More Adventures in God

John G. Lake

During my ministry in South Africa, I came across a bachelor who hated everything that was Christian. He had a reputation for cussing preachers off his place.

One day I realized that he had not been seen for it while, so I decided to pay him a visit. Immediately, I was warned as to what kind of a reception I could expect. I went anyway.

Upon entering his home, I observed that he was it very sick man. Before he could say a thing, I tossed my hat down, prayed that God would heal him, and Left.

A few days later he came to church. He was a changed man!

The Christian, the child of God, the Christ man who has committed his body as well as his spirit and soul to God, ought not to not be a subject for healing. He ought to be a subject of continuous, abiding health, because he is filled with the life of God.

Jesus Christ is at once the law and life of God.

When I lived in Africa, one of our departments was the native work. I bless God for the marvels He let me witness among the native people. I believe we had a privilege never accorded any other white man in modern times.

In Basutoland, on Christmas Eve, 1912, the Lord's Supper was administered to 75 healed lepers. They had been healed under the ministry of a black fellow whose sole raiment when we first knew him was a goatskin apron.

It was a beautiful thing to sit with a man under whose ministry 75 lepers had been healed! Some were without noses others without fingers, or toes, or ears.

But I am going to tell you another leper story. Until about seven weeks ago, a man by the name of Young was quarantined in the State of Nebraska. Correspondence with him was made possible through a senator, another leper.

Reared as a Roman Catholic, Young believed in the power of faith. God told him He was going to move in behalf of this deliverance.

Officers of the institution discovered that he had been sending and receiving letters, contrary to instructions.

When confronted, Young said, "Yes, I have been corresponding with people who pray the prayer of faith that I shall not die like a dog or pig."

The officers asked to see the letters. In a few days they came back to him and said, "If you think you can get healed, we will turn you loose on your pledge that you will go directly to Spokane to these people who heal."

So he started for Spokane with their pledge to furnish him 'With the necessary funds.

The day before I left Spokane, I sat down with that man and he dictated the story of his healing by the power of God. He joined his wife and children in Key West.

My Lord is not dead! But I'll tell you, dear hearts, we have been satisfied to live in Christ in our babyhood, to perpetuate our babyhood, and to go on shouting like a lot of babies, instead of entering into the secrets of the heart of Jesus Christ by the grace of God and claiming from Heaven the divine flames of God upon our souls.

When that takes place, then we shall stand amazed at the action of God in our own and others' lives.

A Mrs. McDonald was brought to the Healing Rooms so emaciated by tuberculosis that she weighed only 70 pounds. Her condition improved so rapidly that she put on flesh at the rate of one pound per day.

She attended our Divine Healing Meeting and gave public testimony to her healing.

An hour later she called us on the telephone, exclaiming, "I am so happy I just had to tell somebody. I have walked all the way home, kindled the fire in two stoves, and am preparing supper. A thing I have not been able to do for over a year."

A 12 year old boy suffering from tuberculosis of the spine, so extreme that he was compelled to wear a steel jacket both day and night, was brought to the healing Rooms a few days for prayer.

In less than ten days, his condition was so improved that he discarded the jacket entirely. His shoulders had straightened; the vertebrae remained fixed; and the boy returned to his home at Rosalia, praising God that He had proven in our own city in March 1919, that Jesus Christ is still the Healer.

At Cookhouse, Cape Colony, there were ten brothers by the name of Watson. Men who had been saved and baptized in the Holy Ghost.

As I was conducting a meeting at the home of one of them, the Spirit fell upon the youngest of the family. He arose and we observed that he was giving the arrangements for a drama. He was perfectly under the power of the Spirit. He had no consciousness in the natural of what was taking place.

All at once, the Spirit fell upon another of the brothers, then another and another until all ten became actors in the same drama.

We sat there amazed for hours, observing a perfect five act drama. A presentation of God's dealings with the race of man throughout the history of the world.

I left that night with the awe of God on my soul so deep that, for weeks afterwards, I felt as if I wanted to walk very softly.

The life of the Christian without the indwelling power of the Spirit in the heart is a weariness to the flesh. It is an obedience to commandments and an endeavor to walk according to a pattern which you have not power to follow.

But, bless God, the Christian life that is lived by, the impulse of the Spirit of Christ within your soul becomes a joy, a power, and a glory.

When preaching at Bloom fawn tain, Orange Free State, a man by the name of Johnson, an epileptic for twelve years, attended the meetings. He had been suffering 12 to 15 seizures a day.

After the service, a group of us were in an attitude of prayer and communion with God preparatory to going out for an open air meeting.

Someone turned and asked this young man if he would like to be a Christian. He said, "Well, I guess not. I would do the same things tomorrow I have done today if I were."

Like a flash out of the blue, the Spirit of God fell upon him and he fell prostrate upon the floor, remaining there until 10 o'clock the next morning.

Before morning, that fellow who had been having about 15 seizures a day was not only saved, but also healed. He went forth at 10 o'clock, baptized in the Holy Ghost.

One day our minister at Bloom fawn tain was going out to conduct a meeting for Basuto natives. He could not speak enough Basuto to preach to them, so it was necessary for him to have an interpreter. Johnson was with him.

The interpreter did not arrive. But when time came for the meeting to begin, the power of God came upon Johnson. To the amazement of all, he stood and spoke forth the Word to those native people in the purest Basuto!

One evening as I was preaching, the Spirit of the Lord descended upon a man in the front row, a minister from London, England.

He remained in a sitting posture, but began rising from the chair. Gradually, he came down on the chair; then gradually, he began to rise again, somewhat higher. This was repeated three times.

Was it a reversal of the law of gravitation? I think not.

My own conception is that his soul became so united with the Spirit of God that the attractive power of God was so intense it drew him up.

One day I stood at the railway station in Logansport, Indiana, waiting for my train and observing a group of Italian men, apparently laborers, sitting on a bench. They were going somewhere to work.

As I walked up and down the platform, I said, "Oh, God, how much I would like to be able to talk to these men about the living Christ and His power to save! "

The Spirit said, "You can."

I stepped over to them; and as I preached, I observed myself beginning to speak in some foreign language.

I addressed one of the group, and he instantly answered me in Italian. I asked where he was from, and he replied, "Naples."

For fifteen minutes God let me tell the truths of Christ and the power of God to that group of laborers in Italian, a language of which I had no knowledge.

That was a little flash, a gleam but one day, bless God, there will come from Heaven a shower that will so anoint the souls of men that they will speak in every language man speaks by the power of God.

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come Matthew 24:14.

While I was in Africa, the Church of England sent a three man delegation to Johannesburg for a year to report back to England concerning our work in South Africa.

The result was a great conference of Church of England preachers was called and I was asked to preach at the conference.

It resulted in the establishment of healing societies in the Church of England.

We were blessed recently in this country with one of their "healers," Mr. Hicks, who held meetings in the various Episcopal churches all around the land.

I have just come from Portland, where the streets were filled for ten blocks around the church with automobiles carrying the sick to his meetings.

Mr. Clark Mitchell was in a logging accident ten years ago in which his left side was severely injured the knee and left shoulder were crushed.

For ten years he experienced great suffering. His knee developed a tumor so large that it filled his pant leg.

He told me there were occasions when he was able to walk perhaps a single block, but with great suffering. Other periods he was compelled to be confined to his home and his chair.

One day as I was hurrying down Pacific Avenue on the way to my meeting at the Free Methodist Church, I passed Mr. Mitchell's home and his daughter, waved to me.

She had seen me coming and said to her father, "I see Mr. Lake, and I am going to call him in."

Mr. Mitchell replied, "No, don't do it. I don't take any stock in that kind of stuff."

Though I knew nothing of these circumstances, I would have paid no attention if I had. I am Scotch.

When I entered their home, I said, "Mr. Mitchell, I have no time to talk to you."

I threw off my overcoat and hat, and knelt to pray. He indicated it was his knee, so I laid my hands on his knee and began to pray. As I did, I was conscious that he was healed.

I said, "Mr. Mitchell, stick out your leg." He did. "Get up and walk." He did. As he walked, he kept saying, "I don't understand. I don't understand." He came back and sat down, still saying, "I don't understand. What is it you do not understand, brother?"

"Why, I cannot understand God's healing me. I am not a Christian." I said, "Is it possible you have not yet given your heart to God?" He said, "It is." "Then, brother, in the name of the Lord, let us do it now."

So he, his dear daughter, and another lady, knelt with me and all three yielded their hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ.

As he sat in his chair, I told him of the healing of another man and how the bones would grind in his hip.

Mr. Mitchell said, "That is like my shoulder."

This is when I first learned he had a bad shoulder, so I called his daughter again, and we prayed for his shoulder.

Then I said, "Put up your arm, brother."

When he raised his arm, I asked him if it was perfectly free. He replied, "Perfectly free."

By 8:30 p.m. the tumor that had been on his knee for ten years had totally disappeared.

The next morning, he went to the printing office, presented himself to the editor, and said, "Mr. Scott, I am the man the Lord has healed." And the newspaper editor wrote up a statement about the man's healing.

The same day he spaded his entire garden.

The day after, he went to work for a plasterer where he continued work. The day of miracles had not passed as of this incident. March, 1922, in Forest Grove, Oregon.