Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, Christ Healing the Sick, 1742. Public domain.
1947 to 1958 · Subject · Featured Study
The Healing Revival
Gordon Lindsay, Oral Roberts, A. A. Allen and the other tent evangelists of healing in America.
William Branham dated his ministry from an angel's visit on 7 May 1946.
When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to Jesus, and He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took on our infirmities and carried our diseases.”
- Books
- Isaiah, Matthew, 1 Peter, James, 1 John
- Hold in memory
- James 5:14 to 15
William Branham dated his ministry from an angel's visit on 7 May 1946.
Summary
From 1947 to 1958 independent evangelists held healing campaigns across America and printed their reports in The Voice of Healing. Their teaching came from an older conviction that Christ bore sickness as He bore sin.
- A. B. Simpson taught healing in the atonement in print by 1915.
- The revival reached Canada, where the Latter Rain began among students who had heard Branham.
- Branham, A. A. Allen and Oral Roberts each met public failure or scandal.
The Texts of Healing in the Atonement
Isaiah's servant song, Peter's letter, the Lord's word at Marah and James's charge to the elders.
Teachers of healing in the atonement built on the reading of Isaiah 53 that Matthew gives.
The prophet's word
Surely He took on our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken by God, struck down and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.
Simpson set this text first in his teaching that healing is part of Christ's atonement.
The apostle's word
He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. “By His stripes you are healed.”
Simpson quotes it after Isaiah 53 and calls healing a great redemption right.
1 Peter 2:24BSB
The Lord who heals
saying, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His eyes, and pay attention to His commands, and keep all His statutes, then I will not bring on you any of the diseases I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the LORD who heals you.”
Wigglesworth titled his chapter on healing in Ever Increasing Faith from the last words of this verse.
Exodus 15:26BSB
The church's practice
Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.
Simpson names the anointing with oil as the way Scripture prescribes for the sick.
1 Peter 2:24, Exodus 15:26, James 5:14 to 15
The Healing Revival by Date
Eight dated turns from Dowie in 1882 to the City of Faith in 1989.
The revival rose after 1946, crested in the campaigns of 1948 to 1958, and left a trail of failures into the 1980s.
| When | What happened | The witness |
|---|---|---|
| 1882 | John Alexander Dowie begins to preach divine healing. | Harrell, All Things Are Possible, 1975 |
| 1893 | Dowie settles in Chicago. | Harrell, 1975 |
| 1906 | Dowie loses his church, a year before his death. | Harrell, 1975 |
| October 1947 | George Hawtin and Percy Hunt join Herrick Holt's school at North Battleford. | Peterson, 2014 |
| February 1948 | Revival breaks out at the North Battleford school. | Peterson, 2014 |
| 1958 | The healing revival ends, by Harrell's later reckoning. | Harrell, 1975 |
| March 1968 | Oral Roberts joins a Methodist church in Tulsa. | Harrell, 1975 |
| 1989 | Roberts's City of Faith closes. | Time, 2009 |
March 1968, 1989
Healing in the Atonement Before 1947
Wesley's note on James, Simpson's teaching, and Dowie's city of Zion.
John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament of 1755, called the anointing of James 5:14 “the whole process of physic in the Christian church, till it was lost through unbelief.”
Wesley read Matthew 8:17 of Christ bearing our sins “in the highest sense” and of His healing “the diseases which were the fruit of sin” in a lower sense.
A. B. Simpson, who founded the Christian and Missionary Alliance, taught in The Gospel of Healing (revised edition, 1915) that “If sickness be the result of the Fall, it must be included in the atonement of Christ”. He went on, “As He has borne away our sins, He also bore our sicknesses”.
In David Edwin Harrell's history of 1975, John Alexander Dowie stands first among America's healing evangelists. Dowie built a city of his own, Zion, from which John G. Lake went out to South Africa.
Smith Wigglesworth, in Ever Increasing Faith (1924), taught faith in the fact that Christ “took our weakness upon Himself, has borne our sicknesses and carried our pains”.
Branham, Lindsay and The Voice of Healing
The campaign manager's book, the historian, and the evangelists' own paper.
Gordon Lindsay, who managed Branham's campaigns, set down the angel's day in William Branham: A Man Sent from God (1950), from Branham's own telling. The book is the work of an interested witness, and it reprints newspaper reports of the meetings beside its own account.
Lindsay then edited The Voice of Healing, the paper that carried the evangelists' reports, and Harrell treats its first issue as the opening of the revival's door.
Harrell bounds the healing revival from 1947 to 1958 and judges that by its end nearly everyone recognized it was over. The Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International, led by Demos Shakarian, carried its people into the charismatic renewal that followed.
The Latter Rain at North Battleford, 1948 and 1949
A school's revival after a Branham campaign, and the council that disapproved of it.
In the late fall of 1947 George Hawtin and others from Sharon Orphanage and Schools at North Battleford, Saskatchewan, attended a Branham revival in Vancouver, John C. Peterson writes in his study of 2014. They came home and led their students in long fasts and prayer.
A student's prophecy of an open door into gifts and ministry began a revival on the campus. Its leaders began to lay hands on students and to prophesy over each of them.
The General Council of the Assemblies of God, meeting at Seattle, adopted a resolution that disapproved of the so-called New Order of the Latter Rain. It named six points, among them imparting gifts by the laying on of hands and prophecy, and the teaching that the church is built on present-day apostles and prophets.
The Failures, Weighed by the Standard Their Hearers Had
Branham's Message, Allen's arrest and death, and Roberts's appeal of 1987.
The evangelists' hearers had Matthew 7:15 to 20 in their Bibles, and the letter of John below.
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world.It is the standard the revival's own hearers could weigh its teachers by.
Branham's An Exposition of the Seven Church Ages, dated 1960, carries the doctrines of his Message in his own words. He wrote that he would “predict (I did not say prophesy, but predict) that this age will end around 1977”. He taught that “It was the serpent’s seed that brought forth Cain”, and of the last age's messenger that “The proof that he is a prophet is found in Revelation 10:7”.
Branham's serpent's seed, his seventh messenger and his prediction for 1977 are his own teaching, and Scripture does not support them. Peterson records that he also held the doctrine of the Holy Trinity to be wrong, and MannaFest confesses the Trinity.
The Internal Revenue Service sued Branham for tax evasion, Harrell records.
Harrell records that A. A. Allen was arrested for drunken driving at Knoxville, during a revival there, and gave up his bail without standing trial. Allen later died alone in a motel in San Francisco while his team was holding one of his revivals.
Christianity Today of 20 February 1987 reported that Oral Roberts sought $8 million and noted that it conflicted with a call for $4.5 million, the goal Time's obituary of 2009 gives. Roberts wrote to his supporters that God had told him, “I want you to get this going in one year or I will call you home!”
Harrell told Christianity Today, “Some are saying Oral is a swindler,” and added, “It's not that simple.” Time reported that Roberts's City of Faith hospital “cost $250 million to build.”
Is Healing Promised in This Life?
Two readings among those who pray for the sick, and the site's own practice.
The Assemblies of God's Statement of Fundamental Truths holds, “Divine healing is an integral part of the gospel. Deliverance from sickness is provided for in the atonement, and is the privilege of all believers.”
Vineyard USA confesses the Spirit “releasing the gifts of the Spirit” to believers.
All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, who apportions them to each one as He determines.The other reading rests on it, since it gives the Spirit the choice of each gift.
Simpson concluded that “God has not prescribed medicine,” his own conclusion from the atonement.
MannaFest's Wesleyan-Pentecostal tradition prays for the sick in faith, as James 5 directs, and counts medical care as standing beside that prayer.
Books to Read Next
All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America
David Edwin Harrell Jr. · 1975
Harrell tells the revival's men and its failures from their papers and the press.
In print: find it wherever books are sold.
The Gospel of Healing
A. B. Simpson · 1915, revised edition
Simpson sets out healing in the atonement and its practice.
Free at the Internet ArchiveWhat the Revival Left
The healing revival carried the old conviction that Christ bore sickness into tents across America, and it sent its people into the charismatic renewal. Its failures stand in its record beside its campaigns, and its hearers had the Scriptures to weigh both.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible (read 2026)
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on James 5:14 and Matthew 8:17.
- A. B. Simpson, The Gospel of Healing, revised edition (Harrisburg: Christian Publications, copyright 1915), pages 34 to 35 and 69 to 70.
- Smith Wigglesworth, Ever Increasing Faith (1924), chapter 5, I Am the Lord That Healeth Thee.
- David Edwin Harrell Jr., All Things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975)
- Gordon Lindsay, William Branham: A Man Sent from God (Jeffersonville: William Branham, 1950)
- William Branham, An Exposition of the Seven Church Ages (Voice of God Recordings; dated 1960 in the catalogue), pages 126, 321 and 323.
- John C. Peterson, New Order of the Latter Rain, World Religions and Spirituality Project (10 January 2014)
- Minutes of the 23rd General Council of the Assemblies of God, Seattle, Washington, 9 to 14 September 1949, Resolution No. 7.
- Randy Frame, Did Oral Roberts Go Too Far?, Christianity Today (20 February 1987)
- Time, Death of a Faith Healer: Oral Roberts (15 December 2009)
- Assemblies of God, Statement of Fundamental Truths, article 12, Divine Healing.
- Vineyard USA, Core Values and Beliefs (Vineyard Resources, 2016), Statement of Faith, page 19.
Keep Studying
Church history2
People and groups3
Doctrines2