What if your healing doesn’t come in this life even though you ask God for it? How did God ultimately heal people in the Old Testament through resurrection? We will take a closer look at this from the Old Testament.

In my last post, I talked about 6 Old Testament words for healing. In this post, I want to talk about resurrection in the Old Testament and how it is God’s ultimate healing.

Sometimes people ask God for healing but don’t get healed in this lifetime. Scripture doesn’t address this question because it is the norm for people to be healed. You see healing explode in the New Testament compared to the Old Testament.

I want to touch on this subject and talk about God’s ultimate promise of healing. I will address this from the New Testament side later. When people in the Old Testament did not experience healing, we must ask, “How did God ultimately heal people in the Old Testament?”

The Power of Resurrection

One promise we can trust all the way is that God ultimately heals people. He doesn’t always do it in the way we expect or the way we want Him to. Sometimes people don’t get healed this side of heaven.

But God’s not finished with your story if this is the case for you right now. I became a quadriplegic in September 2013. I still believe with every fiber of my being in God’s divine healing for me. I will never give that up. If the Bible promises it, I believe it.

We can ask, “Why hasn’t God healed me yet.” The “yet” shows faith that God isn’t finished with us. It is not the final say. God’s promise holds true past this life through resurrection and in heaven. We underestimate God’s power to do great things in us only in this life.

The Widow of Zaraphath’s Son

There are three times in the Old Testament when people were raised from the dead. Death is the ultimate result of sickness in this life. God is greater than that. And He proved it three times in the Old Testament.

God ultimately healed people in the Old Testament through resurrection beginning with the widow of Zaraphath’s son (1 Kings 17:17-24). This was during Elijah’s ministry. Elijah originally prophesied a miracle of nature in her life when God made a jar of flour and jug of oil last to supply their needs.

Elijah dwells with them and one day her son perished. She blamed Elijah. Sometimes we blame people in our grief that really are not at fault. Perhaps it was because he prophesied they would survive and now her son was dead.

When she addressed it with Elijah, there are some amazing parts of the story. First, the widow thinks her son dies because of her sin and Elijah’s presence in her house. Elijah praise and essentially blames God for killing her son. If only we had time for these parts.

Elijah takes him to his room and lays the boy on his bed. He prays that God would raise the son. Then he stretches himself over the son three times and asked God to revive him. God answered his prayer and the boy lived again. This account has all the earmarks of strange prophetic actions and images.

The Shunamite Woman’s Son

The second time God ultimately healed people in the Old Testament happens when God raised theShunamite woman’s son from the dead (2 Kings 4:18-37). This happens during Elisha’s ministry. There are incredible similarities between Elijah’s and Elisha’s ministries.

The Shunamite woman’s son tells his father his head hurts and lays in his mother’s lap until he dies. She puts him in Elisha’s room she gave him when he was ministering in the area. He had originally prophesied she would have a son. She was angry with him because of his prophecy, and now that she had a son, he was dead.

There’s an element of quickness about the story as the Shunamite woman quickly goes to see Elisha. When his servant greets her, she says everything is fine. I don’t know if this was to get to Elisha instead of going through a middleman or if there was another reason for her deceiving the servant.

When she gets to Elisha, she takes it up with him. He sends his servant ahead of them to lay his staff on the boy’s dead body. He tells the servant to go quickly. This is an interesting difference from Elijah’s experience. When he gets there, the boy is still dead.

I like how the servant says he is not awake instead of saying he is dead. In the New Testament, sleep is a euphemism for death. When God is the God of the impossible, death is only sleep. Whatever was wrong with the boy (I think it may have been a serious concussion), it is healed through resurrection.

Elisha, like Elijah, goes into the room, shuts the door, and stretches himself over the boy. He prays and asks God to restore the boy back to life. He does this twice instead of three times. There is more detail as the boy’s skin becomes warm and he sneezed seven times, and then opened his eyes.

The word for sneeze only occurs here in the entire Old Testament. One possible sense of the word is to exhale spasmodically. It is almost as if the boy comes back to life in stages. That this word appears nowhere else might point to the special miracle of healing God provided.

Elisha’s Bones

As we talk about how God healed people in the Old Testament, there is one more instance of resurrection (2 Kings 13:21). The Bible tells us that when Elisha asked for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit and ministry, he saw God do twice the miracles He did through Elijah’s ministry (2 Kings 2:9).

It’s no surprise, then, that we see a second resurrection through Elisha. It is almost so casual for his ministryd resurrection appears in one verse. There is no story surrounding it other than a man’s corpse being thrown into Elisha’s grave.

As soon as the man’s corpse touched Elisha’s bones, he was revived and stood on his feet. This is an amazing account of what God did through Elisha even after he was dead.

The Ultimate Healing

Even death is not the end of God’s healing people. It is clear even in the Old Testament that there is an afterlife in Sheol, a holding place for the dead. The New Testament will give us even more hope for what happens when we die.

God ultimately healed people in the Old Testament through the power of resurrection. We can trust His power extends beyond the grave. Sometimes in the Old Testament, we saw Him heal through prophetic ministries. The people raised to life experienced full healing.

Praying for Your Healing

Please allow me to pray for you in your affliction.

Precious Jesus, thank You for Your power that goes beyond the grave. I ask for my brother and sister in Christ that you would touch them and heal their bodies completely. We are trusting in You alone to do what seems impossible to us. But we know that nothing is impossible with You. Even beyond the grave, Your power is limitless. Thank You for hearing us and answering our prayers. In your mighty and matchless name, Amen.

Up Next

Now that we have covered Old Testament resurrection and how God ultimately heals people, I want to talk about healing miracles repeated in the New Testament.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay