“Tuberculosis…had stalked two generations of the Roberts. Pleasant Roberts, Oral’s grandfather fell to it, as well as, two of Oral’s father’s older sisters. Although early symptoms generally include coughing up blood and chest pain, as it advances, patients become prone to night sweats, appetite and weight loss, frequent fever and fatigue. You can therefore imagine the feeling of déjà vu, when one day in February 1935, Oral was driven home by his basketball coach, Herman Hamilton. He had collapsed during a tournament. Thereafter, in the words of one of Oral’s biographers, Roberts became “bedridden, subsisting on raw eggs and milk”. Oral, pining away in bed, unable to do much else and even unable to communicate his pain to anyone properly, being a stammerer, was simply waiting to go the way of his grandfather and two aunties. Until that day of destiny…"
Welcome, my dear precious readers, to the year 2010. I wish you another Kingdom-centred year; one in which you will find joy in doing His will, in His way, to His glory and to your blessing. I pray that all things would work together for your good all through this year, in the mighty name of Jesus.
Yes, all things, no matter how seemingly bad, can work together for our good, because the Scriptures say so. And it did for the celebrated faith healing icon, Glanville Oral Roberts whose life and legacy we’ve been celebrating these past two weeks. Tuberculosis worked for his good – and by extension, the advancement of Christianity!
The deadly, infectious, bacterial disease, marked by the presence especially in the lungs, of small rounded swellings, known as tubercles, had stalked two generations of the Roberts. Pleasant Roberts, Oral’s grandfather fell to it, as well as, two of Oral’s father’s older sisters. Although early symptoms generally include coughing up blood and chest pain, as it advances, patients become prone to night sweats, appetite and weight loss, frequent fever and fatigue. You can therefore imagine the feeling of déjà vu, when one day in February 1935, Oral was driven home by his basketball coach, Herman Hamilton. He had collapsed during a tournament. Thereafter, in the words of one of Oral’s biographers, Roberts became “bedridden, subsisting on raw eggs and milk”.
Oral, pining away in bed, unable to do much else and even unable to communicate his pain to anyone properly, being a stammerer, was simply waiting to go the way of his grandfather and two aunties. Until that day of destiny…that day when news that an itinerant preacher was holding a tent revival nearby.
That preacher was a man known as George W. Moncey, described by one writer as "an elusive and shadowy figure, one of that generation of roving revivalists who continued to fight the devil in the depths of the Depression..." It was also said of this tool of God, much like the four lepers in the book of Kings, that he “had no address but a post office box and virtually nothing is known of his life before or after his encounter with Roberts”.
Anyway, Oral Roberts was driven to Brother Moncey’s revival and records had it, that the revivalist prayed on the sick 17-year-old in these words: “You foul, tormenting disease, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, come out of this boy. Loose him and let him go free!" And as he recalled it, Oral felt “a blinding flash of light and the feeling of electricity going through me."
The rest, as the cliché goes, is history. He was not only healed of tuberculosis, he was delivered from his stutter and, within two months of all that, he was in full-time ministry! He began by joining the Pentecostal Holiness Church, to which his minister-father belonged. He wrote for its publication, pastured some of their churches only but resigned his pastorate in 1947. Within one year of going independent, at the leading of the Holy Spirit, he bought his own tent and began a career that eventually changed the face of Christianity leading. It is that career which included more than 300 crusades on six continents, that has been celebrated world wide since his recent departure.
Incidentally, Oral Robert’s first experience with faith healing in his own ministry predated his first crusade. In fact it happened while he was still with Pentecostal Holiness Church, where faith healing was still a contentious issue.
In “The Ultimate Voice”, his last published book, Oral recalled that when he first went into ministry; the healing anointing was on-and-off. So, he could not claim to have “a genuine anointing of God to heal the sick for more than a decade.” He said he felt the healing anointing “at times…but not very long at a time.” Although fully persuaded that God could heal and desired to heal, yet, he was certain that the anointing there was upon his life, was not powerful enough to embolden him to overcome his fear of facing the sick and demon-possessed.
One incident, which was to give him an idea of the power that was available to him, happened while he was still pastor in one of the Pentecostal Holiness churches in Georgia. One of the deacons in that church, Clyde Lawson, had accidentally dropped a heavy motor on his foot while working on a car in his mechanic’s workshop. Oral was invited to go and pray for him. When he and his associate, Bill Lee, arrived at the workshop, they were confronted with a crushed foot and a he-man crying like a baby, from the great pain he was experiencing.
Roberts recorded the rest of the incident in these words: “Feelings of compassion came over me and without thinking I knelt down and touched the end of his shoe with my hand. I said a few words of earnest prayer and stood up. The moment I straightened up, Clyde Lawson quit screaming. He tried to move his toes in his shoe and found that he could. The pain was gone. The bleeding had stopped. He jumped to his feet, stomped his foot on the floor of his garage, and said, ‘Brother Roberts, what did you do to me?’ I said, ‘I didn’t do a thing.’
“He said, ‘yes, you did. The pain is gone. My foot is healed.’ I was as amazed as he was. He tore off his shoe and showed us his foot. His toes were perfectly normal. Bill said to me as we drove away, ‘Brother Roberts, do you have that kind of power all the time?’
“I said, ‘Bill, I wish I did.’ He said, ‘If you had that kind of power all the time, you could bring a revival to this world.’ I didn’t have any doubt about that. I just didn’t have any clue as to how a person might develop that kind of power all the time”.
That we are celebrating Oral Roberts today, more than 50 years later is evidence that he sought and found “the clue”. The enemy meant his tuberculosis affliction for evil; God allowed it for good. So shall your experiences be this year and beyond, in the precious name of Jesus.
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