. By January the Roberts family was back in Shawnee and Oral had reenrolled in school. Oral received an urgent phone call one day telling him that one of the deacons of the church had dropped a motor on his foot. Oral went to the deacon and placed his hand upon his foot and said “Jesus heal”. The deacon was fine and stood up and stomped his foot with no pain. Another incident happened when a mother interrupted a meeting that Oral was in and asked him to heal her sick child. Oral prayed and then the baby looked up at him and smiled.Oral continued to preach in the church and attend school. One day he was in class and he heard a voice telling him to be like Jesus Christ and bring healing to people. Oral went to the church one day and said he was not leaving until God spoke to him. He did, and God spoke to him and said to begin a ministry of healing and that he would have God’s power to pray for the sick and to cast out devils. God was calling Oral to a healing ministry. Oral began holding Sunday afternoon healing services. On his radio program he preached messages on divine healing.He rented a building and scheduled a service. On that Sunday afternoon at the service there was about 1,200 people present. There was an offering. The total of the offering covered the expenses with some left over. He delivered a sermon. Later that sermon was published and read by millions. As a result of that sermon he received invitations from eight states to come and evangelize. Oral resigned as pastor to face an uncertain future as an evangelist. Oral was one of the most influential religious leaders in the world. He is known for his leadership and publicity given to the Pentecostal and charismatic movements (Pentecostalism’s glamorous offspring) since WWII. Thanks to Oral the Pentecostal religion surged around the world in the decades after the war. In the 1980’s a Pentecostal spokesman claimed that fifty m...
