Thy Kingdom Come: A Blumhardt Reader - Plough

it is not as though the distress of the individual—say, hisphysical illness—is necessarily the direct result of his owninner perversion. No, everything is intertwined. We are likea chain in which the corporate deformity produces its fruitsright along with those of individual deformity, to the pointthat we cannot determine from where this or that stems. Wecan only say that, in general, if things were operating closerto truth and right, matters would be very different. Therefore,we don’t pray, “Do wonders!” but rather, “Let truthprevail! Let things be broken so that they can be set right!”Ask this, and we don’t need to concern ourselves about therest.This verse is a real encouragement for me, because recentlyI have had great trouble concerning the wonders beingperformed nowadays. Often I am asked what one shouldmake of them. Through Spiritism, Magnetism, and the like,men perform the greatest wonders, healing everything. Andthe whole business is Christian! They say: We all believe inone true God, Jew, Christian, Turk, and Hottentot.There are stories, too, of the immediate effectiveness ofthe laying on of hands. People are struck with astonishment.Yet these all are oddities and not wonders; they are not boundup with some truth. Assume for the moment that one ofthese people were able to heal all the sick at one blow; whatwould we have gained? Then we could jump about for alittle while, until we got sick again! Beyond that, nothingwould have been achieved.23