Would it contain John G. Lake’s Letter to Dr. Elwood Bulgin dated February 28, 1920……
Dear Brother in Christ:
It was my privilege to be present at your meeting at the St. Paul Methodist Church at Spokane last Monday night and listen to your sermon. I was deeply impressed by the masterful manner in which you marshaled your facts, and the spirit in which they were presented to your great audience.
Your presentation of the deity of Jesus Christ, and the sharpness with which you brought the facts of the denial of the deity of Jesus by the Christian Scientists, were striking. The masterful handling of the whole subject commanded my admiration, and I believe the admiration of a great many of your audience.
Men can speak with frankness to each other, particularly when their interests in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ are identical. You have lived, loved, and denied yourself, and suffered for the cause of the Kingdom of Christ in the earth. I. too, have loved and suffered for my fidelity to the vision of the redemption of Jesus Christ which God revealed to me.
For twenty five years I have labored as few men in the world have labored for so long a period, to bring before the world as far as I could the magnificent truths of the redemptive blood and life and power of the Son of God.
Your methods and my methods have been different. You, in your forceful, philosophical manner, have undertaken to destroy faith in Christian Science through opposition, ridicule, and exposure of what you believe to be its fallacies. On the other hand,I have undertaken by specific revelation of the truth of Jesus Christ concerning the healing power of God and its availability for all men today, to show the world that there is no need for any man to leave any stable Christian body in order to secure the benefits of salvation and healing specifically declared by Jesus Christ Himself to be available for every man.
Jesus, in contrast with the ancient philosophers and reformers of the past and present, first gave Himself in consecration to God, body, soul and spirit, thereby establishing the pattern of consecration for all Christians forever. His baptism was the dedication and commitment of Himself “unto all righteousness” (see Matthew 3:14-15) He undertook to reveal the righteousness of God. Note the nature of this revelation.
Having definitely committed Himself, His body, His soul, His spirit, to God forever, immediately there descended upon Him the witness to His hundredfold consecration. The Holy Ghost came from heaven as a dove and abode upon Him, as it ever will upon every man who will meet Almighty God with the same utterances of real consecration to God, of spirit and soul and body. This reveals the demand of God upon the Christian’s person and conscience, and the answer of God from Heaven to this fullness of consecration.
Being thus definitely equipped, He proceeded to the wilderness for testing by Satan to see if this consecration of body and soul and spirit would endure.
He overcame all the efforts of Satan to tempt Him in the specific departments of His life: first, the body; second, the soul; third, the spirit. He overcame through reliance on God and His Word, and came forth in the power of the Spirit. He announced the constructive platform of His life and ministry, conaining the following six planks.
“The Spirit of The Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me.”
First—“To preach the gospel to the poor.”
Second–“He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted.”
Third—“To preach deliverance to the captives.”
Fourth–“Recovering of sight to the blind.”
Fifth—“To set at liberty them that are bruised.”
Sixth–“To preach the acceptable year of The Lord.”
God’s acceptable year had come. No more waiting for the year of Jubilee and all its consequent blessings. God’s never-ending Jubilee was at hand in
Jesus Christ.
He then went throughout all Galilee searching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the Kingdom. and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people, and so established forever the ideal of Christian ministry for the Church of God.
Then He empowered twelve men, and sent them to preach the Kingdom of God, and to heal the sick(see Matthew 10:7-8). Profiting by their experience, and advancing in faith and knowledge of the power of God, “He appointed other seventy also” (Luke 10:1).
But in sending forth the seventy He reversed the order of instruction. to the seventy He said: Go your ways…”and heal the sick that are therein, and say to them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you” (Luke 10:9) And they returned rejoicing that even the devils were subject to them “through thy name” (Luke10:17).
Then came His wonderful entrance into death, His redemption on the cross, His resurrection from the grave, His interviews with His disciples, His last commission in which, according to Mark, He established in the Church of Christ to be born through their preaching in all the world, the very same ministry of salvation and healing that He himself during His earth life had practiced. That ministry contained the message of Jesus to all the world and the anointing with power from on High, just as He had received it at His baptism. Indeed He commanded them to wait in Jerusalem until “Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost, not many days hence” (Acts 1:5).
He declared to them that certain signs should follow, saying: These signs shall follow them that believe. Every one, every Christian soul, was thus commissioned by Jesus to heal the sick and sinful from sickness and sin.
“In my name shall they —
First – “Cast out devils”
Second – “They shall speak with new tongues.”
Third – “They shall take up serpents.”
Fourth – “And if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not harm them.”
Fifth – “They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” (Mark 16: 17-18)
The same Holy Spirit of God which flowed through Jesus Christ, the anointing that was on Him and which flowed through His hands and into the sick, was an impartation of God so real that when the woman touched the hem of His garment, she was conscious of the instant effect of the healing in her body through it. “She felt in her body that she was healed of that plague,” while Jesus Himself was likewise conscious of an outflow. He said: “Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me” (Luke 8:46).
Divine Healing is the particular phase of ministry in which the modern Church does not measure up to the early Church. This failure has been due to a lack of knowledge of the real nature and the real process of Christian healing. The above incident reveals the secret of what the power was, how the power operated, by what law it was transmitted from the disciple to the one who needed the blessing. The power was The Holy Ghost of God, both in Jesus Christ after His Baptism in The Holy Ghost, and in the disciples after the Baptism in the Holy Ghost came upon them on the Day of Pentecost. It flowed through the hands of Jesus to the sick: it permeated the garments He wore. When the woman touched even the hem of His garment there was sufficient of the power of God there for her need.
The disciples healed the sick by the same method. Indeed, the Apostle Paul, realizing this law, permitted the people to bring to him handkerchiefs and aprons that they might touch his body, and when they were carried to the sick, the sick were healed through the power of god in the handkerchiefs, and the demons that inhabited their persons went out of them.
Herein is shown the secret of the early Church, that which explains the whole miracle-working power of the apostles and the early Church for four hundred years. The same is evident in branches of the modern Church. Herein is revealed the secret that has been lost. That secret is the conscious, tangible, living, incoming, abiding, outflowing Spirit of God through the disciple of Christ who has entered into blood-washed relationship and baptism in The Holy Ghost.
This is the secret that the modern Church from the days of the Reformation onward has failed to reveal. We have, however, retained a form of godliness, but have denied the power thereof (see 2 Timothy 3:5 )
When Jesus laid His hands on people, the Holy Ghost was imparted to them in healing virtue. When the disciples and early Christians likewise laid their hands on the sick, the Holy Ghost was imparted through them to the needy one. Likewise the Holy Ghost was imparted to preachers “for the work of the ministry” (Ephesians 4:12), including healing. Primitive Church history abounds in examples of healing in the same manner. Paul specifically enjoins Timothy to Forget not the gift (power) that is in thee, that came through the laying on of my hands (see 2 Timothy 1:6 ). It was an impartation of the Holy Ghost to Timothy for the work of the Christian ministry.
In the whole range of Christian history we have retained the form, but have lost its power in great degree. The Pope lays his hand on the head of the Cardinal, the Cardinal lays his hands on the head of the Bishop, the Bishop lays his hands on the head of the Priest, the Priest lays his hands on the head of the communicant when he receives him as a member of the church.
In the Protestant church in all her branches, the laying on of hands in ordination for the ministry is practiced. But in the early Church it was not the laying on of hands alone, but through the laying on of hands the impartation of the definite living Spirit of the living God to the individual took place. Through its power in him he was constituted a real priest, a real elder, a real preacher with grace, healing power and faith anointed of God from on High.
God gave the blood of Jesus to the Christian Church. God gave the power of healing to the Christian Church in The Holy Ghost, and as long as they lived under the anointing of The Holy Ghost and exercised the faith of Jesus in their hearts, the healing power of God manifested and is still manifest where the condition exists. Christian Science exists because of the failure of the Christian Church to truly present Jesus Christ and His power through the Spirit and minister it to the world.
Robert C. Ingersoll assailed the Holy Scriptures, laughed at the Christian God, destroyed the faith of men, wrecked their hopes and left them stranded and abandoned amid the wreckage. Through this means he brought the just condemnation of the world upon himself. The world condemns him to this hour in that he destroyed the faith of men without supplying to their souls something to take its place, as he should have done, and as ant man who is honorable and true must do.
You recommended divine healing in one breath and denied its potency in the next. You have attacked Christian Science, the followers of Dowie, and others and arraigned them at the bar and condemned them, without giving to men a tangible way by which the healing of God might be brought to them. Why do you not study and practice Jesus Christ’s own way of healing and so make your ministry constructive? What are you going to do with the multitude of dying that the doctors cannot help? Leave them to die? The doctors have got through with them. And in many instances even though they are still prescribing for them and are perfectly aware of their inability to heal the sick ones and are candid and willing to say so, Dr. Bulgin, what have you got for these? What have yo given to these?
If a man were walking down the street with a very poor set of crutches and a ruffian came along and kicked the crutches from under him and let him fall, every honest soul would rise in condemnation of the ruffian’s act and demand reparation. You come to the dying, kick their hope from under them, and let them fall to the ground, and leave them to die without bringing them the true healing power in the blood and Spirit of Jesus. It is not sufficient to say “I believe in Divine healing”. If they are sick they must be healed.
This must not be construed as a defense of Christian Science. It is not given with that thought, not in that spirit. It is given rather in the hope that as an influential man in the Christian Church, you may see the weakness of your position and of the position of the Church, and by the grace of God call the church back again to faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, for healing for every man from every disease, as Jesus intended it should be as the scriptures definitely, positively teach, and make proper scriptural provision for a definite healing ministry.
In the hope of supplying this need of the Church, the Protestant ministers of the city of Los Angeles have agreed in formal resolution to begin the teaching and study and practice of healing. How has this come to pass, and why? They have been whipped into it by the success of Christian Science.
A recent issue of a New York daily paper announces that the pastors of New York have likewise undertaken to teach the people the power of God to heal. The Protestant Episcopal Church is endeavoring through the ministry of a layman of the Church of England from the old country, a Mr. Hickman, to educate their people in the truth of healing through the atonement of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, by the laying on of hands and the prayer of faith. In a few days the gentleman will appear at All Saints Cathedral, Spokane, for that purpose, and the sick will be invited to be ministered to in the Name of the Son of God and healed through His blood purchase.
The Church of England in England and also in Africa for ten years has been endeavoring to organize societies, not to teach their people Christian Science, psychic therapeutics, or mental healing, all of which belong to the realm of the natural, but to teach and demonstrate the pure power of God from Heaven by The Holy Ghost, purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ, to heal diseases.