How Oral Roberts Operated In The Ministry Of Healing – JD King

[Ron McGatlin]

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How Oral Roberts Operated In The Ministry Of Healing

Posted: 05 Oct 2017 04:54 AM PDT

In 1948, Oral Roberts, a gifted Pentecostal Holiness pastor, felt called by
God to enter into the itinerate healing ministry. Following in the
footsteps of William Branham, Roberts purchased a large canvas tent and
began conducting services across the United States.

In these bustling meetings, Roberts began to intercede for the infirmed,
laying hands on each and every one of them.

Once, before engaging a deaf child in the healing line, Roberts felt like
God was saying, “Son, you have been faithful to this hour; and now you will
feel my presence in your right hand.”[1] Roberts responded to what he had
heard and placed his fingers inside the boy’s ears. The evangelist
recounted,
“I felt nothing of God’s presence in my left hand—it was merely flesh on
flesh. My right hand, however, was feeling God’s presence in ways I still
find difficult to explain: like a strong warmth, like an electric charge,
only it did not sting or hurt, but [it was] more like a vibration I could
feel surging from my elbow clear through my hand.” [2]

Roberts began to pray boldly for this child in the name of Jesus—and
everything shifted.

“Instantly, the little fellow looked around. He put his hands over his ears
and began to cry and look to his mother. I said to her, ‘He is apparently
hearing noise and voices for the first time, and it scares him.’ Then I
asked her to speak to her little son. She called his name, and he answered.
I asked her to get behind him, where he couldn’t see her lips, and talk
with him in a normal voice, which she did. Each time he whirled around to
see her while she said her words.”[3]

What was transpiring, struck the whole crowd. Roberts states that “by that
time, the audience and I were in a sense of awe. They had read of such
things in the Bible, and they had believed someday they would happen again.
They were truly excited they were seeing it happen.” [4]

In another instance, Roberts prayed for a woman who was having trouble
walking. This woman had brought along her kitchen chair from home to
provide support. Roberts pointed out
“My right hand flew to her forehead. Again, I felt the presence of God race
down my elbow into my hand and into her being. She leaped up, raised her
legs up and down a few times, looked around, and took off running through
the crowd, praising God and crying.”[5]

Roberts also recounted praying for Douglass Sutton, a twelve-year-old boy
who was struggling with Perthes disease. This is a debilitating sickness
that causes the flattening of the hip bone. Douglass had to have his leg
supported by a brace. Roberts observed

When I prayed, “Jesus, heal!” I felt the presence of God run down my arm
into my right hand and flow into that little boy’s flat hipbone. Inwardly,
I knew God was working his healing power in the boy’s entire body.[6]

Roberts asked the boy whether he felt God’s power flowing through him. He
said that he did. Roberts looked over at the boy’s mother as she

“leaned down, unstrapping the boy’s leg and taking his crutches … [The
boy] put his foot on the floor. That was the fateful moment. I heard a
sound from the crowd. People were getting up to see, great wonderment
filling their hearts. ‘What do you want to do, son?’ I asked. ‘I want to
run.’ He looked at his mother. She nodded, and he took off from the lower
platform on which he stood in front of me. In a split second, he was racing
down one of the long aisles. Like a cloudburst, the voices of the people
roared.” [7]

Amazing breakthroughs were being reported all over the United States, and
as the years advanced, Roberts had even more pronounced encounters in the
prayer lines. Discussing what happened one night, Roberts recorded,
“The miracle started, and suddenly I cried out that my right hand felt like
it was on fire. My hand was burning like you were sticking it with a
thousand pins . . . Suddenly I jumped to my feet. I didn’t say anything,
and the crowd jumped up, and here they came and completely engulfed the
platform and me. People were pushed up in wheelchairs. They came out of the
wheelchairs and just kept right on walking . . . The next day we picked up
armloads of crutches and eyeglasses and hearing aids . . . It had started
and stopped in five minutes.”[8]

Roberts continued to rely on unusual sensations in his right hand to give
him direction as he prayed for multitudes of sick people.

By early 50s, Roberts’ ministry was being characterized by “huge tents,
massive crowds, and tremendous energy.”[9] One evening, so many attended
his healing crusade that he prayed for 9,300 people in his healing line.

Between 1947 and 1968, Roberts conducted more than 300 major healing
crusades, “personally praying for millions of people.”[10] As William
Branham began to fade, Roberts became “the most prominent individual in the
post-World War II . . . revival.”[11] His successes “thrust him to the
leadership of a generation of dynamic revivalists who took the message of
healing around the world.” [12]

This article was adapted from my book Regeneration: A Complete History of
Healing in the Christian Church. We have a special campaign going on now
where you can order it at a discount. Click Here
_____________________
[1] Oral Roberts, Expect A Miracle: My Life and Ministry (Nashville: Thomas
Nelson, 1995), 91.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., 91–92.
[4] Ibid., 92.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid., 117.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Oral Roberts quoted in David Edwin Harrell Jr., Oral Roberts: An
American Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 106.
[9] Ronald Kydd, “Healing in the Christian Church,” The New International
Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded
edition, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2002), 711.
[10] Paul Chappell, “Roberts, Granville Oral,” The New International
Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded
edition, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2002), 1024.
[11]Robert Krapohl and Charles H. Lippy, “Roberts, (Granville) Oral,” in
The Evangelicals: A Historical, Thematic, and Biographical Guide (Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999), 293.
[12]Paul Chappell, Roberts, Granville Oral,” The New International
Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded
edition, eds. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2002), 1024.

 

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