. Jesus could see and hear them. He could also see and hear ten thousands legions of angels, just waiting to destroy every demon in hell and every man on earth if He changed His mind and cried out the command. With swords drawn the angels waited and watched… At this point, someone will probably say, "Oh, but He didn't 'literally' carry our sins and our sicknesses. The claim is rhetorical, it is symbolic..." Nuts! Let's move on... Jesus died on that Cross and descended into hell, the abode of sinners, the eternal chambers of those that reject the sovereignty of God and the deity of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not reject the sovereignty of God – He committed His spirit into God’s hands the moment He died, giving God the Father all authority and sway over His soul. Moments later, He descended into hell. This is because our redemption had not been completed. It was finished on the Cross, the tormented cry from the Cross said so, but it was only half finished. He had spent six hours on the Cross, and would now spend the nine hours left on Friday, 24 hours on Saturday, and who knows how many hours between Midnight Saturday and sunrise Sunday morning paying the ransom for our deliverance from hell. God’s holiness demanded it. When Jesus submitted to the Father’s will in the Garden of Gethsemane He wept the bloody tears of fear for He knew the price of redemption had to be all inclusive. Every sin debt had to be paid. Every pain had to be suffered. Every fear and every agony had to be realized. And Jesus endured them all because He loved us – because the Father loved us - long before we were born. Jesus, representing you and me, entered hell as the sin-bearing Son of Man, condemned by God. Taking it one step further, we remember that Jesus was and is God in the flesh as well as God in the Spirit, and was therefore God and Man forever. While the mortality of God the Son endured the Cross, God the Father turned his face away and turned His back to the sins that consumed His Beloved Son. A Holy God cannot look upon sin. This is why redemption was so necessary. You and I, covered and filled with the sin nature of Adam could not help ourselves, we would sin again and again in a world that hated God and rejected Jesus Christ. Unless we repent and receive sovereign forgiveness, by Grace THROUGH faith in Jesus Christ, except we are made the righteousness of God through Christ Jesus, we would never, we could never enter heaven or be redeemed from the hell that Jesus suffered on our behalf. For those that reject God’s precious Son, for those that spurn Him without shame in this earthly life, awaits an eternity of all that Jesus suffered on the Cross and endured in hell. Because they reject His agape love and sacrifice on their behalf they will answer to God the Father who will not tolerate disrespect and scorn of His Son’s suffering. If the Holy God could not look upon His Son on that Cross, how dare the weasels of mankind leer, jeer and sneer and make filthy and perverted jokes – So God turned His back and grieved for His suffering Son while He completed His redemptive work in the midst of a wretched mankind. Reconciliation of man with God would carry the greatest price ever paid by one man for another. With the veil in the temple torn in two from top to bottom, God reached down toward man, and man reached up toward the hand and voice of God. God knew that only a man could legally redeem all of creation from the grip of Satan. And He knew no man on earth could ever father a child with pure blood for the sacrifice that would be required. Therefore, when the time was right, Jesus was born of the Holy Ghost who had overshadowed a young virgin that was pleasing to God. The Father was not allowed to comfort His bleeding Son, but He would send thousands of angels and warriors of Heaven to witness this ultimate sacrifice and to record it forever in the annals of heaven, – “Jesus the Christ is now and forever the precious Lamb of God. For God did covenant with Him to raise Him from the grave on the third day and to give Him the kingdom He had redeemed. God will not leave His soul in hell nor allow His body to see corruption. Furthermore, every man, woman and child that believes on Him and His completed works, will share in His life, death, resurrection and glory forever...” On the morning of the third day, on Sunday, the first day of the week, while sitting on the throne in Heaven, the Father of all Creation turned to the Holy Spirit and said, “It is enough. The debt is paid in full. My holiness is satisfied. Go and revive my Son.” The Holy Spirit charged into hell loosing the winds of Grace and the fires of anointing and power upon the head of the Son of God. Jesus felt the crumbling of filth that fell from His flesh. He stood and flexed His muscles as supernatural strength flooded every fiber of His being. Like shackles falling off a prisoner, sins and sicknesses fell from His now healed body and He trampled them as He tore down the prison door and grabbed the keys of hell and death from Satan, humiliating him and all his cohorts. The demons fled, Satan retreated into the shadows and Jesus, revived as the Lion of Judah, ascended to the tomb for a welcome resurrection. We know He also redeemed the deed to earth that Satan had taken from Adam in the fall. We know this because the Father is holding the scroll in Revelations 5 and 6, and it is sealed with seven seals. It is the scroll that no man in heaven, on the earth or under the earth was found worthy to open and read, it is the deed to earth. The seven seals loose the seven judgments of earth during the first half of the tribulation to come, and only the Lamb of God has been found worthy to open those seals and loose the judgments. So Jesus returned from hell and the grave with the keys of hell and death and the redeemed deed to earth. These gave Jesus all authority over all worlds. He will return to save and to claim His redeemed earthly Kingdom as King of kings and Lord of lords and will reign on the earth a thousand years. Two angels waited in the tomb with clean robes. Carefully, lovingly, they folded the grave clothes Jesus exchanged for the heavenly robes that now covered His newly glorified body… But – what became of the sins and diseases that Jesus bore on the Cross and carried into hell? Every sin Jesus bore, every sickness and every disease fell at the feet of Satan who is the author of sin and sickness. He is also the designer of every temptation of the mind, the heart and the flesh. Jesus rebuked them all, renounced them, and cast them at the feet of their master. This is because every sin, every sickness and every disease is a demon spirit – these are the scourges of hell that Satan uses against the mankind God created and loves, and these are the oppressors he uses against the saints. Do you remember the thorn in Paul’s side? It was a demonic messenger, sent from Satan, to keep Paul humble. God had ordered it to cause Paul distress at times to keep him focused on his mission, but it was forbidden to kill him. So we can see that God has authority over Satan’s domain. Every temptation to sin is the work of a demon spirit. You must call that demon by its name, (spirit of lies, lust, deception, etc.) remind it of the Word of God, and rebuke it in the name of Jesus. Remembering the temptations and rebuttals of Christ in the wilderness is a great example to follow. “It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and Him only shall you serve. Go from me you workers of iniquity, in the Name of Jesus.” And remember, the spirit of cancer and other incurable diseases is always – always – a spirit of death. You must take authority over that spirit, you must cancel the spirit’s assignment, dry up its waters so it cannot live, cast him out of the body and rebuke him with authority in the Name of Jesus. There is a chain of command – the little demons answer to the squad leaders who answer to the lieutenants who answer to the captains who answer to the princes that rule over nations and rulers of nations from their seats in high atmospheric regions and these answer to Satan. Sometimes, in difficult cases, a demonic fort is built above a targeted residence from which demon spirits go in and out of a home with temptations, torment, disease and even suicide. The Lord opened my spiritual eyes and allowed me to see one of these fortresses during a critical deliverance of another minister, and it was the ugliest most repulsive thing I had ever seen. I asked the Lord to blow it up and He did… You see, every temptation to sin, every sickness and every disease is a supernatural and invisible entity, working in the natural world. They do not like us, in truth they hate us, they are the enemy of mankind, and they are the deadliest enemy this world has confronted. The world would join forces with the terrorists against this enemy if the world could see what all men are up against. Jesus warned us, He told us again and again how real they are, but we have this problem that we cannot grasp and download an item unless we can see it. Well, I personally have seen it – like many, many others have seen it – and I assure you, this is real. They are subject to Jesus’ authority and must obey any spirit-filled command given in that Name. And since we DO belong to Jesus, it is illegal for you and me to hold onto these killers when they attack us. We cannot say, “Oh, its just a little sin,” or, “It’s just a headache” and let it ride. You see, a little sin prepares the way for a bigger sin and the bigger sin prepares the way for the deadlier sins. They pave the way to backsliding and separation from God. Even a headache can graduate into a more serious attack until it isn’t, “just a headache” anymore. In other words, we need to recognize the attacks when they come and counter attack immediately. There are times when sin is not the reason we are attacked. Sometimes it is the way we abuse ourselves by not eating properly or not getting enough rest. Weariness and tiredness can lower our resistance and the enemy can infiltrate our defenses. Sometimes it is lack of faith that opens the door to Satan’s legal right to put sickness on us. Remember Job – he lacked the faith to trust God to keep his children safe from sin when they gathered for dinners, etc., and he made a sacrifice every day in fear of that sin. In Job Chapter 1, verse 6 we see that God had to show Satan that Job was already in his power and he could test him but he could not take his life. When Job got into fear (“For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me” - Job 3:25) Satan came through the door and did his dirty work. Sometimes we simply open a spiritual door in an unguarded moment. Smith Wigglesworth was the giant Apostle of faith, yet he suffered severe pain with kidney stones. Billy Graham suffers Parkinson’s disease. We continue to ask, “Why?” Perhaps there are times when God wants us lying down so we can look up and listen. Sometimes our suffering is for the benefit of someone else God wants to save or bless, and so we become a vessel of honor. But we must never presume such is the case, only God can answer individual questions and comfort the searching heart. Jesus holds the keys to hell and death. All sickness and death is in His authority so He is the one we need to go through for our healing. He suffered the same sickness we are suffering so He knows what we are going through. He crushed its power over us, giving us power over the sickness, but He did not destroy it – not yet. The day is coming when death will be the last enemy destroyed and sickness will suffer the same fate as death, but until then we win the fight using the tools of faith and confession. Like it or not, agree with me or not, we are creatures of habit and sometimes our habits get in the way… We get sick, we go to the doctor who speaks the curse of sickness over us and sends us home worried. We then speak the same curse over ourselves as we explain the problem to others, and acknowledge that we have so and so and will have to be medicated with heaven knows what to get better – if possible – In short – we are the accomplices of our worst enemies. We do not speak the Words of God – we speak the words of men – words of death instead of the words of life. Yet Jesus, when contending with the crowd at Jairus’ house insisted his 12-year-old daughter was ‘not dead but sleeping.’ “Oh,” you say, “But that was Jesus.” Yep – it sure was. And so are we of the same faith if we believe Him, and if we take the authority Christ has given us in using His name and His Word, rising up in the anointing and power of the Holy Ghost to banish the enemy before he gets a toe hold. This was the thing that frustrated Satan so much when Jesus fed the 5,000. It had taken Satan years to put sickness and poverty on those people and Jesus healed them all on his lunch break, then fed them all until they were satisfied, destroying the works Satan was so proud of. No wonder Jesus had to go to a high mountain to pray after the crowd left – He probably felt dirty and defiled after laying His hands on every imaginable sin and sickness. He needed cleansing and the renewed strength only the Father could give through prayer. Remember when Jesus was resurrected and spoke to Mary in the Garden? He said to her, “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” In the law, handed down at Sinai, one was forbidden to touch a human corpse or a dead animal. If they did, even accidentally, they were defiled and unclean and had to go to the High Priest for instruction and purification. Jesus had been resurrected, totally healed and He was in His glorified body, but He still had come straight from hell and the grave and, as our new High Priest, had not yet been to the Father for purification. He did ascend later that morning, for that evening he visited the Apostles in the Upper Room and eight days later He invited Thomas, who was absent on the earlier visit, to put his fingers in the nail prints and his hand in the hole in his side. So Jesus had been cleansed and purified at the throne of Heaven, the best place to go for all our physical and spiritual needs. What a reunion with the Father that must have been… Remember Peter whose shadow fell across the sick and they were healed. Remember the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead also lived in Peter and today it dwells in you. Pray the prayer of Peter when he was threatened by the religious rulers of his day, in Acts 4:23-31. Choose to believe the Word of God, and test the words of men. Do not believe those that tell you your sickness is a cross you have to bear… Tell these well-meaning friends that it is not always true – tell them that Jesus Christ bore your sickness and it was nailed to the Cross with Him. Its power has no authority over you, and it has no power to take your life unless you give it permission to do so. The Cross knocked out all of Satan’s teeth and, as for his cohorts, they are cowards, every one of them. They tremble at the Name of Jesus. They know that Jesus has all power and authority over all things, they know He has the keys of hell and death (Revelation 1:18), and if Jesus lives within you, if He is King within you, He will do whatever you ask Him to do. He promised a man shall have whatsoever he says. And demons aren’t about to traffic with Jesus or with Jesus’ savvy kids… Before we can die at the hands of the enemy, Jesus has to give His consent and unlock the gates of death. Unless we renounce the sickness and pray the prayer of faith for healing, Jesus will have no choice but to let us suffer what He has already suffered for us. Jesus has completed all He was required to do and, meanwhile, we have to do what Jesus told us in Mark 16 to do. We cannot abandon our responsibility and merely hope for our healing. Hope is in the future, faith is in the present. The faith of the present has a way of moving quickly into the hope of the future and so we must not falter in the faith of the present nor put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today. Every time we speak His Name in authority, we magnify and glorify Him. We lift Him up and exalt Him as the Most-High God of heaven and earth, ruler of kings and kingdoms, judge of men and nations, redeemer of lost souls. Every time we plead the blood, demons flee. Every time we believe, someone is healed. The flesh may still be a battle from time to time, but Heaven is on our side… Joan Krempel
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