The seed of Faith that made BIG MONEY – The Story and legacy of Oral Roberts

Oral Roberts is known in the church as someone many believe has a healing gift. During the 1950s, William Branham led the revival in healing that would break the ground for such people as Oral Roberts.

Roberts was born the fifth child of Rev. and Mrs. Ellis M. Roberts January 24, 1918, in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma. Being of Indian heritage he was honored as "Indian of the Year" in 1963 by the American Indian Exposition. Roberts attended Oklahoma Baptist and Phillips University and received a few years of education. In 1947 he resigned his pastorate to enter a healing evangelistic ministry. Modern church historian Richard Riss writes: “Two of the earliest and most influential healing evangelists of the mid twentieth century were William M. Branham and Oral Roberts.” (THE HEALING AND LATTER RAIN MOVEMENT Richard Riss A survey of 20th-Century revival movements in North America).

The Latter-Rain movement began in Canada from William Branham who laid hands on the leaders, which presumably included Oral Roberts. The "Healing Revival." continued from 1947 to 1957, led by Oral Roberts, T.L. Osborn, Jack Coe, A.A. Allen, and O.L. Jaggers, and was popularized through Gordon Lindsay's Voice of Healing magazine. Roberts is the only one left alive of the original inner circle (along with Paul Cain who was discipled by Branham). Latter Rain proponent Franklin Hall (who made famous the fire baptism) wrote a book on fasting and prayer which was a major influence for the Latter Rain movement and in the ministry of Oral Roberts.

Rev. Walter Frederick, former Assembly superintendent in Canada, sent Brother Hall's literature to every Pentecostal preacher in Canada.... A few of the others (not too well-known then) ministers who had major fasting experiences by our writ­ings in the 1946, 1947 to 1950 fasting era and who also became famous are: Wm. Freeman, Gordon Lindsay, A.A. Allen, O.L. Jagger', Gayle Jackson, Oral Roberts, David Nunn, Wm. Branham, W.V. Grant, Wm. Hagen, Dale Hanson, [and] Tommy Hicks. Franklin Hall, Miracle Word (Phoenix, AZ: Hall Deliverance Foundation, Summer, 1985), p.9)

In 1947, Oral Roberts went through a time of extensive fasting and prayer. The Voice of Healing magazine, published in 1949, quoted Branham saying that Roberts’ "commanding power over demons, over disease and over sin was the most amazing thing he had ever seen in the work of God." By 1950, Roberts was traveling the country with tent meetings that were simultaneous broadcast on TV stations, his healing ministry had begun.

Among the many revelations Oral Roberts had, one was so similar to Branham. He identified his healing ministry with John the Baptist. In the fall of 1948, according to Roberts, God "spoke to my heart and showed me that I would be the John the Baptist to my time in the sense that I would help prepare the way . . . for a great healing to come to the body of Christ." Roberts, as well as other revivalists, believed that the healing revival was a precursor to the second coming of Christ. Unlike Branham, Roberts never developed the idea that he was the forerunner to Christ's return. (See David E. Harrell, Jr., Oral Roberts: An American Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985) 87, 149, 447-48.)

Oral Roberts founded Oral Roberts University (ORU) where Students began attending in 1965. “My warm friend Billy Graham dedicated Oral Roberts University before 18,000 people on April 2, 1967. (Oral Roberts', Miracle of Seed Faith (Fleming H. Revell, 1970), p. 9.

Today there are 5, 300-students. The campus has international students attending from 120 countries. ORU is on 263 acres in Tulsa, Oklahoma with 23 major buildings.

According to the IRS the university reported nearly $76 million in revenue in 2005. Total revenue in 2006 was $81,159,361. In 2006 their direct government support was 11,370,396. Government contributions were $4,957 358.

In a Larry King Interview- Roberts explained how he was healed as a child: “...I became ill with tuberculosis with -- the disease of my mother. My mother is Cherokee Indian. And her father and mother, sister died with tuberculosis, set it on me and I was bedfast five months.

And it came to the end where the doctors told my dad it was a matter of days. I had never been religious. And when my dad came in to pray for me, he said, God, I can't afford for my son to lose his soul. So I'd heard papa pray all my life. I looked across my bed into his face. His face faded and I had a vision, I suppose, and I saw the face of my savior. It broke me up. And for the first time in my life, I heard myself asking God, save me, come in my life, spare my life.”

KING: You ever look back and say why you? If the Lord were there that day, why Oral Roberts?

ROBERTS: Say that in another way.

KING: Doesn't do it with everybody. People die and don't believe. People die young and don't see anything at the...

ROBERTS: Well, my sister Jewel (ph) came in the room and said, Oral, God is going to heal you. I said, is he, Jewel? She said, yes. And a man came into our area praying for the healing of people. For the first time in the history of our county, Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, my older brother got in his car, came after me and said, Oral, I'm taking you there. Get up. I said I can't get up. I couldn't even walk.”

”He dressed me, put me in the back seat of the car. And on the way, I heard that still small voice of God saying, son, I'm going to heal you. You're to take my healing power to your generation, someday you're to build me a university based on my authority and the Holy Spirit. And I knew that I would be healed.”

KING: Do you ever ask why you, why you were chosen to heal?

ROBERTS: Well, I can't figure out God. I don't know if I'd had been God, I'd have chosen me. I think there are many people better qualified. But David says that God's ways are past finding out and I believe that. I believe God is a sovereign God.” (Larry King Interviews Oral Roberts Aired January 31, 2002)

It appears the Lord commissioned Oral to have God’s healing power before he was healed, as he asks to be saved. I cannot find any scriptural examples of god telling people of a gift or power they will have as soon as they ask for God’s help, this is a first. His statement “I saw the face of my savior. It broke me up. And for the first time in my life, I heard myself asking God, save me, come in my life, spare my life,” is perplexing because of what we read in his book “A Daily guide to Miracles” after Oral describes his parents relationship to Jesus, Roberts states “I began to believe in Jesus before I believed in God. The name God was a threat. He seemed more like a terrible judge, while Jesus appeared friendly, tender, caring and absolutely able to do anything” (p.33 A Daily guide to Miracles and successful; living through seed faith 1973).

Details on Orals past history are not abundant (he has written his autobiography) but we do know this healing experience shaped his biblical view. His statement of not figuring out God is not how he has practiced his ministry. Oral Roberts has written more than 120 books on how God works and what he will do. These are about miracles, one of the more mysterious interventions of God in human affairs. Eight million copies are in circulation with titles like: Expect a Miracle; Miracles of Seed-Faith; a Daily Guide to miracles; 3 most important steps to your better Health; miracle living and the Seed Commentary on the whole Bible. It becomes obvious that Roberts is focused on miracles. Roberts was famous for inventing cliché’s like “miracles are always coming toward you or their passing you by.”

Roberts understood his healing ability as he was conducting a one-night service in Nowata, Oklahoma. While praying for a small boy who was deaf in one ear, he heard God speaking as if He were standing by his side: Son, you have been faithful up to this hour, "and now you will feel My presence in your right hand. Through My presence, you will be able to detect the presence of demons. You will know their number and name and through my power, they will be cast out" (Oral Roberts, My Story, 1961, p. 151)

Roberts: “I was hearing God say to me that henceforth I would experience His presence in my right hand .. .. For sure, God's presence coming in my right hand was a sign to great numbers of sick people that there is a God and it is His nature to heal.

When it came, it was unmistakable. I mean, it was there! When it was not there, I was so ordinary, everyone knew it was not there” (Roberts, Expect, pp. 92-96)

Since Roberts was with Branham it becomes suspicious that he would have a healing ability through his hand, only in a different hand. The Bible says nothing about anointed hands to heal.

William Branham, "felt God" in his left hand (David Edwin Harrell, Jr., All things Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic revivals in Modern America, 1975, pp. 27-38.)

The angel … said to Branham, "As the prophet Moses was given two gifts, signs to vindicate his ministry, so will you be given two. He said, "One of them will be that you'll take the person that you're praying for by the hand, with your left hand and their right," and said, "then just stand quiet, and there'll be a physical effect that'll happen on your body. Then you pray. And if it leaves, the disease is gone from the people. (William Branham, How the Angel Came to Me, and His Commission (Edmonton: End Time Message Tabernacle), pp. 18-22.)

Branham explained how it worked for him “Well, as soon as I took hold of her hand, there showed... When I was praying for them, I was using my right hand. Then on the left hand showed vibrations. And a few moments, the deaf spirit was cast from the lady, and she was looking, and I snapped my finger. She turned and looked. I said, "You hear me,   don't you?" And her hearing was perfect.” (1947 Angel and His Commission Phoenix AZ  Sunday 47-1102  E-23) 

Similarities of those Roberts associated with seemed to have been passed on to him.

On the Larry King show: ROBERTS: “… And I came up with a phrase, "God is a good God." God wants you well. God wants you prosperous. God wants you a whole person.”

KING: “You ever wonder why he just doesn't rid us of cancer and heart disease and make it a lot easier?

ROBERTS: “Well, you get into theology again. When Adam and Eve were created by God and they yielded to the devil and sinned, the curse came upon his body, upon the earth, poison, weeds came, sickness came and everybody organically is born with the seed of that in their hearts. And so it released what the devil brought into the world, sin and sickness and death and despair. We have to fight it. We have to come against it by our faith.” (LARRY KING LIVE Interview with Oral Roberts Aired January 31, 2002)

Oral Roberts’ idea of God is a mixture of truth and error. Roberts does agree that each person is born sinful, which is correct. But God never promised prosperity to all, just as he never promised healing to all as long the world is under the penalty of sin. Every believer will be healed one day- that day is when the Millennium takes place and the Messiah is here physically on earth as king. Until then, these are false promises that are tools used to give hope. We do not reverse the effects by fighting sin and sickness and death and despair with faith. It is faith in the Son of God and his work done on the cross that covers our sins to bring us into a relationship with God. But our faith does not eliminate sin or death, which are part of the natural order of our fallen world until it is changed. Roberts has to know this from the reality of his own life.

The Roberts family has had their share of disasters, their daughter Rebecca and her husband Marshall Nash were killed in an airplane crash in 1977. In 1982 Roberts’ elder son Ronald, was arrested after police accused him of obtaining a controlled drug with a forged prescriptions. A week or so later he was found dead in his car from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
His son Richard and daughter-in-law Patti, who were being groomed to take over the ministry, were divorced in 1979. Richard remarried his second wife Lindsay and in 1984, gave his father his 10th grandchild—but the son died two days after birth.

“For over thirty hours, while doctors fought to save the baby, Oral, Richard, and others prayed. Lindsay was wheeled up to the baby's side to pray; Kenneth Hagin and his wife, and other ministers, came to pray for healing. When Richard Oral finally died, on January 19, it `devastated Oral.' He called it the worst tragedy of his scarred life. `I think' Evelyn reflected, `because he felt there was so much healing power in that room that they could have healed a thousand people ... But he said there was something in that baby and he got it as far as the head and it would not leave ... Some obstacle would not leave. It was stubborn.' (Oral Roberts: An American Life, by David Edwin Harrell, Jr., Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press)

Amazing that men like Roberts can promise healing to others without any disqualifications but they cannot deliver to their own loved ones or themselves. But people hear what they want to hear, despite the evidence of seeing something different; and men like Roberts know this and take advantage of it.

Another example was Charismatic author Jamie Buckingham who got a hold of this hope without any healing. Buckingham wrote:  “I'm healed” in Charisma Magazine, several months later he died of cancer. At the time Jamie was under a medical doctors care, “One day my wife ... suddenly spoke aloud [and] said, 'Your healing was purchased at the cross.' ... Here is what I discovered. You have what you speak. If you want to change something, you must believe it enough to speak it. ... If you say you're sick, you'll be (and remain) sick. It was not mine. It was the devil's. I didn't have cancer. I had Jesus. The cancer was trying to have me, but the Word of God said I was healed through what Jesus did on Calvary. ... It was a Friday afternoon. The tape was an Oral Roberts' sermon ... I came up off the sofa, shouting, 'I'm healed!' My wife leaped out of her chair and shouted, 'Hallelujah!' For the next 30 minutes all we did was walk around the house shouting thanks to God and proclaiming my healing” (Jamie Buckingham, “My Summer of Miracles,” Charisma, April 1991).

Ten months after the publication of his article claiming he was healed, he died of cancer (Feb.17, 1992). This was a noticeable failure but the church turned a blind eye to these teachings and continued on, as if it never happened.

That same year, 1992, Oral Roberts was on TBN, the “Praise the Lord” show (October 6, 1992) with Paul Crouch.  I watched as Crouch was asked to lay hands on Oral Roberts to minister to his chest pains, Roberts exclaimed, “I feel the healing power of Jesus!” and said it felt like an “electric current go through him.” Saying to Crouch, Paul you are anointed. Oral Roberts was pronounced healed on TBN. Less than four hours later, while visiting a home in Newport Beach, Roberts felt more pains and was hospitalized at Hoag Presbyterian Memorial Hospital (also in Newport Beach), shortly after midnight. Subsequent articles report that Roberts's heart attack was “near fatal.” (“Evangelist Has Tests,” The Orange County [CA] Register [Dec.16 1992], A-7). Roberts who is known as the healing evangelist now has a pacemaker (“Roberts Out of Hospital,” The Orange County [CA] Register (2l December 1992), A-30).

It’s a matter of integrity that a man who said he felt the healing power of Jesus from Paul Crouch’s hands laid on him was not healed. This is a man who has pronounced healing to thousands from his own hands. Oral Roberts has stated that he would feel a manifestation of God’s presence in his right hand which would be a point of contact between the believer and God’s healing power, so he supposedly knows when healing occurs.

Religion Today reported another heart attack in 1999:
”Oral Roberts is recuperating from a mild heart attack. The Tulsa, Okla.-based evangelist has been at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, Calif., since having an angioplasty procedure to clear a primary artery two weeks ago, the Associated Press said. "We hope he will be up and going soon," his family said in a Feb. 28,1999 statement.

Even more recently “ University founder and evangelist Oral Roberts fell and broke his hip at his home near Palm Springs, Oral Roberts University officials said Friday.
  Roberts, 88, broke his right hip Thursday night while on the way to the kitchen at his home. Roberts was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, where he was expected to undergo surgery Friday.’
(Associated Press The Daily News, Saturday, March 25, 2006)

Evelyn Roberts, the wife of evangelist Oral Roberts age 88, died a day after she fell in the parking lot of a dentist's office, striking her head on the pavement and causing massive internal bleeding, said Jeremy Burton, a spokesman for Tulsa-based Oral Roberts University; May 4, 2005.

Before an audience of 6,000 at Oral Roberts University, the evangelist said, "I've had to stop a sermon, go back and raise a dead person," adding good-naturedly, "It did improve my altar call that night." Roberts provided no details. Later his son Richard, 38, expanded the revivification claim, asserting that in 50 or 60 cases Oral and other ministers had raised the dead.

Then Oral began to hedge. During a TV appearance with a physician from his university's medical school, Roberts explained that a baby he had raised "years ago" appeared to have died during a service. "Only a doctor could say" whether the infant was "clinically dead," he said, but "the mother thought it was dead, I thought it was dead, the crowd thought it was dead" (Time Magazine Raising Eyebrows and the Dead

By Richard N. Ostling;Barbara Dolan/Tulsa and Michael P. Harris/New York Monday, Jul. 13, 1987 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,964970,00.html

Orals son, Richard Roberts, made following statement: "I don't try to prove [that] multiplied thousands [are being healed]. I just say, "there's a person. Let him tell you." [This is enough] to me and the person. . . I can't prove that any person who ever came to me was healed, that is I can't prove it to the satisfaction of everyone." (The Faith Healers, p. 193).

When Jesus healed there was no question what happened the proof was clear to all, even those who opposed him. James Randi says, “Son Richard, as usual, had to face a press and try to explain his father's ridiculous claims about raising people from the dead. He said that there were "dozens upon dozens upon dozens" of documented cases of such resurrection, and I decided to switch the direction of my inquiries. Knowing full well that a mere healing is nothing compared to a resurrection, I sent this telegram to Oral Roberts on June 30, 1987: "Please provide me with one identifiable case of a resurrection from the dead brought about by Oral Roberts, regardless of the sources of the power used to accomplish this wonder. Since resurrections are not considered commonplace, I will accept documentation of such an event in place of any of the other evidences of healing by Reverend Roberts that I have been seeking." Need I tell you that no response was ever received? (James Randi, The Faith Healers, 1989, p.195)

Al Dager cites in his book “Vegeance is Ours” “The Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements credits Roberts with wide-reaching influ­ence upon neo-Pentecostalism and today's charismatic movement: Oral Roberts established Charismatic Bible Ministries in 1986. They are influential in conducting leadership conferences. Many of the charismatic leaders hold dominion concepts that teach the church how to take dominion over their cities, use worship to move God’s hand and believe we need to receive power for miracles, signs, and wonders. They teach spiritual warfare of binding the spirits allegedly of the North, South, East and West.

The names read like the daily programming list on TBN and Daystar. The original officers and trustees of CBM were: Oral Roberts – Chairman Ken Copeland – Secretary Jack Hayford - Vice Chairman Billy Joe Daugherty- Treasurer Paul Yonggi Cho - International Honorary Chairman Executive Committee Members: Charles Green, Marilyn Hickey, Karl Strader. Trustees included names from Roberts own family- Evelyn and Richard Robert and some recognized names in the word faith movement. Happy Caldwell, Charles Capps, Morris Cerullo, Ed Cole, Paul Crouch, Ed Dufresne, Quentin Edwards, Mike Evans, Kenneth Hagin Sr. Buddy Harrison, Wallace Hickey, Benny Hinn, Charles and Frances Hunter, Robert Tilton, Larry Tomczak, Casey Treat, Francis MacNutt, Mike Murdock, John Osteen, Earl Paulk, Carlton Pearson, Fred Price, Tommy Reid, Roy Sapp, Jerry Savelle, Stephen Strang, Lester Sumrall, Hilton Sutton and Vinson Synan, (cited on p.124 “Vengeance is Ours” by al Dager)

Roberts approves and supports numerous other charismatic teachers and organizations. Kenneth Copeland, Jesse Duplantis, Marilyn Hickey, Rodney Howard-Browne (who brought the laughter revival to ORU) and the Toronto Blessing. “During the first few months of 1993, Rodney Howard-Browne spent a total of thirteen weeks at that church, and Christian leaders from many parts of the United States, including Richard Roberts, chancellor of Oral Roberts University, came to the meetings to observe and participate, and minister in the new anointing” (Charisma Aug. 1994, p. 24).

John Bevere’s book, "Breaking Intimidation" has an endorsement on the back of the book from Oral Roberts.  Creflo Dollar has appeared in conferences with him as Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, John Hagee, Joyce Meyers, T. D. Jakes, Leroy Thomson, Hilton Sutton, Ray Mcauley, Paul Morton senior.

Joel Osteen now has one of the largest church congregations in America. Osteen says in 1981, he came home from Oral Roberts University to start the Lakewood TV ministry and he became the television producer of his father’s program. “Prophet” Kim Clement was accepted into a home study Bible course through Oral Roberts University. After explaining his situation of being rejected to the University and donating a few dollars in the envelope, a few weeks later boxes of books from Oral Roberts were delivered to his door. He read them over and over.

Oral Roberts is acknowledged by many of his disciples of his seed faith prosperity influence. It is seen in the teachings and ministries of Marylyn Hickey, Benny Hinn, Rod Parsley, Mike Murdock, Joyce Meyer, John Avanzini, John Hagee, the list is far too long to name them all. Roberts has also given honorary doctorates to many of the word faith teachers, John Hagee is called Doctor Hagee, having received an Honorary Doctorate from Oral Roberts University as did Joyce Meyer. Kathryn Kuhlman gave her baccalaureate address at ORU in 1972, that same year she was a recipient to the university's first honorary doctorate.

Roberts is attributed to be the one who began the seed faith movement (known as the prosperity teaching.) Prior to their becoming rich by Jesus’ promise Roberts and his wife were both acquainted with poverty, both attended a denomination that believed that one had to be poor to be Christian. Roberts in his book A Daily Guide to Miracles explains how 3 John 2 was used in his life: "I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers." he said to his wife Evelyn, this means we’re supposed to prosper, The lord wants us to” “Do you believe that if I ask the Lord for a new car, he would give us one?” She said no, Oral, I really don’t.” Roberts recounts how after discovering this verse, God gave him a brand-new car. This conversation took place the day after he backed his old car into his next door neighbors car and dented it. He went and told his neighbor what happened. A few days later his neighbor saw that he needed a new car and said to him that he was car dealer and would sell his car at the highest price and let him buy a new car at his cost. So he got a brand new Buick for a few dollars difference instead of driving “the smaller economic brands”. As they were driving the new car back it hit Oral that this was the answer to 3 John 2… he wanted us to prosper” (Oral Roberts, A Daily Guide to Miracles (Tulsa, OK: Pinoak Press, 1975, p.36-38.)

What this has to do with seed faith (tithing as he believed then) is beyond me – if the story is accurate, it sounds more like God’s grace to meet a need. Hardly something to justify taking a Scripture out of its context. As I was writing this article there was an advertisement on the radio for a car dealership where you pay what they pay at the dealership on certain cars. Does this mean one was blessed because of 3 John 2?

Roberts has stated on his own program “if your faith grows, if you make it as a seed it will increase. The other word for faith is increase, the other word for seed is increase” Once you get the understanding of seed faith into your heart noone can keep you from getting in seed faith and living in it, because you want increase nobody wants decrease. Anybody here wants decrease? (Oral Roberts Miracle Broadcast 1997 LeSea broadcasting).

Oral Roberts teaching of “seed faith” and “points of contact” has been an influence on many today. Roberts is the inventor of seed faith but his disciples have taken it to places he never imagined. Hinn’s seed faith teaching came from Oral Roberts. Hinn told the TBN audience during the Spring, 1991 Praise-a-Thon how Roberts had been a guest at his church in Orlando and criticized Hinn for how he took an offering. Roberts told him, "You take lousy offerings." He told Hinn that he put too much emphasis on giving, and little on receiving. Oral Roberts said to Hinn, "From now on build faith in your people, not faith in the seed but faith in the harvest it's gonna bring back." Hinn complied and said, "It changed my whole look on giving and receiving, sowing and reaping."

Seed faith is a manipulation tactic to prompt someone to give money to receive a multiple blessing from the Lord.  If one does not give it does not happen, so it has nothing to do with grace by which we receive from the Lord but by law, mans law.

Mike Murdock: “Now I need to say this God always delivers with a seed.” Mike Murdock is just one of Oral’s disciples and attributes his knowledge of seed faith to him. He is a Founding Trustee on the Board of International Charismatic Bible Ministries with Dr. Oral Roberts. He asked Oral Roberts, who is a mentor in his life “what’s the greatest secret you ever discovered in your lifetime?” Oral said without a moments hesitation ... “sowing for a desired result, taking something I have been given to something I have been promised. Taking something in my hand and putting back in his hand knowing it will multiply. Letting go of something I can see to create something I can’t see. Letting go of something in my hand expecting he will let go of something that his hand.”

Oral Roberts: “Remember, only what you give can God multiply back. If you give nothing, and even if God were to multiply it, it would still be nothing!” (p.30 Miracles of Seed-Faith)

Joyce Meyer echoes also her teacher “Sowing and reaping is a spiritual law...Sow generously and you will reap generously” (Joyce Meyer, “What Does Your Future Hold” May 21, 2004). The examples are endless.

Roberts and his disciples are leading people into a false view of God and his ways on a number of teachings.

The point of contact is also employed by using physical objects they send in the mail while you send them your best seed faith gift for your miracle.

Using the example of the woman with the issue of blood who touched the hem of HIS garment (also mentioned in Matt 14:36; Mark 6:56)

Matt 9:20-22: “And suddenly, a woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years came from behind and touched the hem of His garment. For she said to herself, "If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well." But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, "Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well." And the woman was made well from that hour.”

The emphasis was on the woman having faith she would be healed and Jesus acknowledged this.

Numerous disingenuous gimmicks are employed by Roberts, offering candles to the recipient to light at home while they light one at their ministry for a point of contact. Put your hand in the outline of his hand that he sent on a paper in the mail.

Take your prayer sheet and be sure to . . . TRACE YOUR RIGHT HAND on the prayer sheet . . . then write down your needs on the hand. I WANT TO ANOINT YOUR REQUESTS IN THE PRAYER TOWER ON JULY 28TH AND PLACE MY HAND OVER THE TRACING OF YOUR HAND, AS I RELEASE THIS EXPLOSIVE FAITH FOR A MIRACLE SUPPLY FOR YOU!

Don't forget to check the square that lets me know that you want to receive a personal vial of anointing oil . . . when you receive it. . . apply that oil, in the Name of Jesus, to every area of need that you have . . . [emphasis in original]

Oral Roberts also made use of the handkerchief as a point of contact for healing. Many of his associates and disciples have done the same.

See this video by Richard Roberts on how they explain this miracle. http://www.orm.cc/?p=1263

They explain it as being anointed with prayer. But our prayer is to be to God and neither prayer nor we can anoint any inanimate object. They misuse Acts 19:11-12 (even autograph the handkerchief with it.)

True, God did some very unusual miracles through the apostle’s hand, these miracles were in a special, separate category. Other Christians did not repeat this, these miracles were apostolic in nature,

There was no repetition of people laying their handkerchief on the sick and having them be healed. No anointed handkerchiefs was sent by the other apostles. Paul did not put his hands on other people’s cloths to pass an anointing. Paul did not distribute cloths as a method of enabling people to “release their faith,” the cloths came directly from the Apostle Paul’s person, they were brought from his (Paul’s) body to the sick.

So any testimony or practice using this method with or without testimony does not matter because it was not a Biblical practice inside the church as other teachings are.

David E. Harrell Jr. of the University of Alabama in Birmingham is the author of a Roberts biography, he cites:

"I prayed over this cloth for God to deliver you--use as a point of contact (Acts 19:11-12). … It is not necessary to wear the cloth unless you feel you should. It can be used more than once or for more than one person. If you wish to request more, I will be glad to send them to you. The important thing is to use the cloth as a point of contact for the body ..." (Christian News review of Oral Roberts: An American Life by David Harrell

The "point of contact" teaching is based on a misunderstanding of the verse, "If two of you shall agree on

earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 18:19). The phrase "as touching anything" the Greek word translated "touching" is peree, which means "about, concerning, regarding, or with respect to" in its proper context it is about reconciliation between brethren that were offended with witnesses present. Not about objects to heal.

Patti Roberts wrote a book about her marriage to Richard after their divorce, called Ashes to Gold, where she expressed her concern with Richard becoming a clone of Oral and questioned many of their fund raising practices i.e. the error of seed faith. Ray McConnell, a student of ORU submitted a PhD thesis to the university detailing his contention that the teachings of the word-faith movement are heretical. This was later published in the book A Different Gospel (1988) which was read by many as the premiere documented research on this teaching. Neither one of them were heeded by the Roberts.

Oral Roberts does not hesitate to endorse those who have endorsed him, especially those who are famous on TV. He told the audience that Benny Hinn is “God's man for this generation” (Hinn was on his board of ORU). This really doesn’t hold much weight when Oral Roberts seemed to believe it was Branham for another generation.

The reporter on Impact News commented: “A generation ago, Oral Roberts was television’s best known spiritual healer – now he’s a pitch man for Benny Hinn.” Oral Roberts: “Today you should give your biggest cash bill or write your biggest check and send it in and then expect God to give to you. You can’t out give God!” Benny resounds, “Hallelujah!” (Impact News 1997). That’s seed faith in action.

All this shows is a lack of discernment to endorse Benny Hinn who has spoken more false prophecies and taught aberrant doctrine than any other in our modern time. But this lack of discernment is like a blanket spread over the whole church. At the Lakeland services that were supposed to be a revival with Todd Bentley. According to “prophet” Bob Jones God had Roberts as part of the churches history which would affect the future:  “What is the Lord doing?  I brought a 100 year prophesy for a long time, let’s look at it. The 1950’s reveal the power of God.  William Branham, Oral Roberts, AA Allen.” Not surprising that the false prophets endorse each other.

pt.2 Oral Roberts