I have spent the last twenty three years of my life studying divine healing, what it is and how and why it happens. True divine healing that will last can only come from God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Santeria and voodoo priest can heal with the power of Satan as can other worshippers of the occult, but this would never last since it comes from an evil realm. Anything not based on the word of God can be counterfeit and in the end be a curse and not a blessing. God allows this in order to teach men how to find the genuine article. Divine healing is for any person who needs it, it is not for any special person since we are all unworthy of anything from a Holy God. The only requirement is to receive it from the true source.
It is one thing to read the bible and see the miracles Jesus did, but it is another thing to read of people like you and me doing these same miracles. My first book on miracles was by Smith Wigglesworth an English plumber who learned to trust God for all his needs. After losing his wife he spent the rest of his life preaching and performing great miracles around the world in the name of Jesus. I read the book three times after hearing Kenneth Hagin say he had read it all his life. The book is Ever Increasing Faith, next was the Apostle of Faith Smith Wigglesworth, by Stanley Frodsham. I found a book about Stephen and George Jefferies who did great miracles in England and Wales. There is a miracle here of a young child who was born without an eye. When Stephen Jefferies laid hands on her the eye grew in the socket right in front of the people. This was in the book These Men I Knew.
These Men I Knew, by Donald Gee was one of my priced possessions until I lent it out and never got it back. People make idols of these books and hold them for good luck, but that's not what they are for; they are to teach you faith. The book speaks of Howard Carter who went on to mentor Lester Sumrall, who later would mentor Rod Parsley. It tells the stories of the Jefferies, and Evan Roberts another great man of God. Books by and about Kathryn Kuhlman, especially, I believe in Miracles by K.K. and Destiny's Daughter by Jamie Buckingham allow you to see that God can use anyone who will let him. To this list I could add Gods Generals by Robert Liardon a fine book on the imperfect men that God uses. Many of the men in these books have had many problems, sometimes moral, some with bad doctrine as with William Branham and his oneness doctrine. But God does not ask men for their opinion on who he can and can't use, He just uses them and then lets men argue about it all they want.
William Branham is considered the greatest healer of the twenty century even though he was outside of main stream American religion. In his time we also had Oral Roberts, AA Allen, Jack Coe, and Gordon Lindsay. Lonny Frisbee also did many miracles among the Jesus people movement and had many conversions numbering in the thousands both here and around the world. His was a ministry plagued with rumors of homosexuality, but that did not stop God from trying to reach the people no one else could reach, the hippy generation of his day. Aimee Semple McPherson was another great faith healer used by God to reach the unsaved, along with Marie Woodworth Etter, and Lillian Yeoman. Of these three McPherson had the most controversies and gossip, but that did not stop God from using her and leaving a great organization behind.
If you want to have faith that can move mountains you have to see it at work in others who have already been there and done that. This is where these books are so important for us who want to see the supernatural back at work in the church. The miraculous will not come on its own it must be bought in by men who have faith in God and can hear his voice. Others who have had great success in healing were Joseph Seymour of Azusa St. fame and Alexander Dowie who in later life was to have great problems with a spirit of fantasy about being Elijah the prophet, and hording money. But none of this takes away from his great ministry that produced the likes of John G. Lakes and Gordon Lindsay as well as Lillian Yeoman.
Because we are a fallen race, which even as born again Christians is imperfect, we always tend to extremes and suspicions, envy, and pride, which is natural in this corrupted world we live in. To us anything God does for someone else which he has not done for us has to be of the devil since we should have seen it or had it first. Healing is the most controversial subject in the church today for those who have never laid hands on someone and seemed them healed or been healed themselves of some sickness by God. To those who have been blessed with a healing it is not controversial, it is just a fact of life, God does heal.
The skeptics point to the sinfulness and greed of healing preachers and wrong doing of some, while believers point to some doctrine which condemns healing as not for this day and age. But for a dying man or woman whose only hope is God, a man's doctrine or gossip about some vessel the Lord has decided to use is simply nonsense. There is an example of this in Demos Shakarin's book, The Happiest People on Earth, where the power of God falls in a hospital room on his sister, I believe it was, and makes her whole in one minute when the man of God commands her to be healed in Jesus name. There is also a seen where a drunk heals masses of people than runs of with the money. How can this happen you might ask? It is the power in the name of Jesus, not in man's holiness or lack of, the preacher just has faith that the name will perform as it should, and it does.
In the modern age in which we live we have the likes of Benny Hinn, Morris Cerullo, Randy Clark, Steve Hill, Todd Bently, and Reinhard Bonnke, who has done thousands of miracles around the world in the name of Jesus. We have woman like Heidi Baker, Patricia King, Marilyn Hickey and others who have taken the gossip of salvation and healing to all parts of the planet. These are all controversial figures of the modern age and not like their forefathers. But man is imperfect and given to excess in his presumption of who he is, it is this that God uses to confound the wise and intellectual and make his power known. The person who criticizes will never say, "God, here I am, send me to Mozambique or Haiti." Instead he will gossip and slander out of envy and jealousy and never bring anything positive to the table.
But this will never stop the Almighty from being who he is and using who he feels fit to use, not because of whom they are but because of whom he is. Other books of faith worthy of reading are, The Fourth Dimension, by Paul Yonggi Cho, Shout It from the Mountain Top, by Pat Robertson, I Believe in Visions, by Kenneth Hagan, The Final Quest, by Rick Joyner, The Merismos,by Randy Shankle, Azusa St. by Frank Bartleman, How to Heal the Sick by Charles and Frances Hunter, The Cross and the switchblade by David Wilkerson and Mr. Pentecost by David DuPlessis to which I would give five stars. All of these books have regular people who went on to do great things for the Lord, something that should give us great comfort and faith. If they can do it you can to, for God is no respecter of person. They are all imperfect men and women some worse than others but all believing that God could raise them above the heap.
About Author / Additional Info:
There are many websites about these men and women of God, here are two good ones.
http://www.pentecostalpioneers.org/pioneerslist.html http://www.revival-library.org/
