In the early 1990s, I attended a large healing crusade held by a healing evangelist. I’ll keep him anonymous because my focus is on the meeting, not the person. I happened on the meeting quite accidentally. I had a seen a poster on the street while walking. As the location was nearby and it had just started, I kept walking.
As I approached the Convention Center, two men came running frantically down the street. Breathless, they asked me, “Are you blind?” “No”, I answered, quite puzzled. “Are you sure?” they insisted. Was this a joke? They didn’t look amused. Finally it began to dawn on me that these guys were dead serious. “I think I would know if I was”, I replied. As I was now quite useless to them, they tore past me seeking a blind man or woman to take to the meeting.
Now, my curiousity was piqued. Who was this evangelist and why were these men frantically seeking blind people to bring to him for healing? I walked into an auditorium and an atmosphere that was tense with expectation. The confident evangelist walked up and down the rows of people, exhibiting the most accurate gift of the Word of Knowledge I had ever seen.
Coming to a couple and their 4 or 5-year old daughter a couple of rows ahead of me, he stopped and asked, “Four doctors have said there’s no hope, haven’t they?” They nodded silently. For our benefit, since the young girl looked physically healthy, he says “she was born deaf.” The couple nod again. The tension is now palpable…(continued tomorrow)
