Broadly speaking, there are to be found in the Bible two separate and different sets of promises pertaining to life everlasting. The best known of these are the promises of God which assure Christians of this present age that upon conditions of faithfulness they will be rewarded with immortal life in heaven, being raised up in the “first resurrection” to live and reign with Christ a thousand years. But there are also many divine promises which present the hope of being restored to physical health as human beings and of living forever on the earth. In an effort to harmonize these with the promises of heavenly life, most students of the Bible spiritualize them; but when this is done their real meaning is lost.
Others, by taking these promises of physical healing and health out of their setting, use them as a basis for their claims that the Lord will now heal his people of their sicknesses while they are waiting to die and go to heaven. But in this, also, the real meaning of these many promises of physical health is overlooked, and the Bible is made to appear contradictory.
The harmony of these two lines of thought is found only in recognition of the fact that in the divine plan for human recovery from sin and death two salvations are promised—one a heavenly salvation and the other an earthly, a restoration to health and everlasting life right here on the earth. Promises of the heavenly salvation belong to the followers of Jesus during this present age, while the promises of perfect human life apply to the human race as a whole.
These promises of perfect and unending earthly life are not applicable in human experience today, but present a wonderful hope for the future—that future age during which Jesus will reign as King over the earth, and his faithful followers of this age will reign with him. This restoration of the human race to life on the earth is the great objective of the divine plan; hence much consideration is given to it in both the Old and New Testaments.
The work of restoring the human race to life is to be accomplished during the thousand-year reign of Christ. The Scriptures clearly teach that Christ’s kingdom is not established until after his return. (Acts 3:19-21) During the short period of Jesus’ First Advent ministry, he preached the hope of the kingdom, and in connection with his oral message he gave many practical demonstrations of what kingdom blessings would mean for the people when the due time arrived for the promises of God to be fulfilled. Jesus’ miracles, as we have already noted, were not designated to initiate a program of miracles for this present age, but were intended to be illustrations of the divine program for the kingdom age.
Leprosy was prevalent in Jesus’ day, and it was considered incurable. Because of this it was a fitting symbol of sin, which, from the standpoint of human ability, is also incurable. Death came into the world as a result of sin; so when Jesus cleansed the lepers of his day, he was illustrating the divine intention ultimately to remove the blight of sin from the earth and to destroy death, the result of sin.
On this point the Lord had promised, through the Prophet Isaiah: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.” (Isa. 1:18,19) Notice that the promise does not assure a home in heaven, but that the willing and obedient “shall eat the good of the land,” and this because their sins have been cleansed away.