Message 65 - By Leroy Surface
Miracles
That
Cannot be Denied!
Acts 4:6
A testimony of God’s miracles; By Leroy Surface
Acts
1:8
“But
ye shall receive power (miracles), after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be
witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and
unto the uttermost part of the earth.”
Luke
24:49
“And,
behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of
Jerusalem, until ye be endued (clothed) with power (miracles)
from on high.”
When
God pours out His Spirit upon man, there are two things that will always
happen; first, those who receive the
wonderful baptism with the Holy Ghost will immediately begin speaking in other
tongues “as the Spirit gives them utterance.” This is called the “initial” or “first
evidence” that the Spirit of almighty God has filled a human vessel. The second
thing that will always follow is that the believer, being filled with the Holy
Ghost, will immediately enter into a life of miracles. This does not mean that they will be doing
miracles, but they will literally be “clothed with miracles,” which is
the promise Jesus gave to His disciples in Luke
24:49.
Fifty
two years have passed since God called me to preach in 1962. He called me in a vision from the Lord, in
which I was one of the twelve disciples Jesus used to feed the multitude of
five thousand. Without giving the details
of the vision, I saw exactly how Jesus broke and blessed the five little loaves
and two small fishes (a child’s lunch) to feed the multitude. It is worthy of note that the disciples had
asked Jesus to send the multitude away because they had nothing to eat, and
Jesus told them, “You give them to eat” (Mark 6:37). It is when they
protested that He told them to bring the five loaves and two fishes to Him,
which He broke and blessed. In the
vision, I was one of the disciples who took a small portion in a basket to give
to the people. Over five thousand ate
and were filled, and there were enough “leftovers” to fill the twelve
baskets. We had more at the end than we
had at the beginning. It was then that
Jesus turned to me, in the vision, and said, “You give them to eat.” I protested!
I had nothing to give. I had only
a high school education, I was “backwards and bashful,” I could not
speak in public; there was every reason why I could not be His minister. He said to me in the vision, “Bring what
you have to me. I will break it, and I
will bless it. Whatsoever I have broken
and blessed is sufficient to meet every need.” That was the end of the vision. I had been “saved” and “baptized
with the Holy ghost” four years before, but I had always struggled when I
attempted to teach a class or lead a youth group. From the time the Lord told me in the vision
to “give them to eat,” the anointing of the Holy Ghost began coming on
me to speak. I did not accept this as a
call to preach at the time, but He anointed me as the youth leader for the next
two years in the Assembly of God church I attended. The Spirit of God began to move in our Friday
night youth services. We began seeing
young people saved and filled with the Holy Ghost. Some even received gifts of the Holy Ghost as
the Spirit of God freely moved among the people. It was two years later, in the spring of 1964
that I fully surrendered to preach the gospel, to evangelize, and to pastor a
church. It was then that God spoke
something to me that many have not understood.
He said, “Do not study the doctrines of the church, but study the
scriptures and seek me for understanding.
Do not preach a theory or a doctrine about healing the sick or casting
out devils, but preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out devils.” This is almost exactly what He sent His
disciples to do in Matthew 10:7-8.
It
has been fifty years ago this spring that I entered into full time ministry,
and most of those years have been filled with miracles from God. I have never written about these things in
the past because of the frequent saying of Jesus to those who received a
miracle at His hand, “See that you tell no one.” Recently I had lunch with the man of God who
founded a great church in Spring Texas.
We were talking about some of the recent miracles God has done, and he
asked me if I would write a book about the miracles I have seen. At first I didn’t believe I could write such
a book because it would seem to be a “boast,” as in “I prayed…I
touched…I spoke…and such and such happened.” Then I remembered that we
would not know anything about the incredible miracles that God did through His
apostles if the book of Acts had not been written. I will seek to tell the things I have seen
God do with the attitude the apostle expressed to the Corinthians church.
II Corinthians 12:6: “For though I would desire to glory, I
shall not be a fool; for I will say the truth: but now I forbear, lest any
man should think of me above that which he seeth me
to be, or that he heareth of me.”
II Corinthians 10:12-15: “For we dare
not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend
themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing
themselves among themselves, are not wise. But we will not boast of things
without our measure, but according to the measure of the rule which God hath
distributed to us, a measure to reach even unto you. For we stretch not
ourselves beyond our measure, as though we reached not unto you: for we are
come as far as to you also in preaching the gospel of Christ: Not boasting of
things without our measure, that is, of other men’s labours;”
Miracles I Have Seen
I
will begin with one of the greatest visible miracles I have seen with my own
eyes, which took place less than a year ago in March, 2013. A few days earlier, God spoke to me as I came
into the sanctuary to pray. I had been
preaching about “The Christ” and what He came into the world to do for
several months. I had just written the
message “The New Covenant,” and upon seeing a copy of it on the sound
booth, I heard the Spirit speak to me, saying, “When the covenant is right,
the man will be right, the church will be right, and I will confirm the
covenant with miracles.” I told the
congregation what God had spoken in the next service. It was a few days later that God did a great
miracle to “confirm the covenant.”
James
Cooper is a man who has been faithful to church for over a dozen years. Just over two years ago, however, something
happened that gave him an insatiable hunger for the presence of God. He was a man of many interests; hobbies,
hunting, fishing, raising exotic birds, etc.
He stopped all of these to “seek the Lord.” Soon he started a men’s bible study in his
home every Thursday night. Everyone
could see the miraculous change that took place in James life when he began
seeking the Lord in almost continuous prayer.
James works in the grounds maintenance industry, maintaining the
electric generating plants in the Houston area.
He had injured his right arm several months before, and was trying to do
everything with his left arm. On the day
in question, James was cleaning up his shop area. He tried to load a heavy barrel of trash on
his truck with his left arm doing the heavy lifting. Suddenly he heard three pops in his arm and
it fell limp. The pain was greater than
anything he had experienced in his life.
He felt that he would pass out, but he prayed and got a little relief
from the pain. The ligaments connecting
his bicep muscles to his forearm had snapped, and his biceps had literally
jumped up to his shoulder. When he went
into his house with his arm hanging limp his wife offered to drive him to the
emergency room. He said “No! I want
to go where Brother Surface is.” I
was actually next door, hanging sheetrock in a rent house. James came in and showed me his arm, still
hanging limp. The pain was still almost
more than he could bear. I wish I could
say that I had positive faith, like the “faith teachers” claim to have,
but I did not. I thought to myself, “James
will not work again for at least six months even if the doctors can do anything
for him.” James said, “Brother
Surface, I want you to pray for me.”
I was so impacted by what I saw that I remember the exact words that I
began to pray; “Father, there are things that happen in this life that we do
not understand, and we can’t do anything about them, but we are your children
and the sheep of your pasture, and at such a time as this that we look to you.” Immediately, the Holy Ghost fell upon me, and
I received faith to call upon God for a miracle in the name of Jesus. The pain began receding, and James returned
to his house. I did not know all that
God did until that night when I went to pray.
I was surprised to see James in the church entry. I asked him “How is your arm?” He answered with a big smile, “Both
of my arms are great” as he waved them over his head. God had not only healed the left arm, which
had the broken ligaments, but he also healed the right arm that he had suffered
with for over three months. James told
me that within five minutes after praying, all the pain had left his arm and he
had full use of it.
Many
people will read this, and think that it was never as bad as we say that it
was. The fact is, this “miracle”
is a continuing miracle that anyone can see with their own eyes. God did not reconnect the ligaments in James
arm. His biceps muscle is still up on
his shoulder, and there is nothing but loose skin between his biceps and his
elbow. You can hold your hand on the
space between his bicep and elbow while he flexes his arm, and there is
absolutely no movement. We still do not
know how he uses his left arm, but he went to work the very next day and
handled a gasoline weed trimmer for four hours with no problem. He has full strength in his left arm without
any connection to his muscle. No doctor
has seen this, but the miracle that God has done is undeniable. Everyone who looks at his arm, believer or
not, is stunned by what they see. That is the way true miracles are; they
cannot be denied. When Peter and John
raised up the lame man at the gate of the temple, the enemies of Christ and His
church said “What shall we do to these men? for that indeed a notable
miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem;
and we cannot deny it” (Acts
4:16). There is no reason for a man
or woman of God to ever indulge themselves in pretence except for their own “vain
glory.” Be “filled with the Holy
Ghost” and “walk with God,” and He will do miracles.
Retina Attachment
A
similar miracle happened in 1970. Justin
“June” Cassard was a young man from Louisiana
that moved to Houston with his young wife and children to attend our
church. Justin actually worked for me,
also maintaining right-of-ways and substations for the electric company. I was working at the Humble Substation when
Justin showed up from another project.
He said, “Brother Surface, my screwdriver slipped, and I stuck it
into my eye.” It was obvious that
the fluid in his eye was coming out of the cut.
I said, “Why didn’t you go to the emergency room?” Again, you can
see that miracles of God do not depend upon my “positive faith.” He answered, “Brother Surface, you are my
pastor. You tell us that God is a
miracle worker, and that we should trust in Him. I want you to pray for me.” I laid my hands on him according to the
scriptures (Mark 16:17-18), and
prayed for him asking God in the name of Jesus to heal his eye. Then I did
something “incredible” when I think about it; I took him to the “Mann
Eye Clinic.” After the doctor examined his eye for a very short time, he
laid his instruments aside and said, “Who did your eye surgery?” Justin told him he had never had
surgery. The doctor responded, “I
don’t know why you are doing this to me.
You come into this office with an incredible story of how you injured
your eye with a screwdriver, but you can’t deceive me. You have had a retina attachment, and I have
never seen better surgery in my life.”
In the past, Justin’s sight in that eye had been very poor, but now it
was perfect. I later joked, “If God
wants to do eye surgery with a screwdriver, that’s alright with me.” Justin received this great miracle from God
forty four years ago, and is still alive to tell about it.
Amnesia
The first
miracle I received personally was when I was sixteen years old. I was playing football in gym class at high
school when I received a severe blow to my temple. I did not pass out, but when I got up my
memory was gone. In the next play, the
quarterback gave me the ball and I just stood looking at it while the other
team swarmed me, and it became obvious that something was seriously wrong. They called the coach to examine me, and he
asked me if I knew who he was. I didn’t
know him or anyone else on the field. I
had lost my memory to the extent that I did not know my parents when they came
or even who I was. The school officials
told my parents to check me out of school and take me to the hospital, but
instead they took me home, put me to bed, and called our Pastor. We attended the Pearland Assembly of God
church where Sister Maxine Wiggins was the founder and pastor. This happened on a Wednesday, so Sister
Wiggins, her husband, B.L. Wiggins and several others from the church came by
to pray for me before service. They
gathered around my bed and started praying.
I can actually remember seeing all these people crowded around me and
wondering who they were and what they were doing. After they had prayed, I heard Sister Wiggins
say “Amen,” and at that instant my memory came flooding back to me, and
I recognized everyone, while just a few minutes before I had not even known my
mom and dad. I had “total amnesia”
for only about eight hours, but believe me, it was very real amnesia. When I returned to school the next day, my
teachers were all amazed. They had been
notified that I would not be returning to class. They all wanted to know what the doctors had
done to restore my memory, and I was able to tell them about how God had healed
me through prayer. They were all
amazed. Thank God that I had parents who
trusted in God; not in the doctors.
I
have believed in miracles most of my life.
My mother and dad went to the Oral Roberts and William Branham crusades
that came to Houston in the 1940’s and saw wonderful, and almost unbelievable
miracles that God did through these men. I personally saw a huge goiter
disappear off of a woman’s neck when Brother Roberts touched it and said, “Jesus,
take this away.” When I was nine
years old, mom and dad took us to hear a child preacher named “David Walker”
who was only fourteen or fifteen years old at the time. “Little David,” as he was called, had
been preaching since he was nine years old, and great healings and miracles
followed his ministry. The Houston City
Music Hall was filled with thousands of people with overflow crowds almost
filling the old “Evangelistic Temple” which was in downtown
Houston. Night after night we saw God do
great miracles through this young child.
It was exactly as Jesus had said when John the Baptist sent messengers
from his prison cell to ask Jesus if He was “the Christ.” Jesus said, “Go your way, and tell John
what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are
raised, to the poor the gospel is preached” (Luke 7:22). We should notice the nature of the miracles
which Jesus did. No one could deny that
these things happened. The critics had
no case to make. The testimony of the
man that was born blind is given in the ninth
chapter of John. Jesus healed the
man’s eyes, and there was no question that a miracle had happened because his
parents confirmed that he had been born blind and could easily prove that he
could not see until Jesus touched him.
The critics could no longer deny the miracle, so they told the young
man, “Give God the praise: we know that this man (Jesus) is a sinner”
(John 9:24). The young man answers them in the next verse; “Whether he be a sinner
or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.” It is amazing that even this miracle which
could not be denied, did not satisfy the scribes and Pharisees concerning who
Jesus is. The young man was cast out of
the synagogue for no other reason than the fact that he would not deny that it
was Jesus who had touched him and given him sight.
We do
not deny that God heals headaches, takes pain away, and cures all manner of
internal disorders that cannot be proven to the skeptic. When God does a miracle, however, it is
evident to all who see that something beyond the ordinary has happened. No man has the power of himself to either
heal the sick or do a miracle. When the
people saw that Peter and John raised the lame man up in the third chapter of
Acts, they gathered around them in wonder.
Peter questioned them, “Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? or
why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had
made this man to walk” (Acts 3:12)? He clearly told them that it was through
faith in the name of Jesus of Nazareth; the same Jesus whom the people had
denied and delivered up to be crucified, that this man had received this great
miracle. When Peter took the lame man by
the hand and raised him up “in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,”
the miracle that followed not only proved that Jesus of Nazareth is “the
Christ,” but that God raised Him from the dead, and that He sits on the
throne of heaven as “both Lord and Christ.” It is based upon this great miracle, done “in
the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth” that Peter could also tell them, “Repent
ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the
times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he shall send
Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you” (Act 3:19-20).
The Blind See
I had
my revival tent set up in Batson Texas in May of 1968 on the grounds of the old
abandoned high school. We had a good
revival with several people saved, several healed of various different
conditions. One miraculous healing was
in a woman who was injured in her back and had not been able to straighten her
body in thirty five years. After we
prayed, she stood up straight for the first time in thirty five years,
according to her testimony. The great “miracle”
of that revival, however, happened on Friday night of the second week, and the
closing night of the revival. The tent
was pretty full that night as we had advertized that the Doyle brothers, Gene,
Buddy, and Ted, would be playing and singing that night. It was the same night that God straightened
the ladies back that the other great miracle happened. A mother brought her eight year old son for
prayer, who had been born blind in one eye.
I had never prayed for a blind person at that time, and to be honest, I
was a little nervous about it. I
remembered exactly how I had seen another evangelist pray for the blind, so I
decided to do it the same way. After I
prayed, I told the child to cover his eye, which he did. I told Eddie LeGrande,
who was our worship leader at that time, to stand back about twenty feet and
hold up some fingers. I asked the child,
“How many fingers do you see?” He answered, “Three.” I asked, “How many do you see now?” He correctly answered “Two.” I shouted, “Praise God, he’s healed!” The congregation stood to their feet,
rejoicing. A young man got excited and
ran around the tent. About that time, I
heard the mother say, “Oh my, he covered the wrong eye.” I said, “That’s alright. When God does something, He does it good.” I told the child, “Son, cover your good
eye, and tell me how many fingers the man is holding up.” The child said, “I
can’t see a man.”
I
have never seen a service die so fast.
All the excitement was gone. I
felt like the devil had made a fool of me.
If I could have crawled under the platform and hid, I believe I would
have. I wished I was anywhere in the
world except under that tent that night.
I stood there, not knowing what to say, when suddenly I felt something
rise up inside of me, and to be honest it almost felt like anger, and it was
angry at the devil. Hardly knowing what
I was doing, I took the child’s head in my hands and began speaking to the
devil; “Devil, you will not bring reproach against the gospel and make of
fool of a man of God. I command you in
the name of Jesus Christ to release this child.” With that, I asked God to heal his eye, and
He did. We tested that child, who had
been born blind in one eye, in every way we could, and found that God had
certainly done a great miracle, and the child could see.
The Deaf Hear
The
year 1965 was a year that many great miracles of God took place in our
ministry. I was only twenty five years
of age at that time, but we were seeing a wonderful outpouring of the Spirit of
God in the little Full Gospel church I had been called to pastor in Almeda, Texas. I had
also committed myself to minister two nights a week at a rescue mission on
Franklin Ave. in Houston that was sponsored at that time by the old “Radio
Revival Church.” After preaching one night at the mission I began praying
for the sick. I felt led by the Spirit
to pray for the left ear of a man I had never seen before. They were very poor people who lived in one
of the government projects nearby. I
asked the man if I could pray for his ear, and he said yes. I did not know what was wrong with his ear,
but that does not matter. I have found
that the more I know through natural means, the less God can use me through His
means. I prayed for his ear and went on
to pray for others. I did not find out
that night what God had done. The next
service, the man and his wife came back rejoicing. He gave his testimony, that he had been
beaten and robbed by a youth gang. In
the beating he had lost his hearing in his left ear, and the doctors told him
that his left eardrum had burst, and there was very little likelihood that he
would ever hear again. I do not know exactly when his hearing returned, but he
awoke the next morning hearing. He had a
doctor’s appointment that day, and the doctor could not understand what had
happened. He told the man, “You have
a perfect eardrum. All I see is some
dried blood,” which he cleaned from the man’s ear. The story should have ended there, with the
people going about their way rejoicing in Jesus, but it did not. That couple began to follow me to every
meeting where I would preach. The lady
would stand up and say, “I want everyone to know that this is the man that
healed my husband.” I actually saw
her stop people on the sidewalk outside the mission, saying, “I want you to
come inside and see the man that healed my husband.” I told her repeatedly to give God the
glory, that I was not the healer, and that she should not be saying the things
she was saying, but she would not listen to me.
The
greatest enemy a man or woman of God has outside of the devil himself, is those
who tell them how great they are. We are
human, and those words of praise, which everyone likes to hear, war against our
soul. Within a couple of weeks, my “soul” began to be “lifted up”
(Habakkuk 2:4), and the presence of
God was not with me in my Sunday morning service. I knew what I had to do. I confessed to the congregation that the
words of this woman who continually praised me had made war against my soul,
making me to believe that I was someone really special. I told the people, “I have prayed with
many of you in this altar when you first came to Jesus; now I want you to pray
for me, your pastor, until I am restored to the presence of God.” I knelt in that altar and started asking God
to forgive me, and that congregation of people gathered around, laid their
hands on me, rebuked the devil, shook me, held my hands up, and did everything
they sometimes did to repentant sinners.
I tell you to this day, that if you can survive all that, you are surely
“saved.” When I got up from that
altar, the presence of God was with me once more and He would yet do greater
things.
It
was in 1980 or 1981 that a man and his wife, Buddy and Alice Fournet, came to the altar together for prayer. They had been attending for about a month or
six weeks at that time. He was a
Catholic and she had been raised Baptist.
Buddy had an open cancer about the size of a quarter on his face and
Alice could not hear in one ear. Buddy
told me that he had cancers in the past that the doctors had removed. He said “I want Jesus to take this one
away.” We prayed for Buddy, and
nothing spectacular happened. When I
asked Alice if she wanted prayer for her hearing, she told me that the doctors
had her on a ninety day drug program which they were confident would restore
her hearing, and she refused prayer. I
want to say at this time that I consider Buddy and Alice to be among my dearest
friends unto this day, and I tell these things only to the glory of God. The next day when Buddy went to work, his
superior told him that he would have to have to “do something about that
cancer” because it had become an open sore.
Buddy told him, “Jesus is going to take this one away.” I do not know the response he received from
his superior, but imagine the testimony to Jesus that was given when exactly
one week later the cancer fell off, leaving perfect new skin where it had been. Surely God had done a miracle that no one
could deny.
Ninety
days passed and Alice had not received her hearing. She came forward for prayer that God would
heal her. I remembered that she had
refused prayer before, choosing to trust the doctors. I asked her if the drug program had
worked. She said “No.” I asked, “Would you say that the doctors
have failed to help you?” She said “Yes.” Then I did something I question the wisdom of
to this day. I told her to kneel at the
altar and repent for trusting the doctors instead of God. Alice knelt and began simply asking God to
forgive her for not trusting in Him from the beginning. When I saw the tears of that repentance begin
flowing down her cheeks, I laid my hands over her ears and prayed, “And now
Jesus, open her ears.” I could say
nothing more for what seemed to be a long half minute, and said “that’s it,”
and removed my hands to pray for the next person. After service that day, Alice came to me and
asked, “Brother Surface, how did you know?” I said, “How did I know what?” She said, “How did you know my ear
opened?” I said, “Did your ear
open? I didn’t know that it opened.” She insisted, “You did know that it opened,
because when you said ‘that’s it,’ it opened.” She was perfectly healed by God, and I had not
even known when it happened.
About
ten years ago (2004) Brother Kirbbie Cowart,
publisher of “Hear the Shepherd’s Voice,” and I bought a revival tent to
hold services in. We held several joint
revivals in 2004 with good results, and in April 2005, Brother Cowart set the
tent up on the grounds of the Assembly of God church in Newton Texas. I was scheduled to preach on Friday night, so
I went to the service on Thursday night as well. After Brother Cowart preached that night, he
called me forward to help pray for the sick.
Brother Cowart was praying at one end of the altar, and I at the other,
when a man stepped forward to me and pointed to his ears. I did not know what was wrong with his ears,
but I felt led to have Brother Cowart pray with me. He said, “No, you go ahead,” but I
told him “I believe God wants both of us to pray.” When we prayed, I heard the voice of the
Spirit say “rebuke a spirit of deafness.” I did not know that the man was deaf, but I
obeyed what I heard. I placed my fingers
in both of his ears and commanded a spirit of deafness to release him in the
name of Jesus Christ. After we prayed, both Brother Cowart and I went on to
pray with others. About a minute later I
felt someone pulling my coattail, and saying, “He’s hearing! He’s hearing!” I said “Are you sure?” She said, “I ought to be sure; I’m the
one that has been screaming at him for the past sixty years.” One thing was certain; the man now had perfect
hearing in both ears. After the service,
they gave this testimony. When he had
been nine years old, he was playing in a railroad yard with some older
teenagers. One of them put something in
his hand and said, “Hold this” and ran away. It was a live blasting cap, which blew up,
crippling both hands for life and destroying his eardrums. At sixty nine years of age, the man had been
deaf for sixty years, and instantly received perfect hearing in both ears. Only Jesus can do such things.
At the time of this great
miracle, I had been fasting for a long period of time, seeking a miracle of
healing for our children’s minister, who had been diagnosed with cancer at only
thirty nine years of age. We did not
receive that miracle, and Lorna Eberly passed from
this life to be with the Lord in July of 2005.
A couple of weeks after her death, I went to a campmeeting
in Sheridan Arkansas. While I was gone,
we received a call from the daughter of Gloria Wingate, who was in a comma,
waiting for the time the doctors would say that she should be disconnected from
life supports. In my absence, Keith took
the call and agreed to go to the hospital to pray for her. Keith later told me that when he arrived at
the hospital, he stood beside his car and wept in despair over the loss of our
precious friend, Lorna Eberly. Keith, myself, and others in the church had
fasted and prayed almost continually for six months for God to heal her, but
the healing did not come. Keith
literally cried to God, “You must do something for me. I have got to know…” I do not know all the confusion that was in
Keith’s heart that day, but He said the moment he walked through the hospital
doors, the presence of God came upon him with great confidence, as if he knew
exactly what to do. He walked into the
room where Gloria was on life supports.
Her daughter Mimi was with her, and as he entered Keith said, “Gloria,
Jesus has sent me to wake you up.”
He then took her by the hand and spoke directly into her ear, “Gloria,
wake up in the name of Jesus Christ.”
He turned around to talk to Mimi, when suddenly both of them heard
noises behind them. They looked, and
Gloria was pulling the tubes out of her body and trying to get up. Mimi screamed so loud that the nurse came
running, “What’s wrong?” Mimi
said, “Mama just woke up!” The
nurse screamed back, “That’s impossible, your mama can’t wake up,” but
she did, not a week later or a day later, but immediately upon hearing the
command to “wake up in the name of Jesus Christ.” Gloria recovered, returned to her home, came
to our church to give her testimony, and lived for several more years, to the
glory of God. In her testimony Gloria
said that when she awoke, she saw a man standing behind Keith. She said it might have been an angel, but she
did not believe that it was. We asked if
He said anything. She said He just waved
His hand and said to her, “Peace ….peace!”
The Lame Walk
The
only “city wide” meeting I have ever preached was in Reynosa Mexico in
1966, when I was twenty six years old.
Missionaries Bob and Dixie Arriola set it up
and brought me in to preach it. The
second time I went to Mexico was to the desert village of “El Tajo,”
which is between the cities of Saltillo and Matehuala. I preached every night for three nights in
the school house, which was pretty well filled with people, but I had
absolutely no response to my altar calls.
In the fourth day, I walked up on a mountain to pray. I was deeply disturbed, because I had
expected to see a real move of God. As I
was praying, I began hearing two scriptures.
First, from Zechariah 4:6, “Not
by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.” The second scripture was from Hebrews 13:8; “Jesus Christ the same
yesterday, and today, and forever.” From these scriptures, a very simple message
was birthed in my heart. If Jesus Christ
is the same yesterday, and today, and forever, then He will do the same things
tonight that He did when He walked on earth in the days of His flesh. I told the team workers to go throughout the
village and find all the sick people and get them to the night service. That night the school house was crowded to
the walls with no aisles and hardly room to move. There were many standing outside that could
not get into the service. After I
preached my message, which was a challenge to the people that anything Jesus
did two thousand years ago, if He is still alive, He will do today, I called
for the sick to come, and they pushed forward.
I prayed for a couple of old women with internal problems, and there was
no evidence that anything happened.
About the third person in line, however, was a woman who had brought her
fifteen year old daughter, who had been stricken with some malady about six
months before and had not been able to walk since. They actually brought her to the service on a
bed, carried by four men. I prayed for
the girl, asking God to give us a miracle.
I told two of the men to pick her up on her feet, and when I would tell
her to “walk in the name of Jesus,” they were to turn her loose. They picked her up, and when I commanded her
to “walk in the name of Jesus,” they turned her loose, and she fell to
the floor. Her mother ran to her, and
even though I could not understand her language, I knew she was saying
something on the order of, “Oh my baby, my baby.” I told the men to move the mother away from
her daughter and pick her up a second time.
This time I said to the young lady, “You can walk because Jesus has
touched you. I say to you, Walk in the
name of Jesus Christ, because you can walk.” This time, when the men turned her loose, she
stood, took one trembling step, and then another, and then walked across the
front of that school and back.
For a
moment there was total silence in that school house, but then something truly
amazing happened, which I shall never forget.
A man that I had noticed in the back of the room each night jumped up,
running and leaping to the front of the auditorium. He literally leaped over some that were
sitting on the floor in the aisles in his rush to get to the front. He fell on his knees, crying and praying for
a minute or so. Then he stood up and
began speaking to the people in a loud voice.
I do not understand Spanish, but my interpreter, Sister Amalia, told me what he was saying. It turned out that this man was the Spanish
pastor of a Mennonite church in that village.
He said, “I told you that you could come to this meeting, but I told
you not to believe anything this man says.
I told you that he is a crazy man, and that his god can do nothing.” He continued, “But I was the one that was
crazy, and you, if you do not believe this man’s God, you are crazy.” That entire crowd tried to get to the front,
falling on their knees everywhere, repenting and receiving the Jesus Christ who
is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”
The next afternoon, our
service was out under a brush arbor because the children were in the school
house. I was praying for the sick when
suddenly an old man came from outside the arbor straight to me and said, “I
came to be healed.” I had heard of
this man. He was the rich man of the
village, and owned the only mill in the village to grind the corn for the
people. He had refused to grind corn for
anyone who came to my services, which placed another hardship on those who did
come, as they had to grind their corn by hand to make their food. I told the man, “If you will repent and
surrender your heart to Jesus, I will pray for you.” That old man immediately said, “Jesus
healed everyone that came to Him.”
It upset me that this old man in a poverty stricken village in the
deserts of Mexico would try to instruct me, but I heard the voice of the Spirit
say, “He told you the truth.” I
agreed to pray for him, but I told the interpreter not to interpret my
prayer. I asked God to touch his heart
and let him feel His presence and the love of Christ for him. I prayed until I saw one lone tear coursing
down his dusty leathery face, and then I prayed, “Now, Lord, heal his body
and make him completely well.” When I finished praying for him, he left the
arbor as quickly as he had come, and I went on to pray for others. About ten minutes later he returned to the
service and asked to say something. The
following is his testimony; “All you people know me. You know that an ox cart fell on me fourteen
years ago, and that for all these years I have not been able to move without
great pain in my back. I could not bend
over or straighten up…” With that he bent over and touched his toes and
immediately rose up and lifted his arms above his head. He continued, “This man’s God has healed
me; for such a God I give the rest of my life.” His last name was “Raiese
(if my spelling is correct).” He
was the father of the village judge.
From that day forward, he loved Jesus with all his heart and became a
great blessing in that village. It was another “miracle of grace” that
cannot be denied.
Growths Removed
I
preached a two week revival at the Goff Drive Pentecostal Church of God in 1965
where Brother M.R. Smith was the pastor.
We saw God do many wonderful healings in that revival, but there was one
great tragedy also. First, the healings:
A lady came for prayer for headaches.
She had constant pain in her head since she received a blow to her head
in an accident several years before. She
also had a large bald spot in the place where the pain was. We prayed, and the headaches immediately went
away. Headaches are one of the things
that skeptics will call a “Psychosomatic Disorder,” which means that it
can be caused by the state of your mind, and will go away when your state of
mind is improved. There may be some truth to that, but it is just another way
of saying that many “sicknesses” are only in your mind. Either way, they are very real to the one
that is sick. In this case, however, the
miracle of God was proven, not only in that the headaches did not return, but
before the two week revival was over, new hair was growing in her bald
spot. In the same revival, a visiting
pastor’s wife, Sister Leg, brought her eight year old son for prayer. He had a small growth on his lip. She said, “It doesn’t bother him, but it
just shouldn’t be there, and I want God to take it away.” We prayed that God, in the name of Jesus,
would curse the roots of that growth and take it away. Sister Leg later gave this testimony. “After Brother Surface prayed for my son,
the growth on his lip got worse instead of better. It seemed to be getting larger every day, and
it bothered him. After about a week I
took him to the doctor. I told the
doctor about how the growth had been there for years, but only recently it had
started growing. I asked him if there
was anything he could do.” The doctor answered, “I can remove it, but
there is no reason to.” He explained
that the growth was not growing, but that it was dead and coming out by the
roots. He took it in his fingers and
tugged on it just a little, and it fell out in his hand. The “growth” had died when we prayed,
but it took two weeks to “go away.”
Many healings may seem to be a small thing, but to the one who receives
them, they are very wonderful.
I
spoke of a “tragedy” that happened during the Goff Drive revival. Since the early days of my ministry, I have
received many visions of things to come as well as of current conditions that I
knew nothing about. One brother, I
believe it was Brother Smith’s nephew, had been very faithful during the first
week of the revival, really “getting in” and seeking God in the altar
services. Saturday night I received a
vision about this brother while I slept.
In the vision, he was working in the woods picking up broken branches. I saw him bend over to pick one up, and a
snake struck him in the throat. That was
all that I saw in the vision, but I believed that Satan had set some snare for
this brother and that I should warn him and pray for him. The next morning he was on the way to church
when his car broke down, and he did not make the service. I told Brother Smith about the vision, and
said “I will pray for him tonight.”
That night he stayed home to fix the car for his wife, so I said I would
pray for him the next time I saw him in service. As it happened, this man made his living in
the woods as a “pulp wood hauler.”
He had his own truck, and on Monday, the woods were dry enough to return
to work after several weeks of rain. I
never saw that brother again. On Friday,
he and his young son were in the woods loading the truck with pulpwood. He noticed that the truck engine seemed to
have a miss, so he raised the hood to check the carburetor. In doing so, he raced the engine and when he
did, a small blade from the generator fan broke loose and hit him in the
throat, exactly as I had seen the snake strike him in the throat. He sent his son to run for help, but when
help came, the man had bled to death.
Such events take a toll on a man or woman of God, because we always
second guess ourselves. Should I have
done more? Should I have gone to him
instead of waiting for him to come to the service? Would it have changed anything if I had? Only God knows the answer to those questions,
but the death of that dear brother weighed heavily on me.
The
first time that God instantly removed a growth was while I was still the pastor
at Almeda Full Gospel Church. A young man had come to the altar for
salvation. After about twenty minutes of
tearful repentance to God, the young man looked up and I noticed a large knot
on his cheek bone. I asked him what it
was, and he told me he had gotten it in a fight. I thought it was something simple like what
we call a “goose egg” that would eventually go away, but I told him “Jesus
wants to take it away.” There were probably a dozen people around the altar
that night and we all prayed for him. I
placed my hands over that “knot” and when I removed them after prayer,
everyone within ten feet of that young man heard a sound like the breaking of a
dry chicken bone. His hand flew up to
his cheek, and he screamed, “It’s gone.”
It was gone. It was only then
that I found out that it was not “swelling” on his cheek bone, but a
calcium deposit that had formed around a broken cheek bone, which explained the
sound of breaking bones that we heard.
Nothing is impossible with our God for those who fully trust in His
precious Son, Jesus Christ.
The
year of 1965 was surely a blessed year for this ministry. I had resigned as pastor of the Almeda Full Gospel church and was free to go wherever God
would send me. During that time, I
received many visions from the Lord concerning ministry. Sometimes I actually saw the service for the
next night, who would be there, and what their great need was. It was at those times that we saw the
greatest healings and miracles. There
were several times that God instructed me through visions where to go and what
to say when I got there. It was in one
of those visions that I saw two special circumstances of a church in a distant
South Texas city I had never been to.
This was a large church and a very well known revival center of that
day, where the pastor brought in every well known gifted minister to
preach. God did not send me to that
church to preach; instead, he sent me to the pastor with a message. I arrived alone at that church about
midday. No one was there, and I did not
know where the pastor lived. I saw a
woman walking across the street, and I asked her if she knew the pastor. She was the pastor’s wife, and she invited me
into their home. I told her that I had
received a message for them in a vision from the Lord, but I had to give it
directly to her husband. After about
twenty minutes, her husband, the pastor arrived, and I introduced myself to
him. I told him there were two things
concerning circumstances in his church that God had spoken to me about that I
was to tell him. As I began to tell the
first, I saw tears fill the eyes of the pastor’s wife. She got up, went to their desk and brought me
a document to look at. It was exactly
what I had seen in the vision, and God had told me that it was alright to do
what was in that document. In the second
part of the vision, I had seen a crew of men building a wing on their church,
but when they tried to connect the new roof to the old building, they could
not. They were saying, “Pastor, it
just won’t work! We can’t make it work.” A second time his wife went to the desk and
brought back a blueprint of a church addition.
By now the tears were flowing down her face as she said, this is what
you saw in your vision. I had to tell
that pastor that it would not be built until a certain issue between himself,
his wife, and the congregation was resolved.
The pastor got mad. In fact, he
exploded! He said, “Of course I can
build that wing on my building. I can
build anything I want to build on my church.
Those ‘issues’ have nothing to do with what I can do.” With that, he
walked out, leaving me stunned and his wife in tears. I knew that my “mission” had been
confirmed and fulfilled whether he received it or not, so I told the pastor’s
wife I was leaving, but she begged me to stay for the night service, which I
did not. She followed me to the porch,
asking me, “Is there anything else that God told you for us?” I said, “No, I have told you everything I
saw in the vision.” Suddenly,
standing on that porch, rejected by one of the most famous pastors in Texas, I
received “knowledge” of something from the Lord. The scripture calls this a “word of
knowledge.” I don’t know how I knew,
but I told her, “There is someone who lives in this house that has something
wrong on the right side of their head.” She immediately said, “That is
my daughter (she called her by name).” She had two teen age daughters, and she told
the one I had met, “Go get your sister.”
She explained that her daughter had a growth behind her right ear that
had been growing for several months, and they had been trying to trust God for
it. When the young lady came, I felt of
the growth, which was under the skin and about two inches long and stood out at
least half an inch, about the size of my little finger. We prayed for that young lady standing on
their front porch. We asked God, in the
name of Jesus, to “take it away.” When I removed my hand, the growth was still
there, but when the young lady felt for it, she screamed “It’s gone,” and
it was gone. It had instantly
disappeared from her body. This was
another miracle of God of the sort that cannot be denied.
The Dead Are Raised
I
have never told of this incident publicly because I do not know for certain
what God actually did that night. It was
near midnight on a Friday or Saturday night that I received a call from one of
the new converts in my church. His
brother had tried to kill himself by drinking a bottle of rat poison. We lived in the country, and this happened
many years before the world heard of calling 911, so this brother asked me if I
would go with them to take his brother to the emergency room. He lived about two miles from me and by the
time he arrived I was up and ready to go.
I got in the back seat to be with the young man who drank the poison as
we sped at high speed to the Methodist hospital in Houston. He was doubled up, groaning and crying
aloud. His heart was pounding and his
breathing was heavy. I literally
wrestled with that young man even as I prayed to God for mercy. His heart beat so hard it seemed it would
explode, as his body jerked violently.
We were still about five miles from the hospital when suddenly his body
went limp. Perhaps he went unconscious,
but I could not detect any breathing, heart beat or pulse. I was scared.
I’m only twenty five years old in the back seat of a speeding car, and
it seemed to me the one I’m praying for has died. I began crying aloud, rebuking the devil,
rebuking death, frankly, rebuking everything I could think of to rebuke, and
calling for life to come back into his body.
In all of this, I was crying, “In the name of Jesus.” He must have been limp for at least five
minutes, when suddenly his body gave a great heave. He jerked only one time and began breathing
normally. His pulse was normal and
though he was dazed, he was waking up.
We took him into the emergence room, and they pumped his stomach, but
found nothing. They could find
absolutely nothing wrong with that young man.
I asked his brother, “Are you sure he drank the rat poison.” He said, “Yes, I am sure. He drank the whole bottle.” Whether he died that night or not I do not
know for certain, but I do believe that if God had not done a great miracle for
that young man, he would have died. On
the way home, he told me, “Brother Surface, something terrible happened to
me tonight on the way to the hospital.” I asked him what it was, and he said, “I
don’t know, but it was terrible.” It
was something he didn’t want to talk about.
I didn’t know what it was, but I did know that young man was alive only
because God is a miracle worker.
Brain Concussions
We
were at a service station in my work truck.
While I was taking care of business in the station, my second son
Kenneth, who was about two years old at the time, crawled out of the passenger
door window. Kenneth could climb even
before he could walk. No one saw him as
he tried to climb to the top of the truck, but we heard him when he fell on the
concrete drive, landing on his head.
When I picked him up, it was obvious that he had suffered a concussion;
his eyes were dilated, he had a large knot on his head, and he was in and out
of consciousness. We took Kenneth home
and began to pray for God to heal him.
After two days and nights there was no change. On the third night, Kenneth’s mother was
walking the floors with him, praying for him in the middle of the night. Her heart was broken for her son when she
made her final request of God. “If you’re not going to heal my son, please
take my son; but if you’re not going to take my son, then heal my son.” Instantly, Kenneth woke up, ready to eat and
play; he was his old self, just as he would awake from sleep in the
morning. Oh what a wonderful God and
savior we serve. We can trust in
Him.
Birth Deformities
In
the year 1969 Missionary Ralph Nicol had come out of
Mexico for the birth of their seventh child, who was born with what they called
a “clubbed foot.” The baby’s foot
was deformed at the ankle, and the foot was turned totally to one side, and lay
beside the ankle. Brother Nicol brought his child for prayer in our Sunday morning
service. I had the men of the church
gather around as we prayed, asking God for a miracle. Within three days, the
child’s foot was perfectly normal.
My
third son is Keith Surface who is also associate pastor of Calvary
Outreach. When Keith first married
Karen, they wanted children, but could not have them. The doctors tried every procedure for several
years, and finally told Karen, “There are some women that cannot have
babies, and you are one of them.” With that, Keith asked his young wife if she
would trust God for a child, and she said that she would. After receiving prayer during a revival with
Evangelist R.L. Harris from Winchester Kentucky, Karen conceived almost
immediately and gave birth to their firstborn son, Christopher. “Chris,”
as we call him, was born with an abnormality in his skull, which was diagnosed
as “Craniosynostosis,” which means that the
growth plates in his skull were fused.
He had a sharp bony ridge vertically in the middle of his forehead, and
was also born totally cross-eyed. The
doctors said the only remedy was an operation in which they would surgically
remove the front half of the child’s skull, cut it into multiple pieces, then
replace the skull. The pressure placed
upon Keith by the doctors was unbelievable.
They told him that if he did not allow them to do the surgery,
Christopher’s appearance would worsen as his skull grew and that he would be
mocked and ridiculed by other children when he came to school age. The doctors were very clear; “This
condition will only get worse. It cannot get better.” Unknown to me, Keith brought his son to the
church many times in the middle of the night, praying and calling on God to let
him know what to do. “God, you gave
me this son when the doctors could not; how can I give my son into the hands of
the doctors now?” Even so, when he
prayed, he would still hear the doctor’s words, “Your son will look like a
freak.”
Chris
was three months old, and his eyes had never straightened. One Sunday morning at the close of the altar
service, I said, “God wants to do a miracle for someone.” Immediately, Karen came to the front with
Chris. I asked my wife to take the child
in her arms as many of the worshipers gathered around to ask God for the
miracle. While we prayed, the child’s
eyes straightened, but the skull remained unchanged. The next Sunday while I
was preaching, Keith began shouting aloud, “It’s alright! It’s alright!” I stopped preaching and asked, “What’s
alright?” He answered “Chris is
alright. I just heard God say ‘It’s
alright.” I expected to see a miraculous change, but nothing visible had
happened, but on the basis of what God had spoken to Keith, he refused the
surgery, to the dismay of the doctor’s.
Over the months that followed, Chris’s head formed perfectly normal. Today he is a graduate of Texas A&M
University with a degree in Civil Engineering.
Years later we saw a documentary on the operation that the doctor’s had
pressured Keith to approve, and the majority of those who received it were
either physically deformed or mentally challenged. Thank God that Keith chose to trust in
Christ. He did as the apostle Peter said
to do; “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he
may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” (I
Peter 5:6-7).
Free Bleeding
The
first incident I recall was a simple nose bleed. It was in 1968 in the Sunday morning service
that Charlotte Kirtley came forward for prayer. Her nose had been bleeding continuously for
three days and three nights. We were
seeing a wonderful move of God’s Spirit at that time, and I became very bold
that morning. I said, “I will not
take my hand off this sister’s head until the bleeding stops.” I agree that was a very foolish thing to say,
but this is what happened. I prayed and
asked God to stop the bleeding. I
rebuked the bleeding “in the name of Jesus,” yet the blood continued
flowing from her nose. I realized by
that time that I had made a “foolish” boast, so I became a “little
more foolish;” I said, “Devil, if I have to go home with my hand on this
sister’s head, I will.” I admit, all
this seems very foolish to me today, but instantly, the blood stopped
flowing. God was merciful, not only to
Sister Kirtley, but upon me as well.
In
1975 I set my revival tent up on the southwest corner of Interstate 45 and Tamina Rd. in the small town of Shenandoah. One night, my son Keith, who was about
thirteen years old at that time, stayed with the tent to watch over the
equipment along with one of his friends.
The next day, while walking barefoot through the area surrounding the
tent, he stepped on a sharp broken bottle and cut the major artery in his
foot. With every beat of his heart, the
blood spurted from his foot. The only
business in the area at that time was a small service station across the
freeway, and Keith left a blood trail as he went for help. The station attendant got me on the phone and
told me that my son had cut an artery, and that he was “bleeding to death.” I told him it would take forty five minutes
for me to get there, and the attendant told me, “He won’t live that long if
you don’t get him to the hospital.” Again, I explained that I couldn’t possibly
get there; would he please take my son to the emergency room for me. He refused; “I can’t leave this
station. I would lose my job, but if you
don’t get him to the hospital, he’s going to bleed to death.” I was ready to break all speed limits to try
getting to my son, when I heard the Spirit of the Lord say, “You can’t get
there, but I can.” I asked the
attendant to put Keith on the phone. I
told him, “Son, we’re going to pray and ask God to stop the bleeding.” I asked God in the name of Jesus to stop the
bleeding and spare my son’s life, and while we were praying, the blood suddenly
stopped, and the major artery sealed.
When I got to the tent forty five minutes later, Keith was fine, but I
could see the puddles of blood that had marked his trail everywhere he
went. Certainly, this was another
miracle of God that could not be denied.
I
have a grandson, Joseph Smith, who works as an Emergency Medical Technician
for the city of Houston, answering 911 calls.
Joey had told his grandmother one day, “I was raised in church, and I
have never seen anything that makes me to believe that it is real.” It was only about two weeks later that Joey
was helping me hang sheetrock in the rent house, and he was there when God gave
James Cooper the wonderful miracle in his arm (see pages 4-5). It was the next day, however, before Joey
knew what God had done for James. About
two hours after we had prayed for James arm, I was cutting a piece of sheetrock
when the knife slipped and stabbed me in the back of my hand, cutting into a
major artery. The blood literally
spurted out of my hand with every heartbeat, and Joey went into emergency
mode. He cried out, “Pop, you’ve cut
an artery; put pressure on it.” He
threw me a rag, caught me by the arm and said, “Let’s go get you some help.” He was trying to drag me out of the house to
the emergency room. I told him to calm
down, that I was going to be alright. He
did calm down for a minute as he explained that I had to get emergency
attention to sew the artery. I told him,
“Let’s pray first.” I bowed my
head and said, “Father, stop this bleeding in the name of Jesus.” I waited about five seconds and released the
pressure, and the blood started spurting once more. Joey went back into the emergency mode,
almost dragging me the truck, saying “I will drive; we will get you some
help.” I spoke sternly to Joey, “Take
me home! I do not want to go to the
emergency room.” Reluctantly, Joey took me to the house, which was less
than two minutes away. I walked into the
kitchen and told my wife that I had cut myself.
She said, “Bad?” and I said “Pretty bad.” She saw the blood that covered my hands and
forearms. She turned the kitchen faucet
on and I began washing the blood away.
As I did, the water turned clear, and where the stab wound had been
there was only a red line. Joey
stuttered, “Pop! Pop!” I asked him what he was going to say, and he
said, “Oh, nothing.” “No son,
what were you going to say?” He
said, two times, “That’s crazy…that’s crazy.” “What’s crazy, son.” Joey finally began to talk. He said, “Pop, I’m trained in emergency
medicine! I know what a cut artery
is! I know what a cut artery does! We take people to emergency rooms to have cut
arteries sewn up. Five minutes ago, you
had a cut artery, but now you have a scratch.
That’s what’s crazy.” The wound, which was a half inch deep and a
half inch long, never opened again, and healed almost overnight.
Skeptics
say that the reason God did miracles passed away with the first century church,
so why does God do miracles today? I
will give two reasons; first, people need miracles. Without the miracles I have
told of in this short testimony, several people would have been blind, deaf, or
dead, including my own son. The second
and great reason is that there multitudes of people like Joey that have never
seen anything in their lifetime to prove God’s existence. Joey saw two great miracles of God within two
hours of one day, and it shattered his rebellious world. Joey is a believer today, because God still
does miracles that “cannot be denied.”
Burns
Stephen
Graham was about three years old when his parents took their six children on a
campout. The campfire had gone out,
leaving the red hot coals of fire under the black ashes. Little Stephan walked out into the middle of
the ash pile, and stood there crying and screaming until someone found him. The feet were nothing but blisters which
looked like boiled flesh. His dad,
Johnny Graham, soaked his feet in white gas and then brought him to us for
prayer. It was probably in 1969 or 1970
that this took place. Stephen, who
attends our church today, was brought back by the memory of the miracle God did
for him. He said, “I can remember
when you unwrapped the bandages and broke the blisters. I remember you praying and asking God to
prove His miracle by not letting there even be a scar left on my feet.” That is what God did, and it remains vivid in
Stephen’s mind after all these years.
It
was in 1969 that I received a severe burn on the ankle of my right foot. I was using a cutting torch to work on a
piece of equipment. The torch was
running out of oxygen as I made the last cut, so I was literally melting instead
of cutting the metal. My longtime
friend, Jerry Green from Crockett Texas, was working with me that day, and he
hit the red hot piece of metal with his chipping hammer. It fell inside the western boots I was
wearing, and lodged in front of my ankle.
The pain was unbelievable, but I knew that if I tried to remove the
boots, it would drag the hot metal even deeper into my foot, so I stood while
Brother Green went into the house and got a knife to cut the boot off. The burn area, which was about one inch wide
and three inches long, was burned to crisp, black as ashes. The rest of the top
of my foot was one huge blister, with skin literally boiled up. Brother Green took me to the emergency room
at the hospital in Humble Texas. No one
would touch my foot until a specialist arrived to check it out. After doing some tests, He told me that my
foot was burned to the bone. He said
that he would have to remove all the flesh, including the three leaders to my
middle toes, all the way to the bone. He
would scrape the bone, and do skin grafts to cover it. I would lose the use of my three middle toes,
and have a handicap walking on the foot for the rest of my life. I know that my next question sounded so
foolish to the doctor, but I said to him, “Let me get this straight; you’re
going to put me to sleep, and when I wake up, I will never be able to wiggle my
three middle toes again?” He looked
at me with absolute indignation. He
said, “I’m not concerned whether you ‘wiggle your toes’ or not; I’m trying
to save your foot.” I said, “Doctor,
I do appreciate what you are trying to do, but if you will be so kind as to
clean and dress my foot, I am going home, because my God will give me a better
deal than you can.” The nurses cried
out at once, “You can’t go home,” but the doctor told them they couldn’t
keep me against my will. He told me, “If
you leave this hospital, I can’t be responsible for what happens to your foot.”
I asked him, “Doctor, if I stay
in this hospital, will you be responsible for what happens to my foot?” He quickly said, “Oh, no, no! I can’t do that.” When he saw that I was determined to leave,
he gave me a few instructions about how to care for the burn, and painted a
most horrible picture of what I was facing.
I would still lose the leaders and muscle tissue. If I survived without losing the foot,
without the skin grafts, I would have a thick hard scar tissue in my foot that
would give me continual pain in walking.
I went home with two prescriptions, one for pain and the other for infection,
neither of which I ever used. I
medicated the burn with “over-the-counter” ointment, covered it with a
Teflon patch, bought some low quarter shoes, and never stopped going. After about a week of scrubbing the burnt
area daily with a bristle brush as the doctor had instructed me, the flesh in
the burned area, which had been black as ash became as white as paper. After about six weeks of scrubbing it, the
dead flesh crumbled out, leaving a rectangular hole in my foot about a quarter
of an inch deep, but it was healed just above the leaders. Then, what the doctor said could not happen,
happened. Over the next six week, the “hole”
in my foot filled up with flesh, and tender skin began growing over it. I have no handicap in that foot; I have no
scar tissue, and thanks to God I do have my foot.
A Miracle for an Eye
Some people will read these
things and say, “What a wonderful God we have.” Others will read the same things and say, “What
a foolish man he is.” It was about
eight or nine years after the incident with the burned foot that a perhaps even
more tragic accident happened. I was
cutting grass at a HL&P Power Plant in Rosenberg Texas with a tractor and
fifteen foot “batwing mower.” I
pulled up a steep slope onto a gravel road, and the mower picked up a small
rock, bounced it off of the front tractor tire and hit me directly in the left
eye. My hands flew up to my eye and
immediately were filled with water. As
with the burn several years before, the pain was unbearable. I had to pull the eye open to look in the
truck mirror, and what I saw was horrible to look at. The entire eyeball was purple. The outer skin of the eye was ruptured at the
bottom. Keith was on another tractor
right behind me when it happened, so we shut the job down and headed for
home. A few miles down the road, the
pain increased once again, and my vision faded to gray. I told Keith, “Son, the pain is
unbearable, and I am losing my vision.”
Keith was about twenty six years old and had been preaching about two
years at the time. He pulled the truck
off the freeway and laid his hands on my head to pray. He began rebuking blindness from my eye, and
as he prayed, the pain began to lift and my sight returned. On the way home (we did not go to the
emergency room this time), we stopped at a pharmacy to buy an eye patch. The pharmacist asked me what had happened,
and I told him. He asked me to open the
eye and let him see it. I believe the
poor man almost fainted when he saw the eye.
He cried out, “My God man, get to the emergency room. The vessels in your eye are all burst, and
when the pressure builds up you will lose your sight. Get to the emergency room
as fast as you can.” He did not know
that his prediction had already taken place, and that God had healed it. No doctor ever saw that eye, but God healed
it perfectly and quickly. Today, it is
my best eye.
Trusting Him with your Life
We
were laying the foundation for the “Behold the Lamb” and “Shepherd’s
Voice” publishing building in March of 2002. Several days before this incident, I had been
praying, and I heard the voice of the Spirit say, “You trusted me with your
foot, and you trusted me with your eye; will you trust me with your life.” I was shaken with the question, and did not
answer immediately. After much prayer
and wrestling with the question, I told God, “With all my heart, I want to
be one who will trust you with my life.” I realize that most people do not believe that
God still speaks to man, but He has spoken to me so very many times in the past
fifty years in ways that have always proven to be true, that I dare not deny
Him. I always tell what God speaks to me
to several people who are close to me for later confirmation. I did not know what was coming, but while we
were digging the footings for the publishing building, we hit a sewer pipe
which I proceeded to cut out and reroute.
Brother Maurice Bolt from Atwood Illinois was helping that day, and he
offered me a high speed grinder with a diamond blade to cut the sewer
pipe. When I cut into the pipe, it was
full of sewer, and the high speed blade threw the sewer into my mouth, nose,
and eyes, filling them with raw sewage.
I went to the house and bathed, brushed my teeth, gargled, and cleaned
my eyes and nostrils the best I could, but in a few days it was obvious that
the sewage bacteria had incubated in my left nostril, which was evidenced by
the bright green drainage that began. I
had never trusted in doctors, having only seen a doctor two or three times in
my adult life at that time, but because of the fact that God had asked me only
days before if I would “trust Him with my life,” I was actually afraid
to see a doctor about this matter. A
couple of weeks after the drainage started, I was in a dental office when
something seemed to break loose in my mouth, and instantly my breath turned to
the smell of sewage. I was so
embarrassed. I told the dentist what had
happened, and he said “I can smell it.” My wife said the smell of sewage would fill
the bedroom at night. My heart began to be erratic in its beating. Other organs seemed to be under attack. I talked to Keith one day, thinking to
prepare him for the time he would have to take my place in the ministry, when
He asked me, “Dad, are you trusting God with your life?” I said, “Yes son, I am.” He answered, “If
you are trusting God with your life, it seems to me that you will be around for
a long time to come,” and with that he walked away. He refused to join my “pity party.”
One
day in the heat of July I was helping Richard Wilson put a roof over his
porch. I had taken about two steps up a
ladder when a horrible pain struck me in the heart and struck me to the ground. I sat with my head between my knees until it
went away, but my heart continued pounding erratically in its beat. My liver was swollen with much pain front and
back on my right side. My lungs were
filling with the green stuff, and my kidneys and bladder were under attack;
still, I was afraid to go to a doctor.
On August fourth that year I started a time of fasting and prayer. Strangely enough, I was not fasting for
healing as much as for the manifestations of God to be restored to my ministry
and church. I prayed at the church early
every morning and every night during that time, and the last thing I would ask
God was “…and please Lord, heal my body.” It was on the twenty eighth day of that time
of fasting and prayer that the miracle came from God, and I did not know that
it was a miracle at the time. I awoke in
the middle of the night with stomach pains, feeling that I needed a bowel
movement. One thing that I know about
fasting, you do not need a “bowel movement” after four weeks without
food, yet the pain moved me to the bathroom.
What poured out of my body was horrible to see; green knotty slime, and
lots of it. I will not spend time and
space to describe it, but when I saw it, it actually scared me. I thought, “My
entire body is full of this stuff.”
From that very night, however, I began to recover. God had purged my body from the poison that
was killing me. Since that time at least
two medical professionals have heard my testimony and told me, “Thank God
that you trusted in God. We have stood
by helpless as people have died of those bacteria because we had nothing to
counteract them.”
The
things I have shared in this little booklet are only a small fraction of the
wonderful things I have seen God do in the first fifty years of the ministry He
has called me to fulfill. What lies in
the future, I do not know, but my desire is to be found doing what He called me
to do when He comes for me. This I know;
I can trust in Him, because He is faithful, and so can you.
In Conclusion
The
things I have told in this short testimony are only a small fraction of the
wonderful things we have seen God do during fifty years of ministry. I have chosen these because they are of the
nature that they could not be denied by anyone who saw them at the time. God hates pretence, and so do I. He hates self exaltation, and I greatly fear
it. It is my firm belief that most of
the highly publicized “miracle ministries” of today are nothing more
than pretence and self glorification, and have become the “habitation of
devils” (Revelation 18:2), and not of God.
Revelation 16:14 says, “For
they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings
of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great
day of God Almighty.” Jesus spoke of the last days, saying, “There shall
arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were
possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (Matthew 24:24). The apostle
Paul spoke of a last day “…working of Satan with all power and signs and lying
wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish;
because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved” (II Thessalonians 2:9-10).
“Holiness
people” reject the “sign’s and wonders” movement because it is
filled with ungodly, unsanctified, often immoral and scandal ridden ministers,
and they do well to reject it. The “world”
that we are to reach with the gospel rejects the “holiness movement,”
however, not because it is “holy,” but because it is weak and
powerless. We are not to seek “personal
power,” as so many do, but to be “filled with the Spirit” and “clothed
with miracles” as Christ promised his disciples. There are untold millions, yes, billions of souls
living in the world right now that have never seen anything in religion that
can convince them that God even exists. “Miracles
that cannot be denied,” done “in the name of Jesus Christ” is the
answer. We must diligently seek God for
a fresh outpouring of His Spirit upon the children of God. In Psalms
110:3 we read, “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in
the beauties of holiness….” The “church” is beautiful when God pours
His Spirit upon her, clothing her with righteousness, love, and miracles. That is when “grace” becomes “irresistible.”
Message 65 - By Leroy Surface - Miracles That Cannot be Denied
-----------------------------------------------
TOP of PAGE
NEXT MESSAGE
PREVIOUS MESSAGE
Leroy Surface
MESSAGES
JDG MESSAGES
Keith Surface
MESSAGES
