Kathryn Kuhlman was one of the best known ministers of the first half of the 20th century. Her ministry reached tens of thousands throughout the US and all over the world. And even though I am a bit to young to even have a remote chance of ever meeting her, I have seen some footage of her. (You can find a few videos on YouTube.) This thin lady in her white dress with her long pointy fingers is a picture hard to forget. And man, was she theatrical. But whatever you think of her, it is hard to ignore the fact, that she has seen countless miracles. A lot of them have been well documented. All in all it is safe to say that she was not ordinary. But in all she saw God do with her and through her, there was one question on her mind, she always struggled with. And a couple of times she mentioned that this would be the first question she would ask God on entering Heaven. And the question was this: “Why does not everybody get healed?”
When I heard of this question for the first time, I thought: “That is a great one. Please ask him and tell me the answer.” She hasn’t. I mean, told me. In her defense, I wasn’t born yet when she went Home to the Father. But by now, I think I know the answer. And I can picture Jesus with a loving smile on his wonderful face, looking at Kathryn saying: “But they do, my beloved daughter, they do.”
One of the things God told Adam and Eve about eating from the Tree of Knowledge was that they would “surely die”. And after spending all their lives only in His Presence seeing Him in all His Glory they still decided not to believe Him. That day they learned the hard way that God always keeps His promises. And being kicked out of Paradise into a fallen world let them experience something they had never seen before: decay. (On a less theological note: I am convinced that at this moment entropy became one of the driving forces in the universe.) And one of the things they had to watch falling apart, was their own bodies. True, they had some hundred years for that observation, but it was obvious for them non the less. And they discovered death in small doses: sickness. The fact that we are not healthy all the time is a direct result of mankind not trusting God, of the incident we call The Fall. (I am at no point here implying that personal sickness is a direct result of previous personal sin or even family curses. Jesus is very clear on that one (John 9:2-3) and I can’t understand why this theory is still tormenting the Body of Christ. See: My karma sucks)
It always fascinates me that the Bible is set in a way in a pair of brackets. The first two chapters of Genesis find their counterpart in the last two chapters of Revelations. Creation and Re-creation, the unhindered Presence of God, Paradise and Heaven… The parallels are to many to discuss them here in detail. But one thing becomes obvious. Jesus came into the fallen world to restore it to its previous state. And dying on the Cross on our behalf He not only conquered Death, he also bled for our sickness, for “in his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
And this is, I think, the problem Kathryn Kuhlman struggled with. She looked on the “now” instead of the “not yet”. Her focus (with this particular problem) was on our time on this earth, not on our Life in Eternity.
As a child it struck me as odd that no one recognized Jesus after his resurrection. Didn’t they run around with Him for years? It took me a while to realize that His new body simply looked different. That and other scriptures tell us that we will get a new body. One which is no longer under the curse of The Fall. There is no sickness in Heaven. But there is Jesus. The one person in the Presence of God wounded. Even His resurrected body has the holes in its hands and feet and the mark in its side. He wears the signs of His death on the Cross so our bodies can be spotless.
So it doesn’t matter how we leave this world. It is not important how many prayers are seemingly unanswered or what is left of our body. Because when we wake up in the wonderful embrace of our Savior we will look in the loving eyes of everything we have ever hoped for. All will be well for He gave everything for us. And I think that Kathryn Kuhlman, finally arriving Home in the House of her Heavenly Father, simply forgot the question she was so eager to ask.
