Faith of Our Fathers

“I wanted to get up close and catch the man in his tricks!” the preacher was saying. “Everybody said he was a fake and paid people to pretend they were healed!” Our speaker was an 88-year-old minister himself, telling of his early days of belief. “A young woman came carrying a little child whose crooked limbs were wrapped around his mother; the preacher prayed for him then told her to put him on the floor. She looked at him dumfounded--she knew the child could not walk.”

Then he said in amazement, “As soon as the baby’s feet hit the floor, his legs straightened before my eyes. He stretched them out and walked! Then he began running, following the preacher around! My only thought was ‘I wonder how much they paid that baby to do that?’”

The man in the pulpit may have been 88 years old, but he was full of zeal as he taught with authority from the Bible, interspersed with his story of faith. He had come home a broken man from WWII, nightmares and flashbacks of the horrors of what he had seen and experienced tormenting him. At age 30, he had had enough of alcoholic escapism and called on God. He has been preaching ever since.

“Doctors try to find something wrong with me, but they can’t!” he exclaimed. “Once they said I had high blood pressure and gave me medicine. When I got home, I took one of the pills.” He went on, “My wife stepped out on the deck to feed the birds some crumbs, lost her footing on the icy floor and fell. She screamed and couldn’t get up. I went to help her, and I fainted!” He came to, saying to himself that his wife needed him now more than anytime in their lives, got up to assist her, and fainted again! Just then a neighbor happened to look out the window to check on her cat, noticed them and called an ambulance.

“It was the pill!” the old gentleman shouted. “They said, ‘No, you’ve had a heart attack,’ but after running all kinds of tests they could find nothing wrong anywhere! I never took that medicine again and I feel fine!” He certainly had endurance under the power of the Holy Spirit, preaching an hour, at least, even as his wife tapped her wrist as time went on.

He closed the service with prayer for those who came up asking him to pray for them. The Lord was there in a powerful way, and we left rejoicing and praising God, inspired by one whose “youth was renewed like an eagle”.