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About the Book
"Holy War" by John Bunyan is an allegorical novel that tells the story of the city of Mansoul which is besieged by the forces of evil led by the devil, Diabolus. The city's residents must defend themselves against temptation and sin in order to protect their faith and salvation. The book serves as a powerful exploration of spiritual warfare and the battle between good and evil within the human soul.
Gordon Lindsay
Gordon Lindsayâs Early life
Gordon Lindsayâs parents were members of J. A. Dowieâs Zion City, Illinois when he was born. The cityâs financial difficulties forced the family west in 1904, where they temporarily joined another Christian-based community led by Finis Yoakum at Pisgah Grande, California. When similar problems emerged the family moved to Oregon after only a few months. From here the family moved to Portland, Oregon where Lindsay attended high school and was converted during a Charles F. Parham evangelistic campaign.
During his youth he came under the influence of John G. Lake, former resident of Zion City, missionary to South Africa, and founder of the Divine Healing missions in Spokane, Washington, and Portland, Oregon in 1920. Lindsay joined the healing and evangelistic campaigns of Lake, traveling throughout California and the southern states.
Lindsay began his own ministry in California as pastor of small churches in Avenal and San Fernando and for the next eighteen years, he travelled acros s the country holding revivals in full gospel churches. This period of travel prepared him as perhaps no other man in the nation to establish communication among a variety of Pentecostals.
When World War II began, Lindsay felt compelled to give up his evangelistic ministry because its rigorous lifestyle was taking its toll on his young family. He accepted a call to pastor a church in Ashland, Oregon.
William Branham enters Gordon Lindsayâs life
By 1947 he had witnessed the extraordinary ministry of William Branham and responded to the invitation to become Branhamâs manager. His managerial skills were soon obvious in the Branham campaigns, and in April 1948, he furthered the cause of the of the revival when he produced the first issue of The Voice of Healing, specifically to promote Branhamâs ministry. To Lindsayâs great surprise Branham announced that he âwould not continue on the field more than a few weeks more.â
At great financial cost Lindsay decided to continue the publication of the new magazine in cooperation with his long-time friends, Jack Moore and his talented daughter Anna Jeanne Moore. He broadened the scope of the magazine by including more of the lesser known healing evangelists who were beginning to hold campaigns and were drawing large audiences.
One such evangelist was William Freeman who had been holding meetings in small churches. Lindsay visited one of his campaigns and immediately felt it was the will of God to team up with him and organise a series of meetings through 1948. The Voice of Healing featured the miracles of the Freeman campaigns.
Voice of Healing Conventions
By March 1949 The Voice of Healing circulation had grown to nearly 30,000 per month and had clearly become the voice of the healing movement. Itâs pages successfully spread the message of the Salvation-Deliverance-Healing revival across the world.
In December 1949, Lindsay arranged the first convention of healing revivalists in Dallas, Texas. The assembly was addressed by Branham, Lindsay, Moore, old-timers such as F. F. Bosworth and Raymond T. Richey, and a number of rising revivalists including O. L. Jaggers, Gayle Jackson, Velmer Gardner, and Clifton Erickson. This historic conference symbolized the vitality and cohesion of the revival.
The following year, the convention, now about 1,000 strong, met in Kansas City, with virtually every important revivalist in the nation, with the notable exceptions of William Branham and Oral Roberts. Lindsay exercised great skill and wisdom exposing several points of danger and tension in the movement proposed guidelines for the future. Lindsay understood the fears of the older Pentecostal denominations and leaders and tried his utmost to deal with the offending issues.
In an article announcing âthe purpose, plan and policy of the Voice of Healing Convention,â he denounced âfree-lancers who violently and indiscriminately attack organization in general,â and he urged avoidance of ânovel prophetic interpretations, dogmatic doctrinal assertions, sectarian predilections, theological hair-splitting.â
The Voice of Healing Association
The 1950 meeting made the Voice of Healing convention into a loose association of healing revivalists. The evangelists officially associated with The Voice of Healing magazine held âfamily meetingsâ at the conventions, at the same time maintaining their desire to âprove to the world that those associated with The Voice of Healing have no intention to organize another movement.â Through the decade the Voice of Healing conventions were showcases for healing revivalism.
The conference programs were workshops on the problems of healing evangelists. Typical topics were âprayer and fasting,â âpreparation for a campaign,â âthe follow-up work after a campaign,â âthe system of cards for the prayer tent and the healing lineâ and the delicate issue of finances. As the association grew in importance in the 1950s, the program was frequently headed by Roberts or Branham; though every new revivalist aspired to be a speaker on the program.
The Voice of Healing family of evangelists flowered in the early 1950s. Lindsay continued to publicize Branhamâs work, although he was not formally associated with the organization; the nucleus of the fellowship was an influential clique which included O. L. Jaggers, William Freeman, Jack Coe, T. L. Osborn, A. A. Allen, and Velmer Gardner.
Gradually major ministries began their own magazines and had no further need for Voice of Healing promotion. Nevertheless, by 1954 the âassociate editors and evangelistsâ listed in The Voice of Healing numbered nearly fifty.
Though Lindsay became personally involved with healing evangelism from 1949, especially with other revivalists such as T. L. Osborn, he confined his best work to organization and management of the Voice of Healing magazine. By 1956 the expenses of the Voice of Healing were running $1,000 a day. In addition to the national and regional conventions sponsored by his organization, Lindsay also began to sponsor missions and a radio program.
âLindsay was more than an advisor during the first decade of the healing revival; he was much like the director of an unruly orchestra. He tried desperately to control the proliferation of ministries in an effort to keep the revival respectable. He repeatedly advised, âIt is better for one to go slow. Get your ministry on a solid foundation. . . . By all means avoid Hollywood press agent stuff.â
Many of the new leaders of the early 1950s owed their early success to the literary support of Gordon Lindsay through the Voice of Healing, but by 1958, many of the revivalists believed that Lindsayâs work was over.
An evolving ministry
Lindsayâs efforts to consolidate and coordinate the healing movement and its ministries became an impossible task. The increasing independence of ministries and the burgeoning charismatic movement caused Lindsay to reconsider his goals. He took the example of T. L. Osborn and concentrated on missionary endeavours. He remained the historian and theologian of the healing movement but began to produce teaching and evangelistic materials which were sent across the world.
The Voice of Healing ultimately became Christ for the Nations. Native church programs, literature, teaching tapes and funds were distributed to hundreds of locations. The organization had changed from one of healing revivalists into an important missionary society.
His ministry was always to those involved in the healing revival, independents and mainline Pentecostals, but the new charismatics â Lutherans, Methodists and Baptists â became his new audience. His encouragement of, and involvement with, the Full Gospel Businessmenâs Fellowship was designed to provide teaching and wisdom for charismatic leaders, many of whom held Lindsay in high regard.
His death on April 1st 1971
Suddenly, on April 1, 1973, Gordon Lindsay died. His wife, Freda, stepped into the breach and was able to stabilize and advance the ministry of Christ for the Nations. Lindsayâs death brought unparalleled financial support paying off all debts and expanding most of its programs.
David Harrel summarises the life of Gordon Lindsay perfectly: âThe death of Gordon Lindsay closed a major chapter in the charismatic revival. No single man knew the revival and its leaders so well. No man understood its origins, its changes, and its diversity as did Lindsay. A shrewd manager and financier, Lindsay had been as nearly the coordinator of the healing revival as any man could be.
When the revival began to wane, Lindsay was faced with a crisis more severe than those of most of the evangelists themselves. Never a dynamic preacher, he found himself virtually abandoned by his most successful protĂ©gĂ©s. But Lindsay proved able to adapt. Always a balanced person, Lindsay built a balanced and enduring ministry.â
Tony Cauchi
Did God Hear Me - Where Was He When My Sister Died
The ancient Hebrew songwriter of Psalm 116 sings with joy, I love the Lord, because he has heard      my voice and my pleas for mercy. . . . The snares of death encompassed me;      the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me;      I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord:      âO Lord, I pray, deliver my soul!â Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;      our God is merciful. . . . For you have delivered my soul from death,      my eyes from tears,      my feet from stumbling. (Psalm 116:1â8) This is the collective testimony of Godâs people â he loves us, and we love him. And because he loves us, our Savior has promised that when we pray for anything according to his will, he will answer us (John 14:13â14). In two previous articles, I wrote about how I prayed for my daughterâs life when she was diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer and how Jesus answered my prayer. In nothing short of a miracle, Jesus healed her and delivered me and my wife from inconsolable sorrows (Philippians 2:27). God is good, and he is merciful, and, yes, he hears our cries for help. Then March of this year happened. My sister was diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer. My family was still grieving her 40-year-old son who, just months earlier, died tragically and unexpectedly from a heart attack. The news of my sisterâs cancer emotionally overwhelmed us. We prayed for a miracle. Trusting in her Lord with whether she lived or died, my sister breathed her last breath on June 3rd. My heart is broken, and Iâm still grieving. There have been days when I didnât think I would be able to get out of bed. Everything is harder. Writing an article about death is harder. âGod hears the prayers of the righteous â and he is still righteous and good when he answers no.â After praying with me for my sisterâs life and then mourning with me over her death, Desiring God gave me an opportunity to share from our mourning. So I want to try to comfort others with the comfort of God that I am seeking. I want to help Christians see how enduring suffering rests on an important truth. Our comfort comes from embracing the truth that God hears the prayers of the righteous â and that he is still righteous and good when he answers no. What We Donât Understand Yet The Bible teaches that when Godâs children are in despair, he wants us to pray, knowing that he will answer (1 Peter 5:7). But the Bible doesnât promise to limit the infinite answers of God to our finite understandings. While Godâs answers are always consistent with who he is (good, all-wise, righteous, and merciful), his thoughts and ways are incalculably higher than ours. So sometimes when we pray for God to keep us from the sorrows that fill this broken world, his perfect answer will be, âNo, my grace is sufficient for youâ (2 Corinthians 12:9). Consider the agony of seeing your miraculously born, perfectly just, and sinless son hanging from a wickedly unjust, cruel Roman cross. Mary didnât knowingly pray for that. Wasnât the horror of the cross crushing to her? Yet God ordained the cross, and for the joy set before him, Jesus willingly submitted to the Father and endured it. Before we see him on the cross, we see him alone in the garden. And there, we see him in agony, trembling and pleading with his Father three times to take his cup of wrath away (Matthew 26:39â44). Yes, God is good, and whenever he allows suffering, he has good purposes behind it, even when we donât understand (Genesis 50:20). Jesus knew that and surrendered to his Fatherâs perfect will and drank the full cup of Godâs wrath. He endured the greatest suffering of all, and by doing so, brought about the greatest good of all, redemption â the overthrow of death, sin, and all that is evil. The Real Problem with Death When we pray for our dying loved ones, what are we really asking for? Like Hezekiah, are we asking God to give them more years (2 Kings 20:1, 5â6)? God heard his prayers and saw his tears and extended his life by fifteen years. When we pray, and our loved ones are with us for another day, or month, or year, we should give thanks through tears. I treasured the three months that God gave us with my sister. She was able to say her final goodbyes, see her grandchildren, and express her unwavering faith in Jesus. She glorified God in her death (Philippians 1:20). However, we should also remember eternity in our prayers. In our pleading with God, we should first pray for our loved oneâs salvation â that whether they live or die, they make their calling and election sure. For even if God extends their lives, what are years in light of eternity? All our lives are just a vapor. The real problem with death isnât when we die . The real problem is that we will die . The sage of Ecclesiastes bluntly writes, âNo man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of deathâ (Ecclesiastes 8:8). Jesus came for that reason. He came to abolish death and bring life and immortality to light (2 Timothy 1:10). Because the wages of sin is death, the Son of God became man, so that he could live a sinless life and then give that life as the payment for our sin (1 Peter 3:18). Prayer for Your Mourning Jesusâs resurrection validated his victory and authority over death. He is the resurrection and the life. Our loved ones who die in Christ go directly into his presence. We can comfort ourselves with that truth. No one has to mourn without hope when their loved ones die in Christ (1 Thessalonians 4:13â14). In the end, Christ will remove death from creation when he makes a new heaven and a new earth (1 Corinthians 15:26; Revelation 21:4). Until then, we do deeply mourn (Philippians 2:27), but because of Christ we have a balm to heal our broken hearts. In a confession of desperation, when facing an insurmountable enemy, Judahâs King Jehoshaphat cried out to the Lord, âWe are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on youâ (2 Chronicles 20:12). May I encourage you to make this your prayer as you mourn? âYou wonât always understand why you suffer, but you must believe that God does.â Perhaps you have prayed and asked God to heal your loved one. Instead, youâve been struck like Job by the cruelty of our mortal enemy â death (Job 1:4â5, 18â19). Your songs arenât songs of joy. They are laments from a heart that is reeling from the jarring pain that comes with the death of a spouse, a child, a sibling, a best friend, or someone whom youâve deeply loved. You wonât always understand why you suffer, but you must believe that God does. You can, therefore, pray and ask God to comfort you, knowing that he is good even when he ordains that you suffer. How I Comfort My Soul As you mourn, perhaps your prayer can sound like this: Jesus, I believe that you love me. You went to the cross for me and saved me. Fill my heart with the light of your love when the darkness of sorrow encompasses me. Jesus, you are the infinite, all-powerful Son of God, and you became man so that you could be my sympathetic High Priest, who feels all my weaknesses and pains (Hebrews 4:15). Help me to mourn. You know the pain of death. You wept over your friend Lazarus, and you mourned with his sisters. Remind me that you are bottling up every tear that falls from my eyes (Psalm 56:8). Jesus, you are not indifferent to death nor to my struggle with it. You hate death (John 11:33; Ezekiel 18:32) and came to put death to death. When you rose from the dead, you conquered death, and you shared your victory over death with all who believe in you. Comfort me with the reality that you are the resurrection and the life, and because of this, my believing loved one has eternal life in your presence. Lord, you appoint the day when everyone dies and stands before you in judgment (Hebrews 9:27). I canât put people into heaven or hell. You are the judge of all the earth, and you always do what is right even when I canât comprehend it (Genesis 18:25). You mourned over an unbelieving Israel (Matthew 23:37). Help me to know that you are good even when I mourn the death of unbelieving loved ones. Father, all good gifts come from you. Through my tears, I thank you for giving me my loved one, and for the time that you gave me as I mourn the years that I wonât have. This is how I am comforting my soul. I thank God for making my sister to be our family evangelist. She brought me to church when I was twenty. I heard the gospel, and God saved me. I thank God for giving her eternal life so that she never saw death (John 8:51). When she breathed her last breath here, she opened her eyes looking into the radiance of the glory that shines from his face. And I thank God for his word that teaches all of us that Jesus is the ultimate gift, and God is enough to satisfy our souls (Psalms 73:25â26). Until Christ comes or brings us home, I pray that God will comfort our hearts with these precious truths so that we can comfort others who are mourning.
