Following the Voice of God | 75 Years in Ministry (Part 2)

One of the first people that I saw healed was when I was a very young pastor and evangelist in England. Shortly after finishing college, I left the church I had pastored as a student, in Dorking, Surrey, and I was called to take over a church in Harrogate, North England, and prepare for an evangelistic crusade. I was only twenty years old. Soon after arriving, Mr Corker, one of the men in the church, 73 years old, became ill. He refused to go to the doctor until it was too late – they had to rush him into hospital where they diagnosed terminal cancer. He was so sick, they took away most of his stomach, gave him a catheter to pass the water, and a colostomy – and sent him home to die.

The doctors expected him to live for just three weeks. As his pastor, I went many times to his home to pray with him and I discovered that although he had a difficult very blunt ‘Yorkshire’ character, this man loved God from the bottom of his heart. I saw him in a new way, not just as a dying man, not just as a difficult deacon in my church, but I saw how much he loved the Lord. One Sunday morning, I brought a group of people from the church with me to his home. I asked the others to join hands in a circle with me as I laid hands on him. I was only young and with not much knowledge about faith or healing in a practical way, but I commanded the sickness to go. I still remember how I prayed: it wasn't an instant miracle, but it's one of the most amazing stories of my life. For weeks after that, as I continued to visit him, I watched as day after day the catheter tubes would get blocked – only afterward I realised that I was seeing the cancer in small pieces come away from his body!