Demonstration Service

Masonic Temple
May 13, 1917

This ministry purposes not only to teach the things of the Spirit of God, but to teach them in such a way that the common mind, unschooled in the Scriptures and the things of the Spirit, may know,  comprehend, and believe.

During the week, I was called into consultation by a group of lawyers – one of them attends our church – concerning an individual whose past state of health and present state of health was a matter of debate in the minds of the judge and lawyers.

This woman had testified that a year or nine months ago, after having been an invalid for fourteen years, she received an entirely instantaneous healing of all her troubles and was a well woman.  The evidence figured in a monetary way, and it seemed to be the desire of all parties to get at the real facts.

During the course of our conversation two of the lawyers said, “Mr. Lake, we haven’t the least doubt that people who have minor and nervous diseases are healed, but we have a serious question in our minds if people with real diseases are healed.”  And I ventured the suggestion that if they would send a representative to our three p.m.  service at the Masonic Temple, they would find that the majority of people who were healed did not have minor, but major diseases get healed also, for it is about the only place they get healed.  Nervous diseases are a horror to the medical profession and always have been, and any first-rate physician will confirm my word.

Mr. Halford, Mrs. Annie Norton, Mrs. Harriet Petersen, Mrs. H.E. Peterson, Mrs. Carter, Mr. Ben Long, Mrs. Ben Long, Mrs. Carl Peterson, Mrs. Gilbertson, Mrs. Lamphear. (Mr. Lake: “Have any of you been notified to be here?” Answer: “No.”)  This is not a prearranged service, these witnesses are samples of what God has done to hundreds in this audience.

I believe each one of these individuals were diseased differently form the other.  All of these people in times past have given public testimony at one time or another in the services, and our stenographer has the testimonies on record.  So it will not be necessary to give them in full.  I propose to give a very short statement of their healing and then it can be confirmed from the original record if necessary.

 

Testimony of Mrs. C. D. Peterson

Mrs. Peterson’s case was a tubercular one-tuberculosis of the spine and kidneys.

Lake: “Mrs. Olson (nurse), how  long before her healing was she operated on?”

Mrs. Olson: “About five months.”

Five months before her healing, Mrs. Peterson was operated on, and on account of the tubercular condition of the flesh, the wounds refused to heal.  Finally, proud flesh grew up in these wounds.  The first time I went to her house ( I went in a taxi) I could hear her scream when I was within a block and a half of the house.

Her healing began from the time she was first prayed for.  Brother Fogwill prayed for her first.  Her healing continued without cessation until she was perfectly well.

How many pounds of flesh have you put on since your healing, Mrs. Peterson?

Mrs. Peterson: “About sixty-five pounds” (125-190 pounds).

Medical science admits that the putting on of flesh is the final demonstration of the healing of tubercular people.  When thy put on flesh that settles the subject of tuberculosis.

I might say in a word: We do not examine wounds critically, but after I had been ministering to Mrs. Peterson a short time, the nurse said, “In my examination of the wounds, I find they are full of proud flesh,” and she was troubled.

I replied “Never mind.  God is bigger than proud flesh,” and I went back and prayed again.  When we returned the next time the nurse said, “Mr. Lake, the proud flesh has disappeared.”  Surely!

 

Testimony of Mrs. Ben Long

I never could get her testimony without her husband.  Mr. Long came on the platform.  In order to get before your minds some of the difficulties with which people contend when being healed, let me say: Ben was raised in a Christian family, but he was somewhat of a pugilist.  In his boxing bouts he had been violently struck at different times in the region of the stomach, until finally a cancer of the stomach appeared. He was never operated on, but this growth appeared in him, causing the most violent suffering.  Physicians believed it to be a cancer.

I asked him what his business was, and he said, “Fighting booze.”

Mrs. Long was raised under a different environment.  She was a Roman Catholic.  She became paralyzed on one side.  As Ben returned from work one evening, he met a man who had been an invalid, and when he inquired how it was that he was well, he told him he had been to our healing rooms and was healed.  The gentleman advised him to bring his sick wife and also go himself to the healing rooms, so he did.  He hired a motor car and brought his wife to the healing rooms.

Mrs. Long came into the healing rooms through the reception room door.  We laid our hands on her and prayed.  She passed out into the hall and when part way down the hall she discovered, to her amazement, that she was perfectly well.  Her paralysis had disappeared.  She returned through the waiting room again and came into the healing room to show us that the Lord had healed her.  She has been a well woman ever since.

When the brother saw his wife healed, he came himself, and he was healed likewise.  Bless God.  Healing in body and healed in soul and healed in spirit, to the extent that ever since, or very shortly after their healing, I have been in the habit of calling them on the telephone and sending them to minister to others in the name of the Lord, and they are healed.

I want you to realize that when a soul comes in touch with the Lord Jesus Christ, they are healed not only in their physical being, but healed in the soul as well; and no man ever received the touch of God in hi body but what he was enriched in the consciousness of hi spirit. So Mr. Long’s cancer went with his sin.

Testimony of Mrs. Annie Norton

This is the most medically examined woman I ever knew.  She was examined and pronounced incurable by seven hundred physicians. Two hundred and fifty physicians in Spokane examined her at a public clinic in the Old National Bank Building.  Dr. O’Neil had charge of the case.

Mrs. Norton was then taken to Seattle, where the physicians of Seattle examined her.  Then she was taken to Tacoma and the physicians there examined her, and then she was taken to Portland where the Portland physicians examined her and later to Olympia, Washington, where the doctors of Olympia examined her.  Her case became celebrated in medical history and in the medical journals. 

Since her healing, she presented herself to one of the best-known experts of this country, Dr. Blake Baldwin of Seattle, who have a written statement that there is nothing whatever to show that she was sick, excepting the scars on her body.

Mrs. Norton’s case was one of the strangest in medical history.  In fat, it has never been diagnosed.  Dr. O’Neil told me he would sit by her side and watch brown spots appear on her body.  They would burn until in an hour, they would be an inch in diameter and from two to three inches deep.  That condition continued for four years.  The disease would seem to burn out in one spot, and then another spot would appear a few inches away.  And so it went on, searching up and down the body during these terrible years.

Because of her suffering, it was impossible for her to sleep except through the use of narcotics, and consequently she became a morphine fiend.  She tells me she received 250 tablets every two weeks from Spokane, besides nine dollars worth a month that she got from one druggist at Olympia.

This hand that you see (raising one hand) became like that in one night.  That is, the flesh of the hand absolutely disappeared to the bone and the bones of the hand were entirely exposed, and the little finger fell off at the first joint.

In some respects the disease was like gangrene, but it was not gangrene.  In some respects it was like leprosy, but it was not leprosy.  The sensation in her body was that of a burning, consuming fire.  I have not discussed this phase with the physicians, but my judgment is that a gaseous state of some character was established in her body, and when it broke out in one place on her body, all the gas in the body would cometo that spot and burn out.  Then another would begin in another place. That is only my own conclusions.

People have an idea that all these healings are performances by Mr. Lake or Mr. Westwood or Mr. LeDoux or Mr. Fogwill or some other official minister or preacher- not at all.  This woman was healed when two simple women of her church, one a widow with five children and another married woman with five children, agreed together they would take a little time to give to the service of the Lord.  They met her little son at a restaurant and inquiring who he was ad so on, he happened to mention that his mother was sick and the doctors had amputated one arm and were about to amputate the other.  So they went to see her and found her in the throes of death, blind so she could not see.  The physicians had told her that unless she permitted them to amputate the other arm she could not live, and that if they did she would only live a few days.

These women knelt by her side and as they knelt praying, Jesus appeared to her, standing at the foot of the bed.  He walked around and spoke to her, saying, “If I heal you will you tell the story of your deliverance where ever you can?”  She answered Him that she would.  He reached out His loving hand and touched the tips of her fingers and in one instant the Spirit of God flowed through her being and the fire went out and the woman was healed.  Blessed be God.

I think her testimony peculiarly valuable in this respect.  There has been so much in recent years to sort of professionalize the ministry of spiritual healing, but this healing proves that it does not belong to the professional healer only, but to the child of God.

Testimony of Mrs. Gilbertson

What would you do if you got your hip out of joint?  That is some like, “What would you do if you got a broken arm?

This sister’s disease was something I do not know.  She suffered most violently.  Her suffering was similar to that of rheumatism, only much more violent.  It seemed to be in the glands.  Lumps would appear in the glands, as large as golf balls, and when I put my hands on her to pray the lumps would travel down the body through the glands.  They moved just as rapidly down the body as my hands did.  Finally, there seemed to be such a condition of atrophy that the tendons and muscles relaxed so that the hip came out of the socket and would turn over just like the hip of a jointed doll.

I have seen many people suffer, and suffer intensely, for I have been in this ministry for twenty-five years, but I never knew anyone to suffer more intensely than Mrs. Gilbertson.  One morning when I went with Brother Fogwill to see her, her suffering was so terrible I could bear to witness it, and that has occurred very rarely in my life.  Finally, I found I was ot getting victory and went out and sat down in the other room, and as I sat quiet in meditation and prayer I felt I should leave her and return to the healing rooms and invite the other to join me in prayer.  So I returned to the healing rooms and who were there, and we sat down and joined our hands and our hearts.  As we prayed, God Almighty put that hip in its place – no human hands were near her.  She lives at 4115 N. Helena Street, four miles from the Healing Room.  That’s long distance healing by the power of God.

Testimony of Mrs. Carter

Mrs. Carter is one of my neighbors.  She lives at 714 south Sherman. Mrs. Carter had a tumor.  For nine months her physicians believed that the woman was pregnant, until after nature’s time had passed.  She continued to grow larger and larger for thirteen months from the beginning, until it was estimated that the tumor would weigh fifteen pounds.   She came to the healing rooms and I ministered to her on three occasions, when there seemed to be no special evidence of healing, beyond that, her body relaxed and became comfortable.  But the fourth time she was ministered to, the Spirit of the Lord came upon her so powerfully that the next morning she returned at eleven o’clock perfectly normal in size.  The tumor had disappeared, not as tumors usually do, in liquid form, or giving any sign of substance whatever.  It simply dematerialized and disappeared and was gone.  God Almighty did it, bless His name!

When I stand in the presence of people like Mrs. Carter and realize what God has done in them, it seems to me that if I had been suddenly brought face-to-face with such things in the first time, an awe of God would get hold of my soul as it did twenty-five years ago, when for the first time I saw God heal people.

Twenty-five years ago this ministry was as new to me as it is to you.  I went into one of John Alexander Dowie’s great meetings in Chicago where a portion of the room was filled with cots on which dying folks lay. My brother, a man who had been an invalid for twenty-two years and the most terrible sufferer I have ever seen, was healed in that room.  Dowie came in and sat down to teach for a little while, and as he looked down and saw the intense suffering of my brother, he dropped his Bible and came down to him and said, “Young fellow, I see you are suffering,” and he prayed for him.  Instantly, the power of God flashed through him.  He arose and walked out of the place in his nightgown.  three others, a great deal like him, were in cots.  He prayed for each one, and one after another received the healing touch and arose from their cots.  when I saw him well, I walked on my tiptoes for about three weeks.  The wonder of God’s power had been revealed to my Methodist soul.

 

Testimony of Mrs. H. E. Peterson

This was a different case altogether.  Mrs. Peterson had a catarrhal condition for twenty years, so terrible that in the latter years of her life it would throw her into unconsciousness and she would remain so for four hours at a stretch, absolutely dead to the world.  These spells would come about twice a month, sometimes twice a week during the last year.

Mrs. Peterson was healed through and through – not in a moment – her healing was gradual, as many healings are.  She became a perfectly well woman and recently gave birth to a beautiful child, and she is a healthy, well, strong woman now.  Bless God.

She tells me that the condition of decay was terrible in the head that sections of bones issued both from the nostrils and the ears.

Testimony of Mrs. Lamphear

 

Mrs. Lamphear’s disease was different from any other I ever knew in some respects.  Mrs. Lamphear was an invalid for about thirteen years.  Her original sickness was caused by a fall, which caused a prolapse of stomach, bowels, and uterus.  Then tuberculosis appeared and later rheumatism.  Her physicians had done everything for her they could, and finally they said, “There is only one other thing we can recommend.  You go to Soap Lake and take the baths.”

So she went.  Now the effect of the baths that were given (and the superintendent said they were hotter than they had ever given to any other patient) was such that it caused the disease to leave the other parts of the body and concentrate in the left limb and produced an abnormal growth until the leg grew three inches longer than the other one and the foot about seven-eights of an inch longer than the other foot.  A lump of bone as large as an orange formed on the knee and destroyed the action of the joint. 

When her healing took place, all of these conditions were removed.  The limb became short at the rate of an inch a week and all the other diseases disappeared.  The bone on the knee likewise.  Mrs. Lamphear was born without the outer rim on the left ear, and no lobe.  Look at it now.

Beloved, there is more than healing in God.  It is not just the subject of the removal of a disease or some nervous state that has gripped you for awhile.  God is a creative power.  The Holy Sirit coming into the person of a sick one comes as a living, creative power.  It is the creation of life in them that drives out disease.  And the incoming of the Spirit of God, the only Creator, does in people just what it has in her, given her an ear that never was there.  It has grown gradually from the day God’s power came upon her in healing.

Testimony of Mrs. Harriet Petersen

 

Mrs. Petersen was a tiny little woman when the Lord healed her, but oh my!  She has put on seventy-seven pounds since she was healed, a little over a year ago.

I want you to realize the wonder of some of these manifestations of God.  Mrs. Petersen was operated on first for fibroid tumors in the uterus and both uterus and ovaries were removed.  A few months later she was operated on for gall stones and had a bad recovery.  In a short time she passed into the very throes of death, and it was in this state she was finally healed.  Brother Westwood knelt in prayer by her bedside and remained all night.  Her condition was such that for a period of about forty minutes they were not able to distinguish whether she was alive or not.  But the power of God came upon her, and she arose from that condition a well woman.  Not only that, but God Almighty gave her back the organs that had been removed.  God is a creative power, God in you a creative power.  He never intended people to be people to be deficient in body, soul, or spirit.  God purposes to come into every life through the Holy Spirit, a divine, living energy, bless God, removing deficiencies, creating strength and life and health and power.  Blessed be God.

The old apostle’s conception of a well-rounded Christian was, “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).  This is Paul’s description of the Spirit of God in man.  “He hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind,” and it takes all three to make a well-rounded Christian.  No sin, no mental weakness, no sickness either.

 

Testimony of Mr. George Halford

 

Brother Halford was one of the first persons to be healed under my ministry in Spokane, within six months or thereabouts after my coming to Spokane.  Mr. Halford was an epileptic.  At the time of his healing he had taken fifty-five fits in twelve hours.  He was out of one into the other averaging, as you will see, about a fit every twelve minutes.

Of course he was unconscious, and in this condition I found him about nine o’clock in the morning as I went to pray with him and watched the awfulness of his state- the lips all bitten to pieces, blood and foam coming from his mouth – these hellish convulsions tearing him to pieces.  Oh, it was the work of the devil.

When I came into the room something from heaven came upon my heart, so intense that I looked up into God’s face and said, “God, if You will let me smite this devil I will lend You all the energies of my soul.”  As I stood by his bedside the Spirit of God came upon me until I could feel God in me like a burning fire.  And when I laid my hands on him and commanded the devil to come out of him in the name of Jesus Christ, I knew he came out.

There are oppressions of the devil and there are possessions, and if there is one thing I regard as possessions of the devil, it is epilepsy.  It is only where God anoints the soul with the real, pure power of God that epileptics are delivered-none of your psychological influences and mind over matter statements, but God the Holy Spirit to destroy.  We have had many epileptics who were not healed because of the fact that there did not come upon our soul that sufficient measure of the Spirit of God to get them delivered. 

I wish I could impress it on you that God comes into the personality of a man, a living force, a divine being, bless God.  I have been so wearied with psychology in the last few years that it almost makes me puke.  Everything in the world is attributed to psychological influences.  But I want to tell you that twenty-five years in this ministry has taught me that there is something way up in God a mighty lot higher than phycological influence. 

The mind is wonderful, but there are a lot of people in the world who never will be healed by psychological powers because the power of the human mind does not reach the case.  It requires the living Spirit of the eternal God to so possess the body and soul and spirit of the servant of God, that God will flame through His nature like a heavenly lightning and destroy the cursed hell that blasts another life, and so bring to pass the will of God.

 

Testimony of Reverend Osborn

 

“I have been a Methodist minister for six years.  The secretary of our Conference would bear me out in my statement.

“My last sermon in my church was last December.  Having been sick in Addy for three months, I came to Spokane.  I was removed to the Deaconess Hospital and had five leading physicians of Spokane to take care of me, the they could do nothing.  Two weeks ago I was dismissed as a hopeless case.  From that time I took God as my physician and have been improving every day and am practically well.

I thank God for this wonderful light that has come to me.  I might say that during my years as a Methodist minister, Bright’s disease has troubled me a great deal, and I thank God He has brought me to the words of the psalmist, ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.’  And surely I have been blessed since I put my trust in my Christ.  I am glad to testify this afternoon that ‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.’

“Brother Fogwill let me into a secret yesterday, and it is a secret I would like to impart to you, for sometimes I have been troubled at night with sleeplessness.  Sometimes I would waken at night, and the Lord would put upon my soul a burden of prayer and I would pray for the work.

“Yesterday, Brother Fogwill quoted that wonderful scripture that, ‘He giveth his beloved sleep.’  And last night after retiring it was impossible for me to sleep.  I said, “Dear Lord, I am Your beloved, and I want to sleep,” and I slept like a child all night.  If you have any trouble with sleeplessness, and you are the beloved of God, just make God come through with His promise.

“Some of you will understand my condition better when I tell you it was Bright’s disease.  In the first analysis they found there was fifteen percent albumin, and the physicians shook their heads and said it was hopeless.  And since the Holy Spirit has taken possession of my life, thank God, that power is working in and through me, and I am here to testify to the goodness of God.  As I said the other afternoon, I am like t=the prophet of old.  I am here, and I would say, ‘Here am I, Lord, send me.’  If God calls me to this blessed work, believe me, I am ready to go.  My father has been upon the firing line leading souls to Christ a long time.

“As Brother Lake said, I am the son of a Methodist minister, and my father was the son of a Methodist minister, but I say today with all love to the church, He has taken all creeds out of me, and thank God I am trusting in my Savior.  I can understand the heart of the old psalmist when he said, ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.’  He was so full of the living God that he could not express his love for Him.  And this afternoon in the language of the beautiful song,

I cannot tell how precious
The Savior is to me
I only can invite you
To come and taste and see.

‘And now since God has healed me, we rejoice together.’”

(Story of a man in Africa healed, who was shot through mouth.  Did not take it.)

 

Testimony of Miss Pearl Paine

This woman was sent here with diabetes to die, and she was healed and today is a very live, healthy, and happy woman.

 

Testimony of Mr. Robertson

 

Thirty years ago, when Robertson was a young boy, he fell and the cartilage was driven in until the bottom of the breast bone and the cartilage were driven in three inches and remained so.  This is what I want you to think about for a moment.  That remained for thirty years, until the second of April when he came to the healing rooms for the first time, and that bone commenced to come out until it is not quite an inch deep an is coming out every day.

I want you to see what God does. I want you to reason about that for a moment.  What does God have to do?

God Almighty is a surgeon.  I saw a cartoon once shoeing how they do things at the St. Luke’s hospital, Chicago.  They said, “Whit is the matter with the man’s leg?

And the old doctor said, “Well, I’ll be blamed if I know.  Cut it off and see.”

How many people in this audience have been healed of nervous diseases?  (Thirteen hands were raised.)

How many have been healed of other diseases?  (Hundred of hands went up.)

That is my answer.  Reporter, take that back to the lawyer and the judge, and the Lord bless you and them too.  I bless God that a day has come when lawyers and judges want to know, “Are these things so?”  It is a good day.  It demonstrates that the mind of man is becoming emancipated, and I prophesy a day to come when divine healing will be recognized worldwide as the highest and surest system of healing practice known to man and will be recognized a both spiritual and scientific.  We need to recognize a new science and one day our schools will teach the science of Pneumatology (the science of Spirit)

As I have studied what in my judgment is the deepest need of the world, Christian and unchristian, I believe it to be the necessity for the consciousness of Christ, a living Savior in the soul of man.

The reason we devote a portion of the service once in a while to a demonstration such as has taken place this afternoon is that the truth is better brought home to the hearts of men through example and by testimony and demonstration than possible by any words that we could utter.

We are approaching the historical date of Pentecost.  Next Lord’s day is commonly known as Pentecost Sunday, the anniversary of the original Pentecost, fifty days after the ascension of Jesus when, as the disciples were gathered together with the little Jerusalem church, numbering one hundred and twenty,

Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.  And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

These are the words in which the coming of the Spirit of God to abide as a living, divine life and power in the nature of man are given in the Word of God.

I want you to observe that the outward manifestations marking the coming of the Spirit were as mighty and intense as were those that characterized the birth of Jesus Christ.  At the birth of Jesus there was the angel chorus, the shepherd watch, the star of the east, and the wise men who came saying, “We have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.”

The coming of the Spirit was the return of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, not to abide in the flesh of one man, Jesus, but to live in the flesh of every Christian soul.  Even the outward manifestations of the Spirit’s coming were as powerful and as convincing as were those that accompanied the birth of the Savior.  Tongues of fire, the presence of the Holy Ghost, a rushing, mighty wind, speaking in other tongues as the angel chorus, wise men searchers, the shepherd guard, or the star in the east.

Christianity in her darkness and dimness from the fourth century to this present hour forgot and failed to recognize that Jesus Christ purposed to be the same mighty, divine energy in the nature of man, bless God, that was characteristic of the life of Jesus Christ on earth.

Yea, bless God, the purpose of Jesus Christ indicated in that day, as declared in the Word of God, was to so revolutionize the nature of man, so enrich him with the grace and fullness of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, that in nature and character and power and purity he should be like his Christ.  Not like his Christ a little bit, but like his Christ within and without, through and through, blessed be God.

I know you feel as you leave this room that your eyes have witnessed and your ears have heard things that possibly the ears of man have rarely heard in fourteen hundred years.  I want you to carry away this conviction: The Lord Jesus Christ purposed by the Holy Ghost to be in you.