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Y CHILDHOOD memory of my sister, Jewel, is limited because she is seven years older than I and she left home at an early age.

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My most predominant memory is what happened one day when Jewel was fifteen. We were all picking cotton close to my birthplace in Pontotoc County. In those days, the cash crop was cotton, and the whole family picked it during the fall. I noticed that as Jewel was picking the fleecy cotton from the bolls on the cotton stalks and putting it in her sack, which she was dragging behind her, she kept looking toward the road.

About mid-afternoon, I saw her drop her cotton sack and slip quietly toward a car that had parked in the road across from us. Before Papa knew it, the car door slammed, the car roared away, and Jewel was gone!

A brash, good-looking young man had come into our area and, unknown to my parents, centered his attention on the preacher's daughter, Jewel. She was tired of the cotton fields, weary with constant poverty, and was feeling the first flush of womanhood in her veins. It was so easy for the man, an escaped convict from a Kansas prison, to sweep her off her feet and lure her away.

Just weeks after they married and she was pregnant, she learned the truth about the man with whom she had eloped. The officers of the law located him, put the handcuffs on, and drove him back to prison. Crushed, Jewel had only one place to go: back to her family. When the baby, Billie June, was born, my parents virtually adopted her so Jewel could live out her life and have a decent chance for a future.

Two years later, Jewel married a man of character and stability, and he gladly took little Billie June into his heart. His name was Leo Faust. He and Jewel had two children of their own: Gloria and Gale.

It was long after that when tuberculosis struck me down. One hundred and sixty-three days passed with me flat on my back. The district judge of Ada, our county seat, had signed the papers to place me in the state sanitarium in the

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mountains of eastern Oklahoma, in the Indian-named town of Talihina.

When Judge McKeown signed the papers, he told my father, "Ellis, I hate to do this. Putting anyone in the sanitarium in Talihina usually means he comes out dead. Oral deserves better than that."

When his words were reported to me, cold chills went down my spine, and I turned my face toward the wall near my bed and sobbed until I thought my body would break.

Jewel knew of Mama's vow when I was born and felt in her spirit that God didn't want her baby brother to die before he had a chance to live. Somewhere, as she was growing up as the daughter of Ellis and Claudius Roberts, the spark of God's healing power had been ignited and lay smoldering in her heart. One day it came flowing up inside her like a river that God not only could but was going to heal her baby brother. A knowing came into her spirit that she was to come to where I was, hovering at the edge of death, to tell me what God had spoken in her spirit.

Although she had a tender spirit and a loving heart, Jewel was not one who always expressed her thoughts. When that knowing hit her, she turned to her husband and said, "Leo, I've got to go tell Oral the words God has given me. If I don't, I won't be able to live with myself. May I have the car?"

When she arrived, she came straight to my bed. With shining eyes and fire in her words, she said seven simple words that changed my life: "Oral, God is going to heal you!"

Instantly, I asked, "Jewel, is He?"

"Yes, Oral, God is going to heal you."

How can I explain what I felt inside me? I felt that Jewel knew that all the healing I had heard about was going to come to me. To me!

Prior to that time, I had reached a place in my thinking that I later discovered millions of people reach in their illness: I am not going to get well. But Jewel replaced those seven words of death with seven words of life, and hope was birthed in my soul.

The thought of God healing me, restoring my life, and giving me another chance never left me. I had been on the wrong path, but suddenly, the light shone all the way from heaven to my wasting body on that bed—and God in that moment became powerful, real, and alive to me.

Although there was no specific time set for my healing to take place, Jewel had delivered the good news. For the first time in my life, all doubt in my heart about God having a plan for my life left me, and I knew that I knew it was true!

That opened me up to the reality of God and gave me the first feeling that I wanted Him in my life. I saw it as clearly as the noonday sun: If God was going to heal me and restore my life, I realized I had made a terrible mistake to tell Him to get out of my life.

Now, with my experiences of dealing with thousands to whom sickness and other bad things have happened, I know that too many people associate God with

bad and not with anything good. Bad events in nature that are recorded in our government's official documents are referred to as acts of God. Most people have a belief that God has it in for them or He is far removed. How in the world would He ever think of them in their hard knocks of life? Many people think, Who am I to be so brazen to think that God, with all the mighty things He has to do, has time to come to my aid? To others, it's actually sacrilegious in their belief to call on God to help them individually. Among those who do ask God for help, they ask Him to help others, but not themselves, as if they are not as important to God as anyone else.

The following night after Jewel said those life-changing words to me, my father came in my room and announced, "Oral, I'm going to kneel beside your bed and pray and not stop until you give your heart to God and get saved."

Mama and the nurse, who was helping with me, knelt with him. As Papa continued praying, they finished and sat up in their chairs. Papa didn't stop. If ever a father talked to God about his son and his true condition, Papa told God about me. He told the Lord he couldn't stand to see me lose my soul. This disease taking me was bad enough, but for me to go into eternity unsaved was more than he could bear.

I raised my head from the pillow, looked across my body at him kneeling at the foot of my bed, and saw the big tears rolling down his face. He was in agony about my soul.

While I looked at him, Papa's countenance changed in my sight. A bright light seemed to envelop him, and suddenly, the likeness of Jesus appeared in his face! From the depths of my soul I called on the name of Jesus for the first time ever to save my soul and my life!

I felt God's presence go through my whole being. My spirit, mind, and body felt like they were suffused with God's presence. I felt strength enter my body that had not been there for months. The glory of the almighty God was permeating every cell of my body, and for a few moments I didn't feel like a boy who was dying with tuberculosis in both lungs, with a body wasting away.

Faith had leaped in my heart to turn my defeated life over to Jesus to be born again. He had forgiven me of all my sins and, more important, of the rejection of God in my life. I had such deep dissatisfaction with the status quo that had surrounded me in poverty and in religion, so I had turned from the very One who could bring me to greater fulfillment and accomplishment of life.

I discovered I could avoid the status quo, starting with repentance toward God, only by turning my life and ways over to Him. I was ready for the next step God had for the plan of my life. Something powerful and full of destiny was on the way to Oral Roberts!

—— "You Foul Tormenting Disease"

At the same time all that was happening in my life, God had providentially sent a healing evangelist to Pontotoc County, which had never been visited by an outpouring of God's healing power in that way.

Reverend George Moncey didn't conduct his revival in a church building. He

stretched a tent in Ada, and hundreds were filling it nightly. Many people reportedly were being healed by the prayer of faith as he laid hands on them (see Mark 16:18; James 5:14-15).

My older brother, Elmer, and his wife, Ora, had been attending the revival.

Elmer was fourteen years older than I, and we were not close. He was a hard worker, ambitious to get ahead, and he became a building contractor. He had always thought that Papa and Mama had been too soft with me when they let me leave home. Not knowing the fierce burning in my heart to rise above my background, he had often said to me, "Oral, you're not worth the salt that goes in your bread," and he didn't smile when he said it. There was a distance between us that nothing had been able to bridge.

Little did I know God was changing my brother's feelings toward me as he and his wife sat in that tent and watched people they knew get healed through the prayers of a man of God. He knew his baby brother was home dying with terminal illness. He was hearing that "still small voice," like the prophet Elijah had heard in Bible times (1 Rings 19:12).

Once he knew what to do, Elmer was a man of action. "Ora," he said, "I'm going to get Oral and bring him here for prayer." Ora was a believer, and through her tears, she said, "You do that, Elmer."

Only days after Jewel's visit and witness that God was going to heal me, and I had received Christ as my personal Savior, Elmer drove up to our house, rushed in, and grabbed me by the hand. He said, "Get up, Oral. There's a man praying for the sick in Ada, and I've come to take you there."

We had never known Elmer to have a religious feeling before. All I could do was explain to him that I was too weak to get up.

That wasn't going to stop him. He decided that he would carry me on the mattress I was lying on and put it in the backseat of his car.

At that moment, Mama and Papa came in the room. Elmer explained to them how he had seen some of his friends healed in the revival, and he had come to take me to be prayed for. Elmer had never had much to do with Mama and Papa's ministry after he had gotten married and left home. It was hard for him to believe God could come close enough to people to heal them. Seeing such a demonstration of God's personal and loving touch on people's lives had broken him up. He was now ready to believe his own brother could be healed of a deadly disease by God's power.

Immediately, Mama had a knowing inside her spirit that it was my time for healing. She told us the story of how recently she had gone to the grocery store and was thinking about me and couldn't keep the tears back. The man tending the store saw her and asked her if Oral was dead. She said to him, "No, I'm crying because I know that God is going to heal Oral and he will live."

There was an anticipation in us all as Elmer dressed me in my one and only suit that swallowed my thin body, put me on the little mattress, carried it out to the car, and placed it on the backseat. Papa and Mama sat in the front seat with Elmer, and we drove the seventeen miles to Ada that evening.

Lying there on that mattress, my body hurting at every bump in the dirt road, I listened to Elmer say that the preaching of the healing evangelist was different. He had a boldness and an ability to make the Bible come alive, and Elmer and Ora just couldn't stay away from the meetings each night.

As he talked, my thoughts took over, and I ceased to hear any more of what Elmer was saying. I remembered a time when my mother had urged me to pray, and I had said, "Mama, I don't know how to pray."

Her answer came back to me there lying on that mattress: "Oral, you don't have to know how to pray. Just talk to God as if He was in front of you and tell Him you want Him to help you, then believe He will do it."

In retrospect, I've never heard a better explanation of how to pray.

Lying there, I grew very quiet inside. It was as if I was totally alone. Then I heard that Voice I've heard many times since:

on, I am going to heal you and you are to take My healing power to your generation. You are to build Me a university and build it on My authority and the Holy Spirit."

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That it was God's voice, I had no doubt. By the time Elmer drove up to the tent, I knew I would be healed.

Once inside, they placed me in a rocking chair with pillows at my back and sides because my body was so sore. Sitting there, I listened to the evangelist preach, and I saw people coming forward to accept Christ as their Savior. Then as he began praying for sick people, he came over to me and whispered an encouragement: "An Indian boy was healed here a few nights ago." I suppose someone had told him I had Indian blood.

Up till that time when someone visited me to pray or to talk about healing, it was all so traditional. The man's words were totally different. There was no dillydallying around about God's will and desire to heal. He was waiting on the people to believe God for His healing power and miraculous operations in the same way they believed for their personal salvation. He stated unequivocally that both salvation and healing are in Jesus' atonement on the cross, and also are in the Holy Spirit with His supernatural gifts, such as the gift of faith, the gift of healing, and the working of miracles (see 1 Cor. 12). He gave Scriptures for everything and told of miracles being done down through the centuries. He also stated that God is a God who changes not; what He did in Bible times He does today, and as far as the evangelist was concerned, the matter was settled.

It was a long service, lasting until 11:00 P.M., and I was the last one prayed for. The evangelist's wife touched my head with olive oil on her finger to anoint me for her husband's prayer.

When he finally came over to pray for me, my parents stood me up, one on either side holding me. I had never had anybody pray for my healing with any degree of authority or healing faith. However, as I grew up, I was accustomed to seeing other people prayed for to receive various blessings from God. Usually, those who prayed had a lead-in-type prayer, like they were warming up. Then

they would launch into a longer prayer, ending with, "Lord, if it's Your will, please bless [or heal] this one in Jesus' name. Amen."

The evangelist's prayer had no opening. He didn't begin with the idea of getting himself worked up. With boldness, he laid his hands on my head and literally spoke to the disease binding me: "You foul tormenting disease, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, come out of this boy!

Loose him and let him go free."

As he stepped back, I felt something like an electrical shock go through my whole being. Then a strong warming sensation flowed into me. I felt my lungs open like a flower, and the most exhilarating energy swept over me.

The next thing I remember I was breathing from my lungs all the way down, with no coughing, no sharp shooting pains, no weakness. I actually yelled, "I'm healed! I'm healed!" Then I cried, laughed, and praised God. The entire audience leaped to their feet to praise the Lord, and together we gave glory to God.

Reverend Moncey said, "Son, tell what the Lord has done for you."

To my utter amazement and joy, the words no longer stuck in my throat. All fear that I could not talk without stammering was gone, and the words flowed from my lips like a spring gushing up from the earth.

One moment I had been standing there between Papa and Mama, my body trembling with weakness, my lungs feeling as if they would burst, fearing I might have to talk. Now with one sweep of His eternal power, Jesus Christ of Nazareth had touched me as He did the sick when He walked this earth (see Matt. 4:25).

Anyone who has experienced the healing power of Jesus knows something about God that most others do not know. Of course, the greatest miracle of all is the saving of the soul. However, one can have the greatest of all miracles and still become so sick that the medical help at that time cannot bring a cure, and then the only thing that can possibly deliver him is Jesus Christ of Nazareth—healing him directly or through one of His believing believers.

The next day there was great rejoicing at the Robertses' home. Life was coming back into my being. I was walking; I was eating; I was in awe of the wondrous change in me.

However, I was soon to learn one of the greatest lessons of my life. My

However, I was soon to learn one of the greatest lessons of my life. My