Leaves For The Healing Of The Nations

Some are dying for Christ. They are our brothers and sisters, regardless of their nationality.

Rev 21:24 And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it.

In the eternal glorified state, all of the rifts and contentions between nations will be healed, and just as the Christians in them are one, the nations themselves will be one. The fractures between nation and nation will be healed..

By what? By the leaves of the tree of life.

We may ask, the nations will be healed, but what about people?

Will the citizens of heaven from all nations have need for healing?

The need for healing is never far from our minds.

Look at our prayer list. One after another after another needs healing.

Those who struggle with diseases and injuries would place healing high on the list of desired benefits of heaven.

“If I’m suffering from arthritis, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, or a serious injury, I’d rather be made well than to walk on a street of gold.”

The tree of life with its healing leaves is one and the same as was watered by the river of Eden.

That tree was for a time the panacea of Eden. They that ate of it had no need of a physician. The Apostle John describes the same in the New Jerusalem, and the abundant supplies of God’s grace and goodness to his redeemed people, in a future state. John saw a river flowing from the throne of God; on each side of it he saw the tree of life, which bears twelve kinds of fruit, and yields it fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Even after the fall, God graciously and wonderfully provided healing agents in the plants around us: willow bark, aloe vera, coriander, basil, etc.

Leaves for healing is an image drawn from medicinal herbs.

The healing power in the leaves is none other than Jesus himself.

He is the great physician - the healer of nations.

The healer of you.

Isa 53:5 By his stripes we are healed.

Peter explains:

1 Pet 2:24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

In that short statement we have the essence of the gospel.

What can it signify but that the presence of Christ preserves the inhabitants of Heaven - from all nations within the reach of God’s promise to Abraham - forever free from sickness. Every malady is arrested and cured before it begins. We don't get sick there, because the leaves of the tree of life constantly administer preventative healing.

We don't get sick, because Christ, the healer, is there.

In the language of heaven, the leaves of the trees along the river of life-giving water are for the forgiveness of sins, already accomplished once and for all, their effect being evident and continuous eternally - the means by which perpetual health, life, and well-being are sustained.

Do you have this healing of the soul?