Evan Roberts
In Luke it does not say, “preach and faint not,” but “pray and faint not.” It is not difficult to preach. But while you pray, you are alone in some solitary place, fighting in a prayer-battle against the powers of darkness. And you will know the secret of victory.
More than anything else, Evan Roberts was a man of prayer. Yes, the whole world felt the impact of revival that swept Wales from November 1904 through 1905, but certainly the extent of his public influence was a direct result of his personal commitment to prayer. More than a 100,000 Welsh came to Christ during an unprecedented nine months of intense revival that closed bars and cancelled sporting events. It triggered revival around the world, including the famous Azusa Street revival of 1906 which forever changed the landscape of Twentieth Century Christianity. As with all great heroes of the faith, a deep hunger for the Word of God and an unquenchable thirst for more of the Spirit of God began at an early age.
Of his early years, he later wrote “I said to myself: I will have the Spirit . . . for ten or eleven years I have prayed for revival. I could sit up all night to read or talk about revivals. It was the Spirit who moved me to think about revival.” Because of his unique desire for the Lord, Evan gave himself to fervent prayer and intercession. So much so, that by the time he was twenty-one years old, he was known by some as a “mystical lunatic.” It was during this period that Evan would get so caught up in the Lord that he reported his bed shaking. He would awaken every night at 1:00 a.m. to be “taken up into divine fellowship” and would proceed to pray until 5:00 a.m. when he would fall back to sleep for four hours before waking again at 9:00 a.m. continuing in prayer until noon.
The Dawn of Revival
By December 1903, Evan knew in his heart that God had planned a great revival for the Welsh community. Although he had been accepted to Bible college, he could not continue his studies because of his desire to preach and pray. Throughout that year Evan wrestled over what was expected of him and what he felt the Lord calling him to do. He battled with depression, which would prove a life-long struggle for him, eventually rendering him ineffective as a minister. But in September of 1904, Roberts discovered a breakthrough as he sat listening to the evangelist Seth Joshua plead with the Spirit to “Bend us! Bend us!” Later that night, Roberts cried out to the Lord, “Bend me! Bend me!” and fully surrendered to the will of God, allowing His compassion to fill him.
It was the very next month that Roberts had his first vision. While strolling in a garden, Evan looked up to see what seemed to be an arm outstretched from the moon, reaching down into Wales. He later told a friend, “I have wonderful news for you. I had a vision of all Wales being lifted up to heaven. We are going to see the mightiest revival that Wales has ever known – and the Holy Spirit is coming just now. We must get ready.”
He obtained approval to begin a small series of meetings that began on October 31 at a small church. This quickly grew into a major revival that lasted two weeks. Soon, entire communities were transformed as the meetings increased in fervor, strong moves of intercession flooding the services, often lasting well into the night. Evan led the congregations and teams of intercessors in prayer sometimes until morning when crowds would already be gathered outside ready to begin another day of services. Nine months later, Wales was in the midst of a sweeping revival that ushered in a worldwide hunger for God that would change the course of modern Christianity.
The Effect of Revival on a Nation
One eye-witness of the revival said that what drew people to Evan “perhaps more than any other thing, was the unfeigned humility in all his actions.” His services were marked with laughing, crying, dancing, joy, and brokenness. Soon, the newspapers began covering them, and the revival became a national story. Political meetings were cancelled, theaters were closed down, and bars and casinos lost their customers. Most wonderfully, Christians from all denominations worshipped together as doctrinal differences fell by the wayside. Some of the reporters themselves were converted at the meetings.
The revival spread with such fervor throughout the nation, that former prostitutes started holding Bible studies, while delinquent, bar-going husbands became a great joy and support to their families. Debtors paid their debts. Denominational barriers were broken, and eventually, national and racial barriers began to crumble. Women were welcome to participate in a public role for the first time in the history of Wales. They opened the meetings by leading in song and stirring testimonies; and continued to prayer, sing, and minister without restraint.
The Foundation of Revival
The foundation upon which the revival was built had a great deal to do with the softening of hearts. Evan Roberts based his principles of revival on four points; 1) Confess all known sin; 2) Search out all secret and doubtful things; 3) Confess the Lord Jesus openly; 4) Pledge that you will fully obey the Spirit.
Repentance was a central theme in light of surrendering all to the Holy Spirit and putting the love of the Lord Jesus above everything. Revival begins in a heart completely sold out to seeing the Kingdom of God revealed on earth. A heart that seeks first God’s Kingdom, and His Righteousness. A heart consumed by God’s love, and committed to perpetuating righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit; a heart hungry for holiness.
Evan’s hunger for more of the Spirit was palpable and contagious. His sensitivity to the move of God and his ability to discern spiritual things left the crowds silent with anticipation. After waiting quietly upon the Spirit, he would suddenly call out a malady that someone in the audience was suffering and they would be instantly healed, or a habit that held a listener in bondage that they would instantly be freed from. He might suddenly leave the building in search of a passerby to reveal a sin that held that person captive from which they would be compelled to cry out and repent.
Soon, word of the Welsh revival spread to other nations. The people of South Africa, Russia, India, Ireland, Norway, Canada, and Holland rushed to Wales. Many came to carry a portion of this revival back to their own nations. Such was the case with California evangelist and journalist, Frank Bartleman, who wrote to Roberts about how to bring revival to America. Evan corresponded several times with Bartleman, each time listing the principles for revival while encouraging him to pursue it, and assuring him of prayers from Wales. Barlteman would later record the events of the Azusa Street Revival that originated in Southern California in 1906. There is no doubt that the revival in Wales started a worldwide hunger for God.
Confusion, Collapse, and Confinement
By 1905, Roberts’ mind became confused from physical and emotional exhaustion. He began hearing conflicting voices in his head and doubted his ability to distinguish the voice of the Spirit among them. He would rebuke his listeners for not being pure of heart, while he became increasingly obsessed with examining his own self for un-confessed sin. He feared most that he would be exalted instead of God and became overly critical of his audiences and church leaders.
He entered into a period when he would withdraw for days at a time. When he would finally emerge, he might suddenly leave a meeting in frustration, or decide at the last minute not to show up at all. His final downfall came when he was invited to participate in an Easter convention for ministers and church leaders in the summer of 1906. It was there that he spoke on what he called his “new burden”—the identification with Christ through suffering. Soon afterwards, he became tremendously overstrained, and had a complete breakdown.
It was at this conference that he was introduced to Mrs. Jessie Penn-Lewis. She also preached on “suffering with Christ” and although she was a wealthy, influential woman, her ministry was rejected in Wales because of serious doctrinal conflicts. When Mrs. Penn-Lewis heard Evan’s message on the cross, she aligned herself with him in hope of being accepted among the Welsh leadership. She convinced Evan of her allegiance, and sympathized with the abuses he was suffering because of what she told him was his excellent teaching. In his weakened condition, Evan succumbed to her influence, and after suffering a severe nervous breakdown, allowed Mr. and Mrs. Penn-Lewis to transport him by train to their estate in England. They built their new home around his needs, including a bedroom, prayer room, and private stairway. It was there that the great revivalist was confined to bed for more than a year.
Evan became ever more isolated and reclusive as years passed. He refused to see friends, and eventually family. He allowed Penn-Lewis to dictate who he would see, and what he would do. They wrote a number of books together, the first one, War on the Saints, was published in 1913. Mrs. Penn-Lewis stated the book was birthed from six years of prayer and testing the truth. Within a year after the book was published, Roberts denounced it. He was quoted as saying it had been a “failed weapon which had confused and divided the Lord’s people.”
The Penn-Lewis Years
Though his opinion eventually changed, during the years of writing War on the Saints, Evan seemed mesmerized by Penn-Lewis, saying, “I know of none equal to her in understanding of spiritual things, she is a veteran in heavenly things.” During his years of recovery with Penn-Lewis, they formed a team that not only published numerous booklets on spiritual warfare, but also a magazine called "The Overcomer" that was widely distributed throughout the world.
In 1913, Penn-Lewis decided to discontinue the magazine and started holding “Christian Workers’ Conferences” where she would preach and Roberts would be confined to holding counseling sessions. When the conferences became less popular over the years, Evan found his outlet through the School of Prayer started during the Swansea Convention of 1908. He taught how to intercede for families, ministers and churches, and wrote essays on various aspects and degrees of prayer. Several ministers of that day commented that everything they knew about prayer came from Evan’s teaching.
Eventually, Evan Roberts stopped teaching and writing, and pulled away to focus exclusively on his own prayer life. He would pray mostly in private, interceding for Christian leaders and believers around the world. Evan remained inside the walls of the Penn-Lewis home for eight years.
The Lonely Road Home
Sometime between 1919 and 1921 he moved to Brighton in Sussex. He purchased a typewriter and began to write several booklets that were never successful. In 1926 his father became ill and he returned to Wales for a visit. When Mrs. Penn-Lewis died of lung disease in 1927, Evan relocated to his home country permanently.
When his father passed away in 1928, he did something unusual at the funeral. He suddenly interrupted the somber eulogy declaring, “This is not a death but a resurrection, Let us bear witness to this truth.” Of that day, one person remarked, “Something like electricity went through us. One felt that if he had gone on there would have been another revival then and there.”
Soon afterward, there was indeed a short revival when Evan was asked to take part in a special service locally. News traveled quickly and soon visitors came from all over to again hear Evan Roberts speak. For a time, he ministered with a renewed grace and power. Evan prayed for healings and deliverances and operated in the gift of prophecy. Healings, conversions, and answered prayers were the talk of the day with people clogging the streets to get a glimpse or take part. It was only a short year later when Roberts totally disappeared from private life.
By 1931, Roberts was nearly a forgotten man. He stayed in a room provided by Mrs. Oswald Williams and spent the last years of his life writing poetry and letters. He kept a daily journal and enjoyed watching sports and theater. In May of 1929, Evan had to stay in bed all day for the fist time. He became increasingly weak. And then, at the age of seventy-two, on a wintry day in January 1951, Evan Roberts passed away. He was buried in the family plot on January 29, 1951. It was not until many years later that a memorial column was raised there commemorating this former coal miner’s efforts to stir international revival from his small town in Wales.
Friday, July 6, 2007
THE WOMAN WHO BELIEVED IN MIRACLES
Kathryn Kuhlman
The world called me a fool for having given my entire life to One whom I’ve never seen. I know exactly what I’m going to say when I stand in His presence. When I look upon that wonderful face of Jesus, I’ll have just one thing to say: ‘I tried.’ I gave of myself the best I knew how. My redemption will have been perfected when I stand and see Him who made it all possible.
In a time that was suspicious of both women ministers and Pentecostals, Kathryn Kuhlman shook twentieth-century Christianity back to its roots. Believers of all persuasions—Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, or whatever, it didn’t matter—flocked to her meetings to be healed or filled with the Holy Spirit as they had read about in the book of Acts. Though she called herself “an ordinary person,” the effects of her ministry were anything but ordinary. Kathryn was one of a handful of ministers after World War II who prophetically reintroduced the Holy Spirit and His gifts to the body of Christ on the earth in what has proven the greatest revival of all time: the Charismatic Renewal.
Kathryn Kuhlman was born on May 9, 1907, to Joseph and Emma Kuhlman. A childhood friend described Kathryn as having “large features, red hair, and freckles. . . . She wasn’t dainty or appealingly feminine in any sense of the word. She was taller than the rest of ‘our gang,’ gangly and boyish in build, and her long strides kept the rest of us puffing to keep up with her.”
One Sunday when Kathryn was fourteen, she attended church with her mother. As she stood singing, she began to shake all over and sob. A weight of conviction came over her, and she realized that she was a sinner in need of salvation and forgiveness. She slipped out from where she was standing, went to the corner of the front pew and sat weeping. At that moment Jesus lifted the weight from her shoulders and entered her heart.
In 1924 when Kathryn was about seventeen, she and her older sister Myrtle persuaded their parents that it was God’s will for Kathryn to travel with Myrtle and her husband Everett in their evangelistic tent ministry. Then in 1928, after a meeting in Boise, Idaho, Everett decided to go on to South Dakota, while the women stayed behind and continued to minister there. The offerings collected, however, were not enough to support them and Myrtle soon decided to rejoin her husband. After this happened, a local Boise pastor offered Kathryn a chance to preach at an old pool hall that had been converted into a mission and Kathryn’s ministry began.
From the “pool hall” mission, she went on to minister in Pocatello and Twin Falls and eventually ended up in Denver, Colorado. It was there that she founded the Denver Revival Tabernacle in 1935. That same year, Kathryn met Burroughs Waltrip, an extremely handsome Texas evangelist who was eight years her senior. Despite the fact that he was married with two small boys, they soon found themselves attracted to each other. Shortly after his visit to Denver, Waltrip divorced his wife, left his family and moved to Mason City, Iowa, where he began a revival center called Radio Chapel. Kathryn and her friend and pianist Helen Gulliford came into town to help him raise funds for his ministry. It was shortly after their arrival that the romance between Burroughs and Kathryn became publicly known.
Burroughs and Kathryn decided to wed. While discussing the matter with some friends, Kathryn had said that she could not “find the will of God in the matter.” These and other friends encouraged her not to go through with the marriage, but Kathryn justified it to herself and others by believing that Waltrip’s wife had left him, not the other way around. On October 18th, 1938, Kathryn secretly married “Mister,” as she liked to call Waltrip, in Mason City. The wedding did not give her new peace about their union, however. After they checked into their hotel that night, Kathryn left and drove over to the hotel where Helen was staying with another friend. She sat with them weeping and admitted that the marriage was a mistake. She decided to get an annulment.
The three women left Iowa for Denver in hopes of explaining what had happened to the congregation of Denver Revival Tabernacle. The congregation, however, was so furious with her for the secrecy of the marriage that they drove Kathryn “back into Waltrip’s arms.”
In a moment’s time, the ministry that Kathryn had so diligently built was completely undone. People stopped attending her services. Her ministry was dissolved. Kathryn sold her portion of the Tabernacle. She’d lost everything. Her relationship with the Lord had suffered because she had put a man before her God. But from the moment she made the decision to divorce Waltrip and to surrender herself fully to the Lord, she never wavered again in answering the call that God had placed on her life so many years before.
After Kathryn spent some time preaching in a mining community in Franklin, Pennsylvania, her ministry began to reshape. She traveled throughout the Midwest and the south into West Virginia and the Carolinas. In some places she was quickly accepted. In others, her past resurfaced and the meetings were closed. After an unsuccessful tour of the South, Kathryn was invited to hold a series of meetings in the fifteen hundred seat-auditorium of Gospel Tabernacle back in Franklin. It was there that Kathryn’s ministry was revived and the ills of the past eight years seemed to wash away.
Not long after she opened meetings at the Tabernacle, she began daily radio broadcasts. Responses to the broadcasts were so great she soon added a station in Pittsburg. At this time Kathryn was mainly praying for people to receive salvation, but she was also beginning to lay hands on and pray for people who came asking for healing. Though she despised the term “faith healer,” she attended the meetings of such ministers hoping to find out more about this phenomenon of God. Kathryn took a deeper understanding of the workings of the Holy Spirit from each meeting, though many of the things that she witnessed she found to be “unwise performances” and a misuse of the Holy Spirit. In response, she always exhorted people to focus on Jesus and nothing else.
As Kathryn searched the Scriptures about divine healing, she made a life-changing discovery. She read that healing was provided for the believer at the same time as salvation, and it was at this time that she began to better understand the believer’s relationship with the Holy Spirit. Then one night, a woman stood to give a testimony of healing. At Kathryn’s service the night before, without anyone laying hands on her and without Kathryn being aware of it, this woman had been healed of a tumor. She had even gone to her doctor to confirm her healing. Then that next Sunday, a second miracle occurred. A World War I veteran who had been declared legally blind from an industrial accident had eighty-five percent of his vision restored in the permanently impaired eye and perfect eyesight restored to his other eye.
The crowds at the Tabernacle grew. Auditoriums would fill to capacity hours before she was to speak, and thousands were turned away. Countless miracles took place, most without any touch or prayer by Kathryn. She would simply walk the stage and call out healings as they took place where people sat. Sections of those in wheelchairs would walk. In one service, a five-year-old boy who had been crippled from birth walked onto the stage. In another in Philadelphia she laid hands on a man who had received a pacemaker eight months earlier, and the scar from the operation disappeared. Later x-rays confirmed that the pacemaker had as well!
Great healing services continued and her ministry expanded to the neighboring towns. In 1950, a worldwide ministry began to develop and Kathryn’s messages were heard all over the United States via radio and her television broadcast, I Believe in Miracles. She grew so popular that she made appearances on The Johnny Carson Show and The Dinah Shore Show among several others. For the last ten years of her life, she held monthly services at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, where she ministered to countless thousands.
Kathryn Kuhlman’s last miracle service was held in that same arena. Three weeks later, Kathryn lay dying in the Hillcrest Medical Center of Tulsa, Oklahoma, after open-heart surgery. Oral and Evelyn Roberts were among the few visitors permitted to see her. As they walked into her room and began to pray for her healing, Kathryn recognized what they were doing and “put her hands out like a barrier and then pointed toward heaven.” Kathryn gave her sister, Myrtle, the same message and on Friday, February 20th, 1976, Kathryn Kuhlman went home to be with Jesus.
The world called me a fool for having given my entire life to One whom I’ve never seen. I know exactly what I’m going to say when I stand in His presence. When I look upon that wonderful face of Jesus, I’ll have just one thing to say: ‘I tried.’ I gave of myself the best I knew how. My redemption will have been perfected when I stand and see Him who made it all possible.
In a time that was suspicious of both women ministers and Pentecostals, Kathryn Kuhlman shook twentieth-century Christianity back to its roots. Believers of all persuasions—Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, or whatever, it didn’t matter—flocked to her meetings to be healed or filled with the Holy Spirit as they had read about in the book of Acts. Though she called herself “an ordinary person,” the effects of her ministry were anything but ordinary. Kathryn was one of a handful of ministers after World War II who prophetically reintroduced the Holy Spirit and His gifts to the body of Christ on the earth in what has proven the greatest revival of all time: the Charismatic Renewal.
Kathryn Kuhlman was born on May 9, 1907, to Joseph and Emma Kuhlman. A childhood friend described Kathryn as having “large features, red hair, and freckles. . . . She wasn’t dainty or appealingly feminine in any sense of the word. She was taller than the rest of ‘our gang,’ gangly and boyish in build, and her long strides kept the rest of us puffing to keep up with her.”
One Sunday when Kathryn was fourteen, she attended church with her mother. As she stood singing, she began to shake all over and sob. A weight of conviction came over her, and she realized that she was a sinner in need of salvation and forgiveness. She slipped out from where she was standing, went to the corner of the front pew and sat weeping. At that moment Jesus lifted the weight from her shoulders and entered her heart.
In 1924 when Kathryn was about seventeen, she and her older sister Myrtle persuaded their parents that it was God’s will for Kathryn to travel with Myrtle and her husband Everett in their evangelistic tent ministry. Then in 1928, after a meeting in Boise, Idaho, Everett decided to go on to South Dakota, while the women stayed behind and continued to minister there. The offerings collected, however, were not enough to support them and Myrtle soon decided to rejoin her husband. After this happened, a local Boise pastor offered Kathryn a chance to preach at an old pool hall that had been converted into a mission and Kathryn’s ministry began.
From the “pool hall” mission, she went on to minister in Pocatello and Twin Falls and eventually ended up in Denver, Colorado. It was there that she founded the Denver Revival Tabernacle in 1935. That same year, Kathryn met Burroughs Waltrip, an extremely handsome Texas evangelist who was eight years her senior. Despite the fact that he was married with two small boys, they soon found themselves attracted to each other. Shortly after his visit to Denver, Waltrip divorced his wife, left his family and moved to Mason City, Iowa, where he began a revival center called Radio Chapel. Kathryn and her friend and pianist Helen Gulliford came into town to help him raise funds for his ministry. It was shortly after their arrival that the romance between Burroughs and Kathryn became publicly known.
Burroughs and Kathryn decided to wed. While discussing the matter with some friends, Kathryn had said that she could not “find the will of God in the matter.” These and other friends encouraged her not to go through with the marriage, but Kathryn justified it to herself and others by believing that Waltrip’s wife had left him, not the other way around. On October 18th, 1938, Kathryn secretly married “Mister,” as she liked to call Waltrip, in Mason City. The wedding did not give her new peace about their union, however. After they checked into their hotel that night, Kathryn left and drove over to the hotel where Helen was staying with another friend. She sat with them weeping and admitted that the marriage was a mistake. She decided to get an annulment.
The three women left Iowa for Denver in hopes of explaining what had happened to the congregation of Denver Revival Tabernacle. The congregation, however, was so furious with her for the secrecy of the marriage that they drove Kathryn “back into Waltrip’s arms.”
In a moment’s time, the ministry that Kathryn had so diligently built was completely undone. People stopped attending her services. Her ministry was dissolved. Kathryn sold her portion of the Tabernacle. She’d lost everything. Her relationship with the Lord had suffered because she had put a man before her God. But from the moment she made the decision to divorce Waltrip and to surrender herself fully to the Lord, she never wavered again in answering the call that God had placed on her life so many years before.
After Kathryn spent some time preaching in a mining community in Franklin, Pennsylvania, her ministry began to reshape. She traveled throughout the Midwest and the south into West Virginia and the Carolinas. In some places she was quickly accepted. In others, her past resurfaced and the meetings were closed. After an unsuccessful tour of the South, Kathryn was invited to hold a series of meetings in the fifteen hundred seat-auditorium of Gospel Tabernacle back in Franklin. It was there that Kathryn’s ministry was revived and the ills of the past eight years seemed to wash away.
Not long after she opened meetings at the Tabernacle, she began daily radio broadcasts. Responses to the broadcasts were so great she soon added a station in Pittsburg. At this time Kathryn was mainly praying for people to receive salvation, but she was also beginning to lay hands on and pray for people who came asking for healing. Though she despised the term “faith healer,” she attended the meetings of such ministers hoping to find out more about this phenomenon of God. Kathryn took a deeper understanding of the workings of the Holy Spirit from each meeting, though many of the things that she witnessed she found to be “unwise performances” and a misuse of the Holy Spirit. In response, she always exhorted people to focus on Jesus and nothing else.
As Kathryn searched the Scriptures about divine healing, she made a life-changing discovery. She read that healing was provided for the believer at the same time as salvation, and it was at this time that she began to better understand the believer’s relationship with the Holy Spirit. Then one night, a woman stood to give a testimony of healing. At Kathryn’s service the night before, without anyone laying hands on her and without Kathryn being aware of it, this woman had been healed of a tumor. She had even gone to her doctor to confirm her healing. Then that next Sunday, a second miracle occurred. A World War I veteran who had been declared legally blind from an industrial accident had eighty-five percent of his vision restored in the permanently impaired eye and perfect eyesight restored to his other eye.
The crowds at the Tabernacle grew. Auditoriums would fill to capacity hours before she was to speak, and thousands were turned away. Countless miracles took place, most without any touch or prayer by Kathryn. She would simply walk the stage and call out healings as they took place where people sat. Sections of those in wheelchairs would walk. In one service, a five-year-old boy who had been crippled from birth walked onto the stage. In another in Philadelphia she laid hands on a man who had received a pacemaker eight months earlier, and the scar from the operation disappeared. Later x-rays confirmed that the pacemaker had as well!
Great healing services continued and her ministry expanded to the neighboring towns. In 1950, a worldwide ministry began to develop and Kathryn’s messages were heard all over the United States via radio and her television broadcast, I Believe in Miracles. She grew so popular that she made appearances on The Johnny Carson Show and The Dinah Shore Show among several others. For the last ten years of her life, she held monthly services at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, where she ministered to countless thousands.
Kathryn Kuhlman’s last miracle service was held in that same arena. Three weeks later, Kathryn lay dying in the Hillcrest Medical Center of Tulsa, Oklahoma, after open-heart surgery. Oral and Evelyn Roberts were among the few visitors permitted to see her. As they walked into her room and began to pray for her healing, Kathryn recognized what they were doing and “put her hands out like a barrier and then pointed toward heaven.” Kathryn gave her sister, Myrtle, the same message and on Friday, February 20th, 1976, Kathryn Kuhlman went home to be with Jesus.
THE MIRACLE LADY
Maria Woodworth-Etter
I have been in great dangers; many times not knowing when I would be shot down, either in the pulpit, or going to and from meetings…But I said I would never run, nor compromise. The Lord would always put His mighty power on me, so that He took all fear away, and made me like a giant…If in any way they had tried to shoot, or kill me, He would have struck them dead, and I sometimes told them so.
Within a short time after Maria Woodworth-Etter responded to God’s call to “go out in the highways and hedges and gather in the lost sheep,” and people were thronging to hear her speak with signs and wonders following. By 1885, without a public address system, crowds of over twenty-five thousand pressed in to hear her minister while hundreds fell to the ground under the power of God. Woodworth-Etter not only shook up denominational religion, she rocked the secular world with life-altering displays of God’s power.
Those who came to investigate, condemn, or harass her seemed most at risk of “falling out” in what was described as a trance-like state. Maria preached that these strong manifestations of the Spirit were “nothing new; they were just something the Church had lost.” She was unwavering in her determination to break the strongholds that held people, communities, and whole cities in bondage. It seemed the more opposition she faced, the more she dug in her heels. Maria produced invincible strength through tenacious prayer that enabled her to take authority and minister with grace and power. She was known as a revivalist who could break towns open.
Maria Woodworth-Etter did not immediately heed the Lord’s call to evangelistic ministry in her life. As a single woman in the latter part of the nineteenth century, she felt the need to position herself by first obtaining an education and then marrying a missionary. Her well thought-out plans were interrupted when her father suddenly died in a farming accident and she was left with the burden of helping support her family. She met P.H. Woodworth upon his return from the Civil War, and after a brief courtship, they married and took up farming.
Over the course of time, P.H. and Maria became the parents of six children. Farming life proved difficult and they struggled with the demands of making a living and raising a family. Maria was frustrated that she couldn’t answer the call to ministry due to the demands of her life on the farm as a wife and mother of a growing family. She battled illness and disappointment that her husband did not share her desire for ministry. Then overwhelming tragedy struck as the Woodworth’s lost five of their six children to illness. P.H. never recovered from this loss and Maria did her best to support him while raising their only surviving daughter. Instead of growing bitter, Maria applied the Word of God to her heart.
She came to understand through her study of the Bible that God had used women as ministers, prophets, and leaders. From the prophecy of Joel she read that God would pour out his Spirit on both men and women. Still, she felt inadequate and ill-equipped to be of useful service to the Lord. She continued to study and later wrote, “The more I investigated, the more I found to condemn me.”
Then Maria had a vision. Angels came into her room and took her to the West, over prairies, lakes, forests, and rivers where she saw a long, wide field of waving grain. As the view unfolded she began to preach and saw the grains begin to fall like sheaves. Then Jesus told her that, “just as the grain fell, so people would fall” as she preached. Finally, Maria yielded to the increasingly clear call and asked the Lord to anoint her for ministry.
And the Lord did. Shortly after she began ministering to small groups in her community, churches began inviting her to speak to their congregations. The result was always a deep conviction among the hearers as they fell to the floor weeping. Soon she was invited westward and began traveling extensively. It wasn’t long before she had held nine revivals, preached two hundred sermons, and started two churches with Sunday school memberships of over one hundred people. God honored Maria’s dedication and faithfulness restoring her heart and the years she had lost.
But it was not until she preached at a church in western Ohio that the meaning of her vision about the sheaves of wheat became clear. Here the people fell into what seemed like “trances”—an altered state which would come to profoundly mark her ministry and confound the wise of her day. “Fifteen came to the altar screaming for mercy. Men and women fell and lay like dead,” Maria recounted. “After laying on the floor for some time, they sprang to their feet shouting praises to God. The ministers and elder saints wept and praised the Lord for His ‘Pentecost Power’”7—and from that meeting on, her ministry would be marked by this particular manifestation with hundreds miraculously healed, and hundreds more coming to Christ.
At every meeting she held, there was a demonstration of the power of the Spirit. One reporter wrote, “Vehicles of all sorts began pouring into the city at an early hour—nothing short of a circus or a political rally ever before brought in so large a crowd.”8 Maria couldn’t answer all the invitations she received to minister, but the ones she did accept created a national stir that has never been silenced. The writings of then young F.F. Bosworth described the spectacular meetings that took place in Dallas, Texas, from July through December. As a result, Dallas became a hub of the Pentecostal revival.
Along with Maria’s ministry success came great pressures and severe persecution. It was during a controversial crusade in Oakland, California—where she had met with unusually challenging opposition—she decided to leave her unfaithful husband after his infidelity had been exposed. After twenty-six stormy years of marriage, they were divorced in January of 1891. In less than a year, P.H. remarried and publicly slandered Maria’s character. He died not long after on June 21, 1892, of Typhoid Fever.
God, however, continued to honor Maria. As she persistently sowed, labored, and reaped a momentous harvest for the Lord, God sent her a true friend and partner in Samuel Etter. Again her sorrow was turned to joy as the two were married in 1902. Samuel became a vital part of Maria’s ministry in every capacity and the two co-labored for Christ until his death twelve years later. Maria never wavered in her dedication to the healing and evangelistic ministry she was so powerfully called to. She seemed invincible in her ability to carry on in the face of tragedy and opposition. Her fame for miraculous healings and revival services grew, as did her critics. But God silenced them all.
She has been called the grandmother of the Pentecostal movement. None has done more than Maria Woodworth-Etter to shed light on the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, the role of women in ministry, and the power of miracle crusades to revive a nation. In addition, she brought insight on how to effectively administrate massive miracle crusades, build sustainable ministry centers and manage opposition in the public arena. Her commitment and dedication personally influenced such great heroes of the faith as Smith Wigglesworth, Aimee Semple McPherson, John Alexander Dowie, John G. Lake, E.W. Kenyon, F.F. Bosworth, and Kathryn Kuhlman.
Her legacy is evidenced by the ongoing ministry work of healing evangelists around the world. Though, for the last six years of her life, she confined herself to ministering from the Tabernacle she had erected in Indianapolis, ID, her healing anointing remained as powerful as ever. She continued to speak with power from the Word of God until her very last days. As she became weaker, she was carried in a chair to the pulpit, and finally ministered a touch of healing or a word of hope from her bed.
In 1924, at the age of eighty, Maria B. Woodworth-Etter fell into a deep sleep and went home to be with the Lord. Her passing was mourned by all whose lives she touched and was felt by the entire nation. She ministered God’s healing power with the last ounce of her strength, proclaiming God’s love with the last of her breath.
I have been in great dangers; many times not knowing when I would be shot down, either in the pulpit, or going to and from meetings…But I said I would never run, nor compromise. The Lord would always put His mighty power on me, so that He took all fear away, and made me like a giant…If in any way they had tried to shoot, or kill me, He would have struck them dead, and I sometimes told them so.
Within a short time after Maria Woodworth-Etter responded to God’s call to “go out in the highways and hedges and gather in the lost sheep,” and people were thronging to hear her speak with signs and wonders following. By 1885, without a public address system, crowds of over twenty-five thousand pressed in to hear her minister while hundreds fell to the ground under the power of God. Woodworth-Etter not only shook up denominational religion, she rocked the secular world with life-altering displays of God’s power.
Those who came to investigate, condemn, or harass her seemed most at risk of “falling out” in what was described as a trance-like state. Maria preached that these strong manifestations of the Spirit were “nothing new; they were just something the Church had lost.” She was unwavering in her determination to break the strongholds that held people, communities, and whole cities in bondage. It seemed the more opposition she faced, the more she dug in her heels. Maria produced invincible strength through tenacious prayer that enabled her to take authority and minister with grace and power. She was known as a revivalist who could break towns open.
Maria Woodworth-Etter did not immediately heed the Lord’s call to evangelistic ministry in her life. As a single woman in the latter part of the nineteenth century, she felt the need to position herself by first obtaining an education and then marrying a missionary. Her well thought-out plans were interrupted when her father suddenly died in a farming accident and she was left with the burden of helping support her family. She met P.H. Woodworth upon his return from the Civil War, and after a brief courtship, they married and took up farming.
Over the course of time, P.H. and Maria became the parents of six children. Farming life proved difficult and they struggled with the demands of making a living and raising a family. Maria was frustrated that she couldn’t answer the call to ministry due to the demands of her life on the farm as a wife and mother of a growing family. She battled illness and disappointment that her husband did not share her desire for ministry. Then overwhelming tragedy struck as the Woodworth’s lost five of their six children to illness. P.H. never recovered from this loss and Maria did her best to support him while raising their only surviving daughter. Instead of growing bitter, Maria applied the Word of God to her heart.
She came to understand through her study of the Bible that God had used women as ministers, prophets, and leaders. From the prophecy of Joel she read that God would pour out his Spirit on both men and women. Still, she felt inadequate and ill-equipped to be of useful service to the Lord. She continued to study and later wrote, “The more I investigated, the more I found to condemn me.”
Then Maria had a vision. Angels came into her room and took her to the West, over prairies, lakes, forests, and rivers where she saw a long, wide field of waving grain. As the view unfolded she began to preach and saw the grains begin to fall like sheaves. Then Jesus told her that, “just as the grain fell, so people would fall” as she preached. Finally, Maria yielded to the increasingly clear call and asked the Lord to anoint her for ministry.
And the Lord did. Shortly after she began ministering to small groups in her community, churches began inviting her to speak to their congregations. The result was always a deep conviction among the hearers as they fell to the floor weeping. Soon she was invited westward and began traveling extensively. It wasn’t long before she had held nine revivals, preached two hundred sermons, and started two churches with Sunday school memberships of over one hundred people. God honored Maria’s dedication and faithfulness restoring her heart and the years she had lost.
But it was not until she preached at a church in western Ohio that the meaning of her vision about the sheaves of wheat became clear. Here the people fell into what seemed like “trances”—an altered state which would come to profoundly mark her ministry and confound the wise of her day. “Fifteen came to the altar screaming for mercy. Men and women fell and lay like dead,” Maria recounted. “After laying on the floor for some time, they sprang to their feet shouting praises to God. The ministers and elder saints wept and praised the Lord for His ‘Pentecost Power’”7—and from that meeting on, her ministry would be marked by this particular manifestation with hundreds miraculously healed, and hundreds more coming to Christ.
At every meeting she held, there was a demonstration of the power of the Spirit. One reporter wrote, “Vehicles of all sorts began pouring into the city at an early hour—nothing short of a circus or a political rally ever before brought in so large a crowd.”8 Maria couldn’t answer all the invitations she received to minister, but the ones she did accept created a national stir that has never been silenced. The writings of then young F.F. Bosworth described the spectacular meetings that took place in Dallas, Texas, from July through December. As a result, Dallas became a hub of the Pentecostal revival.
Along with Maria’s ministry success came great pressures and severe persecution. It was during a controversial crusade in Oakland, California—where she had met with unusually challenging opposition—she decided to leave her unfaithful husband after his infidelity had been exposed. After twenty-six stormy years of marriage, they were divorced in January of 1891. In less than a year, P.H. remarried and publicly slandered Maria’s character. He died not long after on June 21, 1892, of Typhoid Fever.
God, however, continued to honor Maria. As she persistently sowed, labored, and reaped a momentous harvest for the Lord, God sent her a true friend and partner in Samuel Etter. Again her sorrow was turned to joy as the two were married in 1902. Samuel became a vital part of Maria’s ministry in every capacity and the two co-labored for Christ until his death twelve years later. Maria never wavered in her dedication to the healing and evangelistic ministry she was so powerfully called to. She seemed invincible in her ability to carry on in the face of tragedy and opposition. Her fame for miraculous healings and revival services grew, as did her critics. But God silenced them all.
She has been called the grandmother of the Pentecostal movement. None has done more than Maria Woodworth-Etter to shed light on the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, the role of women in ministry, and the power of miracle crusades to revive a nation. In addition, she brought insight on how to effectively administrate massive miracle crusades, build sustainable ministry centers and manage opposition in the public arena. Her commitment and dedication personally influenced such great heroes of the faith as Smith Wigglesworth, Aimee Semple McPherson, John Alexander Dowie, John G. Lake, E.W. Kenyon, F.F. Bosworth, and Kathryn Kuhlman.
Her legacy is evidenced by the ongoing ministry work of healing evangelists around the world. Though, for the last six years of her life, she confined herself to ministering from the Tabernacle she had erected in Indianapolis, ID, her healing anointing remained as powerful as ever. She continued to speak with power from the Word of God until her very last days. As she became weaker, she was carried in a chair to the pulpit, and finally ministered a touch of healing or a word of hope from her bed.
In 1924, at the age of eighty, Maria B. Woodworth-Etter fell into a deep sleep and went home to be with the Lord. Her passing was mourned by all whose lives she touched and was felt by the entire nation. She ministered God’s healing power with the last ounce of her strength, proclaiming God’s love with the last of her breath.
THE MIRACLE MAN
“The Miracle Man”
Night after night, the waves of Divine Glory so sweep over the congregation that many testify of being healed while sitting in their seats.
Asa Alonzo Allen was perhaps one of the most important revivalists to emerge during the Voice of Healing revival. He was certainly the most sensational of his time, and not surprisingly drew a great deal of criticism and controversy. But all told, he was faithful to pursue God’s call on his life and as a result ushered a mighty move of the Spirit that swept the nation with powerful miracles, signs and wonders. In a time when the impact of other healing evangelists was diminishing, Allen was gathering momentum. Throughout the 1950’s, and into the 1960’s, Allen built a far-reaching worldwide ministry ultimately comprising an international radio program, magazine, Bible school and ministry training center, as well as overseas missions programs. The backbone of his ministry, however, was the massive tent revivals and healing crusades.
The Dreadful Past
What makes Allen’s ministry success all the more amazing is the childhood he had to overcome. Of all the hardship stories, his home life was among the most dreadful. Allen and his six siblings had two alcoholic parents who were wild drunks, brewed their own liquor, and grew their own smoking tobacco. For entertainment they gave their kids this moonshine and watched them get drunk. Allen’s mother put home brew in his baby bottle to keep him from crying, and he was smoking before he was old enough to go to school.
Needless to say, the Allen home was not a happy one. There were constant tussles. Allen’s mother left his father when A. A. was only four years old to marry another abusive, alcoholic. By the time he was six, he was carrying tin buckets of beer home from the saloon to his stepfather. This man left his mother when A. A. was eleven, at which time Allen attempted to run away himself. If the weather had not turned bad, he might have succeeded. He left home for good when he was fourteen.
Meeting Jesus
By the time Allen was twenty-one, his health had badly deteriorated. He had the shakes so bad he couldn’t light a cigarette or hold a cup of coffee without spilling it. His chest burned and he was racked with a deep, hacking cough. Even his memory was slipping. He was already dying the death of an old man. Hoping to restore his health there, he returned home to the farm where his mother still lived. The two of them soon slipped into their old ways and started stilling their own liquor and hosting wild parties. Their regular Saturday night shindig became known as the “Allen Dance Hall and Still.”
A neighbor had a different type of celebration in mind. He was a Pentecostal preacher who wanted to start a Holy Ghost revival out of his home just down the road. He and his little flock started to pray that the Allen parties would stop—they prayed that the Lord would either run him out of the neighborhood or kill him.
God did better than that. Allen happened upon a country Methodist church one day where they were singing and dancing inside. Out of curiosity he went in and was mesmerized by the woman preacher and the celebratory atmosphere. He knew he wanted what they had. The next night he returned and answered the altar call to be saved. From that point on, the parties and bootlegging ended.
Hook, Line, and Sinker
Allen went home and found an old Bible up in the attic. He read it voraciously, from cover to cover. He showed up at the Pentecostal home meeting down the road and after he left the people there prayed he would be filled with the Holy Spirit and used to win souls for Christ. The next day he visited a Methodist pastor who told him to stay away from the Pentecostals because they spoke in tongues. This just piqued Allen’s curiosity even more and now he wanted that too. Not long afterward, he and his sister attended a Pentecostal camp meeting where he received the baptism and shouted out in tongues.
When drought hit Missouri in 1934, Allen moved to Colorado where he was offered a job on a ranch. There he came across a Foursquare Church and met a young neighbor named Lexie Scriven. She felt she was called to preach and soon the two became close friends. When she left for Missouri to attend Central Bible Institute, Allen also returned to Missouri to help his mother. Allen wrote Lexie daily and finally proposed marriage. On September 19, 1936, the two returned to Colorado to marry.
The couple knew they were called to preach, so they both enrolled at Central Bible Institute. On the way there they stopped to see Allen’s ailing mother and ended up staying to nurse her back to health, spending all the money they had saved for school in the process. After her health improved, they continued on their way searching for jobs and a place to live. During this time Allen had the opportunity to preach at a church meeting in a local home.
The Journey Begins
The Allens wasted no time holding meetings wherever they could. They struggled with money, having to chop and sell wood to survive, sleeping in a dilapidated shack on a bed made from their car seats, and eating nothing but beans for weeks at a time. In the late 1930’s, Allen was offered the pastorate of an Assembly of God church in Holly, Colorado, when they also licensed him.
It was while pastoring that Allen began to truly seek God. He was determined to discover the secret of God’s power and how to flow with it. He prayed and fasted until he heard from the Lord how to increase his effectiveness as a preacher. And as promised in the Bible, those who seek will surely find. God revealed Himself to Allen in a powerful, life-changing way.
The Price Tag
Allen received clear direction from the Lord about exactly what he should do in order to operate in the miracle-working power of God. Allen recalled that “God revealed to me that the things that were hindrances to my ministry . . . were the very same things which were hindering so many thousands of others. At last, here was the price I must pay for the power of God in my life and ministry. The price tag for the miracle-working power of God!”
Here are eleven of the thirteen things Allen said the Lord told him he must understand and do to see His Miracle-Working Power:
1. He must realize he couldn’t do greater quality miracles than Jesus.
2. He could walk as Jesus walked.
3. He must be blameless like God Himself.
4. He must measure himself to Jesus alone.
5. He must deny his fleshly desires with fasting.
6. After self-denial, he must follow Jesus seven days a week.
7. Without God, he could do nothing.
8. He must do away with sin in his body.
9. He must not continue in shallow, pointless discussions.
10. He must give his body wholly to God forever.
11. He must believe all of God’s promises.
The remaining two guidelines were “pet sins” that God had pointed out by name, which Allen felt he could not share.
Miracle-Working Power
Shortly after this visitation, Allen resigned from his position as pastor. The Allens had an invitation to minister in Missouri and here is where their first miracle service took place. A blind man came forward for healing in response to the altar call. Allen asked for all those with faith for the healing of this blind man to come up and pray with him. Then he said, “There is unbelief in this room, I can feel it!”. With that a man got up and stomped out the door. When the believers finished praying, the blind man could name the color of Allen’s tie!
Throughout the first half of the 1940’s, Allen traveled around the country leading miracle-working healing revivals. Lexie was left alone for months at a time to care for their young babies. It was a difficult time for the family as they continued to struggle financially and Lexie was left with the burden of raising the children single-handedly. Then, in 1947, Allen was offered the pastorate of one of the largest Assemblies of God churches in Texas. He accepted and the family moved to Corpus Christi in search of a more normal family life and financial stability.
Going to the Next Level
For the next couple of years, Allen threw himself into building the church and the congregation grew until they needed a new building. He oversaw the exciting and successful church building project, but then searched for the next great adventure to throw himself into. He felt called to pursue a radio outreach, but the church board rejected the idea and Allen fell into a severe depression. Lexie recognized it as a spiritual attack and commanded the tormenting spirit to leave him. Miraculously it did, and Allen was back to his ambitious self.
By the fall of 1949, Allen began to hear stories of miraculous healing meetings from church members and the widely circulated Voice of Healing publication. He attended an Oral Roberts tent revival in Dallas, Texas, with some ministry friends and felt God tugging on his heart about the vision he originally gave him. He rededicated himself to fulfilling that calling and upon returning home resigned the pastorate once again.
In May of 1950, Allen sent his first report to the Voice of Healing after the awe-inspiring results of a miracle campaign he held in Oakland, California. People were healed sitting in their seats as “waves of divine glory swept over the congregation.” In 1951, Allen purchased a tent and on July 4, 1951, the A. A. Allen Revival Tent went up for the first campaign in Yakima, Washington.
In November of 1953, Allen finally broke into radio with the Allen Revival Hour on eleven stations. By 1955 he was being broadcast on seventeen Latin American stations and eighteen American ones. Allen conducted yearly revivals in Cuba and Mexico from 1955 until 1959 when Castro took power.
Persecution and Progress
As Allen’s fame grew, so did opposition. At the height of his ministry success, his enemies slandered Allen publicly with accusations of being a drunkard. The newspapers published accounts of public drunkenness and he was even arrested for drunk driving. The charges were trumped up and widely disputed across factions of friend and foe. R.W. Schambach, who was traveling with him at the time, testified that he was in the car the night he was arrested and that Allen was by no means under the influence of alcohol. Nevertheless, the bad press did great harm to his ministry and reputation. Ultimately he was forced to withdraw from the Assemblies of God denomination and Voice of Healing network.
However, what the enemy means for harm can often work for good. In the midst of persecution, Allen launched the Miracle Revival Fellowship, which licensed ministers and supported missions. Five hundred ministers were licensed in its first ordination. During this time he also began publishing the Miracle Magazine, which boasted two hundred thousand paid subscribers by the end of 1956. In January of 1958, he established the International Miracle Revival Training Camp for ministers near Tombstone, Arizona. He was given 1,250 acres of land and called it “Miracle Valley.” In 1960, he built a four thousand seat church hoping to one day to develop a city there with flourishing neighborhoods, recreational facilities, and media centers.
A Sudden End
Throughout the late 1950’s, great public controversy continued to surround Allen, as well as hostile persecution, yet he pressed on. The miraculous followed his preaching in unprecedented forms. Unheard of signs and wonders were manifested during his campaigns, such as a flame appearing above his revival tent, oil flowing from the heads and hands of people in the audience, crosses appearing on foreheads, and a radio listener having organs reappear that had previously been removed.
Allen worked as hard as ever well into the next decade. He continued to fervently teach on healing, and then more and more on financial prosperity. By 1967, the ministry suffered a debilitating blow when it was sued for $300,000 in back taxes. By 1969, Allen’s health began to deteriorate and he battled severe arthritis in his knees. He suffered with so much pain that a protégé had to fill in during the crusades. Allen had already undergone surgery on one of his knees and in June of 1970, was considering surgery on the other knee.
Allen arrived in his hotel room the night before his scheduled doctor’s visit and made a disturbing call to a close friend. This friend became alarmed and immediately headed over to the hotel. After banging on Allen’s door and receiving no response, he had the assistant manager open the door, and there they found Allen dead in a chair in front of his television. A. A. Allen was pronounced dead at 11:23 p.m. on June 11, 1970. The Coroner’s Report recorded the cause of death being “fatty infiltration of the liver” as a result of the few times he used alcohol in his last days to alleviate the excruciating pain of his arthritis.
Night after night, the waves of Divine Glory so sweep over the congregation that many testify of being healed while sitting in their seats.
Asa Alonzo Allen was perhaps one of the most important revivalists to emerge during the Voice of Healing revival. He was certainly the most sensational of his time, and not surprisingly drew a great deal of criticism and controversy. But all told, he was faithful to pursue God’s call on his life and as a result ushered a mighty move of the Spirit that swept the nation with powerful miracles, signs and wonders. In a time when the impact of other healing evangelists was diminishing, Allen was gathering momentum. Throughout the 1950’s, and into the 1960’s, Allen built a far-reaching worldwide ministry ultimately comprising an international radio program, magazine, Bible school and ministry training center, as well as overseas missions programs. The backbone of his ministry, however, was the massive tent revivals and healing crusades.
The Dreadful Past
What makes Allen’s ministry success all the more amazing is the childhood he had to overcome. Of all the hardship stories, his home life was among the most dreadful. Allen and his six siblings had two alcoholic parents who were wild drunks, brewed their own liquor, and grew their own smoking tobacco. For entertainment they gave their kids this moonshine and watched them get drunk. Allen’s mother put home brew in his baby bottle to keep him from crying, and he was smoking before he was old enough to go to school.
Needless to say, the Allen home was not a happy one. There were constant tussles. Allen’s mother left his father when A. A. was only four years old to marry another abusive, alcoholic. By the time he was six, he was carrying tin buckets of beer home from the saloon to his stepfather. This man left his mother when A. A. was eleven, at which time Allen attempted to run away himself. If the weather had not turned bad, he might have succeeded. He left home for good when he was fourteen.
Meeting Jesus
By the time Allen was twenty-one, his health had badly deteriorated. He had the shakes so bad he couldn’t light a cigarette or hold a cup of coffee without spilling it. His chest burned and he was racked with a deep, hacking cough. Even his memory was slipping. He was already dying the death of an old man. Hoping to restore his health there, he returned home to the farm where his mother still lived. The two of them soon slipped into their old ways and started stilling their own liquor and hosting wild parties. Their regular Saturday night shindig became known as the “Allen Dance Hall and Still.”
A neighbor had a different type of celebration in mind. He was a Pentecostal preacher who wanted to start a Holy Ghost revival out of his home just down the road. He and his little flock started to pray that the Allen parties would stop—they prayed that the Lord would either run him out of the neighborhood or kill him.
God did better than that. Allen happened upon a country Methodist church one day where they were singing and dancing inside. Out of curiosity he went in and was mesmerized by the woman preacher and the celebratory atmosphere. He knew he wanted what they had. The next night he returned and answered the altar call to be saved. From that point on, the parties and bootlegging ended.
Hook, Line, and Sinker
Allen went home and found an old Bible up in the attic. He read it voraciously, from cover to cover. He showed up at the Pentecostal home meeting down the road and after he left the people there prayed he would be filled with the Holy Spirit and used to win souls for Christ. The next day he visited a Methodist pastor who told him to stay away from the Pentecostals because they spoke in tongues. This just piqued Allen’s curiosity even more and now he wanted that too. Not long afterward, he and his sister attended a Pentecostal camp meeting where he received the baptism and shouted out in tongues.
When drought hit Missouri in 1934, Allen moved to Colorado where he was offered a job on a ranch. There he came across a Foursquare Church and met a young neighbor named Lexie Scriven. She felt she was called to preach and soon the two became close friends. When she left for Missouri to attend Central Bible Institute, Allen also returned to Missouri to help his mother. Allen wrote Lexie daily and finally proposed marriage. On September 19, 1936, the two returned to Colorado to marry.
The couple knew they were called to preach, so they both enrolled at Central Bible Institute. On the way there they stopped to see Allen’s ailing mother and ended up staying to nurse her back to health, spending all the money they had saved for school in the process. After her health improved, they continued on their way searching for jobs and a place to live. During this time Allen had the opportunity to preach at a church meeting in a local home.
The Journey Begins
The Allens wasted no time holding meetings wherever they could. They struggled with money, having to chop and sell wood to survive, sleeping in a dilapidated shack on a bed made from their car seats, and eating nothing but beans for weeks at a time. In the late 1930’s, Allen was offered the pastorate of an Assembly of God church in Holly, Colorado, when they also licensed him.
It was while pastoring that Allen began to truly seek God. He was determined to discover the secret of God’s power and how to flow with it. He prayed and fasted until he heard from the Lord how to increase his effectiveness as a preacher. And as promised in the Bible, those who seek will surely find. God revealed Himself to Allen in a powerful, life-changing way.
The Price Tag
Allen received clear direction from the Lord about exactly what he should do in order to operate in the miracle-working power of God. Allen recalled that “God revealed to me that the things that were hindrances to my ministry . . . were the very same things which were hindering so many thousands of others. At last, here was the price I must pay for the power of God in my life and ministry. The price tag for the miracle-working power of God!”
Here are eleven of the thirteen things Allen said the Lord told him he must understand and do to see His Miracle-Working Power:
1. He must realize he couldn’t do greater quality miracles than Jesus.
2. He could walk as Jesus walked.
3. He must be blameless like God Himself.
4. He must measure himself to Jesus alone.
5. He must deny his fleshly desires with fasting.
6. After self-denial, he must follow Jesus seven days a week.
7. Without God, he could do nothing.
8. He must do away with sin in his body.
9. He must not continue in shallow, pointless discussions.
10. He must give his body wholly to God forever.
11. He must believe all of God’s promises.
The remaining two guidelines were “pet sins” that God had pointed out by name, which Allen felt he could not share.
Miracle-Working Power
Shortly after this visitation, Allen resigned from his position as pastor. The Allens had an invitation to minister in Missouri and here is where their first miracle service took place. A blind man came forward for healing in response to the altar call. Allen asked for all those with faith for the healing of this blind man to come up and pray with him. Then he said, “There is unbelief in this room, I can feel it!”. With that a man got up and stomped out the door. When the believers finished praying, the blind man could name the color of Allen’s tie!
Throughout the first half of the 1940’s, Allen traveled around the country leading miracle-working healing revivals. Lexie was left alone for months at a time to care for their young babies. It was a difficult time for the family as they continued to struggle financially and Lexie was left with the burden of raising the children single-handedly. Then, in 1947, Allen was offered the pastorate of one of the largest Assemblies of God churches in Texas. He accepted and the family moved to Corpus Christi in search of a more normal family life and financial stability.
Going to the Next Level
For the next couple of years, Allen threw himself into building the church and the congregation grew until they needed a new building. He oversaw the exciting and successful church building project, but then searched for the next great adventure to throw himself into. He felt called to pursue a radio outreach, but the church board rejected the idea and Allen fell into a severe depression. Lexie recognized it as a spiritual attack and commanded the tormenting spirit to leave him. Miraculously it did, and Allen was back to his ambitious self.
By the fall of 1949, Allen began to hear stories of miraculous healing meetings from church members and the widely circulated Voice of Healing publication. He attended an Oral Roberts tent revival in Dallas, Texas, with some ministry friends and felt God tugging on his heart about the vision he originally gave him. He rededicated himself to fulfilling that calling and upon returning home resigned the pastorate once again.
In May of 1950, Allen sent his first report to the Voice of Healing after the awe-inspiring results of a miracle campaign he held in Oakland, California. People were healed sitting in their seats as “waves of divine glory swept over the congregation.” In 1951, Allen purchased a tent and on July 4, 1951, the A. A. Allen Revival Tent went up for the first campaign in Yakima, Washington.
In November of 1953, Allen finally broke into radio with the Allen Revival Hour on eleven stations. By 1955 he was being broadcast on seventeen Latin American stations and eighteen American ones. Allen conducted yearly revivals in Cuba and Mexico from 1955 until 1959 when Castro took power.
Persecution and Progress
As Allen’s fame grew, so did opposition. At the height of his ministry success, his enemies slandered Allen publicly with accusations of being a drunkard. The newspapers published accounts of public drunkenness and he was even arrested for drunk driving. The charges were trumped up and widely disputed across factions of friend and foe. R.W. Schambach, who was traveling with him at the time, testified that he was in the car the night he was arrested and that Allen was by no means under the influence of alcohol. Nevertheless, the bad press did great harm to his ministry and reputation. Ultimately he was forced to withdraw from the Assemblies of God denomination and Voice of Healing network.
However, what the enemy means for harm can often work for good. In the midst of persecution, Allen launched the Miracle Revival Fellowship, which licensed ministers and supported missions. Five hundred ministers were licensed in its first ordination. During this time he also began publishing the Miracle Magazine, which boasted two hundred thousand paid subscribers by the end of 1956. In January of 1958, he established the International Miracle Revival Training Camp for ministers near Tombstone, Arizona. He was given 1,250 acres of land and called it “Miracle Valley.” In 1960, he built a four thousand seat church hoping to one day to develop a city there with flourishing neighborhoods, recreational facilities, and media centers.
A Sudden End
Throughout the late 1950’s, great public controversy continued to surround Allen, as well as hostile persecution, yet he pressed on. The miraculous followed his preaching in unprecedented forms. Unheard of signs and wonders were manifested during his campaigns, such as a flame appearing above his revival tent, oil flowing from the heads and hands of people in the audience, crosses appearing on foreheads, and a radio listener having organs reappear that had previously been removed.
Allen worked as hard as ever well into the next decade. He continued to fervently teach on healing, and then more and more on financial prosperity. By 1967, the ministry suffered a debilitating blow when it was sued for $300,000 in back taxes. By 1969, Allen’s health began to deteriorate and he battled severe arthritis in his knees. He suffered with so much pain that a protégé had to fill in during the crusades. Allen had already undergone surgery on one of his knees and in June of 1970, was considering surgery on the other knee.
Allen arrived in his hotel room the night before his scheduled doctor’s visit and made a disturbing call to a close friend. This friend became alarmed and immediately headed over to the hotel. After banging on Allen’s door and receiving no response, he had the assistant manager open the door, and there they found Allen dead in a chair in front of his television. A. A. Allen was pronounced dead at 11:23 p.m. on June 11, 1970. The Coroner’s Report recorded the cause of death being “fatty infiltration of the liver” as a result of the few times he used alcohol in his last days to alleviate the excruciating pain of his arthritis.
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