Our God answers prayer – and He works miracles. I know miracles will happen when I pray; I don’t have any question about it. It’s no different from knowing that every morning the sun will get out of bed and show itself at my window. God works miracles every day – but it’s for us to believe that He can, and will in our lives. This is where faith becomes so important.
My life has been step by step a walk with God. It was in mid-1964, just three years after my first visit to Jerusalem, that I began losing my voice. It was throat cancer. I was just 32 years old with twin girls, 8 years old. I had to get another pastor to take the church services for me.
Through all the years I have spoken many times about my healing from throat cancer, because it was a major turning point in my life and was miraculous in two ways.
The first is that, when I was diagnosed with the cancer, I HAD to refuse medical treatment because members in my church, who had seen so many miracles during the mission which founded the church in 1959, now began to criticise me. They said, he has faith for other people, but he’ll be the first to have an operation now he’s sick. So I made a clear statement both in the church and to the doctors that I would pray for a miracle, in faith and take no treatment or medication. However, after three months when I went back to the doctors saying that I believed my cancer was gone, they shocked me by saying that it had now grown so big that, without an immediate operation, I could die; they also said, the fact that I was not healed proved there is no God. That was on Friday and the operation was to be on the Monday. I spent all day Saturday desperately pleading with God for a miracle to heal me, but nothing happened.
On the Sunday I changed my prayer. I was in a spiritual dilemma – and this was to be the second way in which my healing would prove miraculous: I had just made my third trip to Israel in May with a second-hand bus which I had bought, and I was beginning to believe that God was calling me to leave my church and work full-time in Israel and the communist countries. So now I prayed the most dangerous prayer of my life: I said Lord, if You want me to stay in England with my church and my family, don’t heal me, and I will tell the doctors tomorrow that You couldn’t do it. However, if You want me to leave my family and my church and work full-time in Israel and Russia, then I need a miracle.
Because I am very impatient, I then said, Lord, I want the answer now, today. I had an American style ‘promise box’ and foolishly I picked up the first text, it was Romans 8.28, ‘All things work together for good to those who love God.’ I was angry and threw the text down. I desperately complained to the Lord, I preach this to comfort people – I want a straight answer, YES or NO, are You going to heal me or not? At that moment it seemed the Holy Spirit rebuked me and said, you chose Romans 8, now open your Bible and read the whole chapter. I began to read, rebelliously, still wanting a clear answer, YES or NO. Eventually I came to verse 26 ‘when we know not what to pray for… And verse 27, ‘the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us according to the WILL of God’. I jumped up. I KNEW, the Holy Spirit had said YES!
But how could I convince the doctors in the morning? My thought was if, as in the case of Naaman the leper, he had first to wash seven times in the river Jordan before he was healed, I could persuade them to look 7 times; 6 times they would see the cancer and, on the 7th, it would be gone… But I argued with God, they will not look 7 times, let it be just 6, then realising they wouldn’t even look 6 times, I began to count down, not 6 – 5, not 5 – 4, not 4 – 3. The Holy Spirit stopped me. They must look three times.
Next morning, Monday, I went to the hospital. Three doctors were waiting for me, ‘with sharpened knives’, ready for the operation that would prove that, even IF He exists, God does NOT answer payer.
To prepare for the operation, first they put their instruments down my throat; then they pulled them out, put them down the second time; pulled them out, then put them down – rather roughly – for the third time. I hadn’t spoken a word, with the instruments down my throat, I couldn’t. In shock they looked at me and challenged me, “Who did it? Tell us the name of the hospital and the doctor who made the operation.” My reply was, “The doctor is the Jesus you don’t believe in and He needs no hospital.” They said, “But we can see the scar tissue where the cancer has been cut out by someone.” It became clear to them that no human hand had touched me and, what is precious to me, is that to this day I have the scar tissue where the Hand of God touched me.
I have witnessed tens of thousands of healing miracles in my ministry, but I have never seen or heard of a permanent and visible mark left behind, only in my throat – the evidence that God’s Hand actually touched me.