FROM PETER TO PAUL
from
IS HEALING IN THE ATONEMENT?
Maurice M Johnson
Publicly advertised meeting
Long Beach, California
Now when they were hungry, what they needed was food, and He said, "I was hungry and you gave Me food. And when they was naked, what they need was clothes, you gave Me clothes. But I was sick and you visited Me." If healing is in the atonement that's a horrible thing for the Lord Jesus to have said. "I was sick and you visited Me." What do you think He meant? And then you remember the other side of it, and there's Going to be some who say, "Lord, when saw we Thee hungered, and when saw we Thee in prison, when saw we Thee naked?"
By the way... if miracles are being performed today like they were performed in the apostles’ day, He should have said, "I was in prison and you came, performed a miracle, and the jailer fell down, the door flew down wide open, earthquake." That's what happened in Peter's case, in Paul's case. One, in each of them. Peter was delivered from the jail by a miracle once, and Paul was delivered from the jail by a miracle once. Peter raised one dead person we read of and Paul raised one dead person. Peter's body was used, his shadow to heal people, Paul's body, handkerchiefs put on his body. God saw fit to let Paul have miracles that perfectly paralleled Peter's miracles. I believe it's because Peter as the apostle of the circumcision, the leading of the twelve Jewish apostles, was soon to pass off the scene, and Paul, the new type of apostle, apostle to the Gentiles, was to take over. And in order for the Jewish Christians to believe that Paul was really God's man, because he's Going to preach a good many new things, in order for these Jewish Christians to believe that Paul was really God's man, they all had great faith in and confidence in Peter, I don't mean as the pope, but as one that God saw fit to single out in many cases unquestionably. The Roman Catholics are partly right, but the other part is a little leaven that leavens the whole lump of their damnable inverted pyramid of error.
But now watch. I believe that ... it's very interesting and very significant and a very delightful study to see how God had Paul duplicate the miracles that Peter performed. So the people who believed Peter was a dear man of God would say, "Well, everyone of the great miracles that Paul ... performed in connection with Peter, were performed in connection with Paul". And so thus Paul ... said, "The signs of an apostle were wrought in me". The signs of an apostle, 2 Corinthians 12th chapter, signs of an apostle.