Commentary, Part 2: Initiation Rites and Entering the Temple 175 In the Gospel of Philip, the real meaning of the story of the Good Samaritan is pointed out, for the wine and oil and the meal provided for the sorely wounded man could, to the faithful, refer only to the ordinances of anointing and sacrament, by which one is healed from the mortal wounds of this sinful world.466 Theologians are just beginning to see the implications behind these things.467 In early Christian sources, the ministry of Christ pointedly reverses the work of Satan, the destroyer. One of the earliest texts tells how Christ redeemed Adam and healed the wounds inflicted on his posterity by the enemy, death.468 Another tells how the Lord descended to the lower world and “treated with healing medicine the wound which the Enemy had inflicted on His Son. . . . He brought back Adam again to the state wherein he was at first, and he forgave them.” 469 Christ’s first recorded miracle shows how closely healing and forgiving go together.470 His healing miracles were pointedly a reversal of Satan’s blows, many expressly performed by the denouncing and driving out of evil spirits (see Mark 1:23–25 [Mark 1:6]); in Mark 6:13 [Mark 3:7] he uses olive oil; he touches the eyes to heal them (Matthew 9:29 [Matt. 4:13]; Mark 8:23–25 [Mark 4:20]); he heals the blind and the deaf daimonizomenos, one who is possessed of an evil spirit (Matthew 12:22 [Matt. 6:12]).
Two Blind Men; the Mute Demoniac
Two men who can ask are healed according to their faith; one who cannot ask at all is healed anyway, and the same act that makes the crowd marvel makes the Pharisees reach for an accusation.
Note. A small passage carrying a real JST addition: to “see that no man know it” the JST prefixes “Keep my commandments,” and limits the silence to “no man in this place.”
? How to read this edition
The reading is the Joseph Smith Translation, in the text of the Covenant Christian Edition, carried beside each Gospel and set against the King James baseline. Headers give both numbering systems: the CCE chapter and verse, and the traditional KJV reference.
27And when Jesus departed from there, two blind men followed him, crying and saying, Jesus, you son of David, have mercy on us. 28And when he had come into the house, the blind men came to him, and Jesus said unto them, Do you believe that I am able to do this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord. 29Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith, be it unto you. 30And their eyes were opened. And sternly he charged them, saying, Keep my commandments and see you tell no man in this place, that no man know it. 31But they, when they had departed, spread abroad his fame in all that country.
32And as they went out, behold, they brought to him a dumb man possessed with a devil. 33And when the devil was cast out, the dumb man spoke. And the multitude marveled, saying, It was never so seen in Israel. 34But the Pharisees said, He casts out the devils through the prince of the devils.
The Devil Steals a Body, and Is Turned Out of Doors
He Is Liable to Be Turned Out of Doors
Preaching at Yelrome on the necessity of a body to salvation, Joseph Smith explained what an exorcism actually is: not a cure but an eviction, and the restoration of a house to its rightful owner.
Discourse, 14 May 1843, Yelrome (Morley Settlement), Illinois, as reported by Wilford Woodruff (Words of Joseph Smith; cf. Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 297–298, History of the Church 5:387–390) · Joseph Smith Papers ↗Also recorded in Wilford Woodruff’s journal.
So the devil, thinking to thwart the decree of God, by going up and down in the earth, seeking whom he may destroy—any person that he can find that will yield to him, he will bind him, and take possession of the body and reign there, glorying in it mightily, not caring that he had got merely a stolen body; and by and by some one having authority will come along and cast him out and restore the tabernacle to its rightful owner. The devil steals a tabernacle because he has not one of his own: but if he steals one, he is always liable to be turned out of doors.
They Said He Was Beelzebub
On why the world cannot recognize the gifts it is looking at: the movement of verses 33 and 34, where the multitude marvels and the Pharisees reach for the prince of the devils.
Editorial, “The Gift of the Holy Ghost,” Times and Seasons, 15 June 1842 (3:823–825), p. 824; Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 244–245 (History of the Church 5:26–32) · Joseph Smith Papers ↗Peter and John were apostles, yet the Jewish court scourged them as impostors. Paul was both an Apostle and prophet, yet they stoned him and put him into prison. The people knew nothing about it, although he had in possession the gift of the Holy Ghost. Our Savior was “anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows,” yet so far from the people knowing him, they said he was Beeizebub [Beelzebub], and crucified him as an imposter.
In both sermons the doctrine is a digression inside a discourse on 2 Peter 1: Joseph is arguing that salvation requires a tabernacle, and the devil’s bodilessness is the illustration. It bears on verse 33 by doctrine rather than by exposition of the verse. The second entry is a signed editorial, so it has no reporters’ records; Richard C. Galbraith, in Scriptural Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, keys its Beelzebub clause to Matthew 12:24, the later and fuller form of the same charge that verse 34 makes first.
They Believe First; the Miracles Follow
Nibley names the rule this whole passage runs on, and he does it twice over. The blind men are asked whether they believe before anything happens, and are healed “according to” it; then they are told to keep quiet. For Nibley those two facts belong together: miracles were never evidence offered to unbelievers, which is exactly why the Lord kept trying to suppress the news.
Whenever people asked the Lord for a sign, he walked out on them, telling them that to those who ask for a sign, no sign shall be given save one they don’t want. (Cf. Luke 21:11 [Luke 12:15]—28.) When the Jews pinned him down with the request for a specific demonstration, asking him, “What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?” he evaded them neatly with the challenge, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:18 [John 1:10]—19), that being a thing he knew they would never do—they brought this against him later as a serious charge, and of course missed the real significance of the remark. In the other passages cited by Lagrange we read (Acts 5:14 [Acts 3:4]—15): “And believers were the more added to the Lord. . . . Insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets” to be healed, etc. Here they bring out their sick inasmuch as they believe: They believe first; the miracles follow. Does not the Lord in preparation for a miracle often ask the recipient whether he or she believes, this being a prerequisite to the miracle? In his own native district the Lord “did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief” (Matthew 13:58 [Matt. 7:14]). If the purpose of miracles was to convince the unbelieving, this should have been the very place where the Lord would perform his greatest ones, but the rule is very clear—no belief, no miracles: “Ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith” (Ether 12:6 [Eth. 5:2]—30). Lagrange again cites the case of Simon, who “wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done” (Acts 4:30 [Acts 2:7]; 8:13), but that was only after he had believed and was baptized. He was not converted as a result of those miracles, but they followed his belief. In the King James Bible, the twelfth chapter of 2 Corinthians is headed Paul’s Visions Are Apostolic Credentials. Yet he never reveals the content of those visions, least of all to unbelievers; what he does in this chapter is to remind the Corinthians, “Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you . . . in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds” (2 Corinthians 12:12). The Corinthians had been treated to this after their conversion as Christians, not as pagans, but even these signs did not guarantee a lasting conversion, for Paul goes on to describe how these same Corinthians are falling away.
The first entry cites Matthew 9:29 explicitly, alongside Matthew 12:22, the blind-and-mute demoniac, which is the fuller parallel of verses 32–33. Nibley writes “the blind and the deaf daimonizomenos” where the King James has “blind, and dumb”; the quotation is left as he wrote it. The second entry expounds the principle rather than the verse.
The Blind, the Deaf, the Lame and the Dumb
Isaiah 35 promises that four disabilities will be undone when creation is renewed, and Barker notices that the same four name four kinds of angelic being, and that these four are precisely the ones Jesus chose as his sign. Matthew puts two of them back to back here, and then, two chapters on, has Jesus answer the Baptist by listing them.
There are significant word patterns in [Isaiah] 35:5-6: the blind, the deaf, the lame and the dumb are healed in the renewal of the creation, but the names of these four are also those of four types of angel. . . . How these supernatural beings were connected to these disabilities is not clear, but it is surely no coincidence that Jesus used the curing of these four types as his sign. John the Baptist asked if Jesus was the one expected (Luke 7:20 [Luke 5:16]ff), and the reply was an amalgam of these verses and Isaiah 61:1 [Isa. 23].... In the Gospels, the defeat of what these creatures represented is seen as a sign of the kingdom of God.
Barker’s point is that there was a specific expectation that the Messiah should demonstrate his power over these specific manifestations of evil. John’s disciples asked, “Art thou he that should come? or look we for another?” By way of response Luke says that “in that same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits; and unto many that were blind he gave sight.” Then, after performing these particular miracles, “Jesus … said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.” The answer through specific action shows rather than tells, and therefore makes sense only in light of a preexisting expectation.
Recall that John the Baptist had identified Jesus as “the Lamb of God,” so the title that Nephi uses in his prophecy of these events may be significant: “And he spake unto me again, saying: Look! And I looked, and I beheld the Lamb of God going forth among the children of men. And I beheld multitudes of people who were sick, and who were afflicted with all manner of diseases, and with devils and unclean spirits; and the angel spake and showed all these things unto me. And they were healed by the power of the Lamb of God; and the devils and the unclean spirits were cast out.”
Two voices here, kept apart. The first entry is Margaret Barker herself; The Older Testament passage is quoted from the block quotation reproduced in Kevin Christensen’s Paradigms Regained, p. 60 n. 48, and should be checked against the printed book before being leaned on. The second entry is Christensen writing about that passage, quoted under his own name: the Book of Mormon passage he sets beside it is 1 Nephi 11:31, and it is his comparison, not Barker’s.