Just like new converts need to get established in the Word if they’re going to go on, people who get healed need to get established in the Word if they’re going to stay healed. Without a firm foundation of what the Bible says about healing, people will begin to doubt the Word and their faith.
Years ago, when I was pastoring a Full Gospel church in the blacklands of North Central Texas, I was walking uptown to get my mail at the post office box and I saw one of my members, Brother W___, staking his cow out in a vacant lot full of knee-deep green grass. This was 1939. (He could do that then. We didn’t have all the city ordinances we have now; especially in small towns.)
As I walked up to him, he started to get up and suddenly he grabbed his back, moaning, “Ohhh…” I saw that he couldn’t stand up straight, so I got hold of him and started to help him. “Oh, no, no, no! Don’t touch me, Brother Hagin! Don’t touch me! My goodness, that makes it worse,” he said.
It took him between five and ten minutes to finally stand upright. He said, “That old rheumatism has come back to me.”
He was a man about 63 years old. He had been backslid for 25 years. Then I’d held a meeting in that church eight months before, and he had gotten back to God. I had laid hands on him then, and he’d been healed.
I said, “What happened, Brother W____?”
“Well,” he said, “day before yesterday, I was milking the cow and the pain hit right here in this hand, and it went up my arm and into my back. Ever since then, when I bend down, I can’t get up. My back won’t work right and my arm won’t work right. I’m just in pain and misery.”
I said, “Brother W____, you know I prayed for you last January and you were healed.”
“Well, yeah,” he said.
I said, “Well, how come it came back?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
I said, “I guarantee you that when that pain struck you in the hand and went up your arm, you said to yourself – or maybe right out loud – ‘I thought the Lord healed me. I guess He didn’t'”
He looked at me and said, “You must be a fortune-teller or a mind reader. That’s exactly what I said!”
I continued, “I’m not telling your fortune or reading your mind. I knew you had to open the door for the devil to come back in, or he couldn’t have gotten back in.”
He said, “That’s exactly what I said.”
I explained, “When you said that, you opened the door and said, ‘come back in, Mr. Devil, and put it on me’ – and he obliged you.”
“Yeah,” he said, “but I’ll tell you what I believe: I believe if God every does anything, it’s done. If God ever heals anybody, they’re healed forever.”
I said, “You mean if a fellow ever gets healed, then he’s always healed?”
“Yeah.”
I said, “Well, isn’t that something? Jesus didn’t know that. He didn’t know you couldn’t lose your healing or the blessings of God. When He appeared in a vision to John on the Isle of Patmos and gave him a message for one of the churches in Asia Minor, He told them to “hold fast” to what they had. Why hold fast to it if you can’t lose it? There’s an enemy arrayed against you who’s going to do his best to rob you if he can. That’s why!”
I added, “Now I’m going to ask you a question: When I laid hands on you and prayed for you last January, how long had you had this condition?”
He said, “I was in pain and I took pain medicine every day for 25 years.”
I said, “Then I laid hands on your head in the Name of Jesus, every pain disappeared, and for nine month you haven’t had one pain, one symptom, and you haven’t taken anything for pain?”
“Not a thing,” he said.
“And you said, ‘I thought the Lord healed me.’ Why, Brother W____,” I said, “a 12-year-old child with half sense would know he had been healed.”
He said, “Maybe I’m wrong?”
I said, “I know you’re wrong.”
I stood there in that vacant lot and taught him for over and hour. And he got it. He told me afterwards, “I may be a little dense, but once I get it, I’ve got it!”
This time he got his healing and kept it.
Excerpt permission granted by Faith Library Publications
Rev. Hagin served in Christian ministry for nearly 70 years and was known as the "father of the modern faith movement." His teachings and books are filled with vivid stories that show God's power and truth working in his life and the lives of others.
Rev. Hagin was born on Aug. 20, 1917, in McKinney, Texas, a son of the late Lillie Viola Drake Hagin and Jess Hagin.
Rev. Hagin was sickly as a child, suffering from a deformed heart and an incurable blood disease. He was not expected to live and became bedfast at age 15. In April 1933 during a dramatic conversion experience, he reported dying three times in 10 minutes, each time seeing the horrors of hell and then returning to life.
In August of 1934, Rev. Hagin was miraculously healed, raised off a deathbed by the power of God and the revelation of faith in God's Word. Two years later, he preached his first sermon as pastor of a small community church in Roland, Texas.
In 1937, Rev. Hagin was baptized in the Holy Spirit and began ministering in Pentecostal churches. During the next 12 years he pastored five churches in Texas: in the cities of Tom Bean, Farmersville (twice), Talco, Greggton, and Van. In 1949, he began an itinerant ministry as a Bible teacher and evangelist.
During the next 14 years, Jesus appeared to Rev. Hagin eight times in visions that changed the course of his ministry. In 1966, he moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he opened a ministry office. That same year, he taught for the first time on radio—on KSKY in Dallas. In 1967, he began a regular radio broadcast that continues today as Faith Seminar of the Air. Teaching by his son, Rev. Kenneth W. Hagin, is also heard on the program.
In 1968, Rev. Hagin published the first issues of The Word of Faith magazine, which now has a monthly circulation of more than 250,000. The publishing outreach he founded, Faith Library Publications, has circulated more than 65 million copies of books by Rev. Hagin, Rev. Hagin Jr., and several other authors worldwide. Faith Library Publications also has produced more than 9 million audio teaching tapes and CDs.
Other outreaches of Kenneth Hagin Ministries include RHEMA Praise, a weekly television broadcast hosted by Rev. and Mrs. Kenneth W. Hagin; RHEMA Correspondence Bible School; RHEMA Alumni Association; RHEMA Ministerial Association International; RHEMA Supportive Ministries Association; the RHEMA Prayer and Healing Center; and a prison ministry.
In 1974, Rev. Hagin founded RHEMA Bible Training Center USA and in 1976 moved the school and ministry offices to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where they remain. To date, RHEMA Bible Training Center USA has 23,000 alumni, and RHEMA Bible Training Centers have opened in 13 other nations: Austria, Brazil, Colombia, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Romania, Samoa, Singapore, South Africa, and Thailand. Together, the 14 schools have more than 28,000 graduates worldwide.
RHEMA Bible Church, pastored by Rev. Hagin Jr., began holding services in October of 1985 on the RHEMA campus in Broken Arrow and has since grown to become a thriving congregation with more than 8,000 members.
Rev. Hagin's daughter and son-in-law, Pat Harrison and the late Doyle "Buddy" Harrison, founded Harrison House Publishers in 1975 and Faith Christian Fellowship International Church in 1977. Both organizations are based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Until shortly before his death in September 2003, Rev. Hagin continued to travel and teach throughout the United States and into Canada conducting All Faiths' Crusades and other special meetings.