The lost Bible verse that changes the story

There is a story in the Bible that has been lost over time. The story tells about how a man was in a hopeless situation. He had no way to change the situation — nobody to help him, nobody to turn to and nobody cared.

The situation was terrible, but he kept faith that someday the situation would change. To this end he would go every day to a pool. He went in the winter cold, blistering summer heat, the spring rains and the fall winds. He did this year in and year out, suffering, waiting for his faith to change the situation. The man did not want wealth, power or fame; his desire was simply to be like other people. He had seen others in similar situations suddenly, but expectedly, have their problem disappear. Time and again he went to the pool to wait for that moment when he could be like other people, to wait for the answer to his prayer.

There are people today that are like the man at the pool. They have trouble in their lives and they wait for an answer to come. Today we are accustomed to instant gratification. We are not patient. We want God to fix our problems now. Too many times we try to fix a problem ourselves, not allowing God to do his work. Usually the effort of getting in front of God has disastrous and unintended results, often these results out-last the initial problem.

The economy of the United States is in trouble. Many people look to the government for the answer. I often wonder how many problems that people have today would be taken care of if they looked to God and not the government for resolution.

Two weeks after the earthquake in Haiti the rescue teams were still pulling people out of the wreckage. One was a child too young to understand that a person is not supposed to live more than three days without water. Was part of the reason the child lived a case where the child did not know that after three days he/she was supposed to die? Another was an 84-year-old woman. Maybe she was too stubborn to die, maybe she didn’t know she was supposed to die from lack of water or maybe, just maybe, she had faith she would be found. Against all odds she would survive. I think she had faith much like the man at the pool.

How does this apply to the trouble today? Simply put, God has his own clock, he does things in his time, in his way and sometimes we have to wait on him.

Some of you reading are asking what about the man at the pool? What happened and what made him think anything was special about the pool and why did he keep going back?

Sadly some Bibles don’t tell the whole story. Sadly, some Bible scholars decided that this story or at least a very important part of the story needed to be removed from the Bible shortly after 1965. The Bible verse had been in the Bible for more than 1,000 years and some Bible scholars decided to rewrite the word of God, in essence saying, “I’m smarter than God” (I’m not nearly that brave). Some Bible scholars claim this passage is a myth. How strange until about a century ago there were still recorded unexplained cases of healing at the well.

I have inserted the Bible verse for those who would (as Paul Harvey would say) like the rest of the story. For those still wondering what I am talking about open your Bibles and look at John 5:4 “For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.”

If this verse is missing from your Bible, I would only ask one question. What else is missing? I would like to leave with these verses from the book Revelation 22:18 and their chilling implications.

“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: 22:19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”

Michael K. Blodgett is chaplain of Lighthouse Chapel.