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About the Book
"God's Way of Holiness" by Horatius Bonar explores the concept of holiness and how believers can attain it through faith in Jesus Christ. Bonar emphasizes the importance of relying on God's grace and power to live a holy life, rather than relying on our own efforts. He argues that true holiness comes from aligning our will with God's will and allowing the Holy Spirit to transform us from the inside out. Overall, the book encourages readers to pursue a life of holiness by continually seeking God's presence and relying on His strength.
Oral Roberts
Granville Oral Roberts was born January 24, 1918 in Pontotoc County, near Ada, in Oklahoma. His parents were deeply religious. His father was a farmer who also preached the gospel and established Pentecostal Holiness churches. His mother regularly prayed for the sick and led people to Christ. While she was still pregnant, Robert's mother committed Oral to God's service. Even though Oral had a very strong stutter his mother would tell him that one day God would heal his tongue and he would speak to multitudes.
The Roberts family was desperately poor. When Roberts was 16 he moved away from home, hoping for a better life. He rejected God and his upbringing. He started living a wild life and his health collapsed. Roberts had contracted tuberculosis. He returned home and eventually dropped to 120 pounds. He was a walking skeleton. God spoke to his older sister, Jewel, and told her that He was going to heal Oral. During this same time Oral turned his heart back to God and gave his life to Christ. A traveling healing evangelist named George Moncey came to Ada and held meetings in a tent. Oral's elder brother was touched when he saw friends of his healed in the meeting. He decided that he should get Oral and bring him to be healed. On the way to the meeting God spoke to Oral and said "Son, I'm going to heal you and you are to take my healing power to your generation. You are to build me a University and build it on My authority and the Holy Spirit." Once at the meeting Oral waited until the very end. He was too sick to get up and receive prayer, and so had to wait for Moncey to come to him. At 11:00 at night his parents lifted him so he could stand. When Moncey prayed for him the power of God hit him and he was instantly healed. Not only that but every bit of his stutter was gone!
After Roberts was healed he began to travel the evangelistic circuit. He met and married Evelyn Lutman, a school teacher from the same Holiness Pentecostal background as Roberts. They had their first child Rebecca and then the entire family began traveling as ministers. In 1942 they left the evangelistic field for a while and Roberts became a pastor. He also returned to college to further his education. While a pastor he prayed for a church member whose foot was crushed. The foot was instantly healed. God continued to speak to Roberts about his call to the multitudes. God called him to an unusual fast. Roberts was to read the four gospels and the book of Acts three times consecutively, while on his knees, for thirty days. God began to reveal Jesus as the healer in a new way. God also began to give Roberts dreams where he would see people's needs as God saw them. God called him to hold a healing meeting in his town. A woman was dramatically healed, several people were saved and Roberts' ministry changed overnight.
Roberts resigned his church in 1947 and began an itinerant ministry. Notable healings began to occur. One man tried to shoot Roberts. God used the story to bring him media attention, which expanded his ministry very quickly. Roberts felt called to purchase a tent and take his evangelistic ministry to larger cities. His first tent held 3,000 but he quickly exchanged it for a tent that held 12,000. In July 1948 The Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association was established. Oral began traveling continuously throughout the United States. Like many of his Pentecostal brethren Roberts held inter-racial meetings. This brought him a lot of negative attention from groups who didn't like his stand. He even received death threats for not holding segregated meetings. In 1956 Roberts was invited to Australia. He held meetings in Sydney and Melbourne. In Melbourne there were outright physical attacks and destructive gangs. He was literally driven out of the city for praying for the sick. Often when people discuss the healing revival of the 1950s Oral Roberts and William Branham are listed as the most widely recognized leaders of the movement. Others came along side and many emulated them, but they were the most widely recognized personalities.
Roberts was a man who understood and used the media for his benefit. Roberts began publishing a magazine almost immediately upon starting his ministry. He grasped the power of radio and television. In 1954 Roberts began filming his crusades. He began playing his sermons on radio and then airing the crusade tapes during evening television prime time. Unfortunately there is some evidence that healing meetings were scripted ahead of time, and not all healings were genuine. People began writing to the Ministry headquarters by the thousands. They were accepting Christ as their savior after seeing a person healed on TV. By 1957 the ministry was receiving 1,000 letters a day and he was getting thousands of phone calls. He established a round the clock prayer team to answer calls and pray for people who contacted the ministry. In 1957 Roberts claimed 1,000,000 salvations. Between 1947 and 1968 Roberts conducted over 300 major Crusades. Money was flowing into the organization at an unprecedented rate.
In the late 1950s the healing movement was waning and ministries were under attack for their lack of financial accountability. Roberts began to move on the vision God gave him to build a University. It was chartered in 1963 and became open to students in 1965. Roberts was having a significant national impact in the late 1950s and early 1960s. For several years his named appeared in the Top 100 list of the nation's most respected people. Although Roberts continued to hold healing meetings his focus shifted to the University and the television programs.
The 1970s and 80s brought many crises to the Roberts family. Their daughter Rebecca and son-in-law Marshall were killed in a plane crash. Their son Ronnie struggled with depression after serving in Vietnam and also declaring himself gay. He grew despondent after losing his job and committed suicide. Richard Roberts got a divorce. After Richard remarried he and his wife lost a new born son within two days. Roberts began teaching a doctrine of "seed faith" where he claimed that if you gave to his ministry then God would pay you back in multiplied ways. The television ministry received heavy criticism for the constant requests for money. The Roberts were living an extravagance lifestyle while many of their supporters were not wealthy. Financial questions were raised in how Roberts used University endowment funds to purchase personal homes and cars.
In 1977 Roberts had a vision to build a hospital where people not only received care but received healing prayer. It was to be called City of Faith. Roberts put his heart and soul into the project, believing that God would build it as He had the University. The hospital struggled along and Roberts called his followers to give to the project, believing he had a vision from God to raise the money. Roberts even claimed twice that if money didn't come in that Jesus would "take him home." The hospital was built, but never succeeded financially, and finally closed in 1989. Financial giving was plummeting for both the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University.
Roberts retired in 1993, at the age of 75. Roberts, with his wife Evelyn, moved to California to live near the coast. Evelyn died in May 2005. Although Roberts influence waned after the problems of the 1970s and 1980s, he was still recognized for his pioneering work on the "sawdust trail", television evangelism, and building a Christian University. He often appeared on religious broadcasting networks as a recognized leader in the healing movement of the last half century. He died December 15, 2009 at the age of 91.
Oral Roberts' legacy is a mixed one. Roberts brought the truth of God's healing to the public in a way that few others accomplished in his lifetime. His financial and personal issues and increasingly extravagant claims eventually brought his ministry into disrepute. The University he established continued to have financial crises under the leadership of his son Richard Roberts. It was only after Richard stepped down in 2009 and new leadership took over the University that it stabilized financially. The University is no longer connected to the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association.
Trade Self-Help for God-Help
They set out to get help from a higher power. The lion needed courage. The tinman needed a heart. The scarecrow needed a brain. The little girl longed to return home. But at journey’s end, they came to the unfortunate discovery: The Wizard of Oz was no wizard at all. He relied on screens and microphones. His wand was broken. He had only pins and needles to give. Yet, all was not lost. Our four heroes realized that what each had sought, each already possessed. Along the way, Tinman loved, Lion risked, Scarecrow thought. Dorothy carried the ability to travel home wherever she went. They discovered that they did not need an all-powerful Oz behind the curtain. What each truly needed he already held within. Whether or not Frank Baum meant it or not, Wizard of Oz is an apt parable of the generations-old self-help movement in our increasingly post-Christian West. The Oz, many say, has nothing to offer. God, the wisdom of modern man finally confirms, is a fraud. Yet, some rush to tell us, all is not lost. After sobering from the opiate of the masses, they tell us to awaken to reality: what we’ve needed all along already resides within each of us. Truth in Self-Help Some professing Christians are promoting self-help resources at alarming rates. As can happen when biting into that pizza roll too quickly, we can lose the ability to taste differences. We chew pop-psychology’s ideology of self-reliance and discern no real difference from Christianity, which builds upon God-dependence. We swallow both indiscriminately and wonder why our stomachs hurt. Before we look at the differences between the ideologies, first a question: Can we learn anything from the self-help movement? Why does this placebo help some? Many will line up to testify of its cure-all power. What’s in the snake oil? At least one true ingredient: self-help acknowledges our personal agency. Self-help assumes that you can indeed do something to help yourself. It too rejects the deceit that we drift helplessly downstream from our past or current circumstances. We are not leaves floating down from trees. The me of yesterday doesn’t have to be the me of tomorrow. We can learn discipline. We can “take control” of various aspects of our lives, escape addictions, and overcome fears. At least self-help affirms what God always has: we can, even now, reap a different harvest by sowing a different crop. It properly highlights the truth that we can — and must — own some measures of responsibility for our lives. We each can choose, as Luther once said, many things under heaven. And each decision will have consequences. Self-help advice rescues some from the fatalistic, paternalistic, dehumanizing worldviews (so common today) that deny a crucial component of God’s world: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Diagnosing the Difference The ineptitude of the self-help philosophy becomes apparent when we contrast it with God-help. Note three differences, among others. 1. On Whom Do You Rely? Self-help gurus have little to sell us other than ourselves. In stopping at mere personal agency, they send us to build a new life while denying us straw for our bricks. Sure, they interject themselves to get us going (for a small fee, of course), but the real power resides within. The god they point to stoops down to fit into every mirror we see. Returning to our childhood optimism, “I think I can, I think I can,” this endless search to find your true potential borrows from the oldest heresy: “And you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). Claiming to be wise, these gurus exchange the glory of the immortal God for images of successful man. Believe in yourself. Clutch the scepter of your life. You can do all things through you who gives you strength. As if God, looking down from heaven without any mercy, thundered, “Just figure it out!” Promoters of self-help have not been tutored in that school that Paul had: We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:8–9) The illusions of self-help shatter when suffering weighs so heavily on our backs that we despair of life itself. Pain reminds us that we are still but creatures — for the gods do not bleed. But all affliction is a choice friend when it teaches us to sing, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:1–2). The shoulders of him alone, who carried the cross and willingly bled for the treason of our self-reliance, can bear all of our further needs. 2. What Help Do You Get? When we look within for help, we receive only temporal solutions to what amounts to eternal problems. That alcohol addiction is not first and foremost a sin because it destroys one’s family and poisons oneself. All transgression, as we shall all soon discover, is against God: “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:4). God has the first grievance, though the shrapnel certainly strikes others as well. Self-dependence may subdue some of the symptoms of sin — you stop drinking, overeating, or committing adultery — but a life of sin against God remains unaddressed and ultimately unaltered. Whereas self-help can tidy a sinking ship, “godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:8). Grace trains the Christian to say “No!” to theft, anger-issues, pornography, pride, laziness, and say, “Yes!” to self-control, uprightness, and godly lives in the present (Titus 2:11–12) — all while steering us home and preparing us for heaven, not hell. 3. Who Gets the Glory? When we trust in self — and actually succeed— we get the glory. I am smarter, more disciplined, better. When we become self-made men and women, and not God-made men and women, we run from disordered lives into the arms of pride. Having escaped the cobra, we encounter the bear. And this tempts the self-reliant to look down on others who aren’t successful, and, whether they ever succumb to temptation or not, they never bother looking up to God. But the man who makes God his trust has a very different victory song: Not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me. But you have saved us from our foes and have put to shame those who hate us. In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever. (Psalm 44:6–8) The Christian, awake to the reality that he has no good apart from his God (Psalm 16:2), speaks repeatedly, “Not to me, O God, not to me, but to your name give glory” (Psalm 115:1). Christ is his boast. Christ is his refrain. He wants every triumph to add another jewel to the crown of his King. Make the Trade Self-help gives me my own small, fleeting glory. God-help offers us deep, everlasting joy, secure in his unfading glory. Self-help offers a temporal good (at best). God-help gives eternal good with the temporal thrown in. Self-help relies on my discipline, my resolve, and my effort. God-help builds upon a child’s cry to his father, leaning on one’s eternal family, and trusting God’s unfailing promises. God-help sustains me with daily bread from heaven. Self-help cannibalizes me, for it can find no other food. God-help ends in salvation, glory, and the conquering of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Self-help addresses the coughs and sneezes of this life but leaves me, at the end of it, without hope, without forgiveness, and without God in this world. So, trade self-help for God-help. God does not help those who, unmindful of him, help themselves. He works for those who wait for him (Isaiah 64:4). In the end, self-help is sheer folly. It sends us to work on Babel, rent a room in Gomorrah, eat grass with the mad king, and speak over ourselves, “Take up your bed and rise.” The placebo works only for so long, but all shall fall eventually — and “great shall be the fall.” But those who trust in Christ have Almighty God working in them, unsearchable promises to guide them, a heaven to journey to, and a Savior to glorify along the way. Article by Greg Morse
