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About the Book
"7 Signposts To Your Assignment" by Mike Murdock is a guide to discovering and fulfilling one's purpose in life. The book outlines seven key indicators that can help individuals identify their unique calling and direction in life. Through personal anecdotes and practical advice, Murdock encourages readers to align their talents, passions, and experiences with their assignment to achieve a fulfilling and purposeful life.
Jack Coe
Jack G. Coe was born on March 11, 1918 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His father, George, was a gambler and an alcoholic. His parents, although having been Christians, did not attend church. His grandparents, on his father's side were Christians but they were not able to influence their son's behavior. The couple had seven children in all. When Jack was five his father gambled away all their furniture and their house, leaving his mother Blanche destitute with seven children. They were devastated. His mother tried to make a new life by moving to Pennsylvania, but it was too hard. When Coe's father came to her house promising to change she agreed to reunite. The change did not last, however, and George went back to gambling.
Blanche left George for good, but only took her daughter with her this time. The boys were left with their father, which meant they were essentially left on their own. Often they did not have food to eat. Blanche did return to claim them, but could not care for them on her own. When Jack was nine he and his twelve year old brother was turned over to an orphanage. His older brother ran away, but was hit by a car and died. Jack struggled with rejection and abandonment. At seventeen he left the orphanage and began to drink, becoming an alcoholic like his father. He drank so much he had ulcers and his heart became enlarged. The doctor told him that if he didn't quit drinking he was going to die. Not knowing where else to go he moved to California to be near his mother. When he thought he was near death he promised God he would turn his life around and he was healed for a while. The family moved to Texas and he was drinking again. This time he heard God's voice "This is your last chance". The following Sunday he went to a Nazarene church and accepted Christ. He was radically changed. He went to church meetings almost every night, prayed, and read the Word constantly. After a year and a half he went to a Pentecostal meeting and was filled with the Holy Spirit and had a vision of Jesus.
Jack felt called to the ministry and went to and Assembly of God school called Southwestern Bible Institute, led by P.C. Nelson. He left in 1941 to join the army after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was so committed to God's purposes that he went to church every night. His sergeant sent him for psychiatric evaluation This happened several times while he was in the army. One day he was reading a book by P.C. Nelson on Healing when he fell asleep. He had a dream where he saw his sister close to death in a hospital but he saw a bright light come into her room and she was healed. He left immediately to see her and everything was as he'd seen it in a dream. She was healed and he was changed forever.
In 1944 Coe became ill with malaria. He was sent home because the doctors felt they could not help him. He sought the Lord who told him "preach the gospel". God healed him. He went out to preach and three people were saved. That year he was ordained as an Assembly of God minister. His healing experiences caused him to seek God about the gifts of healing. In 1945 he felt God called him to have a healing meeting. He went to Texas and announced in a church that God was going to heal the sick, cause the blind to see, and the deaf to hear. Those were bold words indeed! A woman received her sight that night. His ministry was launched. He began traveling over the country.
In 1946 God spoke to Coe and his wife Juanita to sell their house and start an itinerant ministry. They purchased a beat up truck and a ministry tent and began to live on the road. In 1948 God spoke to Coe to go to Redding, California. A woman, whose leg was about to be amputated, was healed and the news spread throughout the city. God blessed the couple and for the first time had enough money to be ahead on their finances. Healings and miracles regularly occurred in his meetings.
There were some very controversial things about Jack Coe. He believed that he should have a larger tent than other evangelists and went and measured Oral Roberts tent, then he ordered one larger. His style was dramatic and he often hit, slapped, or jerked people. He also would pull people out of wheelchairs. His speaking style was aggressive as he challenged people to believe God. He suggested that people who stood against him would be "struck dead by God". He was anti-medicine and told people not to go to doctors. He also encouraged interracial meetings.
In 1950 Coe began publishing the Herald of Healing magazine. Within six years it was being sent to over 350,000 people. God began to speak to Coe about opening an orphanage. He collected money for the project at every meeting. He sold his own home and began to build the children's home. His own family moved into the partially finished building so they would have a place to live. Coe eventually bought 200 acres outside of Dallas and built four dormitories and established a home farm. They could support 200 abandoned children.
In 1952 Coe began a radio ministry, which eventually was carried on over 100 radio stations. He also began having trouble with the Assembly of God organization. Although initially responsive to suggestions, he felt their goal was to limit the ministry. He suggested that the Assembly of God leadership had lost the belief in the miraculous and felt that they should be replaced. Needless to say this aggravated the situation. In 1953 Coe was expelled from the Assembly of God church. They felt that he was independent, extreme, prone to exaggeration, and they weren't sure about his ministry style. Coe felt that it was an attack against his success. He told people that "one of the officials made the remark to me that he would not rest until every man that was preaching divine healing in a deliverance ministry, separated from the General Council of the Assembly of God."
In 1953 Coe started his own church in Dallas. It was called the Dallas Revival Center. God spoke to him that it was important for those not getting healed to receive teaching about healing from the Word. In 1954 Coe opened a faith home, where people could stay for extended periods of time to receive prayer for healing. Teaching and prayer were given daily. 1956 was a pivotal year. While Coe was preaching in Miami he was arrested for practicing medicine without a license. This brought national attention to him and the ministry, both positive and negative. He was acquitted of practicing medicine without a license when the trial went to court.
At the end of 1956 Coe became ill. He had pushed himself night and day for years. He had poor eating habits and was overweight. He thought it was exhaustion but it was bulbar polio, a form of polio that affects the nerves. He became paralyzed, developed pneumonia, and died December 16, 1956.
host as you are - practicing hospitality as a family
Love God and love your neighbor . This is the Butterfield family motto. It makes us humble, messy, and on the frontline in our neighborhood. And being on the frontline isn’t pretty. “Hospitality means being profoundly unselfish, and small children need help to see the blessing in this.” Take for example last March, when the pandemic hit. We were supposed to batten down the hatches, disinfect everything, including the family cat, and remain socially distanced at all times, but schools closed before parents were home from work. So after the first week of lockdown, I looked like the little old lady who lived in the shoe. Our house was open, boisterous, noisy, and full of students who would have been in class. I could visualize getting arrested in my apron for violating governor’s stay-at-home and social-distancing orders. While that hasn’t happened, other things have happened that have made me realize that children play a vital and central role in Christian hospitality. Indeed, I couldn’t practice hospitality without them. Consider six touch points for children’s central role in Christian hospitality. 1. Hospitality is a mission of the church. Sometimes we American Christians privatize hospitality in false ways. Hospitality isn’t a Butterfield thing. It’s a church thing. And children are a blessed part of our church. Jesus loves children and so do we. As the church seeks to evangelize the world, the homes of church members become gospel outposts, places where we bring the gospel to the neighborhood. This is very good news for people with young children. It means that the burden is not on you to be different. It means that your unsaved neighbors will benefit from seeing that you also decorate with plastic dinosaurs and LEGOs. And it also means that you do not always have to be in hospitality mode. As Edith Schaeffer said, doors have hinges for a reason. 2. Hospitality puts the church on the frontline. When inviting unsaved neighbors over, Kent and I always invite our church family, too. The more the merrier, especially in the summer. Your unsaved neighbors will benefit from seeing many different models of the covenant family, including singles (whose church membership renders them a covenant family) and older people. Many Christian hands make the care of little ones easier. Also, with the church family on deck, your children will not feel neglected or isolated as they participate in hospitality. Hospitality means being profoundly unselfish, and small children need help to see the blessing in this. 3. Hospitality puts hot-button topics on the frontline. Our family is made by adoption and all of our children are biracial. Christians know that oppression, violence, and discrimination are sin, but we do not believe that racism, for example, is itself a “meta-narrative” — a paradigm that declares all white people are racists, all black people victims, all social structures complicit in a white hegemonic hatred machine, and any white family who has adopted children of color as colonizing micro-aggressionists. If these things were true, then the Butterfield family doesn’t exist. And yet here we stand, opening the door to everyone. When your family is on the frontline, it has the opportunity to showcase the love of Christ, the purpose of natural law, the harmony of the biblical callings of male and female, and the shallowness of the modern social construction of race. It exposes idols and tears down strongholds and reveals how the love of Christ transcends sociology (shocking as this may be). 4. Hospitality builds relationships within the family. Hospitality is a joy for small children when they get to have some agency in the process. Especially when you are opening your home to others in the neighborhood with small children, your children should be enlisted as hosts. They can set the kids’ table and make the kids’ menu. And with platters of chicken nuggets, watermelon, and popsicles, don’t be surprised if some of the neighborhood dads are found sampling the children’s fare. Your children can also be prepared to think like Jesus would about having children over who haven’t gone to church and don’t (yet) know Jesus. Your children need to be guided in how to be good hosts who lead and set examples (and don’t follow bad ones). And you should set clear boundaries for safety. In our house, there is no playing in children’s bedrooms. Ever. We have a big back yard with a trampoline, and we think that a knock on the head is safer than anything that happens behind a closed door. Working together to have a hospitable home also puts all hands on deck — from the smallest to the largest. Children can’t clean the house as well as you can, but even a small child can sweep up tumbleweeds of dog hair and throw trash in the kitchen can. Value their contributions. 5. Hospitality cares about what neighbors care about. When you open your home to neighbors, you set a table that welcomes them. You ask them about food allergies and other sensitivities. You remember these things and you go out of your way to care about what they care about. You practice becoming all things to all people in the hopes of saving some (1 Corinthians 9:22). You help your children to respect differences that they don’t understand (yet). 6. Hospitality is all for one and one for all. If you have small children whose bedtime is 7:30, consider having neighbors over for Saturday lunch instead of Saturday dinner. Don’t think of your children as a burden — ever. Work with the capacities, limitations, and skills of each member of your family. Be a team. Be in sync with each other’s rhythms and needs. “Hospitality isn’t a performance. It’s a Christian grace that involves the whole family.” And when guests arrive, don’t segregate the children, but integrate them. We live in a world that segregates everything. Show the beauty in working together. And at the end of the meal, the older children can put the dishes in the sink and distribute the Bibles. The little children can play with LEGOs on the floor while the family patriarch opens the Bible to the watching world and prays for the power of the resurrected Christ to guide, encourage, correct, and save. Your children will grow up watching you plead for your neighbors to put their faith in Christ. They will inherit an integrated faith, not a compartmentalized one, where parents act like Christians from ten to noon on Sunday, but the rest of the time operate in an orbit of selfish ambition. Hospitality isn’t a performance. It’s a Christian grace that involves the whole family.
