SYMBOLISM OF SICKNESS AND DISEASE
The reason God punishes his people is that they do not listen to his spoken voice. He symbolically represents the consequences of not listening as disease. Therefore, when the Bible refers to any kind of bodily ailment or handicap, it symbolically refers to religion.

Religious disease is spread by false prophets who prophesy out of their own minds with the imaginations of their evil hearts. They speak worldly wisdom and knowledge — not Godly wisdom and knowledge.

STUDY TIP: See Two Kinds of Knowledge, Identifying False Prophets, and Checklist for Identifying True Prophets for more about the differences between true prophets and false prophets.

The one and only antidote for the disease of religion spread by false prophets is the word of God spoken by true prophets or spoken by God himself to the hearts of people.

The words of false prophets bring spiritual sickness, disease and death, while the words of true prophets and God bring healing and restoration to life. This is why God is the healer, and it is why Jesus and his disciples were able to heal and raise people from the dead. There is nothing about them personally that has power to heal. What they do have, however, in God’s anointing to speak words of life which will heal people from religious disease. This is why it was said of Jesus that he has the words of life.

This paradigm of life and death is symbolically represented in the two covenants. God gives us the choice about which covenant we want to be in. Old/First Covenant religion is a covenant of death and a curse, and the New Covenant is a covenant of life and blessing.

God frames that choice in the imagery of the fruit of two trees: Fruit of the Tree of Life and Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. One choice leads to spiritual life and the other choice leads to spiritual death. It is a simple choice. Which one we choose depends on who we listen to. Do we listen to the words of Jesus and other True Prophets and Warriors, or do we listen to False Prophets? The power of the words spoken by true prophets and false prophets is symbolically represented as the power of the tongue to give life or death.

Truth is the antidote for disease and sickness spoken by false prophets who speak nothing but lies. Jesus and other true prophets always speak the truth because they speak for God. Thus the words they speak on God’s behalf are the way to spiritual life, and the words spoken by false prophets are the way to spiritual death. Another way that the Bible symbolizes this dichotomy is in the power of the tongue to produce life or death.