TROUBLED
WATERS AT BETHESDA
Does God pick and choose who
He will heal?
- Question: What’s going on with the troubling of
the Waters at the pool of
- Background: To answer this question I have to make a
pretty bold statement, but just run with my thinking while I draw a word
picture.
- I can say; the night
before Christmas we left cookies and milk for Santa when he came down the
chimney. What I said was true,
but that does not validate the
appearance of Santa.
- Job in the Bible said:
“The Lord giveith and the Lord
taketh away”. It is true he
said it, but is what he said
true? What Job said, is what
Job believed.
- Scripture says that;
The Lord came to give life and Satan came to destroy life.
- Now the stage is set
to read the scripture concerning the troubling of the waters.
John 10:10
10 The
thief cometh not, but for to steal,
and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more
abundantly. KJV
 |
John 5:1-9
1 Some time later, Jesus
went up to Jerusalem
2 Now there is in Jerusalem Bethesda
3 In these lay a multitude
of them that were sick, blind, halt,
withered,
(John 5:3b-4 ADDED IN LATER TRANSLATIONS.
waiting for the moving of
the water.
4 for an angel of the Lord
went down at certain seasons into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever
then first after the troubling of the waters stepped in was made whole, with whatsoever
disease he was holden.) ASV
5 One who was there had
been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
6 When Jesus saw him lying
there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked
him, "Do you want to get well?"
7 "Sir," the
invalid replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is
stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me."
8 Then Jesus said to him,
"Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."
9 At once the man was cured;
he picked up his mat and walked. NIV
- There is much interest in the angel of God
“troubling of the waters”
at
- QUESTION: Does God every now
and then send His messenger to select one person out of a group of
sick people to divinely heal them, just to let the sick know they are not
forgotten? This idea is “expounded
on” in some commentaries. So, let’s
take a look.
- The remains of the pool with its five
porticos at
- The five porticos spiritualized the five
books of Moses and the Law.
- It was a very large pool that had a sloped
floor where you could kneel and further on out you could dunk under. There
are indications that it was used as; a water source, bathing, baptisms and
you could even swim in it. There
were a number of these pools built around various springs.
- This one was built around an intermittent
spring that had medicinal properties.
Nature provided remedies for the sickness with minerals boiling
up from time to time from the underground spring. Much like our “Warm Springs” minerals in
the
- NOTE; Oddly enough, in the
earliest ancient Greek text, the
last part of verse three and all of verse four is missing, as it was added
in later. Many commentaries skip over
the part of chapter five concerning the angel troubling the waters as if
the passage did not exist.
- The boiling up or troubling of the waters was
the signal
of the forthcoming healing minerals.
- The folks noted in the scripture, did not
have diseases as such, but had physical limiting infirmities. They were blind, crippled, and lame and
some had bodies that had lost their vigor and were decaying and had become
wasted. These people could not get
into the waters by themselves when the minerals were present.
- FACT: Superstition or
folklore had it that at the beginning of the year an angel would stir up
the waters in different localities and that the first person into the
waters would be healed.
- So folks would wait around for this
supernatural event to occur. Thus,
they would say they were waiting on the angel of God to trouble the water.
- FACT: Concerning the
Angel; The Bible reported in truth of what they were doing,
although what they thought was just superstition.
- The truth was that the waters would erupt
with minerals which would be beneficial to those in the water and then the
minerals would recede.
- Wherever Christ and the Disciples went, they
healed ALL who asked to be healed.
ALL
- God is not a “respecter of persons”. It is His will that ALL be healed. In this story, only one was healed; the
one Jesus perceived had faith to be healed. It was a teaching moment.
Acts 10:34 – ALL can receive
34 Then Peter opened his
mouth, and said, of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: KJV
Matt 9:35 – EVERY disease
35 Jesus went through all
the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news
of the kingdom and healing EVERY disease
and sickness. NIV
Acts 10:38 – He healed ALL
38 How God anointed Jesus
of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and
healing ALL
that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. KJV
Matt 9:27-29 – According to your FAITH you receive
27 When Jesus departed
from there, two blind men followed Him, crying out and saying, "Son of
David, have mercy on us!"
28 … "Do you
believe that I am able to do this?" They said to Him, "Yes,
Lord."
29 Then He touched their
eyes, saying, "According to your faith let it be to you." NKJV
- A
Truism
- It is true that God has an appointed an angel in charge of “waters”.
- It is true that it was God’s Devine
will that these waters promote healing and give hope.
- So whether an angel
or nature erupted the waters, the results were the same.
- Healing and Hope.
Rev 16:5
5 And I heard the angel of the waters say,
Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and was, and shall be, because thou hast
judged thus. KJV
In the multitude of counselors,
there is wisdom.
Prov 11:14
A survey of the New
Testament – Gunry
All the Miracles of the
Bible - Herbert Lockyer
Bible Commentary – F. B. Meyer
Compact Bible Dictionary - Zondervan
Complete Bible Handbook – Lawrence
Dake’s annotated Bible - Dake
Halley’s Bible Handbook – H.H. Halley
KJV Bible
Mystery of the Ages – Herbert W. Armstrong
Mysteries of the Bible – Readers Digest
NIV Bible
The Illustrated Bible
Dictionary – Tyndale
The Layman’s Overview of
the Bible – George W. Knight
Vincent’s Word Studies of
the NT - Mac Donald
What the Bible is all
about – Henrietta C. Mears
What in the World is going
on? – David Jeremiah
Wikipedia encyclopedia
Wycliff Bible Commentary,
The
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