Throughout the Scriptures are found glowing promises of health and all manner of good things which a loving Father waits to bestow on the children of men, and yet the world seems to abound in sickness and all manner of evil. This strange condition, this problem of human need and divine supply, has puzzled the thoughtful in every age. It has led them to search the Scriptures for some unrecognized truth that would show men how to avail themselves of the promised good, though this key to the Scriptures seemed ever to hang above the range of human vision. Men have, as it were, peered wistfully in through the windows of the Scriptural treasure-house, at the wealth within, and then passed sadly on to their toil, because they knew no way to enter.
It was not always so, however, for nineteen hundred years ago there lived one who entered, and dealt out the treasure with a lavish hand. He not only demonstrated the availability of the Scriptural promises to meet man's every need, but he added to them yet other promises, which were far more inclusive. He said, "All things are possible to him that believeth." "And these signs shall follow them that believe; . . . they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do."
When he "was received up into heaven," Mark tells us, his followers "went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following." Then, for about three hundred years afterward, as history records, there were some who continued the Christ-ministry of healing, but following this period there seems to be a long dark night in Christian history, wherein the "key" to the Scriptures was lost. There were no more "signs following."
