TOUCHES OF FAITH
NATURE AFFORDS A UNIVERSAL MEANS OF
HEALING AND PRESERVING MEN.
Anton Mesmer
 George Fox was an English Dissenter and founder of the Society of Friends or Quakers. He was the first religious leader of the English Reformation known to heal sizable numbers of people by “spiritual means.” His most common method of healing was through prayer and laying on of hands. His healing works gained him a public reputation as a “magic worker.” From History
of the Supernatural, Volume II, by William
Howitt, 1963.
In 1648 George Fox had ‘an opening,’ such as Swedenborg records of himself. ‘The creation was opened to me; and it was showed to me how all things had their names given them, according to their nature and virtue. And I was at a stand in my mind whether I should practise physic for the good of mankind, seeing the nature and virtue of the creatures were so opened to me by the Lord.’ He says that the Lord showed him that such as were faithful to Him would be brought into the state in which Adam was before the fall, when the natures of all things were, by the divine unity, known to man, and that so they would come to know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being. He was shown that the professions of physic [medicine], divinity, and law were all destitute of the true knowledge and wisdom necessary for these professions, and that nothing but this divine illumination could bring them into it. It was shown him, however, that his labour was not to be physical but spiritual. It was at this time that he felt a certain assurance of his acceptance with God. At Mansfield Woodhouse he found the gospel gift of command over disordered spirits manifested in him. There was a distracted woman under a doctor's hands, being bound and with her hair loose. The doctor was trying to bleed her, but could get no blood from her. Fox desired that she might be unbound, and he then commanded her in the name of the Lord to be still; and this had such effect that she became still; her mind settled, she grew well, and became a convert to his doctrine, and remained perfectly sane till her death. Soon after at Twycross he restored a person who was ill by prayer. ‘There being in that town a great man, who had long lain sick, and was given over by the physicians, he went to visit him in his chamber; and having spoken some words to him, he was moved to pray by his bedside, and the Lord was entreated, so that the sick man was restored.’ A still more remarkable case is recorded by him in his ‘Journal.’ ‘After some time I went to a meeting at Arnside, where Richard Myer was, who had been long lame of one of his arms. I was moved of the Lord to say unto him, amongst all the people, “Stand upon thy legs!” and he stood up, and stretched out his arm that had been lame a long time, and said, “Be it known unto you, all people, that this day I am healed.” Yet his parents would hardly believe it; but, after the meeting was done, they had him aside, took off his doublet, and then saw it was true. He came soon after to Swarthmore meeting, and there declared how the Lord had healed him.’  John Wesley was an English minister and evangelist who was a principal leader of the revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism which gave birth to the modern Methodist Church denomination. He viewed spiritual and physical health as a whole – and believed in the importance of God's healing power and the role of prayer and faith in recovery. From Life
of Wesley, v. 2 by Robert Southey, 1847.
Among his lay preachers, there was a certain George Bell, who had formerly been a life-guardsman. Mr. Wesley published, as plainly miraculous, an account of an instantaneous cure wrought by this man: it was a surgical case: “Dec. 26. 1760. I made a particular inquiry into the case of Mary Special a young woman then in Tottenham Court Road. She said, ‘Four years since, I found much pain in my breasts and afterwards hard lumps. Four months ago my left breast broke, and kept running continually. Growing worse and worse – after some time I was recommended to St. George's Hospital. I was let blood many times, and took hemlock thrice a day; but I was no better, the pain and the lumps were the same, and both my breasts were quite hard, and black as soot; when, yesterday se’nnight, I went to Mr. Owen's, where there was a meeting for prayer. Mr. Bell saw me and asked. Have you faith to be healed? I said, yes. He prayed for me and in a moment, all my pain was gone. But the next day I felt a little pain again: I clapped my hands on my breasts, and cried out, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me whole! It was gone; and, from that hour I have had no pain, no soreness, no lumps or swelling, but both my breasts were perfectly well, and I have been so ever since.’” ~~~ From Works
of John Wesley.
May 31, 1785. — At eleven I preached in the avenue again. It rained all the time; yet the congregation was large and attentive. Afterwards a decent woman, whom I never saw either before or since, desired to speak with me; and said, “I met you at Caladon. I had then a violent pain in my head for four weeks; but was fully persuaded I should be well, if you would lay your hand on my cheek; which I begged you to do. From that moment I have been perfectly well.” If so, give God the glory. March 17, 1746. — I took my leave of Newcastle, and set out with Mr. Downes and Mr. Shepherd. But when we came to Smeton, Mr. Downes was so ill, that he could go no further. When Mr. Shepherd and I left Smeton, my horse was so exceeding lame that I was afraid I must have lain by too. We could not discern what it was that was amiss; and yet he would scarce set his foot to the ground. By riding thus seven miles, I was thoroughly tired, and my head ached more than it had done for some months. (What I here aver is the naked fact: Let every man account for it as he sees good.) I then thought, “Cannot God heal either man or beast, by any means, or without any?” Immediately my weariness and headache ceased, and my horse’s lameness in the same instant. Nor did he halt any more either that day or the next. A very odd accident this also! ~~~
From History of the Supernatural, Volume II, by William Howitt. Among the Irvingites, a religious sect founded in the 1830s by Edward Irving, a Scottish clergyman, who was deposed from the Church of Scotland. The Irvingites believe in the restoration of supernatural gifts, like those of the apostles, as described in the Book of Acts: Many cases are recorded. Miss Fancourt, the daughter of a clergyman, had been a hopeless cripple for eight years. She had curvature of the spine, an enlargement of one collar bone, disease in nearly every joint, and was utterly incapable of walking. The medical men had tried every possible remedy upon her. She had truly ‘suffered many things of many physicians’ — blisters, leeching, setons, bleeding, caustics, sea and warm baths; but all in vain, and the doctors declared her case so thoroughly organic that it was hopeless. Through the prayer of Mr. Greaves, one of Irving's congregation, she was suddenly and perfectly healed. Her father publicly attested the perfect cure; she did the same in the ‘Christian Observer,’ and that she was become quite straight, her collar bones quite equal in size, and she altogether healthy and well. A Mrs. Maxwell, who had been lame twenty-four years, and whose case was pronounced equally hopeless, became suddenly quite sound. A little girl of about eleven years of age, with curved spine, diseased knee, and also pronounced incurable by the faculty, was perfectly cured by earnest prayer. These and like cases were attested by the parties, by medical men and clergymen, and in the usual way were recklessly denied, or declared otherwise curable, in spite of the doctors themselves. ~~~
From
Mark Twain’s Autobiography
Olivia Langdon, the wife of Mark Twain, developed paralysis after an injury at the age of sixteen. She was confined to bed for two years. After exhausting all manner of medical help, her desperate family contacted the “famous charlatan,” JR Newton. On November 30, 1864, Newton “the quack” produced a “miracle” with Olivia. Samuel Langhorn Clemens describes Newton’s work below. [JR Newton is also featured in Gifts of Touch.] Newton came. He found the young girl upon her back. Over her was suspended a tackle from the ceiling. It had been there a long time but unused. It was put there in the hope that by its steady motion she might be lifted to a sitting posture, at intervals, for rest. But it proved a failure. Any attempt to raise her brought nausea and exhaustion and had to be relinquished. Newton opened the windows — long darkened — and delivered a short fervent prayer; then he put an arm be- hind her shoulders and said, “Now we will sit up, my child.” The family were alarmed and tried to stop him, but he was not disturbed, and raised her up. She sat several minutes without nausea or discomfort. Then Newton said, “Now we will walk a few steps, my child.” He took her out of bed and supported her while she walked several steps; then he said: “I have reached the limit of my art. She is not cured. It is not likely that she will ever be cured. She will never be able to walk far, but after a little daily practice she will be able to walk one or two hundred yards, and she can depend on being able to do that for the rest of her life.” His charge was fifteen hundred dollars and it was easily worth a hundred thousand. For from the day that she was eighteen until she was fifty-six she was always able to walk a couple of hundred yards without stopping to rest; and more than once I saw her walk a quarter of a mile without serious fatigue. Newton was mobbed in Dublin, in London, and in other places. He was rather frequently mobbed in Europe and in America, but never by the grateful Langdons and Clemenses. I met Newton once, in after years, and asked him what his secret was. He said he didn’t know, but thought perhaps some subtle form of electricity proceeded from his body and wrought the cures.  From Sister
Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson by
Daniel Mark Epstein, 1993.
It started in 1909, when Aimee tumbled down the stairs at the mission in Findlay, and broke her ankle. She could hear the bones crunch as she fell, bending her ankle under so that her toes turned toward her heel. The ankle swelled rapidly and turned blue from the fracture. A doctor who was at the prayer meeting said that not only was it cracked; she had torn four of the ligaments that move the toes, all but the largest toe. The outside of her foot had been pulled around and backwards. When they rebandaged the swelling, Dr. Harrison and his son, local physicians, drew the bent foot back into place. They put on a plaster-of-Paris cast. These doctors … explained that while the bone would heal, the torn cords would never grow together. Her healed foot would be straight but stiff. They gave Aimee crutches, advising her to put no weight on the foot for a month. So off she hobbled, in excruciating pain, to the train that would take her back to Chicago. The afternoon she arrived, Aimee attended a service at the North Avenue Mission, resting her feverish limb on the platform in front of her. Every footfall on the hollow floor of the mission sent a shock of pain through Aimee’s leg. Finally she couldn’t take it anymore. She limped back to her room a block away from the hall. While sitting there, staring at her black and swollen toes sticking out of the cast, she heard a voice. “If you will wrap the shoe for your broken foot, and take it with you to wear home, and go over to the North Avenue Mission to Brother Durham and ask him to lay hands on your foot, I will heal it.” Aimee looked around her to see that she was alone. Then she laughed. The idea of wrapping up the shoes, which had pinched even before she broke her foot, was hilarious; but while she laughed in half-delirium of her pain, she heard the voice again, “Wrap up your shoe to wear home, take it with you as you go to be prayed for, and I will heal you …” She was eighteen years old. Since she had received her baptism a year before, she had heard voices several times. But they were Bible echoes, passages she had read and memorized. This was different. It was the same tone as the voice in her head that quoted Scripture in answer to her prayer; but now the voice of the Lord was issuing to Aimee a specific and disturbingly irrational command. She searched for her crutches, hobbled over to the loose shoe, and wrapped it up. Tucking the parcel under her arm, she made her way down the winding staircase to go to the mission for prayers. Once her crutch slipped into a hole in the sidewalk, and as she stubbed her toes, the sweat stood out in beads on her forehead. Two men carried her on a chair up the stairs and into the meeting. When she told them what the Lord had told her, all twelve of the assembly but one began to pray for her; that man, the brother of Pastor Durham, was a skeptic, but he would not be one for long. As William Durham strode up and down the room calling upon the powers, he stopped suddenly, and laid his hands on Aimee’s ankle. After a few sentences in an unknown language he said, “In the name of Jesus, receive your healing,” and Aimee “felt as if a shock of electricity had struck” her foot…. The darkness faded from the skin of her foot. Aimee felt the ligaments ease into place as the bone was made whole, and a strange coolness there in the absence of pain. She asked for help to cut away the cast. “Don’t be foolish,” said the skeptic. “You will only have to pay a doctor three dollars to replace the cast.” But his eyes grew wide and he joined the others in praise as the plaster was removed from the healed foot, and Aimee laced on the shoe she had brought. She leaped and began to dance and jump on her new foot. ~~~ From Sister Aimee Monkey Abe was one of those characters so essential to the mental balance of small communities years ago – the scapegoat and laughingstock of Mount Forest. He was a stumbling drunk with long arms and short legs and simian features that earned him his nickname. The mayor gave him a handbell and the charge to ring it upon noon and dinner hour, and for public meetings. They gave him a few pennies to spend at the saloon. And folks would feed him table scraps they would leave in a bowl on thee porch, where dogs couldn’t reach it. He was frequently bruised and cut, as men out of humor in the saloon used him as a punching bag, or as a football when he was sleeping. Everyone loved him more than they understood because he was always there where he was needed, drunk or sober, ringing the hour; he was always where he was supposed to be, to be blamed or punched, pitied or laughed at or used as a bad example for children who did not obey their parents and teachers. Aimee, of course, realized at once this was a job for Jesus. Monkey Abe had taken on the sins of a whole people who had not the slightest idea of what they owed him. For years the bell ringer had endured three running sores upon his ankle … But the doctors of Mount Forest could think of nothing to do for the bell ringer except cut away the foot just above the ankle, and get him a good crutch. Like a wounded animal with an instinct for the hand of sympathy, Monkey Abe limped to the Victory Mission. He had heard something about the healing power of God, and came begging the women for “mission ointment.” They told him they had no mission ointment but the healing ointment of Calvary. All began to pray, laying hands on the poor drunk. They called down the name of Jesus and the Holy Spirit to cast out the demons that had been gnawing at Abe’s ankle. Meanwhile somebody doused a cloth with “oil.” They wrapped the leg and ankle in a cloth all the while they trembled, and rubbed Monkey Abe, and chanted the name of Jesus. Then they sent him on his way to the saloon, where he might ponder the day’s events in the peace of familiar surroundings. According to Sister Elizabeth’s account, Monkey Abe returned to the mission the next day, pointed to his bandage and complained it felt as if little needles were pricking all through his lower leg. When they unwrapped the bandage, there was a chorus of shouting and praise, because they saw “he was perfectly healed all the blackness was gone – he walked without a limp.” This gave the town crier something to think about, and a new cry as he went his rounded ringing the hour: “Hear ye! Hear ye! I have given my heart to Christ! Come down to the revival tonight and hear Sister McPherson preach the Christ who saved even me …” Everyone heard of Monkey Abe’s healing. ~~~
From Sister Aimee “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” She was preaching this text one night in Corona when a taxicab pulled up to the door of the Free Gospel Church. Two people got out of the cab quickly and came around to open the curb door for Louise Messnick. You could hardly tell whether Louise Messnick was a little girl or an old lady the way she was scrunched down in the car seat. She looked as if she had passed out with her chin on her chest. But she was wide awake in pain, looking up out of the corner of her eyes through the car window above her head…. The young woman curled up in the back seat of the cab could not lift her head. The inflammation had impaired the neck muscles and the jaw, so she could hardly chew. The vertebrae of her neck were skewed with the swelling, and the ligaments of her back had begun to shorten, so she could not stand erect. For a long time she had not been able to lift her hands high enough to comb her hair. Her fingers were gnarled and twisted. Louise, a Catholic, had heard about the controversial revival meetings going on in the Free Gospel Church. This Sister Aimee people were arguing about had brought to the town a spirit that worked wonders. This was just what Louise needed. Every time Louise thought of Sister Aimee, she felt a thrill of hope, a tingling in her blood and bones Now the crowd made way for the twisted young woman on crutches. On either side a friend supported her as she came through the door and started down the central aisle. Sister Aimee had just been declaring that Jesus Christ was the same yesterday, today, and forever, with the same power to heal the body and mind, and deliver the gifts of tongues and prophecy via the holy Ghost, as He showed in ancient times. The crippled Louise Messnick entered like a dramatic challenge to Aimee’s sermon…. Aimee tells that before this night in Corona she had not discovered the gift of healing. “Indeed very little had been said or done about this great doctrine at the time.” Yet she had seen her own broken ankle healed in Findlay, Ohio in 1909, and she had witnessed the overnight healing of Monkey Abe’s lesions in Mount Forest a year ago. Most important, perhaps, was her own resurrection from the physical and mental collapse in Hong Kong, where she lost Robert Semple, and the internal damage she had suffered in the Providence hospital. As Aimee looked at Louise Messnick (whose eyes were downcast because she could not raise her head), she could tell the girl was weeping. The audience watched Aimee looking at the arthritic woman, as if to say: If Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, what about Barnabas, and the lepers? What about Lazarus? If He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, why doesn’t He do something about this crippled woman in our midst? Are you just going to stand there and preach? “Oh Lord,” Aimee cried out in her heart, “you are able to heal her.” And she realized she was going to do something she had never done before. It might disappoint everyone terribly if her instinct failed her. “How I did wish that I could begin with someone who looked a bit more mendable …” she recalled. But it was too late for such considerations. She was already caught up in the process that had begun in Louise Messnick’s body and in the body of the crowd days before. She decided in that instant that she would pray for the crippled girl to be healed. But she would do it as inconspicuously as possible during the altar call; she would slip down to the front seat and pray quietly with her. In the back of Aimee’s mind was the thought that if Louise was not completely healed there, the failure would be less noticeable. But the young cripple had whispered to her friends to carry her up at the very beginning of the altar call. Aimee gasped as she saw the woman being carried to the front, all eyes upon her. Since she could not kneel, they set her down in the central minister’s chair. Sister Aimee had called all these people together in the presence of the Holy Spirit, for an anointing, an infusion of the divine presence. Young and old, rich and poor, man and woman, became a single body. This was her gift as an orator, her charisma, which came from a deep understanding founded upon years of reflection and prayer. The crowd’s body was a healing body like that of Christ, the wounded healer. Now she had a vivid image of Christ’s body which she projected in their midst so powerfully that those who could not literally see it could still feel the Lord’s presence. When she prayed in His name, the prayer had a physical as well as psychic force. Every man, woman, and child in the Free Gospel Church had been transported by Aimee’s gift into a cell of the healing body of Christ. In her mind was a blueprint of the human body in radiant health. Now Aimee looked into the downcast eyes of Louise Messnick and prayed for her healing. She laid hands upon the woman’s head. As she did this, she felt an energy surge like an electric charge coming up from her heels right through her spine and into her tingling fingertips. It seemed, as she closed her eyes, that the charge came from Christ’s image down through the body of the rapt audience and then up through her legs. This was pleasant and soothing, like warm water. It seemed to have an immediate effect upon Louise Messnick’s skin color, as well as her temperature. The woman’s cheeks flushed and her heartbeat increased. Aimee told her to lift up her hands and praise the Lord. Louise Messnick looked at her hands, lifted them slowly. And as she lifted her hands, some people in front gasped in wonder. The hands unfolded from their clawlike deformity, and straightened out. Like hands pulled from above by a puppeteer, limp at the wrist, Louise Messnick’s hands rose to the level of her chin. The shoulders thawed as the hands then rose to her eyes, and then to the top of her head. She could feel a mild vibration in her limbs, a pleasant warmth like spring sunlight coming from Sister Aimee’s hands and dark eyes. “Praise the Lord,” she muttered, “this is the first time I have been able to lift my hands …” The hands went up until her arms were nearly straight above her head. Her chin, which had been fastened to her sunken chest so long, it seemed to have grown there, began to move slightly to the side. Then it straightened again as her neck muscles relaxed. Aimee smoothed the hair back from the woman’s brow, and the woman’s chin lifted, and they looked into each other’s eyes. Louise Messnick gazed heavenward, her arms outstretched, and, as Aimee held her, she rose to her feet. People cried out in praise and wonder. She tottered, and Aimee helped her get hold of the chancel rail. Her face and hands were streaming with sweat as she moved slowly along the rail, hand over hand. And with every step she took, her limbs straightened; the fingers clutching the chancel rail unknotted. Louise Messnick walked out of the church that night alone, without her crutches. ~~~
From Sister Aimee Mrs. Sarah Matthews lived at 41 East Montgomery Street. From her front door she could walk two block west, on the arm of a neighbor, and climb the steps to the battery of Federal Hill. From the north and east slopes of the hill was a spectacular view of the harbor, and beyond––the masts and sails of the merchant vessels, the tall buildings and gleaming copper flashings and church spires of downtown Baltimore. Sarah had known the view for most of her life. But during the last few years her field of vision had shrunk to where she could see only a narrow corridor right in front of her, and then a narrower tunnel off to one side, so that she had to tilt her head queerly to make headway even in broad daylight. And then that scan opening flooded with mist, so that Sarah Matthews could see nothing from the height of Federal Hill but light itself, like sunshine through a blizzard. Her memory of the buildings may at times have seemed as clear as her vision might be should she recover it. She could not abandon the hope her vision would return, by degrees or all at once, like a glass tube free of smoke. Sarah Matthews’s cataracts had troubled her for thirteen years before Sister Aimee came to Baltimore. She had sought cures from “medical specialists.” As a Fundamentalist she was familiar with John 9:1-13, where the disciples ask Jesus about the blindman: “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answers: “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” Then Jesus spits on the ground, makes clay of the spittle, and smears the man’s eyes with the clay. When the man returns from washing away the clay in the pool of Siloam, he can see as well as anyone. More clearly than most, in truth, because he understands that Christ, “the light of the world,” is the cause of his vision. His neighbors and the Pharisees are blind to this; they immediately begin to question the man’s identity, hilariously. In an important sense he is not the man he was, the blind man, now that God’s works have been made manifest in him. He becomes a source of light. Sarah Matthews knew this parable from the inside out. As a woman of faith, she would accept the first opportunity to re-enact it…. Sarah Matthews, walking the wintry terraces of Federal Hill, got wind of the miraculous possibility in the rumors of Sister Aimee Semple McPherson. Maybe from the day she heard that the healer would come to Baltimore, she began to remember how to see, and glimpsed figures through her perpetual fog. On the afternoon of December 11, Sarah Matthews was driven to the Lyric Theater to attend Sister Aimee’s healing services. The auditorium was crowded with spectators, the faithful and the skeptical. They had come to see what comfort the lady evangelist might bring to scores of the afflicted. These were stumping up the aisles on crutches or being wheeled or carried toward the altar. Twenty-five clergymen of various demonstrations had come, as well as “a number of eminent physicians.” Aimee, in her nurse’s uniform, stood on the platform. The hall was full. She heard the testimony of men and women who had been healed. She read a psalm and delivered a deep-throated speech about God’s wonderful works. She made time collapse upon itself, present time and the ancient days of Christ in Galilee and Jerusalem. She spoke caressingly of Our Lord’s promises to those who seek him in their hearts, and how the power of healing is the same in Jesus Christ, “yesterday, today, and forever.” To the blind woman, who no longer knew the seasons or the hours of the day in visible terms, this held a special meaning. When Sister Aimee called for those who sought to be healed, Sarah Matthews moved toward her voice with such a certain step that when she arrived at the altar rail, Aimee had to inquire what ailed her. Sarah explained she had a cataract over each eye. For many years she had sought a cure from the eye specialists. The evangelist led Sarah to the platform, and walked up and down with her, praying, for several minutes. It grew quiet in the opera house, as if the enormous crowd somehow had been subsumed in the roles of the healer and the invalid. Facing Sarah, the evangelist placed her fingers gently upon the older woman’s eyelids. Sarah felt a peculiar warmth. Her heart was pounding. Aimee, with her eyes closed, declared she believed “God had returned her sight.” And in a burst of light beneath her eyelids under Aimee’s fingers, Sarah Matthews realized even before opening her eyes that they would see. And she did not stop proclaiming her joy until it was drowned in the choruses of “Praise the Lord” as she walked unaided from the platform.  From Kathryn Kuhlmann: Daughter of Destiny by Jamie Buckingham, 1999. Kathryn paused. She had never preached like that before. It was a new revelation. A new truth. Yet it came straight from the Bible. She was shaking as she continued, “The last words He said before He went away were, ‘And ye shall receive power after the Holy Ghost is come upon you.’ God the Father had given Him the gift. Now He was passing it onto the church. Every church should be experiencing the miracles of Pentecost. Every church should be seeing the healings of the Book of Acts. The gift is for all of us.” Dumbfounded over what she had said, Kathryn left as soon as the service was over, leaving the ministry at the altar to a group of men who came forward to help. She was up all that night, in her little attic room on the third floor of the Business Women’s Club where she lived, pacing the floor, praying, and reading her Bible. It was as though she had stood with Simon Peter when Jesus had said to him, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” The following night she was back at the tabernacle. The room was packed with expectant faces. Every seat on the long wooden pews was taken. The huge open-beam rafters resounded with joyful singing as she entered the room. The people had come expecting. Expecting a miracle. Just as Kathryn stood to preach there was a disturbance in the audience. A woman was coming forward. She had her hand up. “Kathryn, may I say something?” Kathryn looked at her. Plump. About fifty. Dressed in a gray tweed suit and wearing a black straw hat adorned with a small white flower. She carried her handbag in her right hand, but was waving her left hand in the air. “Come on, honey, of course you can say something.” The woman came to the front of the building and stood facing Kathryn, separated only by the long pipe from which the altar curtain was hanging by little rings. She talked softly. “Last night, while you were preaching. I was healed.” Twice Kathryn tried to say something, but nothing came out. She finally stammered, “Where were you?” “Just sitting here in the audience, “ she smiled. “How do you know you were healed?” If it was of God it could stand examination. “I had a tumor,” the woman said shyly. “It had been diagnosed by my doctor. While you were preaching, something happened in my body. I was so sure I was healed that I went back to my doctor this morning and had it verified. The tumor is no longer there.” There had been no numbered healing line. No laying on of hands. No prayer. The miracle simply occurred while Kathryn was preaching about the Holy Spirit. It took a full week for Kathryn to grasp what had happened. Then, on the following Sunday, another miracle occurred, this one even more spectacular. In 1925, George Orr, a World War I veteran – and a Methodist by denomination – had been injured in an industrial accident. A splash of molten metal so badly scarred the cornea of his right eye that he was declared legally blind. His ophthalmologist, Dr. C. E. Imbrie of Butler, Pennsylvania, said the eye was permanently impaired and the resulting scar on the cornea was too deep for surgery. If they operated, they would have to remove the eyeball. In March 1947, Orr and his wife attended one of the tabernacle services in Franklin. Over the next two months they returned several times to hear Kathryn preach. On May 4, they drove up from Butler for the morning service, riding with a young couple who was also interested in Kathryn’s ministry. Kathryn was still preaching about the power of the Holy Spirit and during the service declared, flatly, on the basis of the woman who had been healed earlier in the week, that physical healing was just as possible today as spiritual salvation. Something happened inside George Orr. He prayed, “God, please heal my eye.” The next moment he felt a strange tingling sensation in his eye, as though something were passing through it. Then it began to stream tears. In fact, Orr was embarrassed since he couldn’t control the watering. His eye overflowed and tears splashed onto his jacket. After the service, afraid to tell anybody what had happened to him, he staggered out of the building to his car. On the way home he kept blinking the eye as it continued to stream tears. Then, just as they went over the hill, he said the sun seemed to suddenly burst forth in all its glory. Cupping his hand over his good eye, he shouted, “I can see! I can see everything!” George Orr, who had long been drawing workman’s compensation because of his blindness, returned to the service in Franklin on Tuesday night to testify. ~~~
“The
Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity,
comes in power and He uses the vessel yielded unto Him. I cannot use the Holy Spirit, He must use me. It is not so important that I touch anyone, but rather that the Holy Spirit touch the life, the heart, and fill the individual with himself.” Kathryn
Kuhlman
From
Jamie Buckingham in God Can Do It Again by
Kathryn Kuhlman, 1969.
I made my way through the crowd of wheel hairs on the side porch and slipped through the back door of the auditorium. Behind the stage in a small passageway, Kathryn Kuhlman was pacing back and forth, her face uplifted in prayer and her lips moving without audible sound. She was completely oblivious to the others around her as she talked with God. When at last she saw me, we exchanged quick greetings. Shaking my head, I began to remark about the sights I had seen on the front steps. “I saw a child….” She interrupted me with a compassionate, “Please... I have a service to do.” Her soft blue eyes searched my face for a moment. “No one knows better than I how powerless I am,” she said, her voice now filled with emotion, “how dependent I am on the mercy of the Lord to help these precious people. But the ability of God is beyond our comprehension, beyond our strongest faith, beyond our largest prayers.” “Come with me,” she said suddenly. Grabbing my hand she led me briskly toward the little door that opened onto the stage. “There! See those three steps. See that black doorknob. I die a thousand deaths every time I go up those steps, turn that knob, and walk out onto that platform. There are thousands of people out there who have come in their desperation to be healed — to find God. But I cannot give them anything. Only the Holy Spirit can give it. I stand on these steps and you will never know how I feel when I open that door. I know people have come from great distances. “I know this is their last hope. I have no power to heal. All that I can do is to remind them of the bigness of God, the greatness of God, that He is still God Almighty. I am only the vessel that is surrendered. God does the rest. “Last week ... no, it was two weeks ago, a man came back here before the service. We try to keep the people out of the wings before the service because they would overwhelm me. But he got back here and asked me to pray for his ear. He had cancer of the ear. I have never heard a man sob ... cry ... like that man. That is all he did. He did not pray. He just sobbed. We prayed a simple prayer and he left.” Her face was beaming as she continued excitedly: “Last week he was back and his ear was as pink and nice as can be. That is the power of God!” she said as she broke into a prayer of thanksgiving. She turned and walked back down that long corridor, holding her hands up and praying for the anointing of God before the service began.  From The Call by Oral Roberts, 1972. We lived on a little farm in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma. Because of my mother’s dedication to God, it was not unusual for her to be called on in time of great need. One day three months before I was born she received a call from a neighbor, whose child was dying of pneumonia. The doctor said the infant would not live through the night. Crying, the parents had asked Mamma, “Would you come pray for him?” It was a two-mile walk across the fields and Mamma was six months’ pregnant. It was late in the evening. When she came to a barbed-wire fence, she separated two strands of wire, one up and one down, in order to crawl through. Her dress got caught. The wind was blowing. She was tired and alone and felt very awkward. She began to pray. She said, “Oh God, I want to make a vow. I ask you to heal my neighbor’s child tonight, and when mine is born, I will give him to you.” When she came to the neighbor’s house she said to the father of the sick child, “God will heal your child.” She went over and put her hand on the child and prayed in the name of Christ. The child’s life was spared. For Mamma, that settled the matter. The baby she was carrying would be a boy and a minister. Shortly thereafter when I was born they named me Granville Oral, “and let’s call him Oral.” She took me to church and asked the pastor to lay his hands upon me and dedicate my life to God. The name Oral, though, was an ironic choice, for as I grew up I stuttered and stammered badly. I didn’t take my stammering seriously until my first day at school. When the teacher asked my name and all the children waited to hear me say it, a sharp fear hit me in the pit of my stomach, and all I could do was work my jaws. I couldn’t say, “Oral Roberts.” The big laugh this got made me extremely self-conscious. I began to live inside myself and train myself to talk as little as possible. One day a gang of boys gathered around me asking my name. I refused to tell them. They began to get tough and I started running home. Mamma saw them coming and met me at the gate. We went into the house and she pulled me up on her lap. Then she told me the story of how she had given me to God before I was born, and added, “Oral, someday you will talk without stammering. God will loosen your tongue.” ~~~
From The Call. When Papa and the coach had put me in bed, I weighed 160 pounds on a 6-foot 1 1/2-inch frame. After lying bedfast for 163 days, I was down to 120 pounds. Friends no longer recognized me. In fact, when they came to visit me they could hardly stand to look at me. Food tasted like wood. Sharp pains were constantly in my chest clear through to my shoulder blades. Night sweats were constant and the bloody coughing was always there. I began to curse the day I was born. I took a lot of medicines prescribed by the doctors and several homemade remedies given by well-meaning friends. Constant prayers were said over me, predictions were from time to time that the end was near. I lived in a state of unreality except for the suffering in my body. My mind was in a shadow it felt as if I was away off from normal things. I didn’t respond to my parents’ entreaties to pray or to be converted. A stupor engulfed me and at last it was as if I didn’t see or hear anyone. I refused to take any more medicine, saying, “If I’m going to die anyway, why take that bitter-tasting stuff.” I kept wondering, “Why has this happened to me? What have I done to deserve it?” My pastor at the Methodist Church came to visit me. I had joined the Methodist Church quite a while back even though my father was a Pentecostal Holiness minister. Most of my friends were Methodist, also. I had enjoyed my church relationship very much. But now, as my pastor started to leave, he said, “Oral, you’ve got to be patient.” I had never been patient even when well, and now I certainly was not interested in patiently waiting for death, I thought. “Brother, if that’s all you’ve got to offer, I don’t want it.” I was equally repelled by my parents’ religion. They and the people of the church were concerned about my dying and going to hell. They would talk to me about getting saved and going to Heaven. They found it difficult to appreciate my response: “I’m not interested in dying and going to Heaven or dying and going to hell. I’m interested in living. I want to be well.” Then one day something happened that changed my attitude. My sister, Jewell, who lived seventeen miles away had an urge to come to our house. She came into my bedroom and looked down and said, “Oral, God is going to heal you.” It was as though she had turned on a light in my soul. All at once I awakened and I became aware of Jesus. Sermons had never reached me, the beautiful songs had never touched me. But with those seven words, my sister identified Jesus as being part of my life, part of my future and my existence. He knew my name. He knew I existed. I was a person, a human being worth saving. I had a life worth living. And He was concerned about me. My lungs were torn up, I stammered and stuttered, I’d run away from home, gone my own way, but God cared. He was going to heal me and He had known about me all the time. Not too long after this my brother Elmer came to our house. Elmer was no more religious than I was, but he had attended a tent revival where an evangelist was praying for the sick. What he had seen there had convinced him that his little brother could be helped. He borrowed a car, bought gas with the last thirty-five cents he had, and drove over to get me. He came straight into my bedroom and said, “Oral, get up. God is going to heal you.” Since I had never heard him talk about religion much, I said, “Elmer, what do you mean?” He said, “I’m taking you to a tent meeting they’re having in Ada. God is going to heal you. Now get up and let’s go.” I said, “Elmer, I can’t get up.” He said, “Well, then, I’ll carry you.” About this time Mamma and Papa came in the room. When Elmer told them what he was doing they immediately pitched in to help. Though none of my clothes would fit me now, they put an old suit on me. They couldn’t afford an ambulance so they took my mattress and put it in the backseat of the car and they carried me out. As the little car slowly made its way to Ada, I suddenly knew God was going to heal me. It was one thing for Jesus to know it . . . I had to come into a knowing my self. The promise that my mother had made to God before I was born now became a reality to me. God spoke to my hart promising to heal me and He called me to take His healing power to my generation. His words rang clear to me: “Son, I am going to heal you and you are to take the message of my healing power to your generation.” Though I didn’t have any idea what that meant, I did know that now my life was in His hands. I have never ceased to believe it. When we arrived at the tent, they put me in a rocking chair with pillows on both sides, and when the evangelist finished preaching, they carried me up to him. He put his hands on my head and said a short prayer, “Thou foul disease! I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of this boy’s lungs! Loose him and let him go!” The next thing I knew I was racing back and forth on the platform shouting at the top of my voice, “I am healed! I am healed! I am healed!” The preacher came over and took hold of me. He led me to the microphone and said, “Son, tell the people what the Lord has done for you.” All my life I had been a stutterer. I had been scared of crowds. I would freeze on the spot. But I took the microphone from his hands and spoke to the that crowd as if I had spent half my life on a platform. My tongue was loose, and I could talk. I could breathe all the way down without burning pain and coughing and hemorrhaging. I walked up and down the platform proclaiming what Jesus of Nazareth had done for me. Later my parents took me to the Sugg Clinic in Ada, Oklahoma. There I had my lungs fluoroscoped. Dr. Morry found them absolutely perfect. He came into my room after the fluoroscopy and said, “Son, just forget you ever had TB. Your lungs are as sound as a dollar.” ~~~
From The Call. One of the outstanding miracles of my ministry happened in a crusade in Roanoke, Virginia, in the early fifties. It was so miraculous that Look magazine reported it. The crowds in the American Legion Hall were unbelievably large. Thousands were turned away, for fire marshals had refused to let any more in. Even the crusade organist was unable to get inside one night. As the service was closing, a ten-year-old child named Willie somehow managed to get into the invalid room. He didn’t know that I had already prayed for the invalids and in fact was leaving the auditorium to head for home following this last service. As I passed by the room where the invalids had been, my eye caught the picture of a little body sitting in a chair by himself with his crutches under his arm. Despite my exhaustion, I turned and went in. I said to him, “Son, what is your name?” He answered, “Willie.” “Willie,” I asked, “what are you doing here?” He said, “I’m waiting on Oral Roberts. I’m supposed to be healed today.” I looked at him a moment and then said, “Willie, I’m Oral Roberts. But when Brother Roberts is tired, his faith is not very strong.” With the honesty that only a ten-year-old can have, he said, “I don’t know about that, but I’m supposed to be healed today.” Reluctantly, I said, “Willie, Brother Roberts is going to put his hands on you and pray. And I’m going to ask Jesus to heal you, but you’re going to have to pray and believe with me. Okay?” He nodded. I said a short prayer, patted him on the shoulder, and said good-bye. I learned later what happened when he got home. He took off his braces, laid his crutches down, and said,, “Momma, I’m going to walk …” and walk he did! “The next day,” as Willie told me later, “I couldn’t go to school on Monday morning because I didn’t have any shoes that would fit me. The built-up shoe was useless because both legs were now the same length. So my mother had to take me downtown in Lynchburg to buy me some normal shoes before I could go to school. “It was late when I arrived at school that day. And when I walked into the classroom, it almost broke up the school. My classmates had never seen me except on crutches. “Everybody shouted and the teacher cried. Then she asked lots of questions. She asked what had happened, and I told her that I had been to Roanoke where a preacher prayed fro me, and that I was healed. The teacher asked me how much he charged, and I told her, ‘He didn’t charge a penny.’” When Willie was eighteen, we checked on him again. From Willie and his parents the full story came out: “When Willie was seven he developed a limp in his right leg. The leg shrank until it was a full two and a quarter inches shorter than the left one. The doctors diagnosed it as Perthes’ disease. They said that nothing could be done for it, and for four years Willie walked on crutches and a built-up, corrective shoe. “Three times a day, for an hour each time, Willie had to be bathed in hot salt water. When this did not bring any improvement, he was taken to the hospital and remained three weeks with a ten-pound weight attached to his leg. But this also failed to bring relief, and he was placed in a heavy, cumbersome cast up to his shoulders. “Finally, all hope was gone. The doctor told his mother, ‘You must realize that this is not unusual. Nine out of ten people who have this disease never walk again.’ “It was, indeed, a trying and discouraging experience. And when they came to my crusade in Roanoke the first two times they could not get in because of the crowd. “The third time, as they were waiting outside the American Legion Hall, it began to snow. As they waited in the cold and snow, Willie’s mother prayed. She felt in her heart that now was God’s time heal her son.” Finally, Willie managed to get in. And the rest is history. ~~~
From The Call. In January 1951, Anna Williams had been involved in a train-car wreck. She sustained a severely fractured right leg and complications. Thrombophlebitis, a clotting of the blood, necessitated an operation before these clots could reach Anna’s lungs. The clots finally dissolved, and Anna was released from Hermann Hospital, Houston, Texas – but on crutches. By September 22, 1952, Anna had not yet abandoned her crutches when she was stricken with polio and rushed to Jefferson Davis Hospital, Houston’s polio center. Polio had caused temporary, but nonetheless complete paralysis, and there were many hours of pain and therapy in the days that followed. Two weeks later she was transferred to Hermann Hospital. The polio therapy was hampered because Anna was expecting her first child. Also, her old trouble, phlebitis, the blood condition that induced clots, re-activated making further polio therapy impossible. The baby, little Benjamin Rex, was born January 7, 1953. And on January 22, Anna was again released from Hermann Hospital – still on crutches. A third crippling force entered into Anna’s life – spondylitis, a disease similar to polio. This left her confined to a wheel chair. On April 27, 1955, they moved to Wichita Falls, Texas, where her husband Bill, a sergeant in the Air Force, was to be stationed at Sheppard Air Force Base. Unable to find an apartment immediately, they moved in with some friends, Harold and Anna Weeks. Mrs. Weeks had written Anna and Bill about the Oral Roberts television program and urged Anna then to watch it. But Anna was not able to see it where they lived. So Mrs. Weeks determined they should see it on the very first Sunday they were in her home. Bill had suggested earlier that they attend the motorcycle races in Lawton, Oklahoma, but they found it so good to be home, they decided not to go. They sat happily relaxed in the Weeks living room as the Oral Roberts program came on. Anna sat comfortably on a divan where her husband had assisted her from her wheel chair. They listened spellbound to the sermon. Then came the healing line. There was a little crippled boy, who was instantly healed by God’s power. He strode triumphantly from the platform. Mrs. Weeks, watching for Anna’s reaction, saw her catch her breath. Oral Roberts then appeared on the screen in a close-up. He urged everyone in the TV audience to place his hand on his heart and pray either for himself or for others who needed healing. Anna listened with both her mind and her heart as Brother Roberts prayed. At this precise moment, the Holy Spirit entered into Anna’s frail body and there was a general tingling throughout her entire being. Her legs felt strange and alive. An overpowering compulsion told her to GET UP AND WALK. “Honey,” she said, “help me get up.” She reached out her hands. Bill was accustomed to helping his wife, so he walked over and took her hand. He had not caught the ecstatic look on Anna’s face, and he was bewildered when she grasped his hand and pulled herself up from the divan under her own power. Bill looked apprehensively at his wife. She was standing uncertainly, like a child who has not yet learned to walk. She lurched forward with staggering, unsteady steps. In panic, Bill grabbed for Anna’s hand and attempted to steady her. “Turn me loose!” she exclaimed. “I’m going to walk. God has hold of me.” Anna Williams did walk. Her steps may have been weak and unsteady at first, but she did walk. Bill’s eyes followed Anna with a look of combined concern and rejoicing. She walked the entire length of the living room and stopped at a table in the adjoining kitchen. She leaned against the table, tossed back her head and cried exultantly, “The Lord has healed me!” The urge to praise God and the urge to continue walking were consuming her like fire. Again she walked that length of the room, this time right into her husband’s arms. Each step she took was just a trifle stronger, a little surer than the last. Again and again she exclaimed happily, “Look what God did!” Anna could not stop walking. She picked up little Benny, raised him high over her head and laughed with the thrill of full motherhood. This was her child. Although he was 28 months old, this was the first time that she had ever had the strength to lift him. She swung Benny to the floor and sat playfully with her baby on the floor. She sprang to her feet. Her joy was so complete that she flung herself about the room in happy dancing movement. After the newspapers had flashed the story of Anna’s healing from coast to coast, Paul Harvey, the well-known ABC commentator, interviewed her the following Tuesday. Mr. Harvey had informed the people on his radio program that he would have a surprise guest at his lecture that evening at Midwestern University. And when the time came, he merely said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I would like you to meet a friend of mine: this is Mrs. Anna Williams.” There was no further introduction, and none was needed, for by this time all of Wichita Falls knew of the miracle of Eighth Street. As Anna Williams walked up on the stage, you could have heard the proverbial pin drop. Anna Walked like a slim, regal princess, proud of God’s handiwork. She was not nervous. She felt no fear. She hadn’t planned her speech. She let God put the words in her mouth. She told Paul Harvey’s audience, “If you believe and have faith, you will be healed.” |
The Great Physician
Love Heals
“Even as there is only one nature, one life, one health,
there is, only one disease, one remedy, one healing.”
Mesmer
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