In the USA two names stand out as the country’s greatest evangelists in the 20th C: Billy Graham and Oral Roberts. Both reached millions – but it is Oral Roberts, the healer-evangelist who impacted the Middle East more. This was through his influence on an Iranian Armenian family living in Tehran. From 1956 to 1960 Bible Society worker Seth Yeghnazar held a prayer meeting in his home every evening. Here many Armenians – and others – put their faith in Christ, and had an experience of the Holy Spirit.
At the same time the periodical of Oral Robert’s ‘Abundant Life Magazine’ found its way into the hands of Seth Yeghnazar and his fellowship. Today teaching about the baptism in the Holy Spirit, casting out of demons, and divine healing is common in many denominations: fifty years ago is was not. Many considered Pentecostal teaching extreme or worse, and there was little expectation that God would miraculously intervene by imparting gifts of the Holy Spirit or healing. This was also true in Iran. The Yeghnazars had experienced God’s direct dealings, but they had no support from other churches, and no teaching. Until Oral Roberts’ magazines arrived. Seth Yeghnazar drank in the Pentecostal teaching and shared it with the rest of the family. When he later visited the USA in 1967 he visited Tulsa, Oklahoma, the city where Oral Roberts had his head-quarters to visit the evangelist. Now aged 99, hearing the name of Oral Roberts, Seth Yeghnazar immediately says, ‘A great man of God.’ Seth Yeghnazar’s son, Pastor Luke Yeghnazar sums the family’s feelings up like this: ‘Yes, Oral Roberts had a great impact on my father and our whole family’
And this family has had a great impact on the Iranian Church. Many of the well known names of recent Iranian church history experienced God at those prayer meetings held in Seth Yeghnazar’s house – martyrs Haik Hovsepian Mehr; Issa Dibaj; and Tateos Michaelian; Bible translator and pastor Saro Khachikian; Pastor Edward Hovsepian-Mehr, and Seth’s three sons – Samuel, Luke, and Lazarus all of whom are pastors with their own ministries touching thousands. The Yeghnazar family was also closely involved with the founding of the Assemblies of God Churches in Iran in June 1960 which is now the largest over ground Protestant denomination.
‘Take my healing power to your generation’
Oral Roberts has indirectly touched Iranians. He has literally touched two million people praying for their healing, mainly in the USA. And through his preaching, books, TV programmes, university, and City of Faith medical centre he has affected millions of others. There was nothing in Oral Robert’s childhood marking him out for greatness; his older brother unkindly said he ‘would not amount to a hill of beans.’ He was the son of a poor Oklahoma farmer who became an even poorer travelling preacher for the Pentecostal Holiness Church. Though naturally intelligent, Roberts’ education was limited, and a preaching career was out of the question as he suffered from a terrible stammer. And then in February 1935 he got tuberculosis and his most likely future was an early death. This tragedy though became the foundation of his future ministry. Four months into his sickness Roberts had his own salvation experience. His father was praying for him at the end of his bed – ‘As I looked Papa’s countenance changed…the likeness of Jesus appeared…I fell back sobbing…Jesus save me, Jesus save me.’ . Then in late July on the way to a healing service led by Geo W. Moncey, Roberts heard God audibly speak to him…’I was conscious of the car and the presence of others, but I was alone with God. His words were clear and unmistakable. ‘Son I am going to heal you and you are going to take My healing power to your generation.’ And this is exactly what happened. When Moncey prayed for the sick seventeen year old, ‘It was like…electricity going through me. It went into my lungs, went into my tongues. Oral was healed both of his tuberculosis, and his stammer. He jumped up on the platform shouting, ‘I’m healed, I’m healed’, and ‘words rolled out of my mouth.’
And for the next seventy four years of his life, Oral Roberts took God’s healing power to the nations. In the autumn of 1935 he began preaching with his father, Ellis, but was soon in demand as a revivalist preacher on his own. In the early forties he and his new wife, Evelyn, took pastorates with the Pentecostal Holiness Church. Though highly respected, Oral Roberts became restless. During a time of spiritual searching in 1947 he fixed on 111 John verse 2, ‘I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health just as it is with your soul.’ and resolved to preach that God is good and wants good for his children. Shortly after this he heard God speak to him again, ‘From this hour your ministry of healing will begin.’ And so in April 1947 Oral Roberts began holding healing services. In his first public meeting 1,200 came. The Holy Spirit was also present – ‘The anointing of the Holy Spirit was so strong upon me that my flesh quivered.’ And genuine healings happened.
From 1947 to 1968 the heart of Oral Roberts’ ministry was evangelistic healing crusades, often held in a huge tent that could seat 3,000 people. By 1957 Roberts had preached his full Gospel of salvation and healing to eight and a half million people, and prayed for the healing of about half a million. There was a constant stream of testimonies. For example late one evening in July 1948 at a meeting in Durham, North Carolina, Roberts announced he felt a new surge of God come on him…’As soon as the crippled were touched they threw their crutches away, deaf ears snapped open, people leaped off stretchers.’ Despite the emphasis on healing, Roberts discouraged speaking in tongues and allowed no hysteria. Observers were struck by the orderliness of the meetings.
TV – ‘A lot of people I know love your show’, ex Beatle John Lennon
Along with the crusades, there were also books and TV. Oral Roberts penned his first book in 1938, ‘Salvation By The Blood’, and for the rest of his life never stopped writing. He published 120 titles, many of them bestsellers. He was also closely involved in the magazine ‘Abundant Life’ which by 1957 had over one million subscribers. Roberts was on of his generation’s most powerful preachers. So he soon became a familiar voice on radio – but then in the mid 1950’s he was the first evangelist to have his meetings filmed for TV. This was phenomenally successful and his broadcasts on hundreds of channels saw more conversions than his other ministries. Oral Roberts always stayed at the cutting edge of television, and in the 1960’s knowing the unchurched were not tuning in, he developed an evangelistic chat show featuring Christian singers and interviews with celebrities. This certainly reached the unchurched as one of his viewers was the ex Beatle John Lennon who personally wrote to Oral Roberts saying, ‘A lot of people I know loved your show’ and he asked for help: ‘Explain what Christianity can do for me? Is it phoney? Can He love me? I want out of hell.’
Critics and a friend
With his crusades lasting up to ten days, and averaging about one a month, the schedule for Oral Roberts was punishing – as were at first the secular press. Newspapers accused him of using ‘mass hypnotism’ and making money out of peddling false hope to the sick. These attacks sparked an investigation by the Internal Revenue in 1956 which ended with Roberts being exonerated. Coming from a background where he had to sell newspapers to buy his own pencils for school, Roberts had no romantic notions about poverty and lived well. However given the size of his ministry, his life-style was in fact relatively modest. Later on he stopped taking ‘love offerings’ and relied on a salary of $15,000 a year in the early 1970’s which later rose to $24,000 .
While the press harassed him, Roberts was far more concerned about the established church. He faced wide-spread hostility from Roman Catholics, fundamentalists, and liberals – all who disagreed with his theological emphases. And the Pentecostal churches felt he was receiving funds they should have been getting. Many churches treated Oral Roberts like a leper. The friend who did more than most to get Oral Roberts accepted by the mainstream churches was Billy Graham. Though his constituency was not Pentecostal, Billy Graham was ready to risk their wrath to show love to a fellow evangelist. In 1950 he asked Roberts to lead prayer at his crusade; he ministered to Roberts when the hostility of the press in Australia closed down his meetings early (‘All that sting I had about Australia, he just killed it’); and he invited him to the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin in 1966 and let him address the many less than sympathetic delegates. They were electrified. Berlin proved what was nearly always the case – when people heard Roberts for themselves they usually liked him and were persuaded he was genuine, even if they did not theologically agree with him.
After Berlin Roberts was much more widely accepted. He showed his desire to influence the major denominations by joining the Methodist Church in 1968. This coincided with a rapid expansion of Pentecostal teaching across the main denominations which Oral Roberts, beloved by fellow Charismatics, certainly helped. Many would argue that nobody did more than Oral Roberts to bring the message of healing to the mainstream churches.
University
Billy Graham also dedicated the other great achievement of Oral Roberts’ life after his preaching and healing: the Oral Roberts University. Roberts was convinced of the need for the whole man to be healed, and this meant bringing together intellectual and charismatic spiritual disciplines. His zeal was spurred on by seeing the students of the secular universities demonstrating and losing themselves in drugs in the 1960’s. And so, to the shock of his staff, the vision was born to start a Christian university in Tulsa. After many trials it opened with 365 students in 1965, three years later there were 865, and by 1978 there were 4,000. While he brought in professional academics, Oral Roberts remained closely involved, making sure chapel and prayer were central; insisting on a strict code of personal ethics; and encouraging the university to field a baseball team to compete at a national level. Physical fitness was compulsory for both faculty and students and if someone became overweight they were cautioned. Billy Graham said to the 8,000 guests at the dedication, ‘Students should be taught not just how to make a living, but how to live’. This is certainly what the university did. In the late 1970’s Oral Roberts added graduate schools, and most imaginatively a health centre, the City of Faith, to combine prayer and medicine. This provoked fierce opposition and involved massive expense, but Roberts, always a fighter, persevered. The hospital opened in 1981, but had to close in 1989 due to spiralling costs.
Tragedies – ‘My Foundation Held’
This was a blow for Oral Roberts, but he and his wife had experienced much worse. For the other side of the Oral Roberts’ success story are the terrible personal tragedies his family endured. On February 12th 1977 his daughter Rebecca and her husband were killed in a plane crash. Bravely Oral and Evelyn shared their grief on TV – to help others who had lost loved ones. Two years later the marriage of their second son Richard broke down. Worse was to come. Their eldest son Ronnie had rebelled against Christ and took to drugs and alcohol. Oral did all he could to help him, but to no avail. On June 9th 1982 Ronnie shot himself. Two years later his first grand-son died two days after being born. In all of this Oral Roberts gave a telling challenge to his students, he said, ‘My foundation held.’
We Salute You
His foundation was the call on him when he was a sick stuttering seventeen year old to take God’s healing to his generation. Despite personal tragedy and ministry set-backs there is no doubt that Oral Roberts was obedient to this call. As a result millions, including Iranians, were blessed and with Seth Yeghnazar this magazine unreservedly salutes Oral Roberts as – ‘a great man of God.’
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