Vacinations

The Vaccination Dilemma

The first vaccination that I remember vividly was the polio vaccination.  If you were born before 1950, you experienced the fear of polio.  If you were a parent during the 1950's, you will remember the fear even more.  Most people who contacted the virus had only minor symptoms. One percent experienced paralysis or death; however, fear paralyzed the nation. The polio epidemic in the U.S. occurred in the 50's and the original vaccine was developed in the 50's.  As a result polio is virtually nonexistent today in the USA.  The last reported case in the U.S. traced back to the wild raw virus was in 1993.  However 154 cases have been reported in USA that were vaccine-associated caused by the live oral poliovirus vaccine.

SO, today we vaccinate against something that we cannot see, a virus; a disease that by 1965 only affected 61 people a year in the USA and that has not been reported in the last 20+ years. 

Vaccination is preventive medicine.  All of us participate in preventive medicine.  If you take cholesterol, you are practicing preventive medicine.  If you believe in eating healthy and exercising, you practice preventative medicine.  Most of the medications we take are preventative, trying to avoid something bad happening. 

If you fall in this group, you believe in preventive medicine, trying to head off health problems.  You want to be healthy.  I want to be healthy.  We all want to be healthy.  We all go to physicians so we can stay healthy and want to live as long as possible.  We all trust our physicians and believe that they want us to be healthy; yet, when it comes to be believing that God wants us to be healthy; many Christians are not so sure.  Many Christians believe that God may want them to be sick; while at the same time paying big bucks to stay healthy.  Some believe that God is trying to teach them something through sickness; or that in some way, their sickness brings glory to God.  Meanwhile, they are paying the medical establishment big bucks or costing their insurance carrier big bucks.

The only example of anything similar to this, is in the Old Testament under the Mosaic Covenant (Exodus 15 and Deut. 7 and 28).  This was a conditional covenant that God made with the children of Israel.  There is no such covenant in play in the New Testament.

Am I the only one that sees a problem here?

I am not against vaccines or preventative medicine.  I just want to point out the irony that in contrast, the church today ignores "spiritual vaccination" and denying the role of satan in sickness.   When Jesus sent out the twelve and the seventy, he instructed them to “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils (Matt. 10 and Luke 10).   Was that just a problem in “Jesus’ day”?  Has satan’s role been eliminated?  Do we really believe that there is a satan?  Do we believe that satan is active in our well being and that God has given us authority over him and his actions?  Many Christians believe that only the 12 disciples had the authority to heal, ignoring the seventy.  We are told to make disciples of all nations and to do the work of Jesus; but, believe that we do not have the authority of the Twelve.  

But, Paul in his letter to the Ephesians says differently.  He prayed :

that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.

He is the Head. We are His Body,  We are to do His work.  We are to do the same works that He did and greater. But we are told by our pastors and teachers that we don't have His authority, that we have the same Holy Spirit but don't have the power.  That to do so is presumptive of us. Where do they get this?  Scripture not only says we have the same power, we are told we have the responsibility.

Are we more enlightened and know what causes most diseases?  We can handle most of them by just going to the doctor.  I don’t see the church using this authority or using the “armor of God” to stand against him.  I do, however, see the church trying to fight against the “wiles of the devil”, i.e. sickness, using the armor of the flesh.

Christians profess to believe that there is one God; but demons also believe the same and tremble, James 2:19.  I ask do we believe more or differently that the demons.  If we really believe in God and His power, why don’t we use it?

You will hear many Christians request pray for healing after they have exhausted all that modern medicine has to offer.  Many Christians pray for doctors to find the cure for their illness.  Many Christians pray for healing with the escape clause, “Lord, if it be your will”, thinking that they are praying Biblically, yet Jesus never prayed for healing in this manner.  The typical answer is that Jesus knew when it was God’s will to heal and when not; so he did not waste his prayers in those cases.  Jesus prayed in this manner only once, in the garden before His death.  Did he not also Jesus know that it was His Father’s will for Him to die?

Jesus said He was doing His Father’s work.

I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works

Jesus came “that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8c).  That is what Jesus came to do and that is what He did when he healed the sick.  We are now His Body, assigned with the responsibility of carrying on His work.  That is why Jesus said, “I tell you that he who trusts in me—the things which I do he shall do also; and greater things than these he shall do, because I am going to the Father.”

The church today does not practice preventive medicine in the spiritual realm.  It does not practice praying for health because it does not believe in it; yet will buy health insurance and spends billions of dollars on preventive medicine while believing that God sends sickness or wants them sick.  Our churches are filled with people in various stages of dying, knowing that death comes to all, that life after death is better than here; yet still spends billions of dollars trying to avoid the inevitable.  At the same time refusing to pray, believing, that God wants them to be healthy; praying only when the doctors say that they can not do anything more.  Refuse to “anoint with oil” or “lay on hands”, in spite of the fact that we are instructed to do so and that it was done is the New Testament church.

YET, we say we believe the whole Bible.

YOU ONLY BELIEVE AS MUCH OF THE BIBLE AS YOU PRACTICE!!!!

“It makes me boil when I think of the power we profess and the utter impotency of our action. Believers who know one-tenth as much as we do are doing one-hundred times more for God, with His blessing and our criticism. Oh if I could write it, preach it, say it, paint it, anything at all, if only God's power would become known among us.”

― Jim Elliot, killed in 1956, while evangelizing to the Auca Indians in Ecuador