About a year and a half ago, while shopping at the local market,
a man told me how miserably crippled his wife was with arthritis. I
told him about using the sea salt, and he said he would immediately
get some, as all other hopes had failed.
Although I did not know the man’s name, but his face was
familiar, I recognized him walking out of a store just last week. I
ran out after him, without first paying for my paper, I would
immediately be picked up for shop-lifting. I paid for the paper as
soon as the clerk was available, then ran after the gentleman in
question, a full half-block down the main thoroughfare.
‘Did your wife try the sea salt for her arthritis?’ I
asked, a bit breathless.
‘She sure did,’ he replied with enthusiasm. ‘And
she’s much better. When you told me about the sea salt, she was
almost helpless. But this summer she raised the finest garden
tomatoes this big, everything grown the organic way.’
‘I don’t know your name,’ he went on, ‘But
I’m very glad that you identified yourself and started her
using the sea salt. She’s not only much better, but she has
gone in for everything organic and all the health foods. We even
have our grown-up children using natural foods in their
families.’
‘People may call us ‘nuts’ for using health
foods-but, don’t you believe it. It really is the answer to
health,’ the friend concluded.
I gave the gentleman the address of our Natural Food Associates
meeting, and he assured me that his wife would want to come to the
sessions, being a confirmed believer that health comes from natural
foods that enable the body to function as it was intended.
Just this past week-end we attended the big Tri-State Engine
Show at Portland, Indiana. Red Fischbach, the veteran 77-year old
steam engine man and owner of a small museum of early Americana at
Kettlersville, Ohio, dropped by our IRON MAN ‘office’ for a
chat. I had received a letter from Red, two years ago, asking where
he could get some sea salt for his wife whose arthritis had left
her helpless and unable to do her work. A year later when I saw him
at The Darke County Steam Threshers, he told me his wife was well
enough and relieved from pain that they no longer had to wait on
her. She was already able to do her own housework. But this time,
at Tri-State Show, Red assured me that his wife was even better
than last summer.
‘My wife even bakes cakes and pies. What a difference from
two years ago, when she was in such pain she merely lay in a heap,
not able to do anything,’ said Red. ‘That sea salt made the
difference. We use it all the time.’
We are always happy to hear from people who have benefited by
our suggestions. We’re here in this world to help others, if
only in a very humble way. It is our feeling that people often
suffer too much. Some may be of their own making. But oftentimes
the suffering is the result of things and forces out of human
control.
Over a year ago I gave a box of sea salt to a neighbor. His wife
had become a helpless invalid from arthritis. A few weeks later he
told me he couldn’t get her to use it.
I happened to see this neighbor just a week ago. I told him of
the happy results the two people had experienced from using the sea
salt over the past year. He again told me that he never could get
his wife to use it.
‘My wife’s psychotic, and she rejected the suggestion of
using sea salt,’ he explained. ‘She ‘s still
sufferingso helpless I have to call in another woman to do the
housework.’
It doesn’t seem to make sense, that one would object to
merely emptying their old salt shaker of its store salt and filling
it with sea salttasting the same but having trace minerals
beneficial to the body. But there are those who would rather
‘suffer than switch’. If this woman had only used the sea
salt, she might be much better, and in less pain, even doing her
own housework like the others. But instead she is still in misery,
and helpless from aching joints, a victim of her own prejudice.
We do not prescribe any medicines or. even patent drugs here.
Only a physician is qualified to do that. But oftentimes, when the
doctor does all he can, and we learn of some food that is
beneficial we do our best to pass it on. Had our neighbor been
wise, he would have emptied the old salt shaker and poured it full
of the sea salt without telling his suffering wife. She
wouldn’t have known the difference, anyway, except she’d
have been feeling better instead of suffering so much over the past
year.
Another neighbor lady, across the street, complained about the
pain of her arthritis. We immediately gave her a box of sea salt we
had on our shelves. She said, ‘I11 start using it today.
I’m so glad to know about it, before it really cripples me. I
feel I’m only sixty and too young to be an invalid.’
This summer, while attending the Blue Grass Steam and Gas Show
at Harrodsburg, Ky., I noticed a young man sitting on the ground,
propped against a tree.
‘You’ve really picked out a comfortable seat for
yourself,’ I said.
But he replied, ‘I’m leaning against the tree to relieve
my back pains. My vertebraes are out, and I can hardly stand or
walk.’
‘I know how you must feel,’ I replied. ‘For years my
spinal maladjustments made me almost a helpless invalid. When I was
only in my twenties, I could get out of bed in the mornings, only
by the strength of my arms my body was in such utter pain.’
Then I went on to tell him how I took some old cream-tester
gears that I had used to make an astronomical telescope mounting,
and dismantled it to make me what I call a
‘back-stretcher’. After a chiropractor and an osteopath had
both given up keeping my spine in condition and alignment, I
succeeded in getting it in a much more live able condition by using
this back stretcher. I was able to get the vertebraes back in line,
and my sacro-iliac in proper relation, one with the other. Of
course this took some time, but I persisted gently stretching the
spine, then releasing the tension, stretching again, and so on,
till the vertebraes lined up. And I was soon feeling better. For a
while I did a hitch in a glass factory. If you could have seen me
climbing over the machinery and up through the carton chutes of
that factory, you’d have never believed I’d recently had
chronic spinal troubles with double curvature resulting from a
sacroiliac rotation, suffered since childhood.
I then proceeded to tell this young fellow how to take certain
exercises, to help align his spine. I don’t know whether he
will try it, or take my suggestions seriously. But I hope he does,
because he told me all that was being done for him anymore was the
administering of pain-killers to allow him to live with his
condition.
Life was meant to hold more for us than constant physical
suffering. Yet many suffer excruciating pain every day, after the
doctors have done everything for them, oftentimes for want of a
little practical knowledge and application that can bring help and
relief. In the days of the New Testament, Jesus healed every known
disease and sickness that was brought to Him. His disciples, and
later the Apostles even could heal the most difficult diseases by
prayer and faith, in His name. But the next best thing that you and
I can do, is to at least take some suggestions, or work out some of
our own problems and improve our health conditions to the point of
being able to live with ourselves. Many people suffer not only
great pain and crippling, but often mental and spiritual torment as
well. The Great Healer could erase all these torments for all who
came. And today Christianity can heal when medicine cannot and the
psychoanalyst has long given up. But we must give it a chance. In
the Book of James is written a short, concise procedure for divine
healing. ‘Call in the elders and pray, and the prayer of faith
shall save the sick.’ It’s very simple. But the hard job
might be to get some elders of a church, these days, dedicated
enough to their high calling to respond.
Meantime, you and I can, regardless of the lack of sincerity in
many elders, do some helpful things for ourselves sufficient to
enable us to live with ourselves and with others.
Jesus said, ‘According to your faith, so be it.’ It is a
sad commentary on some folks that even practical suggestions are
rejected, preferring continuance of their misery to using the
simple remedies that God has provided to heal mankind.
Martin Luther said it a little more wordy, some fifteen
centuries later. In a historical-religious pamphlet we picked up at
the inter-faith building during this summer’s Darke County
Fair, we read:
‘The tax collector in Torgau and the counsellor in Belgern
have written to me to ask that I offer some good advice and help
for Mrs. Korner’s afflicted husband. I know of no worldly help
to give. If the physicians are at a loss to find a remedy, you may
be sure that it is not a case of ordinary melancholy. It must
rather be an affliction that comes from the devil and this must be
counteracted by the power of Christ and with the power of faith.
This is what we do, and what we have been accustomed to do for a
cabinetmaker here who was similarly afflicted with madness and we
cured him by prayer in Christ’s name.
Accordingly you should proceed as follows: Go to the afflicted
one with the deacon and two or three good men. Confident that you,
as pastor of the place, are clothed with the authority of the
ministerial office, lay your hand upon him and say, ‘Peace be
with you, dear brother, from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus
Christ.’
Thereupon repeat the creed and the Lord’s Prayer over him in
a clear voice, and close with these words, ‘God, Almighty
Father, who has told us through your Son, ‘Truly, truly, I say
to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give it to
you;’ who has commanded and encouraged us to pray in his name,
‘Ask and you shall receive,’ and who in like manner has
said, ‘Call upon me in the day of trouble and I will deliver
you and you shall glorify me;’ we unworthy sinners, relying on
these words and commands, pray for your mercy with such faith as we
can muster. Graciously deign to free this man from all evil, and
put to naught the work that Satan has done to him, to the honor of
your name and the strengthening of the faith of believers; through
the same Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns
eternally with you, forever and ever, Amen.’
Then, when you depart, lay your hand upon the man again and say,
‘These signs shall follow those who believe; they shall lay
hands on the sick and they shall recover.’
Do this three times, once on each of three successive days.
Meanwhile let prayers be said from the chancel of the church
publicly until God hears them. Insofar as we are able, we shall at
the same time unite with yours our faithful prayers and petitions
to the Lord. Farewell. Other counsel than this I do not have.
I remain,
MARTIN LUTHER
It took two pages, single-spaced, for Martin Luther to say it,
but only two verses for the Apostle James. However, Jesus, the
greatest of healers, said it in only five words: ‘Ask and you
shall receive.’
