Big Healing Book - Mark 11:23-24

Mark 11:23-24:

For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

Notes on Mark 11:23-24:

Once you discover that healing is yours, this passage of Scripture settles the question, “How do I get it?” There are actually two valid methods here. One is to speak to your condition and command it to be gone. The other is to believe that you receive your healing from God when you pray. These methods are covered in detail in the discussions under “See also:” below.

The context includes an admonition to forgive in the very next verse, so if you are holding onto unforgiveness, you aren’t praying the way that Jesus said to pray.

How much faith would it take to move a mountain? Only a “mustard seed” quantity of faith would get the job done, according to a similar passage in Matthew (Matthew 17:20).

I’ve seen some teaching on the fact that different Greek words are used for “say” in Mark 11:23, though I’m not convinced of their significance after looking them up and seeing their use throughout the New Testament. According to this teaching, the word “say” (to the mountain) really means “command” and having whatever you say refers to a “systematic set discourse.” However, in point of fact, the word used both here and in Matthew’s version to speak to the mountain is almost always rendered say as we would normally use the word, and command would not even fit the vast majority of cases where that Greek word (eipon) is used in the New Testament! You could make a case that you’re commanding the mountain to move (which would be correct), but you wouldn’t make that case on the basis of the Greek. And if you’re speaking to a mountain to make it move, you would only SAY something once, not systematically! If you had to speak to the mountain a second time in your systematic speaking, you spoke the first time in unbelief!

Speaking to the mountain does not involve you working up enough spiritual “oomph” on your own to make it move. The only way you can speak to it in confidence is to know that God will back your words when you speak them. Your trust is in God to make it happen based on your words, not in your own innate ability to make it happen without God’s intervention, which would be a New Age teaching rather than a Christian one. (I read a New Age book before I got saved that talked about speaking to things, but it didn’t involve God. Trying to access the supernatural apart from God is a way to get involved with occult powers.) I believe that the previous verse (Mark 11:22 – “Have faith in God”) goes along with this idea. Your faith is in God to make things happen when you speak because you know that He gave you authority. Your faith is in God that He will honor the authority that He gave you.

Some people teach that believers DON’T need to receive when they pray but rather acknowledge that they already have received something that just needs to be released. I have heard such a preacher “support” this by using one of the several translations that read, “Believe that you have received it and it will be yours.” The teaching is then that you are believing that you already received it when you got saved and thus no further “receiving” is necessary. Unfortunately for that point of view, the verb “receive” in Mark 11:24 in the Greek (lambanete, a form of lambano) is in the present indicative, meaning that you receive (take) it when you pray, not believe that you have already received it before you started praying.

One modern translation used in a “faith” Study Bible renders Mark 11:24 as saying “believe that you will receive…” but that is wrong. All other translations I know of correctly say “believe that you receive” or something to that effect. The Greek verb tense for “receive” is definitely present; future tense is used only for “shall have.” (One would think that Mark 11:24 would be the last verse that a “faith” Bible would want to mess up, but I realize that going with a certain modern translation was an all-or-nothing decision despite the horrible rendition of Mark 11:24, and I can understand not using the sometimes difficult King James Version for the entirety of a modern Study Bible. Also, at this writing, the only publishing company to offer this particular “faith” translation happens to be the same one that puts out the “faith” Study Bible in question.)

Almost all modern translations use the word “ask” instead of the word “desire” in Mark 11:24, and that word choice is supported by the underlying Greek word – ask really is a better translation.

This passage then becomes similar to the following one:

John 15:16:
Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

Note that what you’re asking has to be something you have authority to ask for if you are to ask it in name of Jesus. It needs to be something the Bible says you have a right to ask for. Since your healing is paid for, you have the right to “ask” for it knowing that you WILL receive it because you’ve prayed according to God’s will.

1 John 5:14:
And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:
And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.

A LOT more can be said about Mark 11:23-24. See the discussions below.