3 John G Lake Miracles: Epileptic Healed, Tumor Dissolves, Man Speaks Unknown African Tongue

Easter, 1916

When preaching at Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, a man by the name of Johnson, an epileptic for twelve years, attended the meetings.

He had been suffering 12 to 15 seizures a day. After the service, a group of us were in an attitude of prayer and communion with God preparatory to going out for an open-air meeting.

Someone turned and asked this young man if he would like to be a Christian. He said, “Well, I guess not. I would do the same things tomorrow I have done today if I were.” Like a flash out of the blue, the Spirit of God fell upon him and he fell prostrate upon the floor, remaining there until 10:00 the next morning. Before morning, that fellow who had been having about 15 seizures a day was not only saved, but healed. He went forth at 10:00 baptized in the Holy Ghost.

One day our minister at Bloemfontein was going out to conduct a meeting for Basuto natives. He could not speak Basuto to preach to them, so it was necessary for him to have an interpreter. Johnson was with him.

The interpreter did not arrive. But when time came for the meeting to begin, the power of God came upon Johnson. To the amazement of all, he stood and spoke forth the Word to native people in the purest Basuto!

One evening as I was preaching, the Spirit of the Lord descended upon a man in the front row, a minister from London, England.

He remained in a sitting posture but began rising from the chair. Gradually, he came down to the chair; then gradually, he began to rise again, somewhat higher. This was repeated three times.

Was it a reversal of the law of gravitation? I think not.

My own conception is that his soul became so united with the Spirit of God that the attractive power of God was so intense it drew him up.

One day I stood at the railway station in Logansport, Indiana, waiting for my train and observing a group of Italian men, apparently laborers, sitting on a bench. They were going somewhere to work.

As I walked up and down the platform, I said, “Oh, God, how much would I love to be able to talk to these men about the living Christ and His power to save!”

The Spirit said, “You can.”

I stepped over to them, and as I preached, I observed myself beginning to speak in some foreign language.

I addressed one of the groups, and he instantly answered me in Italian. I asked where he was from, and he replied, “Naples.”

For fifteen minutes God let me tell the truths of Christ and the power of God to that group of laborers in Italian, a language of which I had no knowledge.

That was a little flash—a gleam—but one day, bless God, there will come from heaven a shower that will so anoint the souls of men that they will speak in every language man speaks by the power of God. “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (Matt. 24:14).

While I was in Africa, the Church of England sent a three-man delegation to Johannesburg for a year to report back to England concerning our work in South Africa.

The result was a great conference of Church of England preachers was called, and I was asked to preach at the conference.

It resulted in the establishment of healing societies in the Church of England.

We were blessed recently in this country with one of their “healers,” Mr. Hicks, who held meetings in the various Episcopal churches all across the land.

I have just come from Portland, where the streets were filled for ten blocks around the church with automobiles carrying the sick to his meetings.

Mr. Clark Mitchell was in a logging accident ten years ago in which his left side was severely injured—the knee and left shoulder were crushed. For ten years he experienced great suffering. His knee developed a tumor so large that it filled his pant leg. He told me there were occasions when he was able to walk perhaps a single block, but with great suffering. Other periods, he was compelled to be confined to his home and his chair.

One day as I was hurrying down Pacific Avenue on the way to my meeting at the Free Methodist church, I passed Mr. Mitchell’s home and his daughter waved to me. She had seen me coming and said to her father, “I see Mr. Lake, and I am going to call him in.”

Mr. Mitchell replied, “No, don’t do it. I don’t take any stock in that kind of stuff.”

Though I knew nothing of these circumstances, I would have paid no attention if I had. I am Scotch.

When I entered their home, I said, “Mr. Mitchell, I have no time to talk to you.”

I threw off my overcoat and hat and knelt to pray. He indicated it was his knee, so I laid my hands on his knee and began to pray. As I did, I was conscious that he was healed.

I said, “Mr. Mitchell, stick out your leg.” He did. “Get up and walk.” He did.

As he walked, he kept saying, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand.”

He came back and sat down, still saying, “I don’t understand.” “What is it you do not understand, brother?”

“Why, I cannot understand God’s healing me. I am not a Christian.”

I said, “Is it possible you have not yet given your heart to God?” He said, “It is.”

“Then, brother, in the name of the Lord, let us do it now.”

So he, his dear daughter, and another lady knelt with me, and all three yielded their hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ. As he sat in his chair, I told him of the healing of another man and how the bones would grind in his hip.

Mr. Mitchell said, “That is like my shoulder.”

This is when I first learned he had a bad shoulder, so I called his daughter again, and we prayed for his shoulder.

Then I said, “Put up your arm, brother.”

When he raised his arm, I asked him if it was perfectly free. He replied, “Perfectly free.”

By 8:30 p.m., the tumor that had been on his knee for ten years had totally disappeared.

The next morning, he went to the printing office, presented himself to the editor, and said, “Mr. Scott, I am the name the Lord has healed.” And the newspaper editor wrote up a statement about the man’s healing.

The same day he spaded his entire garden.

The day after, he went to work for a plasterer where he continued work.

The day of miracles had not passed as of this incident: March, 1922, in Forest Grove, Oregon.

In the same building that we had our Healing Rooms, there was an x-ray laboratory. The technicians wanted to see what it was all about, so they asked to take x-rays at no charge to us of some of our prospects for healing. It was a unique opportunity.

Among those we sent to them was a man with tuberculosis. Each time after he was ministered to in prayer, they would take an x-ray. We could see the progress of the healing. Each picture showed less and less of the disease until there was no more evidence of it. He was completely well.

We always prayed for a person until we were satisfied that the healing was complete. There was no dependence on the arm of man (flesh).

Mr. W. A. Fay suffered from cancer of the stomach. He had been ministered to perhaps thirty times.

For the first ten days there was no evidence of healing whatsoever or a subsiding of his suffering. After that, there was a gradual subsiding; then color began to return to his face, and he began to put on flesh.

Now he can eat anything and everything, and as much of it as he can get! And that is not all, beloved.

He found the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ while the process was going on, and he says that is the big part of it.

I guess the Lord knows how to open doors in people’s hearts. A good many Christians overlook the fact that Jesus Christ made the ministry of healing just as broad as He could make it.

To the seventy (Luke 10:8, 9), Jesus said, “…into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you…heal the sick that are therein.” And then what did He tell them to do? “…say unto them, The Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.”

I once lived near a man who was sick unto death. Some went to him and told him he had to be baptized, or he would die and go to hell.

I have always said that was a form of coercion, and Jesus never used it. He was too much of a gentleman. He never took advantage of a man when he was down, to grind his soul and try to influence him to be a Christian.

If the man was sick, Jesus went and healed him by the power of God. Then when that man was healed, the natural response of his loving soul led him to Christ.

I wonder, have you ever paid attention to the different occasions in reading the Scriptures when the Voice of God is mentioned?

You know, the thing that makes the Bible the Bible is the fact that somebody had an interview with God! Somebody heard from heaven before there was any Bible. Then the conversation or the incident was recorded, and these became the Word of God.

Now the Word of God is indestructible because it was a real Voice, a real experience. God really did or said something and the record of it is true.

It is very simple to prove the inspiration of the Bible. Every child is taught to “prove” whether or not his sum in mathematics is correct.

If you have doubts, questions, and fears concerning the Bible and its inspiration, we know that if one soul ever heard from heaven, another soul may.

If one soul ever had an interview with God, another soul may. If any man ever knew his sins were forgiven at any period,

another man may know his sins are forgiven now.

If a man or woman ever was healed by the power of God, then men and women can be healed again.

The only thing necessary is to return again in soul experience to that same place of intimacy where the individual first met God.

That is the way you prove the Word of God.

That is the reason Christians love the Word of God. That is the reason the Word of God becomes the thing men live by, the thing men will die for. The Word of God becomes a present, living reality to them—not just a theory.