Chronicles of power 3

The atmosphere crackled with anticipation.  Faith was so high you almost needed an oxygen mask to breathe!  More than 10,000 people had turned up at a building that only seated 3,000.  There were overflow tents for the overflow tents!  I had arrived early and managed to get a seat in the main auditorium.

The venue was a church called Christian City near Johannesburg in the mid-1980s and the event was to be a demonstration of the healing power of God.  Founded by Pastor Theo Wolmarans in 1979, Christian City church had rapidly grown to a congregation of over 3,000.  He preached a message of uncompromising faith and divine healing.  Soon testimonies of healing miracles were being spoken of and before long the usual nay-sayers and heresy-hunters began airing their cynicism in the national media.
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It led to a showdown!  Pastor Wolmarans issued an invitation to all the doubters and “disbelievers” to attend a service and see for themselves the power of God to heal.  The “invitation” quickly grew into a “challenge” with TV camera crews in attendance and a panel of “experts” also invited to attend and debate the topic of divine healing.

On the day in question, thousands of believers from other churches also turned up to pray for and witness the anticipated move of God.  After the panel discussion, Pastor Wolmarans preached on divine healing through faith in Jesus – and then invited people to come forward for prayer. The result?  Nothing!  Not a sausage. Nothing demonstrable or verifiable. No blind eyes or deaf ears opened, no lame leaping for joy.  It was in fact a spectacular let down, a massive anti-climax.  As high as our hopes had been before the meeting – so low were our hearts after.  A stunned numbness fell upon us all as we quietly made our way home wondering what had just happened, or not happened as it turned out.

At the time I was assisting Pastor Bill Anstruther at the Bethel Pentecostal Church in Malvern, Johannesburg. He had been my Bible college principal, and was a father to me in the Lord, a truly wonderful and remarkable man of God.  He too had been at the meeting, sitting in an overflow tent quietly praying. In the light of what happened, I wondered what on earth he was going to preach at church the following Sunday.

To my great surprise, he got up and preached on Christ the Healer, that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever, that He is the great physician and that healing and wholeness are part and parcel of our salvation in Jesus.  To my even greater surprise, people came forward for prayer that morning, and were healed by the tender grace, love and power of the living God.  

I cornered Pastor Bill straight after the service and asked him to explain why he had preached on divine healing after what had just happened at Christian City?  His answer changed my life.  He said that just because people didn’t get healed that day, didn’t alter the fact that Jesus is still the Healer – the same yesterday, today and forever. And just because people didn’t get healed that day, didn’t mean we should stop praying for the sick!

It was very similar to something the Lord once said to the pioneering 20th century healing evangelist F. F. Bosworth.  Bosworth rose from the ranks of a Nebraska farming community to establish the First Assembly of God church in Dallas in 1910.  People flocked from miles around to hear him preach the gospel of salvation and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.  He travelled thousands of miles preaching throughout the American southwest and signs and wonders began to follow his ministry.

Then in 1920 he was invited to preach at a revival in Lima, Ohio, and to speak specifically on the healing power of Jesus for today.  Bosworth felt this was God’s leading.  He knew from personal experience that Jesus still healed today, and that healing was part of our salvation and included in the price that Christ had paid on the Cross.  

He studied the Scriptures diligently to learn all he could about divine healing before going to Ohio, but he still had one nagging fear.  As Bosworth later wrote: “I said to the Lord, ‘But suppose I preach healing, and the people come, and they don’t get healed?’.  And the Lord responded, ‘If people didn’t get saved, you wouldn’t stop preaching the gospel’”

It was a seminal moment for Bosworth.  On the first night he announced his conviction that what Jesus could do in saving their souls He could also do in healing their bodies.  On the second night hundreds came, by the third night they were coming in their thousands.  Some came expecting a miracle; others came ready to laugh at failure.  But everyone who came saw the same things: deaf ears could hear, blind eyes could see, the lame could walk. Doctors began bringing their most critical patients to be prayed for and many were miraculously healed. 

Major newspapers began carrying reports of the astonishing miracles, with many doctors verifying the healings that were taking place. Bosworth never looked back and went on to become the most successful healing evangelist of the 1920s.  

He believed that the healing nature of God’s salvation was revealed in such Old Testament Scriptures as Exodus 15:26 – “I Am the Lord who heals you”, and Psalm 103:2-3 - “Bless the Lord O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: who forgives all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases”.

And he believed too that the revelation continued in the earthly ministry of Jesus, citing such Scriptures as Matthew 4:23 - “And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people”, and Luke 6:19 - “And the whole multitude sought to touch Him: for there went virtue out of Him, and healed them all”.

Bosworth was convinced that Scriptures such as Isaiah 53:5 – “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with his stripes we are healed” – showed that healing was included in the salvation Jesus purchased for us on the Cross.

Later in life he became a mentor to the likes of William Branham, Ern Baxter, Oral Roberts and T. L. Osborn.  His 1924 book “Christ the Healer” remains to this day a Christian classic on the subject of divine healing, and it is estimated that in his lifetime, Bosworth was instrumental in more than a million decisions for Christ.
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The moral of the story is simple: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). He was the Saviour then, He is the Saviour now.  He was the Healer then, He is the Healer now.  There can be any number of reasons why healings and miracles may not manifest, from arrogance and presumption on our part (Deuteronomy 6:16 and Matthew 4:7) to an atmosphere of unbelief (Matthew 13:58).  But we must never let that stop us from proclaiming that He is Christ the Saviour and Christ the Healer.  Preach the gospel – and some will get saved.  Pray for the sick – and some will be healed!