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About the Book
"Not I, but Christ" by Watchman Nee reflects on the Christian journey of dying to self and allowing Christ to live through us. Nee emphasizes the importance of surrendering our own desires and ambitions to God, and allowing His will to be done in our lives. Through personal anecdotes and biblical teachings, Nee encourages readers to seek a deeper intimacy with Christ and to let go of their own self-centeredness. Overall, the book serves as a guide for believers to grow closer to God and live a life that reflects the character of Christ.
Kathryn Kuhlman
Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman was born on May 9, 1907, in Concordia, Missouri. Her parents were German and she was one of four children. Her mother was a harsh disciplinarian, who showed little love or affection. On the other hand, she had an extremely close and loving relationship with her father. She would describe, as a small child how, her father would come home from work and she would hang on his leg and cling to him. She often said that her relationship with God the Father was extremely real because of her relationship with her own father.
Kuhlman was converted, when she was 14, at an evangelistic meeting held in a small Methodist church. When she was 16 she graduated from high school, which only went to tenth grade in their town. He older sister Myrtle had married an itinerant evangelist, Everett B. Parrott. They spent their time traveling and asked that Kathryn could join them for the summer. Her parents agreed and she went to Oregon to help out. She worked with them, and often gave her testimony. When the summer was over she wanted to stay, and the couple agreed. She ended up working with them for five years.
The evangelistic team was made up of four people, Everette, Myrtle, Kathryn, and pianists named Helen Gulliford. In 1928 Everette missed a meeting in Boise, Idaho. Myrtle and Kathryn preached to cover for Everette. The pastor of the church encouraged Kathryn to step out on her own. Helen agreed to join her. Her first sermon was in a run-down pool hall in Boise, Idaho. The team covered Idaho, Utah, and Colorado for the following five years. In 1933 they moved into Pueblo, Colorado. They set up in an abandoned Montgomery Ward warehouse. They stayed there for six months.
Denver, being a much bigger city, was the next stop. They moved several times but ended up in a paper company's warehouse, which they named the Kuhlman Revival Tabernacle. Then in 1935 they moved once more to an abandoned truck garage they named the Denver Revival Tabernacle. Kathryn was seeing a lot of success in Denver. The church grew to about 2000 members. She began a radio show called "Smiling Through" and invited speakers from all over the country. One of them was Phil Kerr who taught on divine healing. In 1935 another invited evangelist was Burroughs Waltrip.
Waltrip was bad news for Kuhlman. He was a charismatic, handsome man several years older than she was. There was an immediate attraction, and one family claims to have seen the couple embracing in 1935, but he was married and had two children. Waltrip left Denver and went home to Austin, Texas, but the relationship simmered between Kuhlman and Waltrip. In 1937 he was invited back to Denver to take the pulpit for two months. Shortly after he divorced his wife and abandoned his two sons. He then spread the story that his wife had left him. He moved to Mason City, Iowa, where he told everyone he was single, and started a new ministry. Waltrip raised pledges of $70,000 to build a ministry building called Radio Chapel. It was state of the art with a disappearing pulpit and an art deco style. He appeared to be a successful and dynamic preacher.
There was an ongoing relationship between Kuhlman and Waltrip, and they married in September 1938. Kuhlman was naive about the consequences of her choices and the marriage was a disaster. She announced to her church that she and Waltrip were married and they would go between Denver and Mason City preaching at their two churches. Most of the people in her congregation left due to her relationship with Waltrip. She gave up her church in Denver, lost some of her closest associates, and moved to Mason City. Waltrip's success turned out to be a pipe dream as well. The Radio Chapel was completed in June of 1938. By October 1938 Waltrip could not meet his debts. In December Waltrip was demanding a higher salary, even with the shortfall in income. His Board of Directors quit and left him to deal with the finances. His solution was not to pay the mortgage or debts on the Chapel. Radio Chapel went into bankruptcy. Waltrip's last sermon was in May 1939. The Waltrips were on their own. Kathryn's happy vision of she and her husband flying back and forth between Denver and Mason City with a successful preaching careers was utterly demolished.
The next few years were very hard for the couple. They embarked on the road as traveling evangelists, primarily staying in the Midwest. They were not accepted in many places due to their marriage history. Initial advertisements listed Waltrip as the primary evangelist. Then occasionally Mrs. Waltrip was also mentioned. By the early 1940s Kathryn Kuhlman Waltrip was given equal billing. Finally by the mid-1940s Kathryn was using only Kathryn Kuhlman in meetings where she was the primary speaker. In 1944 Kuhlman went on an evangelistic tour on the east coast without Waltrip. It may have been a conscious decision to leave him, or she may also have taken the opportunity to reassess her life. It appears to have been more gradual as Waltrip wrote about them as a couple as late as 1946. Kuhlman never returned to Waltrip and they eventually divorced in 1947. She left her marriage behind and from then on acted as if it never existed in the first place.
In 1946 Kuhlman was asked to speak in Franklin, Pennsylvania. She was well received and decided to stay in the area. Kuhlman began preaching on radio broadcasts in Oil City, Pennsylvania. These became so popular they were picked up in Pittsburgh, and she was preaching throughout the area. She began to preach about the healing power of God. In 1947 a woman was healed of a tumor while listening to Kuhlman preach. Several Sundays later a man was also healed while she was teaching on the Holy Spirit. She was now convinced of God's healing work. One important thing to note is the context and timing of this breakout period in Kuhlman's life. 1947 was the beginning of the Healing Revival (sometimes referred to as the Latter Rain Revival) that would last for the next 10 years. What was happening in Kuhlman's meetings was breaking out across the United States. It was in this time frame that the Voice of Healing Ministry was established and men like William Branham, Oral Roberts, A.A. Allen and many others were propelled onto the public stage. Kuhlman was not associated with those groups, but stepped into the flow of what God's Spirit was doing across the nation and the world.
In 1948 Kuhlman held a series of meetings at Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh. She eventually moved to Pittsburgh in 1950, and continued to hold meetings at Carnegie Hall until 1971. She was used by God to bring the charismatic message to many denominational churches, including the Catholic Church. (She received a lot of criticism over this and was accused of being a closet Catholic.) These were her best known years. Her style was flamboyant. She would hold her famous miracle services and the auditorium was filled to capacity every time. She was on radio and television shows. She was ordained in 1968 by the Evangelical Church Alliance. Hundreds of people were healed in her meetings, and even while listening to her on the radio or television. People she prayed for would often be hit with the power of God and be "slain in the Spirit." Kuhlman never claimed that she was the healer. She always pointed people to Jesus as their healer.
Kuhlman had been diagnosed with a heart problem in 1955. She kept a very busy schedule and overworked herself, especially in the 1970's. She traveled back and forth from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles frequently, as well as taking trips around the world. Her heart was enlarged and Kuhlman died on February 20, 1976, in Tulsa, following open-heart surgery. Videos of some of her services are still available and continue to be popular today.
God Wrote a Book
We actually have the words of God. This is almost too good to be true. And yet how often are we so accustomed to this reality — one of the greatest wonders in all the universe — that it barely moves us to handle the Bible with care (and awe), or at least to access his words with the frequency they deserve? Familiarity can breed contempt, or at least neglect. While scarcity drives demand, abundance can lead to apathy. For many of us, we have multiple Bibles on our shelves, in multiple translations. We have copies on our computers and phones. We have access to the very words of God like never before — yet how often do we appreciate, and marvel at, the wonder of what we have? Wonder of Having One of the greatest facts in all of history is that God gave us a Book. He gave us a Book! He has spoken. He has revealed himself to us through prophets and apostles, and appointed that they write down his words and that they be preserved. We have his words! We can hear in our souls the very voice of God himself by his Spirit through his Book. “No word of God is a dead word.” Think of all God went to, and what patience, to make his self-revelation accessible to us here in the twenty-first century. Long ago, at many times, and in many ways, God spoke through the prophets (Hebrews 1:1). Then, in the fullness of time, he sent his own Son, his own self, in full humanity, as his revealed Word par excellence, in the person of Christ, represented to us by his authoritative, apostolic spokesmen in the new covenant. For centuries, God’s word was copied by hand, and preserved with the utmost diligence and care. Then, for the last 500 years of the printing press, God’s word has gone far and wide like never before. Men and women gave their lives, upsetting the apple carts of man-made religion, to translate the words of God into the heart language of their people. And now, in the digital revolution, access to God’s own words has exploded exponentially again, and yet — and yet — in such abundance, do we marvel at what we have? And do we, as individuals and as churches, make the most of what infinite riches we have in such access to the Scriptures? His Words, Our Great Reward The psalmists were in awe of what they had. In particular, Psalms 19 and 119 pay tribute to the wonder of having God’s words. For instance: The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. (Psalm 19:7–11) “We come to his word, like holy hedonists, stalking joy.” God is honored when we approach his words as those that revive the soul and rejoice the heart, as those that are more to be desired than gold and sweeter than honey. The summary and culmination of Psalm 19’s unashamed tribute to God’s words is this: great reward. He means for us to experience his words as “my delight” (Psalm 1:2; 119:16, 24), as “the joy of my heart” (Psalm 119:111), as “the delight of my heart” (Jeremiah 15:16), as kindling for the fires of our joy. Not only has God spoken in this Book we call the Bible, but he is speaking. Writing about Psalm 95 in particular (and applicable to all the Scriptures), Hebrews says “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). No word of God is a dead word. Even Hebrews — the New Testament letter plainest on the old covenant being “obsolete” in its demands upon new-covenant Christians (Hebrews 8:13) — professes that old-covenant revelation, while no longer binding, is indeed “living and active.” “Is not my word like fire,” God declares through Jeremiah, “and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” (Jeremiah 23:29). From cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation, God has captured for his church his objective, “external word” (as Luther called it) which he speaks (present tense) to his people through the subjective, internal power of his Spirit dwelling in us. We hear God’s voice in his word by his Spirit. And so, Hebrews exhorts us, “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking” (Hebrews 12:25). Wonder of Handling So then, how will we who marvel at having God’s living and active words not also fall to the floor in amazement that he invites us — even more, he insists — that we handle his word. It is no private message to Timothy, but to the whole church reading over his shoulder, when Paul writes, Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15) The charge lands first on Timothy, as Paul’s delegate in Ephesus, and then on pastors (both then and today) who formally and publicly “handle the word” for the feeding and forming of the church. But the summons to rightly handle the word of truth (both in the gospel word and in the written Scriptures) is a mantle for the whole church to gladly bear. In the midst of a world of destructive words, God calls his church to first receive (have) and then respond to (handle) his words. As human words of death fly around us from all sides — in the air, on the page, on our screens — he gives us his own life-giving words to steady our souls and the souls of others. As the world quarrels about words, “which does no good, but only ruins the hearers” (2 Timothy 2:14) and coughs up “irreverent babble” that leads “people into more and more ungodliness” and spreads like gangrene (2 Timothy 2:16–17), God gives us an oasis in the gift of his words (2 Timothy 2:15). We receive them for free, but that doesn’t mean we take them lightly or expend little energy to handle them well. Make Every Effort God, through Paul, says “do your best” — literally, be zealous, be eager, make every effort — “to present yourself to God as one approved.” We orient Godward first and foremost in our handling of his word, then only secondarily to others. Which will make us “a worker who has no need to be ashamed.” Being a worker requires work, labor, the exertion of effort, the expending of energy, the investment of time, the patience of lifelong learning. To do so without cutting corners (“unashamed”) or mishandling the task. And in particular, for building others up, not tearing others down. For showing others the feast, not showing ourselves to have been right. “God gives us his own life-giving words to steady our souls and the souls of others.” “Rightly handling” — guiding along a straight path — harkens to the vision Paul casts in 2 Corinthians of his own straightforwardness with God’s word. Paul was not coy about hard truths. He was not evasive. He was not a verbal gymnast, gyrating around humanly offensive divine oracles. Rather, he was frank, honest, candid, sincere. “We are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word,” he declares, “but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:17). He has more to say about such sincerity: We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. (2 Corinthians 4:2) Listening Like Hedonists But rightly handling God’s word doesn’t just mean we’re convinced of its truthfulness and handle it as such. Rightly handling doesn’t only include rigorous careful analysis and forthright unapologetic candor. Rightly handling includes the psalmists’ intense spiritual sensibilities. To see in and through God’s words his “great reward,” and knowing him to be a rewarder of those who seek him (Hebrews 11:6). In other words, we come to his word like holy hedonists, stalking joy. Worldly hedonists pursue the pleasures of sin; they don’t wait on them to arrive. And so do Christian Hedonists. We don’t wait around for holy pleasures. We don’t passively engage God himself through his own words. We stalk. We pursue. We read actively, and study, and meditate. When we are persuaded that God himself is indeed the greatest reward, is there any better avenue to pursue than his own words? At Desiring God, we don’t aim or pretend to be unique. However flippantly or earnestly others handle God’s words, we mean to receive them with the utter seriousness and joyful awe they deserve — he deserves. God wrote a Book. And gave it to us. Let’s give ourselves to this wonder, and marvel that we get to handle his words. Article by David Mathis
