Christ in the Sick Room: Hezekiah's Affliction and Recovery

The Holy Ghost presents to us a king and ruler of men, a dweller in palaces, possessor of all that money can obtain, a good man and friend of God—yet laid low by disease like the poorest man in the kingdom. The tabernacle in which our soul dwells is a most frail and complicated machine. We ought not wonder so much that we die as that we live so long.

Yet whence comes this liability to sickness, disease, and death? Only one book supplies the answer: the Bible. The fall of man at the beginning brought sin into the world, and sin brought with it the curse of sickness, suffering, and pain. Here lies proof that Scripture is given by inspiration of God, accounting for realities which natural philosophy cannot explain.

Learn from Hezekiah's affliction that sickness is not an unmixed evil. God sends illness to do us good: to make us think upon our immortal soul; to teach us of the world beyond the grave; to make us examine our past lives honestly; to reveal the emptiness of worldly satisfaction; to send us to our Bibles and to prayer; to draw us toward repentance and toward Christ; to make us sympathetic toward others' suffering.

The fig-plaster applied to Hezekiah's boil was a popular emollient, used to hasten the mattering-process and healing—a simple remedy God Himself sanctioned for recovery.