How I Came To Devote My Life to the Ministry of Healing

John G. Lake

No one can understand the tremendous hold the revelation of Jesus as a present day Healer took on my life, and what it meant to me, unless they first understand my environment.

I was one of 16 children. Our parents were strong, vigorous, healthy people. My mother died at the age of 75, and my father, still lives at the time of this writing', and is 77.

Before my knowledge and experience of the Lord as our Healer, we buried eight members of the family. A strange train of sicknesses, resulting in death, had followed the family. For 32 years some member of our family was an invalid. During this long period, our home was never without the shadow of sickness.

As I think back over my boyhood and young manhood, there comes to mind remembrances like a nightmare: sickness, doctors, nurses, hospitals, hearses, funerals, graveyards, and tombstones; a sorrowing household; a brokenhearted mother and grief stricken father, struggling to forget the sorrows of the past, in order to assist the living members of the family who needed their love and care.

When Christ was revealed to us as our Healer, my brother who had been an invalid for 22 years, upon whom my Father had spent a fortune for unavailing medical assistance was dying. He bled incessantly from his kidneys and was kept alive through the assimilation of blood creating foods which produced blood almost as fast as it flowed from his person. I have never known any man to suffer so extremely and for so long as he did.

A sister, 34 years of age, was then dying with five cancers in her left breast. Before being turned away to die, she had been operated on five times at a large hospital in Detroit, Michigan, by a German surgeon of repute. After the operations, four other "heads" developed, making five cancers in all.

Another sister lay dying of an issue of blood. Day by day, her lifeblood flowed away until she was in the very throes of death.

In my own life and circumstances, there were similar conditions. I had married and established my own home; but very soon after marriage, the same train of conditions that had followed my father's family seemed to appear in mine. My wife became an invalid from heart disease and tuberculosis. She would lose her heart action and lapse into unconsciousness. Sometimes I would find her lying unconscious on the floor or in her bed, having been suddenly stricken.

Stronger and stronger stimulants became necessary to revive her heart until we were using nitroglycerine tablets in a final, heroic effort to stimulate the action of her heart.

After these heart spells, she would remain in a semi paralytic state for weeks, the result of over stimulation, the physicians said.

But suddenly, in the midst of the deepest darkness, when baffled physicians stood back and acknowledged their inability to help, when the cloud of darkness and death was again hovering over the family the message of one godly minister, great enough and true enough to God to proclaim the whole truth of God, brought the light of God to our souls!

We took our dying brother to a Healing Home in Chicago, where prayer was offered for him with the laying on of hands. He received an instant healing and arose from his deathbed a well man. He walked four miles, returned home, and took a partnership in our father's business.

Great joy and a marvelous hope sprang up in our hearts! A real manifestation of the healing power of God was before us. We quickly arranged to take our sister who suffered from cancers, to the same Healing Home. We had to take her there on a stretcher. As we carried her into the healing meeting, she was speaking within her soul, Others may be healed because they are so good,

but I fear healing is not for me. It seemed more than her soul could grasp.

But after listening from her cot to the preaching and teaching of the Word of God on healing through Jesus Christ, hope sprang up in her soul. She was prayed for and hands were laid on her. As the prayer of faith arose to God, the power of God descended upon her, thrilling her being. Her pain instantly vanished! The swelling disappeared gradually. The large core cancer turned black and in a few days fell out. The smaller ones disappeared. The mutilated breast began to regrow, and it became a perfect breast again.

How our hearts thrilled! Words alone cannot tell this story! A new faith sprang up within us. If God could heal our dying brother and our dying sister, causing cancers to disappear, He could heal anything or anybody!

Then our sister with the issue of blood began to look to God for her healing. She and her husband were devout Christians; and although they prayed, their prayers seemed unanswered for a time. Then one night I received a telephone call and was told that if I wished to see her in this life, I must come to her bedside at once.

Upon arriving, I found that death was already upon her. She had passed in unconsciousness. Her body was cold. No pulse was discernable. Our parents knelt, weeping, beside her bed, and her husband knelt at the foot of the bed in sorrow. Her baby lay in his crib.

A great cry to God, such as had never before come from my soul, went up to God. She must not die! I would not have it! Had not Christ died for her? Had not God's healing power been manifested for the others, and should she not likewise be healed?

No words of mine can convey to another soul the cry that was in my heart and the flame of hatred for death and sickness that the Spirit of God had stirred within me. The very wrath of God seemed to possess my soul!

After telephoning and telegraphing some believing friends for assistance in prayer, we called on God. I rebuked the power of death in the name of Jesus Christ. In less than an hour, we rejoiced to see the evidence of returning life. My sister was thoroughly healed! Five days later she came to my father's home and joined the family for Christmas dinner.

My wife, who had been slowly dying for years, suffering untold agonies,

was the last of the four to receive God's healing touch. But, oh, before God's power came upon her, I realized as never before the character of consecration God was asking, and what a Christian should give to God.

Day by day, death silently stole over her. Then the final hours came. A brother minister who was present walked over and stood at her bedside. Then returning to me with tears in his eyes, he said, "Be reconciled to let your wife die."

I thought of my babies. I thought of her whom I loved as my own soul, and a flame burned in my heart. I felt as if God had been insulted by such a suggestion! Yet I had many things to learn.

In the midst of my soul storm, I returned home, picked up my Bible from the mantelpiece, and threw it on the table. If ever God caused a man's Bible to open to a message his soul needed, surely He did it then for me.

The Book opened at the l0th chapter of Acts, and my eyes fell on the 38th verse, which read, God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the DEVIL; for God was with him.

Like a flash from the blue, these words pierced my heart: Oppressed of the devil! So, God was not the author of sickness! And the people whom Jesus healed had not been made sick by God!

Hastily taking a reference to another portion of the Word, I read the words of Jesus in Luke 13 16. Ought not this woman . . . whom SATAN HATH B0UND, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond? Once again Jesus attributed sickness to the devil.

What a faith sprang up in my heart! What a flame of knowledge concerning the Word of God and the ministry of Jesus went over my soul! I saw as never before why Jesus healed the sick: He was doing the will of His Father; and in doing His father's will, He was destroying the works of the devil. Hebrews 2:14.

I said in my soul, this work of the devil this destruction of my wife's life in the name of Jesus Christ shall cease, for Christ died and Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.

We decided on 9:30 a.m. as the time when prayer would be offered for my wife's recovery, Again, I telephoned and telegraphed friends to join me in prayer.

At 9:30 1 knelt at her deathbed and called on the living God. The power of God came upon her, thrilling her from head to feet. Her paralysis left, her heart became normal, her cough ceased, her breathing became regular, and her temperature became normal. The power of God was flowing, through her, seemingly as blood flows through veins,

As I prayed, I heard a sound from her lips not the sound of weakness as before, but a strong, clear voice. She cried out, "Praise God, I am healed! With that, she caught hold of the bed clothing, threw it back, and in a moment was standing on the floor.

What a day! Will I ever forget it? The power of God thrilled our souls, and the joy of God possessed,' our hearts because of her recovery.

The news spread throughout the city, the state, and the nation. Newspapers discussed it and our home became a center of inquiry. People travelled great distances to see and talk with her. She was flooded with letters.

A new light dawned in our souls. The church had diligently taught us that the days of miracles had passed; and believing this, eight members of the family had been permitted to die. But, now, with the light of truth flashing in our hearts, we saw that as a lie, no doubt invented by the devil and diligently heralded as truth by the church, thus robbing mankind of its rightful inheritance through the blood of Jesus.

People came to our home, saying, "Since God l1as healed you, surely He will heal us. Pray for us." We were forced into it. God answered, and many were healed.

Many years have passed since then, but no day has gone by in which God has not answered prayer. I have devoted my life, day and night, to this ministry; awl people have been healed not by ones and I twos, nor by hundreds, or even by thousands, but by tens of thousands.

In due time, God called me to South Africa, where I witnessed a manifestation of the healing power of God such as the world perhaps has not seen since the days of the apostles.

Christian men were baptized in the Holy Ghost, went forth in the mighty power of God, proclaiming the name of Jesus and laying hands on the sick. And the sick were healed! Sinners, witnessing these evidences of the power of God, cried out in gladness and gave themselves to the service of God. Like it was in the days of Jesus: There was great joy in that city and that nation Acts 8:8.

Finally, God brought me to Spokane, where we have ministered to hundreds of sick persons each week, the city is filled with the praises of God More because of the blessed manifestations of God's Adventures in God healing power everywhere. People have come from as far as 5,000 miles away for healing. Some have written letters. Others have telegraphed. Some have cabled from halfway round the world, asking for prayer, and God has graciously answered.

Ministers and churches throughout the land have seen that, although the church has taught that the days of miracles only belonged to the times of the apostles, that statement was a falsehood. They have seen that the healing power of God is as available to the honest soul today as it was in the days of Christ on the earth. The gifts and callings of God are without repentance, and Jesus is the Healer still.