Introduction: A Testimony Of Why

“But to you who fear My name the sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in its wings; and you shall leap about like calves loosed from the stall.” (Malachi 4:2)

It is a new day! This is a day that is marked with righteousness. A righteousness that comes by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. For righteousness does not come by doing what is right or acting rightly. But the righteousness of God can come upon you like a clothing. The righteousness of God is revealed upon you when you believe the gospel of God’s grace through Jesus Christ. His mercy will heal and deliver you, if you will only believe on His mercy!

Now, I’d like to tell you why I believe in divine healing. It appears to many that our ministry is centered around divine healing.

When I was first born into the kingdom of God, I had a supernatural vision that was a call into the ministry of the gospel of Christ. I don’t believe that it is necessary to have such a vision to do the work of the ministry and most people are not called into the ministry this way. I think that it is more usual that people are called by their passion and desire. But perhaps I happened to be with such littleness of faith in the beginning that God gave me a supernatural vision.

I had been hearing the voice of God for several days in a row. He was saying that He wanted me to preach and proclaim this gospel that had so gloriously saved me. Yet, I was arguing with God about it. I knew no better. It was my assumption that He had too many Billy Graham’s in the world at that time and He didn’t need another one. Especially not me! I was a businessman and a firefighter. I liked it that way. I just loved Jesus. I was throwing myself into Jesus totally, I thought.

He would say, “I call upon you to preach this gospel.” I would say, “No.” I don’t remember how long this went on. All I know was that God had patience. I would never talk to Him in the manner in which I did then. He loves us past our rebellion.

On a particular sunny afternoon, while I was busy arguing with the Lord over this point of being a preacher, I was thinking that a nap would be in fine order for that portion of my day. I didn’t even get a chance to fall asleep when very suddenly, I had a multi-dimensional drama that went on in the air right in front of my face and it filled the entirety of the room where I was.

I saw my grandfather who had been dead for about 6 or 8 years at that time. He was a Southern Pentecostal man of God. He was a beautiful man. He used to tell me Bible stories when I was a child. I do so wish that I had listened to him with greater intent. He was gone before I was ever a Christian.

In this three-dimensional vision was my grandfather. He was standing at the window of his house that I easily recognized. He was looking out into the yard and as He gazed into the yard I saw what he was so intently looking toward. There I was as a little boy standing on an apple box that was laid down on the ground with another apple box up on its end in front of me like a little pulpit. In front of me were chairs in the yard set up in theater style and I recognized my cousins in their childhood days. I had a book on that little pulpit and I was preaching to them.

This vision was from a perspective that was controlled of God. My view was like that of a movie, whereby the cameral moved about and focused on different aspects of this scene as if it were important for me to see certain things.

First I was looking at my grandfather, standing in the window, overlooking the church service of children in the yard. There, on the little pulpit was a book that it appeared as if I was preaching out of instead of a Bible. It is a book and I can see it very clearly at all times, as this picture has been sort of burned into my soul. The book had a yellowish cover that says as its title, “God Will Heal You!” I could also see the faces of my cousins as I was preaching to them. As my viewpoint of this scene changed I could then see my grandfather standing “ bent over” and watching this backyard church scenario. I looked directly at him and could see that his face was intent. There were tears coming down from his eyes. They were tears of joy and expectancy. It was here that the end of the vision came.

It was at that point that I realized beyond the shadow of any doubt that my grandfather had called upon God, and interceded before God, and dedicated me unto the work of the Lord. For the service of God. From this vision I arose and answered the call of God and gave Him my life to His service.

It was probably a dozen years later, while I was telling this story in my church that it just so happened that my mother was sitting there in the audience. She listened to it for the first time and I noticed that she was visibly moved. I didn’t know exactly why except that I figured that it was because I was speaking of her late father.

She went home that afternoon and called me to her home and handed me a book; a book that had belonged to my grandfather. I had never seen that book to my knowledge.

When I was a little boy, my mother was very sick for a long time. I stayed a great deal with my grandparents. My grandfather had given my mother a book because of her illness. It was a book by Reverend A. A. Allen and its title was “God Will Heal You!”

This is the very book that my mother was showing to me and directly under the title on the front cover of this book was the reason that my mother had saved it. At some time when I was a little boy I had written with a pencil on its cover. Immediately under the title of “God Will Heal You,” I wrote the word “Mama.”

My mother gave me the book that was in the vision. “Will Heal You, Mama”  by A. A. Allen, the cover on it says.

My wife and I were saved through healing of our son, Joel, as an infant. We ignorantly walked in a belief that caused healing to take place in our early days of life in Christ.

As the years passed, I became the seventh president of the Ministerial Fellowship of the USA, which was founded on the ministry of Dr. John G. Lake. I was five years the president of that organization.  During my tenure I researched Lake’s ministry and became probably one of a very few living experts on the life and times of John G. Lake having edited much of what you know as the writings and sermons of Dr. John G. Lake.  The reason for this was because of what God was going to do.

On the day that I became the President of that organization my wife and I left for some reason, I don’t even remember why we did it. Less than forty-eight hours, from the time I was made the President of that organization I was standing over John G. Lakes’ grave in Spokane, Washington. This is still a mystery to me as to how it all came about.

While at the grave sight our little girl, Lacey, and my wife, Irene, were out looking at the other graves as is usually done on one of those sunny day strolls through a scenic cemetery. As I was standing above Lake’s grave and leaning up against a tree right that is at his headstone I was contemplatively talking to God and I said, “God if it would at all be possible put even a portion of that man’s spirit upon my life.” An experience came upon me of which words do not do justice.

We returned home and, after some months later, I was editing some of the materials of John G. Lakes’ one evening. In the particular work that I was editing, he was preaching a sermon and was telling the story of going back to Zion City, the place of the ministry of John Alexander Dowey. He said that this the dear old man, though in the last years got off a bit, had the substance of divine healing in him to the place where he was told that even at his funeral people were healed.

And he said something like, “I got to preach in that great tabernacle and he said there were what he called the ‘implements of the devil,’ (as Dowey called them), hanging as decorations around that tabernacle.” Those decorations were wheelchairs and walkers and braces and crutches and pills and potions which men and women gave up, having no need for them because they were healed of their afflictions. These were “instruments of the devil” and they were hanging up as decorations in the tabernacle.

Lake continued his preaching by calling out a woman in that audience, by name, and another man whom he also names, telling how both of these were ridden with sickness and disease and went to John Alexander Dowry’s meetings and were touched by the Lord and healed and their testimonies were right there in the audience to which Lake spoke.

He told of how after preaching in that great tabernacle, “I had the opportunity of going to the graveside of Dowey.”  And he said, “As I stood over that grave I cried out to God: ‘God, if it be possible put even a portion of this man’s spirit upon me.’”

And all of a sudden the lights went on in the darkness of my room where I was sitting and working on my computer. (For, there was only the light of the computer.) Yet the room lit up and I felt the same feeling that was upon me the day when I was standing over Lake’s grave! I realized that I had said precisely the same words. It was, in fact, very mysterious to me. This event caused me to try to understand the wonders of God’s anointing. In time I came to know that the anointing is inheritable.

My passion for divine healing obviously started as a young child because I had hated the sickness that my mother was debilitated by. I still hate sickness. This too accounts for my interest in emergency medicine and involvement in the medical programs of the fire departments for which I worked in my early adult years.