I think also that I should
support it from personal experience. I mentioned earlier this evening
that I came to know the Lord in an army barrack room in the
British Army in World War II about midnight. I was so much of a ignorant pagan, that I didn’t know you had to
go to church to get saved. So before anything could happen
I got saved in an army barrack room. About ten days later I was baptized in the
Holy Spirit in the same army barrack room. Nobody told me you had
to go to church to get the baptism. Within 24 hours God gave me
the gift of interpretation of tongues. I didn’t know you had to wait
six months to get the spiritual gift. Shortly after that the British Army
sent me overseas to North Africa and I spent the next three years
in the deserts of North Africa. During that time I became sick with a
condition that the doctors could not heal. A skin condition. If you get the book
God’s Medicine Bottle it’s got my personal testimony
and how I eventually received healing. I was moved from one hospital
to another and I ended up in the British military hospital in a place
called El Ballah on the Suez Canal. Well, there was a very unusual lady
at that time in the city of Cairo. She was a brigadier
in the Salvation Army. She was a brigadier because her husband
who had died had been a brigadier. And in the Salvation Army
the widow takes the husband’s rank. She was 76 years old at the time. And there was very unusual
Salvationists in those days because she was a tongue speaker. And she was as militant
about speaking in tongues as Salvationists normally
are about salvation. She also had received
divine healing from God in India of malaria 25 years previously
and had never taken medicine since. I had met her once and this precious
lady for whom I will always thank God heard about this British soldier who
was a Christian lying in the hospital and she gathered together a little party: A British soldier, a Christian,
to drive the car, and a small car and her American lady coworker
from the state of Oklahoma a young woman of about 25 or 30. And they took this journey to El Ballah, parked the car in
the compound of the hospital. And the brigadier walked
into the hospital ward with her bonnet, her ribbons,
her uniform and overawed the nurse. And obtained permission for me
to go out and sit in the car. So I found myself - I really wasn’t consulted
as to whether I wanted to do it or not. I found myself sitting in the car, in the
back seat of a very smal four-seater car. In front were the driver
in the driver’s seat, the Salvation Army brigadier
with him in the front. And this American lady missionary
in the back seat beside me. The brigadier said let’s pray and when
the brigadier said pray, you prayed. And we started to pray. And the American lady beside me
started to shake. I felt her whole body vibrating. And then she began
to speak in a tongue. And, of course, I knew what that was. And then I started to shake. And then all the people
in the car started to shake. And then the car started to shake. And I mean, that car was shaking
as if it was going on a rough road about 50 miles an hour but it wasn’t
moving and the engine wasn’t running. Well, I knew that was God
who had come into that car. And furthermore, it humbled me to know
that it was for my sake He had come. After the message
or the utterance in tongues this lady came out with what
I knew to be the interpretation. Now, New Zealanders
probably won’t understand this, but I was very British. I mean, I used to talk like
the radio announcers of the BBC and I had not been
exposed to many Americans. And this precious lady
was from the state of Oklahoma. Anybody who knows the United States
will know that in the state of Oklahoma, they talk a very different language
from what a Cambridge don would speak. But when she came out
with this interpretation it was the most beautiful English. I had been a student of Shakespeare.
I was a great admirer of Shakespearean English. I just marveled at the
elegance of this language. In the course of this interpretation she said these words
which I have never forgotten. They are as clear to me
today as they were in 1942. These were the words
and I want you to listen to them because they had
a life-changing impact on me: Consider the work of Calvary
a perfect work perfect in every respect,
perfect in every aspect. Now you’ll agree that is
very elegant English. Most people couldn’t
create a sentence like that. Furthermore, it spoke to me particularly
because I had studied Greek for many, many years and I was familiar
with the Greek of the New Testament. And if you read your New
Testament in English you’ll find one of the last utterances of
Jesus on the cross was: It is finished. But in the Greek that’s
one single word, tetelestai. And it’s the perfect tense of a verb
that means to do something perfectly. So you could amplify it: It is perfectly perfect,
it is completely complete. And so, when the Holy Spirit said:
Consider the work of Calvary a perfect work, perfect in every respect,
perfect in every aspect, my mind said: That’s the Holy Spirit’s
commentary on: It is finished. And I realized that
the Holy Spirit was showing me that if I could understand what had been
accomplished by the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross,
all my needs could be met. There was nothing that
I could not receive that I needed. That was a revelation. I got out of that car
just as sick as when I got in. But God had showed me where
the answer to my problem was. And that’s what I want
to share with you tonight. We’re going to have a healing service
and I trust that many will receive healing. But I question whether
all will be healed. God does not heal everybody
miraculously in a service. There are many different ways
to appropriate healing. I received my healing
after that revelation. I was healed through Proverbs 4:20-22: My son, attend to my words,
incline thine ear unto my sayings, let them not depart from thine eyes,
keep them in the midst of thine heart: For they, God’s words and sayings,
are life to those who find them and health to all their flesh. And the alternative reading in
the margin for health was medicine. And I said to myself: That settles it. If God, through His words, has provided
health or medicine for all my flesh, there’s no room for sickness. And so, I was very simple. I decided
to take God’s word as my medicine. I was an orderly in
the Royal Army Medical Corps, so I knew how people
took their medicine: Three times daily after meals. And that’s how I took God’s
Word as medicine. Three times daily after meals.
And it did the job. It healed me completely
and permanently in one of the most unhealthy
climates in the world. So what I’m saying to you is:
God has His way to heal you. But whatever way healing comes, the basis is what was done
by Jesus on the cross. And I’m not going
to offer you just an orange. I’m going to invite you to the orchard. And once you get in there you can wander around and help
yourself to all the oranges you want. And you’ll never strip
God’s orchard bare.
