My spirit was jumping in me that the time was near to build. Despite the fact I had no money, no land, no buildings, no faculty, no students, no curriculum, and very little knowledge of how to build a university as the world saw it, I was under the command of Him who has all authority and all power to bring to pass His will. But God can do this only if He can get servants to obey His call and put their hearts and hands to the call.
The time came to purchase the land on which to build Oral Roberts University. I told my legal counsel, Saul Yager, to approach the owner of the land that I felt God had chosen for His university.
Saul was a former district judge in Tulsa. He was also as good a friend as I ever had during the twenty-five years he served as our general counsel.
When I considered hiring Saul, he opened our first conversation by saying, "I am of the Jewish faith. I am comfortable in my faith. I have had very little experience with a Christian minister who is devoutly Christian and who believes in God as I believe in God."
I understood what he was saying and thanked him for his candor. I said, "As for me, Saul, you're not only older than I am in years, but you're older in your faith than I am in mine. There is no doubt at all in my heart that I am a Christian. But if I understand the Bible, you Jews were the ones with whom God started the Christian faith. I owe a debt to every Jew who ever lived and believed in God." From that day forth, we had a good understanding of each other and a good relationship.
When I told Saul to arrange for us to purchase the acreage where ORU now stands, I didn't even know who owned it, but I knew who its real Owner was. My strong guidance was that it was the exact piece of ground that had been set aside by almighty God on which to build His university. I knew it as much as I know my own name.
Saul reported to me that the owner wasn't interested in selling. The land had been in his family for thirty-five years. I insisted that Saul keep trying to buy it until he got it done. Things dragged on for several weeks. I was growing restless. I felt God's time had come to get that piece of property and to ask the Board of Trustees to break ground for the new university.
Each time Saul went, he was turned down. "The man," Saul finally said,
"simply won't sell."
One day I was in California when the Spirit of the Lord came all over me.
That piece of land stood out in my mind as if I were standing there looking at it or walking around on it. In my spirit I could see the groundbreaking, the
buildings going up, the university opening to hundreds of students. I could see years ahead when major buildings would be there with an enrollment of thousands and with young people going into "every man's world," no matter their own profession, sharing the healing power of Jesus Christ.
I dialed Saul. "Go today and buy that land," I said.
"But, Oral, you're wasting your time. The man won't sell."
"I'm telling you, Saul, I know today is the day. Buy it today."
"If you say so," he said, and we hung up.
Saul was bold in legal things but always cautious in his business dealings.
Up to that point, Saul had been cautious in the business end of the deal, but now he put his legal mind to work. He discovered the owner was represented by a man of the Jewish faith, also a high-class lawyer who knew the owner had refused to sell.
Saul told his Jewish lawyer friend my story. He explained how sure I was that regardless of the reluctance of the owner to sell before, today was the day he would sell.
It struck a chord in the brother Jew. He called the owner and recommended he be open to this sale.
"It's strange you would put it that way," the owner replied. "I woke up this morning and decided that if Mr. Roberts's lawyer approached me today, I would sell."
The two attorneys got a kick out of that. They thought it was high drama. I think they felt God was in it. Anyway, when they prepared the contract, the owner suddenly had second thoughts, but both attorneys told him he had given his word and he should honor it. The man said, "I think you're right," and he signed the papers.
Saul later said, "I think it was a deal done in heaven."
We kidded each other a lot. I said, "That's easy for you, a Jew, to say."
He laughed and said, "And that's easy for you, a Christian, to believe."
I said, "Saul, I not only believe it. I know it."
There was only one unexpected change the owner wanted. "I want a small down payment," he said. "I'm also willing for a clause to be included where they can pay it all off at once without penalty."
I really thought that was a heaven-done deal. How did the man know how little I had to pay down? How did he know that we would pay it off soon, and that not having to pay a penalty would ease our burden? How did he know?
I believe the God I know was the One who knew, and somehow, He had the man's attention.
Those were the kinds of deals that we worked out time and again as we proceeded with a growing ministry. An unseen Voice was being heard, an unseen hand was being felt, and unexpected good things were happening.
To a Jewish lawyer who believed in God, and a Christian healing evangelist who believed in God, we both came to the conclusion it was par for the course for God to open doors that had been hitherto closed.
There is so much about Saul Yager that I would like to share in this book, but space forbids. There is one thing I must share, however.
Saul in his later years had cancer of the throat. He flew to New York City to a great Jewish cancer surgeon he knew. The operation was hazardous, but they decided to do it.
I received a call one day: "Oral, this is Saul. My doctor says I should ask you to pray."
I didn't say anything.
"I'm serious. I'm not saying he's a believer. Oh, he believes in God. I'm talking about faith healing."
"He asks me to pray? Why?"
"It's a delicate operation. He knows I'm associated with you. Although he isn't sure about prayer for healing, he says he will feel better in doing the surgery if he knows you are praying."
"Saul, I'll be praying for you anyway. You know that."
"Yes, I know. But would you include my surgeon, too?"
I followed the surgery by phone here in Tulsa several times as it progressed, praying with the full force of my faith for Saul, for the surgeon and his team, remembering in my heart they were blood and spiritual descendants of Abraham, of whom Paul wrote, "That he might be the father of all them that believe" (Rom.
4:11).
Three days after the surgery, which went very well, something went wrong.
Saul's voice box was not acting as if it was going to function. They had had to remove so much of it that he was going to have to learn to talk all over again.
Saul could barely whisper, and only at intervals. He was able to write down much more quickly than he was able to get out the few whispered words he said to me:
"Oral, this time I'm asking you to pray to God to make me able to learn to talk again. I'm asking you."
My heart was thumping in my chest. I was so close to him. We had spent nearly twenty-five years together, closer than blood brothers, and we spiritually understood each other. But for the first time he had phoned to ask me to pray for him.
The words coming out of my mouth, winging their way through heaven from Tulsa to that hospital in New York City, were carrying my soul with them. I felt God's presence in my right hand. Oh, how I felt it!
Saul came home in due time, and he learned to talk without any mechanical aid. At age eighty-three, he could carry on a normal conversation. In a sense, I felt it was an example of the merging of medicine and prayer, plus Saul's determination that he would talk again.
At Saul's funeral years later, I was the first Christian minister who ever took the lead in giving the eulogy in a Jewish synagogue in Tulsa. I owe the rabbi of Tulsa's Temple Israel much for that privilege and honor. I owe God, too.
—— The Holy Spirit Takes Over!
There was one thing I knew—and I knew that I knew that I knew it—the secret to the success of building God a university was to build it exactly as He said and operate it on His authority and on the Holy Spirit.
Nobody can defeat the Holy Spirit.
There are times when a man stands mute before the problems and challenges of his life. His heart is hungry for answers, but they seem to be so mysterious and so unreachable as he wrestles with his doubts and inner turmoil.
The desire to accomplish his task becomes so big in his mind that it represents everything that he has ever wanted. But when he tries to pray, there's a dark cloud hanging over him, and his human language breaks down in the face of the staggering issues that lie ahead.
I'm not ashamed to tell you that I cried out to God from the depths of my soul during those first few agonizing days and weeks after God told me His time had come for me to build His university. I wanted desperately to obey His voice, but I didn't know how! It was out of my deep anguish and bewilderment that I began walking back and forth across those bare acres we had just paid down on, beseeching the Lord for the knowledge I needed to accomplish the great task.
Oh, I felt like I was carrying such a heavy load! I was literally groaning and praying and crying out, "O God, help me! Show me the way!" Then from the pit of my belly, the Holy Spirit language rose up in me and just rolled out of my mouth.
When I stopped praying in tongues, I started praying again, only this time the words that came to me were in English, and they were certainly not words that I had thought of myself. I felt such a tremendous release in my spirit that I said,
"Lord, let me do that again!"
I'll tell you, that was one of the most electrifying experiences I had ever had in my life! I was out there all alone, with only the squirrels and rabbits and birds as my audience, walking along Praying in the Spirit. When I stopped and listened again inside my spirit, through interpretation words came to me by the Spirit of God in English, and there was a brilliance to them. Prophetic words were in my mouth—revelational knowledge from the Lord!
In those words, the Lord revealed to me the most astonishing knowledge and showed me the broad outline of how to build Him a university. He didn't give me all the details, but it was a great breakthrough into the knowledge and the ability of how to do what He had commanded me to do.
One thing I've learned over the years is not to jump the first time you feel like you've heard something from the Lord.
What you hear in your spirit from the Lord must be tested by the Word of God and by the Spirit and by practicality. So, as I continued to seek the Lord over the next few weeks and months, the revelation He gave me was confirmed to my heart over and over again. I stepped out in faith with these words from God
ringing in my soul: "I want you to build My university out of the same ingredient I used when I formed the world, when I created the earth—nothing."
All at once a Scripture from the book of Job flashed through my mind—"He [God] stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing" (Job 26:7). The Lord hung this earth upon empty space, upon nothing.
And God reminded me of another Scripture in Hebrews 11:3, which says God framed the worlds by His word and used the things which we cannot see to make this visible world around us.
That tells me that if you've ever felt like you had so little that you couldn't possibly do God's will, you can stop your worrying! With God, you can do it, because the Bible says He calls the things that are not as though they were! (See Rom. 4:17.)
I'll never forget how I looked out across those empty acres, much as the Lord Himself must have cast His eyes upon the empty spaces when He declared, "I have stretched My hand over the empty spaces and hung the world on nothing."
And, in my mind's eye, when I looked at those bare grounds, I caught a glimpse of a university which was nothing yet, but I could see it by faith.
I knew this truly was going to be a university, but wholly different in its calling to "educate the whole man!"
But the battle was just begun.
17
T HE B ATTLE OF S PIRIT O VER M IND
NE OF THE universities I had attended as a young man was having a difficult time obtaining and retaining professors with Ph.D.'s who were genuinely Christians and committed to the goals of the university. The chairman of the board of this denomination-owned campus was a warm, personal friend of mine. He took a deep interest in the development of Oral Roberts University.
O
One day on Tulsa's Southern Hills Golf Course, he said, "Oral, there are times we almost despair of getting committed Christian professors. It's almost to the point where some believe we ought to be happy that if they are not Christians, they at least do not oppose us. Of course, we can't accept that."
Then he said, "Everything you do to build ORU will be tough—raising the money, getting the buildings up, having a great library, recruiting students who believe in what you're doing—nothing will be easy. But I tell you, my brother, getting and keeping a faculty of scholars who are truly Christian and wholly committed to the founding purposes of the university will be your toughest assignment."
"Thank you," I replied. "I needed to hear that."
He was totally correct.
In some ways God helped me to anticipate the faculty recruitment challenge and their continued dedication to our goals and Purposes. Earlier I had asked Carl Hamilton, editor of our Abun-dant Life ministry monthly magazine, if he would be interested in taking a leave of absence for the purpose of earning his doctorate; he had already completed his master's degree. I explained that he would also be preparing for a higher role in helping me operate the university.
Carl's grandparents had been among those Pentecostals who were instrumental in leading my parents to Christ. They were strong and reliable people, the kind who could be counted on. Carl's parents had been cut out of the same mold, and so was Carl. An able writer and editor, committed to the Lord
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and my healing ministry with the whole of his being, reliable in every way, Carl was the one I felt led to for the future task of being the ultimate academic leader of ORU.
We talked a long time. We prayed. We brought up the pros and cons facing us. We both agreed academic excellence with integrity was a must because I always insisted on excellence and integrity in all I undertook. I felt he was that same kind of young man.
He and his wife, Joyce, with whom he shared all his dreams and plans, made the decision to accept my suggestion. Carl enrolled in the University of Arkansas, choosing to major in English literature. But he confided in his Ph.D. counselor that he wanted to learn all he could about university administration. Our ministry funded Carl and his family as they pursued their goal with the spirit of contentment and dedication for which I had hoped.
That was in 1961, four years before ORU was to open officially.
I had a deep knowing that God was directing my every footstep. Although I felt an intensity in my actions, I was not in panic. The Holy Spirit was in charge.
Meanwhile, I sought out an old friend, Dr. John Messick of North Carolina, a Holy Spirit-filled educator, who in one poll was ranked among the ten top educators in America. He had earned his Ph.D. from New York University and had spent nearly forty years in higher education. He knew me and loved my calling. Although a Methodist layman, he was Spirit-filled as I was, and we were compatible.
Dr. Messick was nearing his retiring years when I called him to come to Tulsa and counsel me in building ORU. He had remembered our talks years ago that the time would come for me to build God a university. It didn't take me long to see that I should ask him to pray about becoming the founding dean and chief academic leader of the new school.
I told him about Carl Hamilton, who was only twenty-eight years old, and my plans for him after he received his Ph.D. He was glad to see I was thinking ahead.