“Then one day in May 1947, God spoke to Oral: “Son, do not be like other men. Do not be like your denomination. Do not be like other ministers. Be like Jesus, and heal the people as He did.” He heard Him clearly and he knew that it was time for him to make a choice - remain like other men in his denomination, or hearken to God’s voice and “be like Jesus.” He chose to obey God. But, how was he to go about being like Jesus? It was a throwback to the days immediately following the miracle healing of Deacon Clyde. He didn’t have a clue then how to have the healing power “all the time”; nor did know now how to “be like Jesus.” As he told it in “The Ultimate Voice”, he immediately began to ask, “But how, God?” God answered, “Read the four gospels and the book of Acts on your knees, three times within thirty days, and I will show you how to be like Jesus.”
As we saw last time, Oral Roberts was still a neophyte in ministry when God wrought a miracle healing through him. He had been invited to pray for Clyde Lawson, a deacon in one of the Pentecostal Holiness churches in Georgia, where he was the pastor. He arrived at the deacon’s mechanic workshop and found him in unimaginable pain. One of his feet had been crushed by a heavy motor he accidentally dropped as he worked on a car. Oral, filled with compassion recalled that he knelt down, touched the end of the man’s shoes, said a few words in earnest prayer and stood up. The man result was instant: the pain vanished, foot healed, crushed toes perfectly normal.
Roberts had been accompanied to the scene by Bill Lee, an associate. On their way back, the duo had a brief conversation: Bill: Brother Roberts, do you have that kind of power all the time? Oral: Bill, I wish I did! Bill: If you had that kind of power all the time, you could bring a revival to this world. Oral didn’t have any doubt about that. But in his words, “I just didn’t have any clue as to how a person might develop that kind of power all the time”.
That was the starting point for Oral. He knew that God was desirous of changing the lives of His people. He knew that miracle healing was part of the gospel; after all had he not been healed of tuberculosis and of stuttering? And hadn’t he seen Deacon Clyde healed through his simple but earnest prayer? But as he put it in his book, The Ultimate Voice, there was a “chasm between what God was saying, and what I was experiencing…”
For twelve years, he worked as a minister in a number of churches. He said of his experience in those twelve years: “On the one hand, I was excited about taking God’s healing power to my generation and freeing suffering people from the shackles the devil had put on their lives—and was eager to do so, but instead, I found myself preaching doctrine and trying to appease the small group of people in any congregation who seemed to have control over what should be preached, how the church should be run, how much the pastor should be paid or not paid, and what kind of balance should be struck between a minister’s work as a pastor and as an evangelist…”
CONTINUES BELOW
As that 12-year phase of his ministry was drawing to a close, he began to hear what he described as “echoes of what God had said to me twelve years before on my way to Brother Moncey’s tent: ‘Son, I am going to heal you and you are to take My healing power to your generation’. I’d be sitting in a classroom and I would hear God say, ‘Son, I am going to heal you and you are to take My healing power to your generation…’” It was, he recalled, as if wherever he was, whatever he did, he could escape the commission.
He had no doubt that he was not where God wanted him to be; that he was not doing what God wanted him to do. He was dissatisfied and unfulfilled. He continually felt that “profound chasm between what I believed could happen in a setting in which God’s power was fully manifested, and what was happening in the daily routine of my life. I felt increasingly that going to church just for the sake of going to church was about the dullest thing a person could do. When the anointing of God is not upon the pastor or the people, and His presence is not experienced, there isn’t very much of interest to the soul of man. Even as the pastor, sitting on the platform about to preach, I often wished I was somewhere else on a Sunday morning.”
He realised that sick people weren’t coming to church; they stayed at home. They kept whatever problems keeping them awake at night neatly tucked away at home and came to church wearing their finest dresses and their happiest faces. Oral “felt a tug-of-war”, deep in his spirit.
Then one day in May 1947, God spoke to Oral: “Son, do not be like other men. Do not be like your denomination. Do not be like other ministers. Be like Jesus, and heal the people as He did.” He heard Him clearly and he knew that it was time for him to make a choice - remain like other men in his denomination, or hearken to God’s voice and “be like Jesus.” He chose to obey God. But, how was he to go about being like Jesus? It was a throwback to the days immediately following the miracle healing of Deacon Clyde. He didn’t have a clue then how to have the healing power “all the time”; nor did know now how to “be like Jesus.” As he told it in “The Ultimate Voice”, he immediately began to ask, “But how, God?” God answered, “Read the four gospels and the book of Acts on your knees, three times within thirty days, and I will show you how to be like Jesus.”
With eager anticipation, Oral did what God told him to do. This was in spite of the fact that he had already read the entire Bible through a number of times, and the New Testament more than one hundred times. He obeyed, and the hidden treasures of the gospel began to unlock before his very eyes. His words: “I saw and understood Jesus as I had never seen or understood Him before… I saw Jesus in three dimensions…doing His work as a preacher, teacher, and miracle-working healer... I saw Jesus as a man of power, yet a man of deep compassion. I saw Him as a man of action. I saw Him as a simple man without any complications. I saw that He came against life-limiting suggestions and life shortening ailments with life-saving power. I saw that He had no tolerance for and came strongly against four great enemies of mankind: sin, demons, disease, and fear. I saw Jesus was a man’s man, strong in body, strong in soul and mind, full of love and tenderness. I saw that He spent two-thirds of His time healing the sick. In fact, I saw that Jesus had a three-fold ministry. He preached…He taught…and He healed. The three worked together…” (TO BE CONCLUDED)
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