John G. Lake manifested a marvellous ministry in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord used Lake to cast demons out of numerous insane people who became normal afterwards. Thousands of awesome real healings from God occurred through Lake’s ministry. These were real healings, not merely confessed healings which never actualised in people’s bodies.

When speaking of Lake, Gordan Lindsay (the founder of Christ For the Nations) said: “In Africa God gave him a revival unprecedented since the days of the apostles. The fire spread throughout the nation, and hundreds of churches were raised up. Miracles occurred of such magnitude as to amaze the world and gave him audience with many leaders of his time. Returning from Africa to Sokane, Washington (in the United States), his ministry is said to have resulted in 100,000 healings in a period of five years.” [1]

John Lake was one of the founders of the Apostolic Faith Mission which is one of the largest Pentecostal denominations in southern Africa today.

Lake taught that the secret of a powerful ministry of healing was not just much you can believe and confess healings for others, but how much the healing minister surrenders to God and His Presence within him or her: “The real secret of the ministry of healing is in permitting the grace of God in your heart to flow out through your hands and your nerves into the other life. This is the real secret. And one of the greatest works God has to perform is to subject our flesh to God. Many Christians, the deepest Christians who really know God in their spirit and enjoy communion with Him, are compelled to wait until a process of spiritualization takes place in them before God can reveal Himself through them. Do not imprison Christ in you. Let Him live, let Him manifest Himself, let Him find vent thorough you…A minister of Jesus Christ…ministers God Himself into the very spirits and souls and bodies of men. That is the reason a Christian throws down the bars of his nature and invites God to come in and take possession of his being. The incoming of God into our body, into our soul, into our spirit accomplishes marvellous things in the nature of man…The medium by which God undertakes to bless the world is through the transmission of Himself. the Spirit of God is His own substance, the substance of His being, the very nature and quality of the presence and nature of God. Consequently, when we speak of the Spirit of God being transmitted to man, we are not talking about an influence, either spiritual or mental. We are talking about the transmission of the living substance and being of God into your being and into mine. Not a mental effect, but a living substance, the living being and actual life transmitted, imparted, coming from God into your being.” [2]

 

Kathryn Kuhlman

 

Kathryn Kuhlman seems to have had the most effective healing ministry of any woman in history. In 50 years of ministry, she ministered before about 100 million people. Another well known healing minister went to one of Kathryn’s services in 1971 and spoke of how he came to see that her ministry was far more anointed and deeper than his own and all other healing ministries he had seen: “Recounting that moment, Oral said, ‘I looked around. It was a different audience than came to my meetings. You could tell this was an audience that had touched the so-called top people as well as the more common like myself. Then all of a sudden, there was a change which swept over her being. I could see it from the balcony. She said, ‘There is someone over on the left who is feeling the presence of God and is being healed. Stand up and come forward.’ I turned and saw a woman standing with a little child. The child was in braces and crutches. That little thing stood up, and they were helping as he tried to put one foot in front of the other. By the time they got halfway down the aisle, they stopped. They took off the braces and they took away the crutches and the little boy took a step – and took another step. When he got to the big steps which led to the platform, people started to help him up. ‘Don’t touch him,’ Kathryn said. ‘Let’s see what the Holy Spirit has done.’ ‘I was absolutely broken up.’ Oral continued. ‘When the little boy was turned loose, he didn’t walk, he ran.’ By that time I knew Kathryn Kuhlman was God’s anointed vessel, and I thrilled because as I sat there I saw things that God hadn’t done through me. I saw things God hadn’t done through anybody I had seen. I rejoiced because God was so great. He was greater than I could conceive Him. He was greater than she could conceive Him.”  [3]

Before her healing ministry fully began to operate, Kathryn Kuhlman went to a tent meeting of a noted healing evangelist. She went there hoping to learn from the minister, but instead came away very discouraged by the fleshly imitation she saw of real Holy Spirit – anointed ministry. Jamie Buckingham recorded her experience: “It was a difficult experience for Kathryn. One of the most difficult of her life. She drove to Erie alone, determined to remain incognito. The giant tent was located on the south edge of the city. The signs, as she entered the parking lot read. ‘MIRACLE REVIVAL. SIGHT FOR THE BLIND! HEARING FOR THE DEAF! POWER TO GET WEALTH!’

Taking a seat on the back row, she waited. When the evangelist came on the platform, he came on as though shot for a canon. At one point he got up and walked on the back of the long bench behind the pulpit itself. At another time he leap-frogged over the pulpit itself. The audience was worked into a frenzy, screaming, wailing, almost beyond control. Kathryn later described it as a ‘nightmare come to life.’

During the service, he auctioned off pieces of his old revival tent, to the highest bidders, which he promised would bring health and prosperity to those who wore them on their bodies or slept with them under their pillows. As the meeting grew more intense the preacher began to scream, saying he felt a ‘spell coming on,’ which he indicated was a ‘Holy Ghost unction’ enabling him to lay hands on the sick and they would be healed. People in the congregation crowded into the aisles, swaying back and forth. When the meeting was at the peak of frenzy, a healing line was formed. This line belied the seemingly spontaneous nature of the meeting, for each person who wanted to be in it had previously been assigned a number at the gate. Thus, Kathryn noted with dismay, people had to wait, sometimes for days to have their number come up. After all, the evangelist could only pray individually with so many people in one evening.

The people lined up by the scores. One by one the evangelist went down the line. Checking cards and slapping people on the head and commanding them to ‘BE HEALED!’ Many of them keeled to the floor. Others screamed and shook. But Kathryn could not help but notice that the more seriously ill patients were steered out of the healing line to an ‘invalids’ tent’ away from the prying eyes of the public. While some of the people did seem to be genuinely helped – perhaps even healed – the vast majority of those who had broken their crutches had to be helped out of the tent by sympathetic loved ones – still unable to walk. To those the preacher proclaimed that their faith was not strong enough yet; that they should come back the next night for more of the same.

In talking about that night, Kathryn said, ‘I began to weep. I could not stop. Those looks of despair and disappointment on the faces I had seen, when told that only their lack of faith was keep them from God, were to haunt me for weeks. Was this the God of all mercy and great compassion?’ I left the tent, and with hot tears streaming down my face I looked up and cried, ‘They have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid Him.’

Years later Kathryn wrote, ‘I could not see the hand of God in man’s superfluity of zeal, and I saw the harm that was being done in attributing everything to ‘lack of faith’ on the part of the individual who had not received his healing. Inside myself, I was crushed: my heart told me that God could do anything; my mind told me that through ignorance and lack of spiritual knowledge, there were those who were bringing a reproach on something that was sacred and wonderful and accessible to all. No preacher had to tell me that the power of God was real…I was assured of these facts as I read the Word of God.’”[4]

Some other things we can learn from Kathryn Kuhlman’s ministry are these: Kathryn believed being born-again was more important than being healed. [5] Also, in Kathryn’s meetings sometimes people were slain in the Spirit. But she did not encourage nor discourage this from happening. [6] She did not push people over and then pretend the Holy Spirit caused the people to fall. I myself was pushed over at a large conference in about 1977 by an over-exuberant Australian preacher.

Smith Wigglesworth was an early British Pentecostal revivalist. He was always smiling and never without his Bible, the only book he ever read. He saw almost every type of healing miracle from God in his ministry including the raising of the dead. He made some very successful evangelistic tours in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Frodesham said Wigglesworth “filled the biggest halls, ministered to record crowds and prayed for thousands”. [7]

If we read the words of Kathryn Kuhlman, John G. Lake and Smith Wigglesworth, we find that they taught Jesus Christ has provided healing in the atonement for all believers [8] Lake and Wigglesworth also taught that healings are mainly received by trusting faith. [9] But the difference between Kuhlman, Lake and Wigglesworth, and numerous modern healing ministries was Kuhlman, Lake and Wigglesworth had an extremely strong preaching emphasis on practical holiness, purity, obedience to God and repentance from all known sin, whereas numerous modern healing ministries mention these things rarely (if at all) and instead preach pitiful easy believism “gospels”.

For example, Lake said, “Sin manifests itself in three ways: in thought, in acts, in nature. Salvation is a complete transformation. God takes possession of man, changes his thoughts; in consequence his acts change, his nature is new. A Christian is not a reformed man. He is a man renewed, remade by the Spirit of God, a man indwelt by God…” [10]

Lake also said, “I believe God by His Spirit has baptised many in the Holy Ghost. But beloved, we have not comprehended the greatness of God’s intent. Not that we have not received the Spirit, but our lives have not been sufficiently surrendered to God. We must keep on ascending right to the throne, right to the heart of God, right into the soul of the glorified…A weak Christianity always wants to drop to the imperfect and adjust itself to the popular mind. But a real Christianity seeks to be made perfect in God, both in character and gifts.” [11] Lake is not here teaching believers can be in a state of permanent sinless perfection in this life, but what we should all be progressing towards.

Lake also stated, “Christianity is the ringing triumph of the mind of God. It is the blessed victory that the individual feels in his own heart of the consciousness of the presence and power of God within the soul which makes man the master now, and gives him the consciousness of mastery over sin and over the powers of sickness and death”. [12] Note Lake emphasised the possibility of practical victory over sin through Jesus Christ in our daily lives, not just victory over sickness.

Lake also declared, “Sanctification is calculated to apply to the needs of all our nature; first of the spirit, second of the soul, third of the body. Over and over again I have repeated these blessed words of John Wesley as he defined sanctification: ‘Sanctification is possessing the mind of Christ and all the mind of Christ.’” [13]

The church needs apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers and other leaders with the awesome power of the Holy Spirit, righteous moral character, honesty about money, unconditional  surrender to God and straight repentance preaching like that done by Charles Finney, George Whitefield, Peter Cartwright, John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Evan Roberts, John Lake, Kathryn Kulhman and Smith Wigglesworth.

I love seeing powerful ministry in the Holy Spirit with miracles, healings, genuine gifts of the Spirit and spiritual manifestations which give glory to God and result in true conversions.