Britannica claims that the roots of Western Medicine started in ancient Greece in about 400 BC. Every history of medicine and medical school also teaches students that modern medicine began with Galen and Hippocrates during a time when the Greek healing god Asclepius was worshipped in temples throughout Greece.
Now let’s challenge your frame of mind and understanding of the modern world. I invite you into the concept of “sphere sovereignty” coined by Abraham Kuyper, early 20th century Netherlands Prime Minister and Neo-Calvinist theologian. Kuyper is know for his famous exhortation, “Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” He expanded the church’s understanding of common grace as he literally believed God sustains the created universe through acts of grace. In other words, the modern world would self-destruct if God withdrew His direct activity. He broke this down further to dissect how God’s common grace historically and institutionally gave rise to spheres in society such as medicine, governance, law, business and even the arts. Thus, I will pursue the common grace of God that has birthed the sovereign sphere of modern medicine that has provided great blessings to the nations.
“The divine Asclepius may have originated in a human Asclepius who lived about 1200 BCE and is said to have performed many miracles of healing.” history of medicine — | Britannica
But something more profound proceeded the human Asclepius in our timeline of antiquity that explains how the man was famed for performing healing miracles. Moses lived in the 13th century BCE. And in Numbers 21 we see for first historical documentation of the Rod with the Brazen Serpent:
Numbers 21:4–9
“4 They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; 5 they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”
6 Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.
8 The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.”
In Numbers 21, we see God tell Moses to make a strange Rod with a Brazen Serpent as a supernatural power to heal and save the Israelites as their “turning” saved their physical bodies from death and their spiritual bodies from disobedience with God’s sovereign will.
The next time scripture mentions this symbol is in 2 Kings, approximately 700 BCE. At that time the rod with the brazen symbol had become a well-known and worshipped healing cult. Israel began erecting it and worshiping the thing, more than the creator.
So “He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.) Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him. He held fast to the Lord and did not stop following him; he kept the commands the Lord had given Moses. And the Lord was with him; he was successful in whatever he undertook. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.” 2 Kings 8:4–17 b
King Hezekiah’s prerequisite to submitting to the Lord was to first tear down this influential healing idol that was leading Isreal astray. Here he gives the Rod with the Brazen Serpent the demeaning name “Nehusthan” or the dumb “brazen thing”
Between Numbers 21 (1300 BCE) to 2 Kings 8 (700 BCE), we can presume the power of healing was still available through this supernatural rod and that somewhere the human Asclepius (1200 BCE) led one of these cults of healing, performing healing miracles.
So now I ask you, when did medicine really begin? In 400 BCE with the Greeks that took the Hippocratic Oath and swore to the Greek God of Asclepius to do no harm? Or 800 years earlier, when God’s Kuyperian common grace supernaturally entered the created world in Numbers 21 to provide healing and salvation to the rebellious Isrealites. Within this sphere sovereignty biblical frame, we begin to understand that the Greeks resurrected the Nehushtan, that “brazen thing”, that King Hezekiah tore down and tapped into God’s ancient 1300 BCE supernatural healing power that rapidly birthed the institution of modern medicine we now take for granted. How do we reconcile this resurrected Greek idolatry with the benefits of modern medicine today? Common Grace!
Take a moment to digest this.
The next time you are at your doctor’s office, imagine that you are not just getting a checkup, but you are experiencing a 3000-year-old ancient practice and power of healing that God gifted to the world. The next you receive an antibiotic to eradicate and kill millions of malicious bacteria throughout your body or you have a loved one going into surgery to remove a deadly cancer, let the weight of God’s common grace, divine intervention and love for you sink in. Medicine is a ministry of powerful common grace, a ministry of love, healing, and salvation.
Now let the weight of Jesus’ words about the Nehushtan sink in:
John 3:14–16, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
The Nuhushtan foreshadows Christ Crucified and Christ Risen and is the spiritual foundation for medicine. Put’s Jesus as the Great Physician in a whole new light as well!
I invite you to join me on this wonderful journey! And please stop my along the way to question, dialogue and wonder!
In Love,
Warren
