Chapter 1
My Pentecostal Experience
Raised From the Bed of Sickness
I was born again on April 22, 1933, at twenty minutes to eight o'clock in the south bedroom of 45 North College Street in McKinney, Texas.
I was raised up from the bed of sickness on the second tuesday of August 1934, after spending sixteen long months flat on my back with two terminal organic heart conditions and an incurable blood disease. And my body was almost totally paralyzed.
When I first started reading the Word of God on the bed of sickness, Grandma would prop the Bible up in front of me as I lay there on my bed. I could only read for about ten minutes at a time — after that I could hardly see. Then that was all I could read for the day.
The next day I would read for another ten or fifteen minutes. After a few weeks of reading like that, I got so I could read for an hour at a time; eventually I could read for as long as I liked.
As a child, I had been brought up going to Sunday school; I can't remember the first time I went to church. Nor can I remember the first time I ever read the Bible. It seemed I had prayed all of my life,yet I had never been born again until April 22, 1933.
You see, you can be religious and yet not really be a born-again child of God. But when you are born again, the very same Bible that you have been reading looks different.
The Bible becomes clear and easy to understand when you are born again. And as I read Grandma's Bible, I found that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8).
The doctors had said I could die at any time, so when I began reading the Bible, I began reading in the New Testament. I reasoned, I might not be alive ten minutes from now, so I will utilize this ten minutes, or whatever time I have, and I will start reading in the New Testament.
I began reading in Matthew 1:1. When I got to Mark 11:24,I read, ". . . What things soever ye desire,when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."
From the first time I read that verse, I never forgot it. I didn't take time to memorize it; it just branded itself on my mind, so to speak,because Mark 11:24 was my answer for healing.
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