Experimental results for continuous features

It was soon evident that God was moving at a time in history when something miraculous had to be taught and preached, then confirmed with signs and wonders. I was not the only one who had begun to pray for the sick, although I was the only one who did it the way I have described. Others like William Branham began a year before I did under the leadership of Gordon Lindsay. Gordon Lindsay was a man of vision and deep feeling for people. Later he organized scores of healing ministers into an International Fellowship, founded Christ for the Nations Bible School in Dallas, and was a prolific writer.

His wife, Freda, took over Christ for the Nations, International (CFNI) after his death and is doing a magnificent job. At the time, I knew few of these men, and none intimately, as I was following God's specific instructions to me. However, I appreciated them mightily.

I was unprepared for the pressures that were going to come down on me because I was so different from anyone seen before by the leaders of denominations—from the smallest ones to the largest ones. As they saw it, the great old denominational churches were doing God's great work through the centuries when men such as I were only a thought in God's mind.

I had nothing of a personal nature to say against any denomination. I knew each had a piece of the truth of God, just as I had a piece. It just so happened that my call was what was missing: the healing ministry of Jesus returning to the people.

From the beginning when my miracle healing ministry was launched and the power of God began to flow through me, I discovered that people generally understood my heart, my message, and my prayers better than the entrenched hierarchy of the powerful denominations. Even the chambers of commerce in various cities worked with local pastors who had begun to invite me for crusades because they knew that large crowds would flood their cities while I was ministering there and a temporary financial boom would occur.

I have discovered people and institutions do things for their own reasons, and they are not always open to anything new. I know it put pressure on me I had never known, and I had to learn to live with it or go home!

I was tested in what I had learned from the Bible and what God had said to me audibly in revelational knowledge by the Holy Spirit who lived in me.

I was tested to see if what God said to me lined up with the written Word of God so that it became a rhema (God's spoken word) to me.

Never had I experienced so many intelligent people attacking the truths and the positions I held in the healing ministry of Jesus that became my lifestyle.

For that reason, as my audience grew toward ten thousand and more each service, it was soon evident that they came not only to see the miracles but to hear me teach and preach the foundational Scriptures and revelational knowledge I was receiving from the Holy Spirit. My crusades were more than healing crusades alone.

I learned the people during those times wanted not a glib fifteen-minute talk but a solid hour-and-a-half sermon put together with the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. They wanted the material organized point by point, and inspired with some stories, personal examples, and references to certain of those miracle healings I could prove were still existing month after month as my ministry continued. They wanted the meat of the gospel, the reality of the "now"

Christ. I began to discover a new strength, a broader understanding, and a greater ability to survive and take what was dished out to me, making me more balanced, more caring, and more enduring as the pressures continued to mount and never go away.

Back then, in addition to the pressures from denominational hierarchies, the power structure of a city, and the media in general, there was the constant need to raise the funds to build, to pay bills, and to make payrolls. Evelyn and I started with a part-time secretary, but over the years the ministry grew to many hundreds of full-time workers. I had to keep my senses under all conditions, good and bad. Today, these same pressures—and more—exist.

Although I didn't want them, I needed the pressures. I still need them. An honest person feels the pressures but knows without them there is no other way to develop as Jesus did: "And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel" (Luke 1:80).

I learned that when the pressures stopped, I had let something slip from my calling. I quickly went back to my beginnings to find when I had failed and corrected it so that the power of God could come upon me in the way I had to have it.

For a Bible man or woman of God, there is no substitute for the power of God

—for having the life of Jesus, for doing His healing works, and for living a supernatural life in a natural world. That is just the way God works, and He will never change: "For I am the LO R D, I change not" (Mal. 3:6).

There is no question in my mind that God changes methods as the times change, but He never changes His principles. What He is, He is forever. That is why we must develop absolutes, yet our methods can change to meet the changing needs of people. There is no discrepancy in doing that; rather, it reflects good common sense and steady obedience to God in His eternal existence and character. I determined that in spite of the persecution and pressures, I was going to change methods as God led me, for the sake of getting His message and ministry to the people.

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E ^XPLORING U ^NKNOWN T ^ERRITORY

O REACH THE crowds of people with the saving and healing power of God, I started with a big tent. I started with one that seated 3,000 and the crowds grew into one seating 12,000, which, with the flaps of the outside pulled up, thousands more could stand five to ten people deep around the tent. It was 470' long and 220' wide and it stretched a quarter of a mile in its outside perimeter and as big as 3 football fields.

T

But there were times I used auditoriums and stadiums instead of a tent.

When I was overseas, I used public areas where the people could sit on the ground, often numbering from 50,000 to 100,000 a service. In South Korea, I used the huge Olympic stadium with my beloved friend and brother, David Yonggi Cho, who pastors the largest church in the world with over 600,000 members.

In 1954, we made a major change in the method of getting the healing message to the people who did not attend the crusades. In spite of being told by the media experts that it could not be done, we began filming the services live and aired them on prime-time black-and-white television each week.

Credit must be given to my able friend, Rex Humbard, whose oldest son was healed of tuberculosis in my Mobile, Alabama, crusade in 1949. He inspired me to believe we should film the crusades for all America. He had the vision and I caught it.

It caused a sensation! People had never had a live healing crusade service coming right into their front rooms via TV. Millions of people in America and Canada had a front-row seat to see and hear a man, who despite all his faults and shortcomings, was really called of God. They could see the expressions on our faces, hear distinctly every word of my preaching and teaching, and literally see the healings. Hearing and seeing what was happening sharply divided the nation between those who believed and those who did not.

Thousands of letters came to my headquarters in Tulsa from people telling

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me that when they had seen a particular healing for the first time in their lives, they had given their hearts to God. Many fell to their knees or threw their hands up in the air and turned themselves toward the Lord while watching the services on TV.

In some cities, whole churches were built from such conversions. At one time, because the crusades were so strong, more than one thousand pastors asked me to form a new denomination. I declined on the grounds that God had not called me to do that. Besides we had more than enough denominations and the fellowship between them was almost nonexistent, which in my opinion was a travesty in the Lord's eyes.

What I wanted them to do, I said, was to take the Word in their hands and go down on their knees with it before the Lord, reread it with fresh new eyes, and let God show them Jesus. They needed to see that the three things He did were done equally: teach, preach, and heal, with the healings confirming His Word preached.

Then I encouraged them to take the best of what they heard and saw me do, as it lined up with the Word of God and the way Jesus healed the people, and adapt it to their own ministries.

Hundreds of them did, and over the years thousands have done it in America and in nations throughout the world. Just now I am thinking of scores of leading pastors and evangelists, teachers, apostles, and prophets who have personally shared with me how the healing ministry, which I've carried on the very best I know how, helped them to become powers for God in their cities and positions and outreaches.