…the Lord will hear when I call unto him.
(Ps. 4:3)
A number of years ago, our ministry received a letter from a dear woman. A portion of the letter read:
I am a widow woman with only one son. He is fifty-seven years old, lives in Indiana, and has cancer and a heart problem. The doctors say that he will die. At my age, it’s difficult for me to travel, so in talking to my daughter-in-law on the phone, I asked her if it would be possible to move him to a hospital closer to me so that I could see him one last time before he dies.
My daughter-in-law talked to the doctors, and they said, “No.” But my son wanted to see me. So after talking to the doctors many times, they finally said, “Well, we don’t believe he will make it, but if you want to try it, we’ll put him in an ambulance and hook him up to the necessary equipment. We hope he gets there before he dies.” So they did.
When she wrote in asking us to pray, she wasn’t even thinking about healing. She just thought, “If I could see him again, I would be satisfied.” She wanted us to pray that he would survive the ambulance trip so she would get to see him again.
But, of course, we believed that God would heal the hole in his heart and the terminal cancer. So we prayed that he would live and not die.
Some time later, the mother said that when they got him to the hospital near her, the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him. Since they had received all of his medical records from the previous hospital, they said, “You’ve either sent the wrong man or the wrong medical records. He doesn’t have a hole in his heart or anything else wrong with his heart, and he doesn’t have any cancer.”
That dear old mother rejoiced that her only son had been healed!
Confession
The Lord hears me when I pray. I pray according to the Word of God. And God’s Word says that I was healed almost two thousand years ago when Jesus hung on the Cross at Calvary. I agree with what God’s Word says.
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.