John G. Lake lived from March 18, 1870, until 1935, and was mightily used of God to bring healing to untold numbers of people. The following information comes from a book entitled "John G. Lake - His Life, His Sermons, His Boldness of Faith" (pg 237)No one can understand the tremendous hold the revelation of Jesus as a present-day healer took on my life, and what it meant to me, unless they first understood my environment. I was one of sixteen children. Our parents were strong, vigorous, healthy people. My mother died at the age of seventy-five, and my father still lives, and is seventy-seven. Before my knowledge and experience of the Lord as our healer, we buried eight members of the family. A strange train of sicknesses, resulting in death, had followed the family. For 32 years some member of the family was an invalid. The home was never without the shadow of sickness during all this long period.

When I think back over my boyhood and young manhood,there comes to my mind remembrance like a nightmare of sickness, doctors, nurses, hospitals, hearses, funerals, and a grief-stricken father, struggling to forget the sorrows of the past,in order to assist the living members of the family who needed their love and care.

At the time Christ was revealed to us as our healer, my brother, who had been an invalid for 22 years, and upon whom father had spent a fortune for unavailing medical assistance, was dying. He bled incessantly from his kidneys. He was kept alive throught the assimilation of blood creating foods, which created blood almost as fast as it flowed from his person. I have never known any other man to suffer so extremely and so long as he did.

A sister, 34 years of age, was then dying of 5 cancers, having been
operated on 5 times at Harpers Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, by Dr. Karstens, a German surgeon of repute, and was turned away to die. There was a large core cancer, and after the operation four other heads developed - 5 in all.

Another sister lay dying of an issue of blood. Gradually day by day her life blood flowed away, until she was in the very throes of death.

I had married and established my own home. Very soon after our marriage the same train of conditions that had followed my father's family seemed to appear in mine. My wife became an invalid from a heart disease and tuberculosis. She would lose her heart action and lapse into unconsciousness. Sometimes I would find her lying unconscious on the floor, having been suddenly stricken, sometimes in her bed. Stronger and stronger stimulants became necessary in order to revive the action of her heart. Finally we were using nitroglycerine tablets in a final heroic effort to stimulate heart action. After these heart spells she would remain in a semi-paralytic state for weeks. It was the result of overstimulation, so the physicians said.

(pg 238)But in the midst of the deepest darkness, when baffled physicians stood back and acknowledged their inability to help, when the cloud of darkness and death again hovered over the family, suddenly the message of one godly minister, great and good enough to proclaim the whole truth of God, brought the light of God to our souls.

We took our brother who was dying to a Healing Home in Chicago. Prayer was offered for him with the laying on of hands, and he received an instant healing. He arose from his dying cot and walked four miles. He returned to his home and took a partnership in our father's business, a well man.

Great joy and a marvelous hope sprang up in our hearts. A real manifestation of the healing power of God was before us. Quickly we arranged to take our sister with 5 cancers to the same Healing Home. We carried her on a stretcher. She was taken into the healing meeting. Within her soul she said, "Others may be healed because they are so good. They may be healed because of their goodness, but I fear healing is not for me." It seemed more than her soul could grasp. Rev. D laid down his Bible, stepped down, and prayed for her. She was utterly healed. A few days later the cancer was black as your boot. We put that cancer in alcohol and it was in Dr. Karsten's hospital for years. The mutilated body (of his sister) began to grow and became perfect again.

How our hearts thrilled! Words cannot tell this story. A new faith sprang up within us. If God could heal our dying brother, and our dying sister, and cause cancers to disappear, He could heal anything or anybody.

Our sister with the issue of blood began to look to God for her healing. She and her husband were devout Christians, but though they prayed, for a time prayer seemed unanswered. One night I received a phone call saying that if I wished to see her in life, I must come to her bedside at once. On arriving I found that death was already upon her. She had passed into unconsciousness. The body was cold. No pulsation was discernible. Our parents knelt by her bed weeping. Her husband knelt at the foot of the bed in sorrow. Her baby lay in his crib.

(pg 239)A great cry to God, such as had never come from my soul before, went up to God. She must not die. She could not die. I would not have it. Had not Christ died for her? Had not God's healing power been manifested for the others, and should she not likewise be healed?

No words of mine can convey to another soul the cry that was in my heart. A flame of hatred for death and sickness that the Spirit of God had stirred within me arose. The very wrath of God seemed to posess my soul. I discovered this fact - that there are times when your spirit lays hold on the spirit of another and he or she cannot get away from you. Somehow I felt my spirit lay hold of the spirit of my sister. I prayed, "Dear Lord, she just cannot go." I walked up and down for some time. My spirit was crying for somebody with faith in God that I could call on to help me. As I walked up and down in my sister's room, I could think of but one man who had faith on this line. That was Alexander D, six hundred miles away. I went to the phone and called Western Union and told them I wanted to get a telegram through to Mr. D and an answer back as quickly as possible. I received this answer back: "Hold on to God. I am praying. She will live."

It was the strength of his faith that came over the wire that caused the lightnings of my soul to begin to flash. I prayed, "This thing of hell cannot be; it will not be. In the Name of Jesus Christ I abolish death and sickness, and she shall live." And as I finished my praying, I turned my eyes toward the bed and I saw her eyelids blink. But I was so wrought up I said, "Maybe I have deceived myself."

Presently I observed her husband get up and tiptoe to her head, and I knew he had seen it. I said, "What is it, Peter?" He replied, "I thought I saw her eyelids move," and just then they moved. She was healed.

My wife, who had been dying slowly for years and suffering untold agonies, was also healed. But, oh, ere God's power came upon her I realized as I never had before the character of consecration God was asking, and that a Christian should give to God. Day by day death stole over her, until the final hours had come. A brother minister was present. He went and stood by her bedside, and returning to me with tears in his eyes said, "Be reconciled to let your wife die." I thought of my babies. I thought of her whom I loved as my own soul, and a flame burned in my heart. I felt as if God had been insulted by such a suggestion, yet I had many things to learn.

(pg 240)In the midst of my soul storm I returned to my home, picked up my Bible from the mantel piece, and threw it on the table. And if ever God caused a man's Bible to open to a message that his soul needed, surely He did then for me. The book opened at the tenth chapter of Acts, and my eyes fell on the 38th verse which reads, "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him."

Like a flash from the blue these words pierced my heart, "Oppressed of the devil!" Then God was not the author of sickness, and the people whom Jesus healed had not been made sick by God! Hastily taking a reference to another portion of the Word, I read again from the words of Jesus in Luke 13:16, "Ought not this woman...whom SATAN HATH BOUND, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond?" Once again, Jesus attributed sickness to the devil. What a faith sprang up in my heart, and what a flame of intelligence concerning the Word of God and the ministry of Jesus went over my soul. I saw as never before why Jesus healed the sick. He was doing the will of His Father, and in doing His Father's will, was destroying the works of the devil (Hebrews 2:14). (See also First John 3:8)

I said in my soul, "This work of the devil, this destruction of my wife's life, in the Name of Jesus Christ shall cease, for Christ died and 'Himself took our infirmities and bear our sicknesses.'" (Matthew 8:17)

We decided on 9:30 a.m. as an hour when prayer would be offered for her recovery. I telephoned and telegraphed friends to join me in prayer at that hour. At 9:30 I knelt at her dying bed, and called on the living God. The power of God came upon her, thrilling her from head to feet. Her paralysis was gone, her heart became normal, her cough ceased, her breathing was regular, and her temperature normal. The power of God was flowing through her person seemingly like the blood flows throught the veins. As I prayed I heard a sound from her lips. Not the sound of weakness as formerly, but now a strong, clear voice, and she cried out, "Praise God, I am healed." With that she caught the bed clothing, threw them back from her, and in a moment was out on the floor.

(pg 241)We all met at Christmas time. For the first time in many years the Lake family sat down to a Christmas dinner without a sick person in the family.

What a day! Will I ever forget it! When the power of God thrilled our souls, and the joy of God possessed our hearts because of my wife's recovery. The news spread throughout the city and state and nation. The newspapers discussed it. Our home became a center of inquiry. People traveled great distances to see her and to talk with her. She was flooded with letters of inquiry.

A new light had dawned in our souls. Our church had diligently taught us that the days of miracles were passed. Believing thus, eight members of the family had been permitted to die. But now, with the light of truth flashing in our hearts, we saw that was a lie. A lie invented no doubt by the devil, and diligently heralded as truth by the church, thus robbing mankind of their rightful inheritance through the blood of Jesus.

People came to our home. They said, "Since God has healed you, surely He will heal us. Pray for us." We were forced into it. God answered, and many were healed. Many years have passed since then, but no day has gone by in which God has not answered prayer. People have been healed, not by ones and twos, nor hundreds, or even by thousands, but by tens of thousands. For I have devoted my life, day and night, to this ministry.

In due time God called me to South Africa, where I witnessed such a manifestation of the healing power of God as perhaps has not been seen since the days of the apostles. Christian men were baptized in the Holy Ghost, and went forth in the mighty power of God, proclaiming the Name of Jesus. They laid hands on the sick and they were healed. Sinners, witnessing these evidences of the power of God, cried out in gladness, and gave themselves to the service of God. It was like it was in the days of Jesus, "There was great joy in the city" and that nation.

(pg 242)Finally, God brought me to Spokane, where we have ministered to 200 - 500 sick per week. The city is filled with the praises of God because of the blessed manifestations of God's healing power everywhere. People have come from 1 to 5,000 miles for healing. Some have written letters, others have telegraphed, and some have cabled from half way around the world, for prayer and God has graciously answered. Ministers and churches throughout the land have seen that, though the church has taught that the days of miracles only belonged to the times of the apostles, that statement was a falsehood. The healing power of God is as available to the honest soul today as it was in the days of Christ on the earth. "The gifts and callings of God are without repentance." (Romans 11:29) Jesus is the healer still.

Lake would say: "Throw your medicine in the toilet,
and then apologize to your toilet."

The book "John G. Lake - His Life, His Sermons, His Boldness of Faith" is published by Kenneth Copeland Publications, Ft. Worth, TX.