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About the Book
In "Latent Power of the Soul," Watchman Nee explores the hidden abilities of the human soul and its potential for both good and evil. Nee discusses the dangers of relying on psychic powers and emphasizes the importance of submitting to God's authority. He argues that true power comes from aligning our souls with God's will and serving others in humility. Overall, Nee urges readers to seek spiritual growth and avoid the deceptive allure of supernatural abilities.
Gordon Lindsay
Gordon Lindsay’s Early life
Gordon Lindsay’s parents were members of J. A. Dowie’s Zion City, Illinois when he was born. The city’s 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 Lindsay’s life
By 1947 he had witnessed the extraordinary ministry of William Branham and responded to the invitation to become Branham’s 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 Branham’s ministry. To Lindsay’s great surprise Branham announced that he “would not continue on the field more than a few weeks more.”
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. It’s 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 “the purpose, plan and policy of the Voice of Healing Convention,” he denounced “free-lancers who violently and indiscriminately attack organization in general,” and he urged avoidance of “novel prophetic interpretations, dogmatic doctrinal assertions, sectarian predilections, theological hair-splitting.”
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 “family meetings” at the conventions, at the same time maintaining their desire to “prove to the world that those associated with The Voice of Healing have no intention to organize another movement.” 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 “prayer and fasting,” “preparation for a campaign,” “the follow-up work after a campaign,” “the system of cards for the prayer tent and the healing line” 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 Branham’s 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 “associate editors and evangelists” 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.
“Lindsay 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, “It is better for one to go slow. Get your ministry on a solid foundation. . . . By all means avoid Hollywood press agent stuff.”
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 Lindsay’s work was over.
An evolving ministry
Lindsay’s 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 – Lutherans, Methodists and Baptists – became his new audience. His encouragement of, and involvement with, the Full Gospel Businessmen’s 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. Lindsay’s death brought unparalleled financial support paying off all debts and expanding most of its programs.
David Harrel summarises the life of Gordon Lindsay perfectly: ‘The 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 protégés. But Lindsay proved able to adapt. Always a balanced person, Lindsay built a balanced and enduring ministry.’
Tony Cauchi
What Keeps Couples Apart
Several months ago, as my wife’s birthday approached, I was thrilled to discover that a band she likes had plans to play next year in a nearby city. I booked good seats, spending a bit more than I normally would on birthdays, and began anticipating her reaction. On the morning of her birthday, she opened my gift, saw the concert tickets, and immediately began (to my surprise and consternation) to laugh. Hard. When she could draw a breath again, she reminded me that we had already booked tickets for this exact concert: same night, same venue. At which point I remembered that, oh yes, we had indeed done so months earlier. A long COVID postponement had pushed the concert entirely out of my mind. Now we had four expensive tickets. And — to add insult to injury — the birthday seats I had booked weren’t quite as good as the ones we had already booked together. Thankfully, my wife was able to laugh at my mistake. But of course, it was also a bit hurtful, given that I had entirely forgotten a special plan we had made together. Resilient Intimacy As my wife and I reflected later, we realized that we know married couples for whom my gaffe would have resulted not in laughter but in a blow-out argument — for whom it would have become not an amusing story but a major incident. For the wives, it would have constituted Exhibit A of her husband’s callous disregard, and the story would have been repeated (often) with bitterness, anger, and disgust. For their part, the husbands likely would have doubled down, not apologizing or daring to admit fault. We wondered what makes the difference in our case, why our marriage can weather small slights, stupid oversights, inconveniences, poorly chosen words, clashes of opinion, and sins of attitude and action against one another. And I think an important part of the answer is marital intimacy. By marital intimacy, I mean a depth of mutual knowledge and affection between a husband and wife, a marriage in which both spouses enjoy sharing experiences, emotions, ideas, and sexual romance with one another. Our own marriage is certainly a work in progress, and I’m not half the husband I ought or want to be, but through God’s goodness we have tasted this intimacy and desire more. Obstacle to Intimacy: Busyness Despite the beauty and blessedness of true intimacy, I’ve encountered numerous obstacles to it — both in my own marriage, and in years of counseling married couples. One of the most common is busyness. If intimacy involves shared experiences, emotions, ideas, and sexual romance, it’s going to require significant time together. You can’t fit it into fifteen-minute increments here and there. For many married couples, however, time is in short supply. Work commitments, household chores, church involvement, transporting kids to their activities — all these good responsibilities fill our lives and keep us traveling in different directions. When a husband and wife pass like ships in the night, there’s not sufficient time to go deep beneath the surface. Obstacle to Intimacy: Lack of Effort A closely related obstacle is a lack of effort invested in cultivating intimacy. Perhaps this is, in part, a function of our culture’s misguided idealization of relationships, in which the dream scenario is to find our soul mate and experience an instant, magical, effortless depth of relationship. We’re disillusioned when we find it doesn’t work that way. A more realistic guide for marriage comes from Hebrews 10:24, which speaks generally of relationships within the Christian community. The English Standard Version translates the verse as, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.” But a more literal translation would be, “Let us consider one another, unto the stirring up of love and good works.” Note the subtle but significant difference. The author of Hebrews urges us to consider not mainly a project (how to stir up others) but people (“one another”). The word consider suggests direct observation of something, together with deliberate thought about it. Since Christian community requires such careful thought toward one another, surely marriage does all the more. We’re to consider our spouse, to observe and ponder this person, to become world experts so that no one knows him or her better. Like any field of research, this long-term course of spousal study requires energy, focus, and attention. Failure to put in the work rules out the reward of intimacy. Obstacles Under the Obstacles Although lack of time and lack of effort are both significant obstacles, they’re not the only ones, and certainly not the deepest. In general, barring other factors, we allocate time and effort to the pursuits we really care about. If we’re passionate about the latest Netflix show, the model railroading club, or the soccer league, we make time and engage deeply. So what prevents this same investment in our marriage? I’ve found that there are usually obstacles under the obstacles. One of the deepest is selfishness. True intimacy with a spouse requires time, work, vulnerability, and sacrifice. It’s a whole lot easier to avoid those costs, particularly if they obstruct our other aims and desires. Sometimes, at the end of a day, when I’m tired of talking and prefer to be silent, the best way to serve my wife is through conversation. At other times, the situation is reversed, and I’m the one who needs a listening ear. Our responses in such moments (and in thousands of other ones) will move us either toward or away from intimacy. “True intimacy with a spouse requires time, work, vulnerability, and sacrifice.” Ignorance also cripples intimacy. We may long for emotional, relational, and sexual intimacy in marriage, but we’ve never seen such intimacy modeled or learned about it from others. To many, intimacy is a mystery, a foreign land, and we have no map, no idea of how to get beneath pleasantries or functional conversations in order to explore another person’s heart. When we find time alone with our spouse, we remain in the rut of “calendar and kid” conversations. Or perhaps the obstacle we face isn’t ignorance but insecurity; we’ve been badly hurt in other relationships and have walled off certain areas of emotional intimacy as no-go zones in order to protect ourselves. We’re not sure how (or if) we could ever open those corners of our lives to another person again. Finally, one of the most serious obstacles to intimacy is a lack of forgiveness. When one or both spouses have been hurt by the other, and that hurt hasn’t been addressed, repented of, and covered with grace, resentment rankles. Each subsequent interaction is freighted with past pain, interpreted through a lens of suspicion. Bitterness accumulates, undercutting intimacy. How to Pursue Marital Intimacy So then, in the face of several significant obstacles, how might we move toward marital intimacy? VISION FOR INTIMACY A crucial first step is seeing and celebrating intimacy in marriage as a precious and desired goal. We would do well to remind ourselves that marriage is a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church, and that therefore the emotional, intellectual, experiential, and sexual intimacy of husband and wife reflects and expresses the intimate love between Christ and his people. Ephesians 5:28–31 teaches that Christ “nourishes and cherishes” the church, that husbands are to “love their wives as their own bodies,” and that husbands and wives become “one flesh” with one another. These are attractive and compelling visions of intimacy. SOURCE OF INTIMACY Once we desire this intimacy, how do we attain it? We can start by asking God for help. He is glorified when our marriages express the intimate love between his Son and his people. So, when we ask him for help in this area — sincerely and persistently — he will answer. Sometimes he’ll grow us in pleasant ways, and sometimes in painful ways. Seasons of suffering can deepen and sweeten our relationships. “God is glorified when our marriages express the intimate love between his Son and his people.” Early in our marriage, my insecurities and anxieties were exposed to my wife in a particularly painful way over the course of months, and she consistently responded to my vulnerability with tenderness and compassion. Her patient love set a tone for our entire marriage that continues to this day. INTIMACY IN COMMUNITY God will act on our behalf, but he also calls us to action. It may seem paradoxical, but one of the most important means of pursuing marital intimacy is surrounding our marriages with other people. True marital intimacy requires an inner core of the gospel and an outer context of Christian community; intimacy must be sourced by good news and surrounded by church. In community, our sins of selfishness and unforgiveness are lovingly identified, prayed for, and challenged. In community, we’re given examples of healthy, intimate marriages from which we can learn, and that we can imitate. Those marriages provide a road map for ours. Marriage counseling with a wise and godly couple is great, but so is simply spending time with them and observing their interactions in everyday life. We can see for ourselves how communication happens, conflicts are resolved, courtesies are extended, and collaboration in ministry is enjoyed. If your marriage is stale and superficial, why not commit to diving deeper into the gospel and into a gospel-saturated community of believers? What’s Wrong in My Marriage? If Christian community is the nurturing context for marital intimacy, the gospel is the necessary core. Only the gospel can fully address our in-built selfishness, lack of forgiveness, and insecurity — those obstacles under the other obstacles. The gospel draws our hearts to Christ, who surrendered himself to death for our sake and took our punishment upon himself. As we soak in that good news, we experience the magnificence of God’s love and the magnitude of our own sin. I once asked a warring couple to identify the main problem in their marriage, and then listened for 45 minutes as each spouse pinpointed the failings of the other. For each, their spouse’s sin was the real problem. The other’s failings were big; theirs were small. The gospel devastates that warped view, because it tells us that the Son of God had to die for our sin. But the gospel also announces that, in Christ, we’re forgiven, cleansed, and treasured by God. God sees, knows, and loves us. So maybe it’s possible for another human being to do the same. True marital intimacy is a precious jewel to be prayed for, prized, and pursued. It’s worth the work. Article by Stephen Witmer
