"BEFORE they call, I will answer." This is the reassuring message of the great prophet Isaiah. To the writer it is one of the best in the Bible, for when held in consciousness and spiritually understood, it resulted in an almost instantaneous healing. With the need of help came the Scriptural assurance that God's kingdom is here, and that God made man in His image and likeness and man has never changed: he was given dominion, and that dominion has never been taken away; he is not in bondage to sin and disease. This realization broke the fetters of false belief.
With what confidence would we turn to God if we realized that the answer is always before the prayer; if we knew that sin, sickness, sorrow, and death are not of God, and have no real existence or power; that they are but dreams of mortal sense, fleeing before the light of divine Mind. And this confidence, this understanding, is required if our prayers are to be of avail. The Master's words and works show us this very plainly. He said, "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." At the tomb of Lazarus, when the stone had been rolled away, but before Lazarus had risen, Jesus lifted his eyes to heaven and said: "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always." The answer of Martha when Jesus told her that her brother should rise again, showed that a theological belief, still extant, hid from her view the ever present Christ and made the resurrection a far-off event. Jesus' answer, "I am the resurrection, and the life:he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live," is very significant.
Jesus knew that the answer is before the prayer. He knew that death is not the master of Life, and that nothing can hide from man the dominion and power bestowed on him by his heavenly Father. Mrs. Eddy tells us (Science and Health, p. 75) that "Jesus restored Lazarus by the understanding that Lazarus had never died, not by an admission that his body had died and then lived again. Had Jesus believed that Lazarus had lived or died in his body, the Master would have stood on the same plane of belief as those who buried the body, and he could not have resuscitated it."
