By John Thiel, mp3

The world is a great lazar house; it is corrupted under the inhabitants thereof, and misery is universal. {8T 169.2}

The world is a lazar house filled with victims of both physical and spiritual disease. {CD 455.3}

The world has become a lazar house of sin, a mass of corruption.  {MM 218. 4}

What is a lazar house? An institution for lepers. Leprosy was incurable in the old days but now they can do more. It was incurable and the people were living in the Lazar house were slowly dying away until finally their disease got worse and worse and they died. Nowadays an institution for lepers can operate and do things to alleviate the problem.

God has separated this planet from the rest of the universe. The rest of the universe is not touched by it. This planet has been quarantined as it is a lazar house of spiritual leprosy. Not a single individual on this planet has not been mentally and physically prevented from suffering. Everyone suffers. A description is given even for the people of God in Isaiah. No one is exempt, everyone is affected.

Isaiah 1:5 Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.  6 From the sole of the foot even unto the head [there is] no soundness in it; [but] wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.

A lazar house of people who have such wounds stinks. There is no soundness from the head down to the feet.

A continual transgression of nature’s laws is a continual transgression of the law of God. The present weight of suffering and anguish which we see everywhere, the present deformity, decrepitude, disease, and imbecility now flooding the world, make it, in comparison to what it might be and what God designed it should be, a lazar house; and the present generation are feeble in mental, moral, and physical power. All this misery has accumulated from generation to generation because fallen man will break the law of God. Sins of the greatest magnitude are committed through the indulgence of perverted appetite. {4T 30. 2}

This is the condition. When you awaken to the reality of this, it is right everyone is sick. While all have good façade upfront but I can tell when there is disease there. Under the trained eye you can see things others don’t see. As we look into this lazar house, we see God portrayed looking in. The spirit of God shows us this is the condition that this is the quarantined planet with all its diseased inhabitants.

This world is a vast lazar house, but Christ came to heal the sick, to proclaim deliverance to the captives of Satan. He was in Himself health and strength. He imparted His life to the sick, the afflicted, those possessed of demons. He turned away none who came to receive His healing power. He knew that those who petitioned Him for help had brought disease upon themselves; yet He did not refuse to heal them. And when virtue from Christ entered into these poor souls, they were convicted of sin, and many were healed of their spiritual disease, as well as of their physical maladies. The gospel still possesses the same power, and why should we not today witness the same results? {DA 823. 3}

God looks upon this world and says I am still going to do something about it. Christ was sent to help these poor souls. The great physician is in this lazar house. As people come to the physician, the great physician Jesus Christ, they press close to him and all of a sudden they notice other people are pressing them and they look around and see the diseases of others.

They are coming themselves to be healed and they know they have a need of healing and they press close to the physician but others are pressing close too. As they look around they say yuck and see all sorts of diseases around them. We find ourselves in the hospital where Jesus is the physician working to heal dangerous diseases.

The people have come to the hospital to be treated. Many people when they become part of the church where Jesus is working, they forget they are as sick as the other people they see around them. Many people have come and said yuck, I thought I came to a pure church. Why are there are all these problems in the church? In fact, some people have even said to me, in the church things are worse than they are in the world and it’s possibly right but this convinces me I’m in the right place if I’m coming to the physician and the physician is there. The church is a place where God is operating.

During ages of spiritual darkness the church of God has been as a city set on a hill. From age to age, through successive generations, the pure doctrines of heaven have been unfolding within its borders. Enfeebled and defective as it may appear, the church is the one object upon which God bestows in a special sense His supreme regard. It is the theater of His grace, in which He delights to reveal His power to transform hearts.  {AA 12. 1}

The Theatre of His Grace

What theatre is this talking about? An operating theatre which is the centre of the hospital. People are sick in the hospital and they come there for treatment and in the hospital is the theatre. The world is the lazar house and the church is the hospital. People forget this very quickly. They think in the church everything will be so sweet but really in the hospital things are not so sweet. There are lots of ugly scenes. Because I’m coming at it from my experience, I can help you understand how a hospital functions. People are admitted with disease. Some come in directly for an operation. Others have to come in and have to go through a period of building up their system so they can go through an operation. Some recover very quickly and some more slowly. Some come in for observation only.

The doctors need to examine the particular source of disease so they can deal with it. As you enter into God’s church, if it is God’s church, you are entering into those very activities, observation to operate on the heart and observation to strengthen you up to be operated on depending on how well ware you are of your cases depends on how quickly the op can take place. Every human being in the church are patients. You will then be prepared for the fact that in the hospital you will see some very strange and unpleasant human experiences.

What You May Meet in the Hospital

Isaiah 1:6 From the sole of the foot even unto the head [there is] no soundness in it; [but] wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.

When you have someone with a putrefying sore it smells seeping through the bandage, it’s ugly. Speaking of it spiritually, it stinks spiritually. They have not been closed. They are open sores, do you like looking at open sores? People have open sores in the hospital. What is done with a putrefying sore? Especially a fistula, what is done with it?

Hosea 6:1 Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.

God tears and smites? That’s what a surgeon does. He tears open. If you have a putrefying sore, it has to be torn open and it has to be probed to its very depth.

John 15:1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.  2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every [branch] that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.

The purging and pruning connected with hospital treatment is a painful experience.

I saw that many souls have been destroyed by their brethren unwisely sympathizing with them, when their only hope was to be left to see and realize the full extent of their wrongs.  But as they eagerly accept the sympathy of unwise brethren, they receive the idea that they are abused; and if they attempt to retrace their steps, they make halfhearted work. They divide the matter to suit their natural feelings, lay blame upon the reprover, and so patch up the matter. It is not probed to the bottom, and is not healed, and they again fall into the same wrong, because they were not left to feel the extent of their wrong, and humble themselves before God, and let Him build them up. False sympathizers have worked in direct opposition to the mind of Christ and ministering angels. {1T 213.1}

There is a spiritual disease. Someone is really wrong in something. As the reproof of God’s Word comes to probe, it is quickly covered over. That is a putrifying in-depth fistula. For a particular condition like that, it has to be operated on and probed. All the pus inside has to be cleaned out and then it has to be packed with gauze bandage to push it into that deep wound so that the wound can heal from inside out whereas if it is patched over, underneath it still festers. In the church these sorts of wounds have to be probed to the very depth so that it can be healed properly.

If we see some brothers or sisters in pain and you think what is the matter and they may murmur or complain, we think poor thing. Sometimes it’s best to just pray and leave them alone. As we relate with each other in the church, we will see each other with pained faces. Sometimes some will throw out a few curt words and you will think, what are they so hurt about? Often people are offended and we will think why are they upset? This is all part of God’s operating theatre. The hospital is not exempt from any of that. Remember also that in the hospital a heart transplant is taking place.

A Heart Operation

Ezekiel 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

 A heart operation or a heart transplant. He is going to take away the stony heart and put a heart of flesh in it. Many don’t realise what is involved in that transaction. Many times as they come into the church they haven’t had that long protracted process of real death of the old nature so many people join the church and you have people who wait to have the heart transplant. Some people come straight in and can have it straight away as they knew their condition. Some come in under a yearning and desire to be close to the physician and the church recognises they want the real thing and they are baptised but their heart operation is still coming. This is where we get different varieties in the hospital. Because it is a heart operation that we all need which some have had and some still need, the convalescence has to do not only with recovery but education of how to live with a new heart.

How to Live With a New Heart

The heart has to learn how to relate to the body, the new mind has to learn how to control the body. Some people find it hard to handle that as it takes a bit of learning, it is education.

The Lord Jesus is making experiments on human hearts through the exhibition of His mercy and abundant grace. He is effecting transformations so amazing that Satan, with all his triumphant boasting, with all his confederacy of evil united against God and the laws of His government, stands viewing them as a fortress impregnable to his sophistries and delusions. They are to him an incomprehensible mystery. The angels of God, seraphim and cherubim, the powers commissioned to cooperate with human agencies, look on with astonishment and joy, that fallen men, once children of wrath, are through the training of Christ developing characters after the divine similitude, to be sons and daughters of God, to act an important part in the occupations and pleasures of heaven.  {TM 18. 1}

In the hospital we are educating after an operation developing character after the divine similitude, to be sons and daughters of God to act an important part of heaven. Ultimately to be able to enjoy heaven but here on earth we are in hospital.

To His church, Christ has given ample facilities, that He may receive a large revenue of glory from His redeemed, purchased possession. The church, being endowed with the righteousness of Christ, is His depository, in which the wealth of His mercy, His love, His grace, is to appear in full and final display. {TM 18.2}

That’s future yet. The church has the facilities, if you go into a hospital, into an operating theatre, you see how well that hospital it is equipped. The more facilities it has to help in the operating theatre the more you feel secure. God’s church has all the facilities to bring forth the full and final display of his objective. Therefore you are instructed by God’s Word to recognise that as you become members of God’s church you will experience these things. In a hospital you will see horrifying things in spiritual matters. You will even see evil, even in the church.

Although there are evils existing in the church, and will be until the end of the world, the church in these last days is to be the light of the world that is polluted and demoralized by sin. The church, enfeebled and defective, needing to be reproved, warned, and counseled, is the only object upon earth upon which Christ bestows His supreme regard. The world is a workshop in which, through the cooperation of human and divine agencies, Jesus is making experiments by His grace and divine mercy upon human hearts. Angels are amazed as they behold the transformation of character brought about in those who yield themselves to God, and they express their joy in songs of rapturous praise to God and to the Lamb. They see those who are by nature the children of wrath, converted and becoming laborers together with Christ in drawing souls to God. They see those who were in darkness becoming lights to shine amid the moral night of this wicked and perverse generation. They see them becoming prepared by a Christlike experience to suffer with their Lord, and afterward to be partakers with Him in His glory in heaven above.  {TM 49. 1}

They behold this in the church. In fact, the very fact that evils exist in the church is God’s orchestration of operation. He uses human depravity to teach and train us for heaven.

God has shown me that He gave His people a bitter cup to drink, to purify and cleanse them. It is a bitter draught, and they can make it still more bitter by murmuring, complaining, and repining. But those who receive it thus must have another draught, for the first does not have its designed effect upon the heart. And if the second does not effect the work, then they must have another, and another, until it does have its designed effect, or they will be left filthy, impure in heart. I saw that this bitter cup can be sweetened by patience, endurance, and prayer, and that it will have its designed effect upon the hearts of those who thus receive it, and God will be honored and glorified. It is no small thing to be a Christian and to be owned and approved of God. The Lord has shown me some who profess the present truth, whose lives do not correspond with their profession. {EW 47. 1}

God will even use evil circumstances to give us a bitter cup as he uses it to do an operation. He uses the orchestration of human beings. If someone has an unpleasant trait of character the other person has to learn how to be patient and tolerant and kind with that. If they understand what they are in the church for and that this is what God is doing. As a result, God wants people to attend meetings so they can interact with each other.

If we want to stand and develop characters through this process of God’s organisational dealings with the people in a hospital setting, we have to stand a final test when the symmetrical character is finally developed to its finishing touch. If we want to come to that final test, there is a daily work that we need to come to that.

He who would build up a strong, symmetrical character, he who would be a well-balanced Christian, must give all and do all for Christ; for the Redeemer will not accept divided service. Daily he must learn the meaning of self-surrender. He must study the word of God, learning its meaning and obeying its precepts. Thus he may reach the standard of Christian excellence. Day by day God works with him, perfecting the character that is to stand in the time of final test. And day by day the believer is working out before men and angels a sublime experiment, showing what the gospel can do for fallen human beings.  {AA 483. 1}

Day by day the hospital procedure goes on where we can come to the point where the daily sublime experience is taking place where finally we can arrive to the final test and come through successful. The facilities that God has given, operate through the experience of Gods people rubbing shoulders.

What Are The Facilities?

They must be the pure truth, the pure instructions of God’s Word. If you have a church that hasn’t got a pristine pure facility like in a hospital, you may have a hospital that has certain instruments and particular machinery needed but they may not have a very good machine that can’t sterilize properly. If the sterilization isn’t there you will spread germs. If you have a hospital that doesn’t have pure truth, you have to find a hospital with the true facilities given of God. There are many hospitals around that are not successful but this one is.

You have to find Gods true hospital and the true facilities and doctrines. When you study doctrine it takes a while to get clean on the doctrines but they are there for a purpose. It is one thing to have doctrine but they never get to the purity of it so it can start doing its work. We have to come as quickly as possible to the pure doctrine so it can be worked on. We are living in a time where we have to work quickly.

Discharge

There are two ways of discharge out of a hospital. If you have failed to respond to the treatment your discharged is via the morgue and you are cremated. The morgue is where you die instead of being healed and restored. The other way is when you have fully recovered and you can be discharged into the normal life. If a person doesn’t respond to the treatment but the hospital is doing it right, they don’t want to stay there anymore, they go out. It is the pure word of God they won’t respond to.

The other way is to be discharged into heaven. From Gods hospital no one has to go via the morgue. God has got ways and means to present the death and lead them on to life.

1 John 5:11 And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

 5:12 He that hath the Son hath life; [and] he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.

In other words, to leave the hospital on this earth you will leave as a dead man because this hospital will only discharge you into eternal life. Until via the hospital you have grown to the full stature of Christ, you don’t become discharged. When you have reached the fullness of the stature of Christ you are discharged into eternal life.

Question: If you choose to leave God’s church, is that the close of probation? Answer: The Seventh Day Adventist church will frighten you to say you mustn’t leave the church or you won’t make it. The church of God on earth is the church that we know carries the truth. If I don’t dissociate myself from the truth that it carries, I am still to be worked on by that truth. If I do things that are not according to God’s way in his church and disassociate myself that is a problem.

The divine Teacher bears with the erring through all their perversity. His love does not grow cold; His efforts to win them do not cease. With outstretched arms He waits to welcome again and again the erring, the rebellious, and even the apostate. His heart is touched with the helplessness of the little child subject to rough usage. The cry of human suffering never reaches His ear in vain. Though all are precious in His sight, the rough, sullen, stubborn dispositions draw most heavily upon His sympathy and love; for He traces from cause to effect. The one who is most easily tempted, and is most inclined to err, is the special object of His solicitude.  {Ed 294. 2}

There may be an apostate that leaves the church but the Lord is still working on him and he will ever be ready to receive that apostate again. God’s efforts to win them do not cease. If these people are in the church and drift in and out, the Lord has not finished with them if he knows they are going to come through. To discharge from the hospital to a happy normal life will never take place until the lazar house has been closed, this planet with all its disease and releases God’s people.

Isaiah 35:4 Say to them [that are] of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come [with] vengeance, [even] God [with] a recompense; he will come and save you.  5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.  6 Then shall the lame [man] leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.  7 And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, [shall be] grass with reeds and rushes.

When we are dismissed from this planet into that eternal world, the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame man leap as an hart, that is final discharge of complete recovery.

Revelation 21:4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

That’s discharge. Meanwhile we have tears, we will see sorrow and crying and pain. We are not yet discharged. God still has more work with us.

Hosea 6:1 Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.  2 After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.

It is the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is the full new birth where the body has changed at last. In Gods hospital don’t expect discharge before Jesus comes and realise his operation and convalescing work and cleaning up of putrid sores all takes its time until finally everyone is clean. That is the story of the hospital.

Amen.