Charles S. Price and Vancouver's Greatest Healing Revival

 

By Rev Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

-an article for the Light Magazine “Healing Pioneers’ series

 

It’s remarkable how few Canadians have heard about one of Vancouver’s greatest healing revivals with Charles Sydney Price. Born in Sheffield, England in 1887, he lost his mom at age 4 when she gave birth to his sister Jessie.  After attending Wesley College, he served in the British Navy for a couple of months before being discharged for a bad knee. At age 20, he emigrated to Canada where he found work on a railroad crew.  Moving to Spokane Washington, he was converted at a Free Methodist Mission:

One night in early autumn I was standing with my back to a lamp post listening to the singing of a little band of mission workers. When the street meeting was over a little old lady detained me. “Do you know God wants you?” she said. Suddenly I felt uncomfortable. I am afraid that I was rather rude in the way I excused myself and hurried away… I began to feel as if God had spoken to the old lady and a feeling of dread and awe came upon me. Slowly I retraced my steps and I arrived eventually at the mission. What a battle went on in my heart that night!...I was getting to the place that I did not care what happened, and while I was not in the gutter, yet I was slipping down, down, down, and I knew it was disaster and sorrow in the end. When Mr. Stayt gave the altar call, I sprang to my feet, squared my shoulders and marched down to the front. That night I gave myself to God. I was desperately in earnest. I was absolutely sincere.

That same year, he was ordained a Methodist minister, and married Bessie Rae Osborn with whom he had five children.  Coming under the influence of liberal theology, he became a Congregationalist pastor for twelve years. This made him very sceptical about the Bible and its healing miracles.

Later, Price would describe himself as having been 'spiritually blind, leading his people into a ditch'. He pastored this way for twelve years, with no altar calls or conversions. Then Price moved to California where he was pastor of the First Congregational Church of Lodi. As a cigar smoker, he built smoking rooms to attract newcomers.  In 1921, a healing revival in San Jose broke out with Aimie Semple McPherson. Some of Price’s own congregation were strongly impacted:

His eyes were fairly dancing and on his face was the joy of heaven itself. Clasping my hand, he said, “Brother Price—Hallelujah!—Hallelujah!—Praise the Lord!” I gazed at him in amazement. Expressions like that were not usual in my church. Throwing back my head, I commenced to laugh. Still clasping my hand, he said, “Hallelujah—I have been to San Jose and I have been saved—saved through the Blood. I am so happy I could just float away.”

Price responded to his congregant, saying “I can explain it all. It is metaphysical, psychological, nothing tangible.”  “Slowly a bitter antagonism”, said Price, “commenced to creep into my heart.” He published an ad in the newspaper, promising to preach against Aimie Semple McPherson as a fraud.

Inserting an advertisement in the paper that I would preach the following Sunday on “DIVINE HEALING BUBBLE EXPLODES,” I made my way down to San Jose, armed with pen and paper to take notes. I intended to return the following Sunday and blow the whole thing to pieces.

While listening McPherson in person, he came under great conviction about his own emptiness. On the third night, he publicly responded to the altar call, being filled with joy:

Down those steps I walked. I was in the act of kneeling at the altar when the glory of God broke over my soul. I did not pray for I did not have to pray. Something burst within my breast. An ocean of love divine rolled across my heart. This was out of the range of psychology and actions and reactions. This was real!! Throwing up both hands I shouted, “Hallelujah!” So overcome was I with joy that I commenced to run across the altar. Dr. Towner followed me—and wept for joy! Then in an ecstasy of divine glory, I ran down the aisle to the back of the tent and back to the front again, shouting, “I am saved—Hallelujah!—I am saved!”

During ‘tarrying’ meetings that week at the local Baptist Church, Price experienced a powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit:  

Suddenly like a knife, there appeared in that awful dark, a light and it flashed like a lighting flash across the blackness above my head. The heavens were split and they commenced to fold up until I could see the glory of a light through that opening in the sky. Then as I gazed at that beautiful light, a ball of fire came down towards me; lower and lower it came until it got to the level of the darkness on either side. It began to shoot out darts of fire. Then the ball came down a little lower. It shone so brightly it banished the darkness. I just watched, fascinated and entranced, those tongues of fire. It then touched me on the forehead and I felt a quiver go through my body and then my chest began to heave and I started praising God. The Comforter had come!

Price returned to his own church where he once again began giving altar calls. One thousand members began to hold seekers meetings crying out to God for His presence. They started holding two-mile long Gospel parades in their automobiles where Jesus was preached.  

In 1922, Aimie Semple McPherson invited Price to join her evangelistic team. When Ashland, Oregon churches invited “Sister Aimee” to lead revival meetings there, she asked Price go in her place. Hearing of the Oregon salvations and healings, the Victoria Ministerial Association unanimously invited Price to conduct a three-week Crusade in April 2023. After thousands were turned away, the meetings were moved to the new Willow Hockey Arena, where over 9,000 attended, still leaving 4,000 unable to get inside. Victoria at that time only had a population of 55,000.  Up to 1,000 per night were powerfully converted. The blind gained their sight, and the lame were walking. Rev. W.J. Knott was healed from a 10-year-old neck goiter that had grown so big that it was starting to choke him.  One month later, Rev. Knott reported that he could eat any kind of food, slept like a baby, and could read fine print without glasses.  Rev. J.F. Dimmick’s daughter Ruby experienced the healing of her curved spine and deformed foot, allowing her to run and walk freely without any paralysis.  Newspapers all over Canada and the United States printed the story. The Literary Digest printed an account of the case. Over 9,000 Chinese people attended the meetings, with at least 600 going forward to receive Christ. Sadly, when he returned a year later, Price was arrested by the Victoria police and kicked out of town for ‘practising medicine without a license.’

  The Vancouver Province newspaper on May 2^nd 1923 reported: “Nothing that has happened in years has so stirred religious circles like the coming of Rev. C.S. Price, an evangelist, who for the next three weeks, commencing next Sunday, will address afternoon and evening mass meetings in the Arena rink.” Price preached at the new Denman Ice Arena to over 250,000 people in a three-week period where many were healed. At that time, the Vancouver region only had a population of 175,000. Frank Patrick, owner of the Denman Arena, commented: “[T]he evangelistic party addressed over a quarter of a million people in the space of three weeks. On more than one occasion, I could feel the very building tremble with the singing of the multitude who were unable to wait for the opening hymn.” Every meeting was filled with stretchers, crutches, and wheelchairs. Price liked to anoint the sick with oil, praying, “May the mercy of God and the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the power of His Holy Spirit — which are here now — enter your soul, your mind, and your body for healing. Amen.”  He regularly reminded people that "it was Jesus who was the healer." In all his services, Price encouraged people: "to forget, as much as possible, the instrument who anointed them with oil. He told them to look away to Christ, in whom alone they could find deliverance out of all their sufferings." 

Price also held parallel meetings in Chinatown, with an interpreter, at the Imperial Theatre.  The over-all response was one of the largest-per-capita response that has ever occurred in BC. Over seven congregations were planted as a result of these meetings. For four months after the crusade, the baptismal tank at Ruth Morton Baptist was filled and used every Sunday.  Sadly, some clergy opposed the healing miracles, publicly speaking out against them. 
Price also held meetings in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, & Toronto, and then in America in Minneapolis, Duluth, St Louis & Belleville, Illinois. In 1926, Price started publishing the "Golden Grain" periodical, which included many testimonies of healings and miracles. In 1928, he decided to purchase a tent to hold meetings, so that he no longer had to pay large auditorium expenses. He called it the Canvas Cathedral. During the last 10 days of the Belleville meetings, there were 1000 conversions a day. He counted 35,000 conversions in 1928 alone. The constant traveling however put a strain on his marriage which ended in divorce in the 1930s.

In the later 1930s, he ministered in Norway, England, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Italy, as well as continuing to speak throughout the USA.  In 1939, Price estimated that he had traveled over a million miles on evangelistic campaigns since he began in 1922. He was a prolific writer, including The Real Faith in which he taught that healing is not about striving but rather surrender and abiding in His healing presence.

Daily surrender of the will was Price’s passion:

In the last analysis, the goal of every mature Christian should not be Divine Healing but DIVINE HEALTH! The flow of His life through ours; the surrender of our will to His; the impartation of His nature, until our natures are impregnated with the glory and the presence of the Divine! Not in an instant! Not in some emotional moment at an altar! But by that daily acknowledgment of His lovely presence in ALL OUR WAYS, and the surrender of EACH MOMENT to His care and to His keeping."

Price, who died on March 8, 1947, acknowledged that it was not always easy to assess the long-term impact of any one evangelistic service. Memorably he commented: "We cannot always visualize or comprehend the result of our labors at the time we minister. We presume that the old cobbler who preached the sermon on that wintry day in London might have thought he had only one spiritual child. That child, however, was none other than Charles Hadden Spurgeon. The old shoemaker might have had only one spiritual son, but he certainly had a lot of grandchildren."

We pray for many spiritual grandchildren as Canadians rediscover the healing well dug by Charles S. Price.

Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird, co-authors, God’s Firestarters

Kathryn Kuhlman: Believing in Miracles

 

-an article for the Light Magazine ‘Healing Pioneers’ series

By Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

We will never forget seeing Kathryn Kuhlman in 1975 at the packed-out Vancouver Coliseum.  Ed intentionally had us sit in the upper-balcony section, as far away as possible from Kathryn. One of her trademarks was encouraging healed people to push their own wheelchairs around the stage. 

Many North Shore residents fondly remember the Sign of the Fish bookstore founded by two charismatic Catholics, after one of them was healed from cancer at a Kathryn Kuhlman event. Time Magazine in September 14^th 1970 called Kathryn ‘a veritable one-woman shrine of Lourdes.’

What is remarkable about Kathryn is the level of scientific, medical analysis of the healings at her events.  A significant number of the healings were documented in a manner consistent with the Lambertini Criteria, the gold standard for examination of such claims of healing. 

Kathryn is a testimony to the God of the second chance.  Early in her ministry, she unwisely married a religious con artist Burroughs Waltrip.  After his third divorce, he died at age 46 while he was in jail for mail fraud. She later called her marriage the biggest mistake of her life. When Kathryn finally left him, she said that was the night that Kathryn Kuhlman ‘died’:

It’s much easier to die than to live, death to the flesh and the opinions of this world, that very day at the end of that dead-end street is when I died at four pm, on a Saturday afternoon.

Her ministry had been so damaged by her marrying Waltrip that no one would have imagined that she would one day be welcomed in packed-out stadiums around the world.

Roberts Liardon, author of the best-selling God’s Generals series, called Kathryn his favorite healing evangelist.  As a young boy, he attended Kathryn Kuhlman’s meetings three times, meeting her once in person:

And all of a sudden, woom! And people started getting healed all over the room, and no one touched them. There was no emotional hype... She had a great word of knowledge, and woom! She could nail it. Someone up there on the third, from the top on the fourth, boom! She could hit it like that. Her word of knowledge was phenomenal with accuracy.

Kathryn Kuhlman, along with Oral Roberts, was one of two healing evangelists who most successfully transitioned from tent rallies to radio and then TV.  She became the world’s best known female preacher.  In 1976, she was greeted at the airport by the Las Vegas mayor, who declared the date Kathryn Kuhlman Day.

Millions of viewers watched her television program I Believe in Miracles where testimonies were shared by now healthy individuals who had been healed at the Kuhlman meetings.  Kathryn’s healing ministry was distinctly interdenominational. She did TV interviews with key renewal leaders like Corrie Ten Boom, Episcopal priest Dennis Bennett, and Lutheran minister Harald Bredesen.  Kathryn wanted everything that she offered, whether radio, TV or a book to be absolutely first class. By focusing on orderliness and excellence, she made healing acceptable to the post-World-War II generation:

I hated traditional tent healing services,” she explained. “Those long healing lines, the filling out of cards…It was an insult to your intelligence. Once, after visiting such a service, I cried all night. I determined that with the Holy Spirit’s help, my ministry would not be that way.

Rather than blaming the sick for a lack of faith, Kathryn invited inquirers into an experience of the loving healing presence of the Holy Spirit:

I saw the harm that was being done in attributing everything to ‘lack of faith’ on the part of the individual who had not received a healing…The looks of despair and disappointment on the faces I had seen, when told that only their lack of faith was keeping them from God, was to haunt me for weeks.

When healing breakthroughs happened, she always redirected the attention away from herself onto God.  She often reminded people that she was not a healer and had nothing to do with these healings. She particularly disliked being called a faith healer.  Often the healings occurred very quietly in her services during long times of silence. It deeply saddened and burdened her when people left her meetings without receiving a healing.  She saw spiritual healing as far greater than physical healing.  The greatest miracle for Catherine was the miracle of the new birth in the Lord Jesus.

Converted at age 14 in her mother’s Methodist Church and baptized at her father’s Baptist Church in Concordia, Missouri, Kathryn initially focused only on personal conversion in her events. Kathryn attended the C&MA AB Simpson Bible College for three years in Seattle, Washington.

For many years in Idaho during the Great Depression, she would ask permission to preach in closed-up country church buildings. When given the go-ahead by local elders, she would preach a series of evangelism meetings.  Some days she would have to sleep in a turkey coop. 

Being raised in poverty, she felt that she had nothing to give, but she would offer her ‘nothing’ to the Lord:

“ …it’s all I have. If you can use it, I give it to you” And He has taken my nothing and used it for his glory. It isn’t golden vessels He asks for.  It isn’t silver vessels.  It’s yielded vessels. The secret is yieldedness to the Lord.

Like Moses and Winston Churchill, Kathryn suffered from stuttering, which caused some of her words to become multi-syllabic, like Hooooly Spii-rit, glooory, and JEEEZuss. Kathryn told a People’s Magazine reporter: “A lot of people think my speech is affected, but it’s just my way of overcoming my (stuttering) problem.’ One Jewish Hollywood movie producer was very supportive of Kathyrn.  He commented that she had all the makings of a star because she was the only woman in the world who could turn the word ‘God’ into four syllables.

In 1947, a spontaneous healing occurred in her service that changed the future of her ministry.  Kathryn described her role as a surprised onlooker. Historians record a great upsurge in large healing services starting in the late 1940s.  A Pennsylvania newspaper in 1950 wrote about Carey Reams who had not walked since 1945. Kathryn Kuhlman told him to throw away his crutches. He did so, walking all around the stage and aisles. Carey was a biochemist who had previously been severely disabled due to an WWII landmine explosion. He had been in a partial coma for six weeks. He now suffered from a crushed pelvis, a fractured jaw, visual impairment, a snapped spine, and a broken neck. After forty-one surgeries, Carey was in no better condition. He had lost sixty pounds, due to hemorrhaging and a limited ability to eat orally. The next day after his healing, he helped load a truck full of heavy furniture.  In follow-up interviews eleven years later, his ailments remained gone.

Kathryn had a special appreciation for medical doctors, encouraging them to either be on stage or in the front rows of her healing services. Dr. Martin Biery, a spinal chord surgeon, was a frequent visitor on the platform at the LA Shrine Auditorium. He was on the staff at the Veteran’s Hospital in Long Beach, California. Dr. Biery commented,

With my own eyes, I have seen the medically impossible happen time and time again.  I have seen arthritics whose spines were frozen get instantaneous freedom and move and bend in all directions without pain. A leg which was shortened by polio visibly lengthened before my eyes as Miss Kuhlman prayed.  A boy with osteochondritis of the knee – a chronic inflammation caused by a football injury – had not been able to bend his leg for several years. When I examined him on the spot, he had perfect flexion of his knee.  As a medical man, I call these healing miracles.

 

At the end of her life, Oral Roberts was about to pray for her healing in the hospital, but Kathryn motioned that she wanted to got to heaven.  So, he complied with her wishes.  as Kathryn Kuhlman died, there was a mysterious smell of roses.   

May the courageous risk-taking of Kathryn Kuhlman inspire others to be innovative in bringing the healing power of Jesus Christ to a needy world.

Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird, co-authors, God’s Firestarters

 

Maria Woodworth-Etter: Under the Power

-an article for the Light Magazine ‘Healing Pioneers’ series

By Rev. Dr Ed & Janice Hird

 

Before the healing ministries of Aimee Semple McPherson and Kathyrn Kuhlman, there was Maria Woodworth-Etter.  Born 1844 in New Lisbon, Ohio, a population of 800, she was an unlikely healing pioneer with little to no church exposure.  Her abusive alcoholic dad bankrupted the family, before he died of sunstroke, leaving them destitute:

…when (my father) took one drink, he was a crazy man for more, and thought he was rich, and gave his last penny away.  Then when he had no money to buy drink with, he would pawn his clothes, and come home to his large family and broken-hearted wife without a penny to buy food, and all in rages.  And we little children would run and hide. Our young lives were full of terror and hardships. 

Maria’s mom sent her children out to do house-cleaning to make ends meet.  There was no time to go to church until age 13 when in 1857 Maria was powerfully converted to Jesus Christ and immersed in water.

With her husband Philo Woodworth, she had six children, five of whom would die in the 1870s.  Even though it was not socially acceptable for women in that culture. she felt a powerful call in the 1880s to minister: “I will not see my generation lost.” Her husband and one remaining daughter opposed her preaching, thinking that she was insane.  Inspired by the examples of Phoebe Palmer and Catherine Booth, she saw herself like a Deborah, a mother in Israel. Because she was absolutely opposed to slavery and segregation, she became controversial, preaching in black churches.

 When she preached, people started crying. Many people started falling under the power or rushing to the altar to get saved. Maria observed:

Sometimes the Holy Spirit gives a spirit of laughter, and sometimes of weeping, and everyone in the place will be affected by the Spirit.  I have stood before thousands of people and couldn’t speak, just weeping…I’ve stood an hour with my hand raised, held by the mighty power of God. When I came to myself and saw the people, their faces were shining.

She first joined the United Brethren, then the Church of God Anderson, and would set up churches wherever she went, particularly in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Texas, Georgia, and Missouri.

Maria taught that ‘the hardest place God sends you is just the place where He is going to give the greatest victory.’ In St. Louis, she put up her tent at the Devil’s Den, a very dangerous area known as the graveyard of pastors.  The rough people were outside throwing rocks at the people in the tent.  They had guns, knives, clubs and fireworks.  She stood up to them and commanded them to listen to her. She said that if they touched her, God would strike them dead.  Even the rough people fell under the power of God. This endured on for five months.  Mockers were struck down and came up as believers who never mocked again.  Thousands were saved and healed of blindness, lameness, and other ailments.  Maria commented: “I lay on hands in the name of Jesus.  ‘Tis Jesus makes you whole.  Sometimes the power is so great they are healed instantly, leaping and jumping and praising God.”  They had to remove the pews and seats from her 1885 St. Louis, Missouri meetings so that more people could crowd in to go to the altar twenty-four hours a day.

She was initially reluctant to pray for the sick in case it distracted from the work of evangelism, getting people saved. Jesus rather than healing was her focus: “Don’t get puffed up by the miracles, don’t get your eyes on them, but keep your eyes on Jesus. You are not saved by miracles.”

Countless miracles however followed her: “The cook was cooking in the cook room one day, and terribly burned his arm and face, the result of pouring oil on the fire. He was prayed for and was healed so that the pain was taken right away and he was able to go right into the kitchen and work over the hot stove.”

In 1913, Maria said that she used to preach hellfire, so hot that you could see the fire.  She noticed that people had become hardened to the ‘hot gospel’, but when they saw people being healed, the formerly cynical responded with enthusiasm:

People who are healed are full of joy and sometimes jump and dance when the healing power comes into them; the Holy Ghost takes all the deadness and stiffness out of them; sometimes God slays them and lays them down so he can talk to them.

She knew that she was called to go west. Her husband strongly opposed this.  After moving to California, she had a tent made that seated 8,000 people. As well as attracting crowds, she attracted violent enemies, including some police officers. The drunk police decided to attack her meeting.  As she preached boldly, the police could see that she was not afraid of them, so they became frightened as they could tell that the presence of God was there. They left in a hurry. 

Some Californians sent her death threats, warning Maria to get out of town or they would tear down her tents and kill them all:

California is a great place for wickedness, and for men and women to hide from the law. In the great crowds that attended our meetings, they told me there were murderers there, and all kinds of other outlaws; they mixed through the crowds with concealed weapons, ready to kill, or fight at the least thing that did not suit them. The brothers built a high board fence around the back of the pulpit, where I stood; they did not tell me why, but they were afraid I would be shot while preaching.

One night, about two am, a wild Californian mob surrounded her tents, ready to kill them all.  But before they could tear down the tents, the police had them surrounded.

On August 18^th 1913, Maria and her team were arrested in Framington, Mass., for obtaining money under false pretenses. A trial lasted for four days, during which about thirty-five witnesses clearly testified about their remarkable healings.  In the trial, Maria was asked: Have you ever said you had any special power?  A. NO, I have not.  Q.  Do you believe any one has been healed by you?  Q.  No, nor saved.  Maria wanted them to know that it was Jesus who saved and healed people.

Maria won over many doctors and nurses who began to defend her.  One of Atlanta’s leading surgeons, Dr. Bowen, received a seemingly terminal injury to his head and heart. He commented that when Maria prayed for him, it felt like a gigantic hand took hold of the heart, and pressed it back into its normal condition and made it beat naturally.

Maria had no patience for petty church politics: “The Lord has given me a special mission to bring about a spirit of unity and love, and God is raising up people in every land who are reaching out after more of God and saying ‘Come and help us.’” She never criticized other churches, but rather lifted up Jesus:

His ambassadors must stop all of the arguing and infighting. We have to drop all the hair-splitting theories, this idea and that with continual bickering about the finished work or sanctification – all of this antagonizes the saints and it has to end.

May God use the example of Maria Woodworth-Etter to bring a fresh appreciation for unity as we seek to preach the gospel and heal the sick.

 

Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird, co-authors, God’s Firestarters

Leanne Payne’s Healing Presence

 

 

-an article in the Light Magazine ‘HealingPioneers’ series

By Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

One of Agnes Sanford’s most significant spiritual daughters was Leanne Payne, a CS Lewis scholar at Wheaton College.  Mentored by Wheaton Professor Clyde Kilby, Payne introduced the world to the healing insights of CS Lewis in her groundbreaking book Real Presence.  Kilby is best known for founding the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, which studies the Inklings, including C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Leanne commented: “I’m more amazed than ever at how Dr. Kilby invested in me — a senior undergraduate who was an older student and by then a grandmother of two.”

Madeleine L’Engle called Leanne’s book ‘probably the best introduction I know to the works of C.S. Lewis.’  Agnes Sanford called it ‘a wonderful book. It brings out meaning behind meaning and clear light out of shadows.’

Born during the Great Depression in 1932, Leanne Payne experienced the tragic death of her father when she was just three years old. This left her with a deep father wound, looking for love in the wrong places. As a single mother, she became the dorm mother in 1963 at Wheaton Academy:

I was a young single mother, in the South, no education, terrified after a divorce, all alone, wondering if I could make a living – all of these kinds of things. There were so many desires in my heart and not much hope of any of them being realized – and then the Lord gave me every desire of my heart, everything I’ve asked Him.

In 1964, she joined the prayer circle of Rev. Richard Winkler, one of the ‘grandfathers’ of Anglican renewal. This led in 1965 to her obtaining her Bachelor’s degree, followed by two Master’s degree at Wheaton College and the University of Arkansas. She taught at Wheaton College, in the graduate program in Christian Spirituality at Creighton University, as well as for the YWAM University of the Nations: “When I am teaching in the university, undergraduate school or seminary, I think that it would be the area of “spiritual formation”.” To be healed for Leanne was to be more fully formed in Christ’s image.

After Richard Winkler introduced her to Agnes Sanford in 1973, Leanne quickly began serving with Agnes Sanford in her Schools of Pastoral Care. in 1981, she served as a research fellow under Henri Nouwen at Yale Divinity School. 

Like her mentors CS Lewis, Clyde Kilby and Agnes Sanford, she was the ‘eternal child’ always rejoicing in God’s creation whether in observing a squirrel, a beautiful flower, or a person made in God’s image. As Jesus taught in Matthew 18:3 and Mark 10:14, only the child-like enter God’s Kingdom. Healing comes through embracing our childlikeness.

In 1982, she incorporated Pastoral Care Ministries through which she provided pastoral care, prayer and counselling mainly at the week-long PCM schools held throughout North America, Europe, Hawaii, and Australia.

Called a “great soldier for Christ” by the philosopher Dallas Willard, she wrote seven books that continue in print in English and in 12 other language translations.

Leanne was fascinated by how we become persons, discovering our true selves in Christ.  She said that experiencing Jesus’ real presence brings about incarnational reality in our lives: “In Him we become fully human…In Him, the will, intellect, imagination, feeling and sensory being are hallowed and enlivened.” As the Word becomes flesh in our lives, healing takes place in body, mind, and spirit:  “All stories of healing in the Scriptures, when imaged by the mind, are incarnational…The Healing Presence descends into us and does it.” Healing for Leanne came through practicing God’s presence.

Leanne saw our modern dilemma as the schism between head and heart, spirit and matter, the intellect and the imagination. She commented that we live in a time when the family is so broken that we find people everywhere without this initial sense of being: “It’s this intense fear of non-being – this chasm – this sense of ‘Do I even exist!’ People are walking around with that big hole.”  Through Christ, our fragmented modern souls become integrated and freed.  This enables us ‘to enter the Great Dance of healthy relationships with the self, others, God and His creation. Jesus heals our deepest wounds, making us whole persons.

Part of her inner healing was to learn how to celebrate her inadequacy and smallness while leaning fully on Jesus’ greatness and love. One of her favorite healing prayers was ‘Come Holy Spirit’.  She saw the work of the Holy Spirit as calling us up out of the hell of our false selves and into the glorious Presence of our Lord. As Leanne invoked God’s presence, she helped people to deeply listen to God and to truly repent of sin, selfishness, and idolatry.  Quoting C.S. Lewis, she spoke of healing bent ones, enabling people to ‘straighten up’ into Christ.  Healing comes through welcoming the Holy Spirit into all our broken places.

Leanne saw three blocks to becoming fully human and whole: 1) failure to forgive others 2) failure to receive God’s forgiveness and 3) failure to forgive and accept ourselves in Christ. Forgiveness is deeply healing. Unforgiveness is closely tied into our hiding behind false selves rather than walking in the light:

Only the real ‘I’, shedding its illusory selves, can draw near to God.  In His Presence, my masks fall off, my false selves are revealed…To continually abide in His Presence is to have one face only –the true one.

She believed that ‘the attempt to combine good and evil is, I believe, one of the greatest threats facing not only Christendom but all mankind today.’  As such, she challenged Carl Jung’s false teaching that evil is merely the dark side of good that needs to be accepted rather than renounced.  The renunciation of evil and idolatry was key in her approach to bringing deep emotional and physical healing. Leanne’s healing ministry was rooted in the spiritual gifts of prophecy and discernment”:

It helped a great deal when I came to realize my main ministry is that of prophet…I could then understand my life – why the Lord led me away from paying jobs and to full dependence upon Him.  A bishop once told me that if a prophet fit comfortably into the Church, he wasn’t needed.

Leanne was passionate about helping people walk out their baptism.  Ed and Janice went in 1987 to her Pastoral Care School on the UBC Campus, and were very impacted by how her team shared about deep healings in their own lives.  The Holy Spirit flowed in healing waves across the participants, particularly during worship.

Like CS Lewis and Agnes Sanford, Leanne saw the eucharist as ‘big medicine’. Her focus on the healing power of Holy Communion helped ground healing prayer in incarnational reality.  Receiving the Lord’s Supper can either make us more sick or healthier, depending upon how we discern the body. (1^st Corinthians 11:29) Taking Communion while living in unforgiveness and bitterness does not end well. 

Leanne, who died of Parkinson’s complications at age 82, often prayed: “Lord, love Your world through me!”  Our prayer is that the deep healing insights of Leanne Payne will become more fully integrated in the lives of local churches as we more fully love God’s broken world.

 

Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird

co-authors of God's Firestarters 

Francis & Judith MacNutt: God’s healing team

 

by Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

-previously published in the Light Magazine

Francis and Judith MacNutt were one of the most remarkable healing teams of God that the world has ever known. Born in 1925, Francis MacNutt’s career dream was to become a medical doctor. In 1944, at age 19, he was accepted by Washington University Medical School after only two years of college premed.  Ten days before entering medical school, he was drafted, serving the next two years in the Medical Department of the Army as a surgical technician, mostly in the operating room of the hospital at Camp Crowder, Missouri. 

After World War II, he returned to Harvard where he completed an honours degree in English, followed by a Masters’ Degree in Speech and Drama at Catholic University of America in Washington DC. In 1956, he was ordained as a Dominican priest, before completing his Ph.D. in Theology from Aquinas Institute of Theology. Serving there as a Professor of Preaching, he was elected President of the National Catholic Homiletics Society. After founding the journal Preaching in 1965, he held preaching seminars throughout North America. 

When first praying for healing with others, Francis initially suffered from what he called ‘spiritual inferiority’, “I was afraid of looking ridiculous or being labeled as overly pious.” In 1960, Francis met Rev. Alfred Price, the Warden of the Order of St. Luke the Physician. In 1967, Francis experienced a life-changing outpouring of the Holy Spirit at a Camp Farthest Out conference. There he encountered Agnes Sanford, who became his mentor in the healing ministry, and Rev. Tommy Tyson, a Methodist pastor who later traveled worldwide with Francis on healing missions. A year later, Francis became the first Catholic priest to ever attend Agnes Sanford’s School for Pastoral Care. Francis became like a spiritual talent scout who could discern and call forth other people’s gifts of healing and deliverance. He was so excited to see the healing ministry restored to God’s people: “One of the greatest losses the Church has suffered has been her full heritage of healing power.”

Francis and Tommy lovingly broke down denominational barriers, being welcome in both Catholic and Protestant contexts. In 1974, Francis wrote the book Healing, which has sold over a million copies, becoming a classic text on the healing ministry. He commented: “We’re trying to get an understanding of healing back into the churches. People say ‘we don’t need that anymore, we’ve got doctors.” Francis welcomed the role of doctors working in conjunction with the healing ministry. Agnes Sanford called this book “the most scholarly and comprehensive book on Christian healing that I have ever read.” Francis went on to write seven more books on the history, theology and scriptural basis of healing.

In 1975, while ministering at the World Conference on the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem, Francis met Judith Sewell, a psychotherapist who was leading a local house of prayer. Judith learned much about the healing ministry while praying for hurting Arabs and Jews. Through Francis’ prayer, Judith was healed from uterine cancer symptoms, and did not have to undergo a hysterectomy. Over the next five years, their strong friendship led them to seek the Lord about becoming married. 

Because of Francis’ high-profile ministry, many people sent Judith letters telling her what a terrible and evil person she was as she was considering marrying Francis. After leaving the Dominican order, he was excommunicated because of his marriage. His application for laicization was denied until 1993 when he received a dispensation to revert to be a lay person. 

Being married to Judith was such a blessing to Francis: “We pray every morning. We pray every evening. It is the first and last things that we do. We have discovered that most Christians that are married don’t pray with each other.” Only three percent of Christians have ever received prayer from their own fathers. The MacNutt’s intentionally mentored their children to feel comfortable with both set and spontaneous prayers as a way of deepening their Intimacy with the heavenly Father. 

In February 1980, Francis and Judith settled in Clearwater, Florida, where they established Christian Healing Ministries. Their complimentary gifts and passion for the healing ministry made them a remarkably effective team.  In 1987, they relocated to Jacksonville, Florida. In the mid-2000s, about 500 Catholic charismatic priests and lay leaders from the worldwide Catholic Charismatic Renewal travelled to Jacksonville to learn from Francis and Judith in the Schools of Healing Prayer. Thousands of people have been trained at the MacNutt’s Christian Healing Ministries. Francis and Judith also helped found the Association of Christian Therapists. In 2008, Francis named his wife, Judith, to succeed him as President of CHM, while he took on the position of President Emeritus. MacNutt and his wife have two grown children, Rachel and David, both of whom are involved in the healing ministry and editing of healing books. After Francis died on January 12, 2020, aged 94, Judith has faithfully carried on with her expansive healing ministry.

Francis and Judith were allergic to techniques in the healing ministry. Instead, they focused on the healing presence of Jesus: “We don’t want to set up a rule or technique in his place, that if you do this, this and this, that it will always work.”  Francis held that ‘something always happens when you pray.’ In conjunction with Tommy Tyson, they popularized the concept of ‘soaking prayer’, spending extended time in healing prayer. Francis commented: “If even Jesus had to pray twice, there is good warrant that I might have to pray three times.” Soaking prayer was in contrast to the popular view that you should only pray once before claiming your healing. To Francis, ‘soaking prayer’ conveys the idea of time to let something seep through to the core of something dry that needs to be revived.

Francis was an ‘apostle’ of the Father’s love. Judith described Francis as “a gentle, strong loving ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ.” She also commented: “We need to hear that we are loved, we need to hear that we have authority in the name of Jesus, we need to take that love to everyone else in this world.” Francis was used in healing Judith’s Cherokee dad from cancer who then gave his life to Jesus Christ. Judith commented that Francis had ‘a supernatural gift of love.’

Both Francis and Judith were powerfully used in restoring the true image of God for broken people.  Healing for the MacNutt’s was about first opening our spiritual sight to see how much we are loved by the Father. Judith MacNutt commented: “Jesus died so that we can call God our heavenly Father…Jesus was always shattering people’s images of God.” Judith observed that forgiveness opens the door and love brings the healing. Dealing with resentments through forgiveness has been foundational to the MacNutt’s healing ministry. Francis commented, “the greatest block to God’s love being poured out among us are the resentments that we have in our hearts. Again, most of us have these resentments, but we can’t get rid of them except through gift…Almost every time Jesus talked about prayer, he talks about forgiveness.  …The greatest block to healing, as I see it, is our lack of forgiveness for the people who have hurt us in the past.”

Francis and Judith were very thorough in their prayer for total health through breaking inner vows, judgements, soul ties, generational ties, curses and strongholds. Francis saw deliverance as a ministry of love to wounded human beings. Both Francis and Judith wanted people to walk in freedom. Our prayer is that the MacNutt’s pioneering examples will inspire many other Christians to walk in greater love, healing and forgiveness.

About Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

Books by Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird include God's Firestarters; Blue Sky, a novel; and For Better, For Worse: Discovering the keys to a Lasting Relationship. Dr Ed’s newest award-winning book The Elisha Code is co-authored with Rev. David Kitz. Earlier books by Dr. Ed include the award-winning Battle for the Soul of Canada, and Restoring Health: Body, Mind, & Spirit.

 

AGNES SANFORD’s HEALING LIGHT

By Rev . Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

An article for the Light Magazine ‘Healing Pioneers’ series

The 20^th century healing revival was encouraged greatly by Agnes Sanford. She mentored and raised up more successors than other healing pioneers. Her spiritual children included Leanne Payne, Francis MacNutt, Tommy Tyson, John & Paula Sandford, Anne White, Ruth Carter Stapleton, and Dennis & Rita Bennett.  Newsweek Magazine described her as one of six people who shaped religious thought in the 20^th century.  Agnes is remembered as the most original healing theologian of that time. The famous author Frederick Buechner commented:

I was deeply influenced by an Episcopal laywoman named Agnes Sanford, who in her day was quite famous as a faith healer, which is a term I've always distrusted, because it conjures up charlatanry. She was not a charlatan. She was the real thing, and she had had remarkable healings.

Much of her creativity can be traced back to her early years as an MK (missionary kid) in China.  Agnes Mary White (later Sanford) was born, on November 4, 1897, in China to Presbyterian missionary parents. Her father, Rev. Hugh W. White was resisted by other missionaries who did not want to give leadership to the local Chinese pastors.  He wrote a remarkable book based on his experiences with brand new Chinese believers: Demonism, Verified and Analyzed. 

Like many MKs, Agnes never really felt fully at home in any culture.  She could speak Mandarin, but not read or write it. She saw North America with Chinese eyes and China with North American eyes: “I fell in love with China before I fell in love with a man.”   Agnes first attended the Shanghai American School as a teenager before leaving for the United States to attend Peace College, a Presbyterian women's college in Raleigh, North Carolina.  However, she could not escape the pull to return to China, serving as a missionary teacher before meeting her future husband Rev. Edgar (Ted) Sanford, an Anglican/Episcopalian missionary in China.

Much like Eugene Peterson, Agnes was very poetic, musical, imaginative, and sensitive to other people’s emotional well-being.  She was deeply moved by the ignored plight of a missionary wife struggling with deep depression who later killed herself.

Agnes's initial view of God was that of a distant and demanding taskmaster: “…the window of my own soul was closed, and I could not see Him.  Christianity to me had become to me words –just words – only words.”  After she moved with her husband back to North America, Agnes suffered from severe, recurrent depressions for many, many years: “My family was adept at them (nervous breakdowns).  We are of strong physical heritage, but we excel in having nervous breakdowns.”

She felt like a square peg in a round hole, in terms of her role as a North American pastor’s wife:

I had determined to make myself exactly like Ted’s mother, whom I adored. I would then be, I felt, the kind of wife that he liked. Therefore, I completely denied my original nature and devoted every moment to fruitless endeavor. And so, I reached the depths because I was doing violence to my own soul.

No matter how hard she tried, Agnes felt that she would never be the ‘perfect minister’s wife.’  Her postpartum depression was so deep that her doctor thought that she might kill herself within a year: “…my mind was clogged with resentment and darkness and unhappiness, as a pipeline can be clogged with roots and dirt.” Agnes’ curiosity was stirred when an Anglican priest Hollis Colwell prayed for her young son who was immediately healed.  She finally broke out of her depression after Colwell laid his hands on her head and prayed for her. For the next year, she wrote, she went about her work repeating to herself, hourly and daily, the same prayer: "Lord have mercy on me, and fill me with Your Holy Spirit."

Agnes realized that the real part of her was simply not living, the creative one who longed for children of the mind to be brought forth. She realized that she could no longer see beauty: “when one can no longer see beauty, one can no longer see God.” 

In her autobiography Sealed Orders, Agnes spoke of discovering her call by God to be a writer.  Hollis Colwell deeply encouraged her to put her thoughts onto paper: “Write two hours every day. Those are my orders.”   The very act of writing brought healing to both Agnes and with those whom she ministered.  She eventually dedicated six months a year to writing rather than constantly leading healing missions. Colwell also encouraged her to begin praying for others on her own, rather than just keep sending people to him. 

The basic trouble was that I had forgotten whence I came, and I did not know the sealed orders with which I had been sent to this earth. I sensed my thwarted creativity. I wanted to be a writer, and I could not, for all of my time and thought and attention was upon being a wife and mother.

During World War II, Agnes volunteered through the Red Cross in the local veteran's hospitals, giving her a chance to quietly pray for the sick. Before being kicked out of the hospital for praying, she saw several miraculous healings there. Agnes said Jesus stood in church services all over Christendom with his hands tied behind his back because neither ministers nor people expected him to do anything. She said people who prayed had to expect miracles.

Agnes’ first book Healing Light was rejected by many publishers before several chapters were serialized by Rev. Dr. John Gaynor Banks in the Order of St. Luke the Physician’s Sharing magazine. This led to Glenn Clark, founder of the CFO Camps, to publish it through Macalester Park Publishing Company. Since its 1947 publication, it has sold over half a million copies.  She later wrote many other nonfiction and fiction books on healing.

In 1958, Agnes and her husband Ted began the School of Pastoral Care. It helped train pastors to both receive healing and then pray for other’s healing.  Agnes, like Jesus, healed people out of compassion for lost, hurting sheep: “If you are not moved by compassion, lay it off. It just won’t work.”

Agnes rooted the healing ministry in the sacraments: “My own most effective way of receiving Christ is at the communion service, for I have learned to receive Him through the sacraments of the church as well as through my own meditation.” One of her strategies for spiritual renewal was having twenty-five women come ten minutes early to the church to pray the prayer of forgiveness for anyone whose face irritated them. This, she discovered, released the healing power of Christ.

With the rise of the Jesus movement, Agnes welcomed the youth awakening: “I thank God for the Jesus People rolling up and down Sunset Strip. They have totally changed that place.  Some of the bars have closed because the Jesus People would get in there and give out tracts before they were kicked out.  They closed one dirty show completely, by all standing around and giving a college yell for Jesus (Give me a J!).”

As a pioneer in the healing of memories, she resisted techniques, preferring instead to rely on the leading of the Holy Spirit.  Inner healing for her was about a deeper understanding of forgiveness of sins, what she called the most difficult venture in the world. Resentment and bitterness poisoned our bodies. Restoring our creative imagination brought our souls back to life.  Agnes found deep healing through gardening and drama:

There was also gardening, which is still my joy and delight, for one feels the life of the earth through the hands, and the benediction of God’s love through the sunshine, and the pure joy of the Kingdom through the color and fragrance of the flowers. 

Soul healing for Agnes was deeply connected with experiencing the beauty of the world.  She also encouraged people not to just do spiritual activities but also to receive healing through building bookshelves, taking part in plays, or going fishing.  We need to both pray and play to bring healing to our body, mind and spirit.

May the pioneering of Agnes Sanford continue to help release many into a deeper understanding of forgiveness of sins in every area of our lives.

 

Alexander & Mary Boddy, British Healing Pioneers

 

-an article in the Light Magazine ‘Healing Pioneers’ series

From the noisy industrial town of Sunderland in Northern England came unlikely healing pioneers, Rev. AA (Alexander) and Mary Boddy.  Sunderland at the time was the largest shipbuilding port in the world, full of noxious factory fumes and clanging steam hammers. As a spiritual well of revival, Sunderland was visited thirty times by John Wesley. 

Alexander was born on Nov 15^th 1853, the third son of Rev. James Boddy in Cheetham, Manchester.  Mary was a descendant of John Wesley.  As a baby, Alexander was not expected to survive: “But the Lord raised me up again when death seemed certain.” 

After seven years as a legal solicitor, Alexander attended the 1876 Keswick Holiness Convention where he decided to become an ordained Anglican pastor. Like many at Keswick, he believed in personal holiness, pleading the Blood of Jesus for sin and for victory over disease:

As TO DIVINE HEALTH, disease was also dealt with at the Cross. When He crucified the flesh, the old man, we read He bare our sicknesses (Isaiah 53) He separated us from the things of the old Creation, old things passed away (2 Cor. v. 17). But we must believe It and appropriate the separating power of the Blood; for Calvary did it, the Victory was gained for us there.

In 1884, Bishop JB Lightfoot sent Alexander at age 32 to All Saints Church, Sunderland.   The previous pastor had taken to drink and emptied the church. Alexander developed a major ministry to people struggling with alcoholism.

Alexander met his wife Mary in 1890 at one of the parish mission conferences that he often organized. They married in 1891. Mary was supernaturally healed from asthma in 1899:

After many months of prayer, God spoke to me from John 5:39…and as I believed the Word and received Jesus to come into me as my physical life, he did so, and I was made whole.

Afterwards, she regularly prayed with and laid hands on the sick. With her musical gifting, teaching, and gifts of healing, Mary was deeply appreciated as a partner in ministry by her husband. Alexander used a service of Anointing the Sick and taught on the subject of healing.

As a world traveler recognized by the Royal Geographic Society, he wrote five travel books and a devotional Days in Galilee book (1900) on Israel:

Oh, for an outpouring of the Holy Ghost until hearts overflow to one another in love!  There is no other solution of these difficulties but the yielding to the full possession of the Spirit’s power.   

When the 1904 Welsh revival broke out, Alexander visited Evan Roberts in Tonypandy, Wales, to see for himself.  Being most impressed, he started a revival prayer meeting at All Saints Sunderland.  People were said to be aglow for two years afterwards.  Boddy held an interdenominational United Revival Service for 15,000 people at the Sunderland football ground.

In 1907, Alexander invited a British-born Norwegian Methodist pastor, TB Barrett, to lead a parish mission at Sunderland. On 13 September, Barratt wrote "the eyes of the religious millions of Great Britain are now fixed on Sunderland."  The stone in the wall of the Parish Hall still carries the inscription “WHEN THE FIRE OF THE LORD FELL, IT BURNED UP THE DEBT” (there had been a debt on the building). Many people were amazed that the Holy Spirit fell first in England on unlikely Anglicans.

From 1908 to 1914, Alexander hosted an annual Whitsuntide Sunderland Convention, which had people attending from many denominations and nations.  Whitsuntide (or White Sunday) is the British term for the week of Pentecost. He noted in the June 1908 Confidence Magazine:

There was a unity that nothing but the Holy Spirit could give. We were Anglicans, Methodists, Friends, Salvationists, Congregationalists, but ‘denomination’ was forgotten.  All one in Christ Jesus was true. Then we were English folk, Scottish Folk, Welsh folk, Irish folk, Norwegian folk, Danish and Dutch, yet all one in Christ Jesus.

 One of his most famous visitors was Smith Wigglesworth who was seeking a deeper experience of God.  After Mary Boddy laid hands on him, he received a vision of the empty cross and Jesus glorified, and began praying in the Spirit. Such an outpouring of the Holy Spirit launched him around the world in a remarkable healing ministry: “After this, a burning love for everybody filled my soul.”

With the help of the Boddy’s friend Cecil Polhill, many missionaries were sent from Sunderland to the ends of the earth. Boddy’s motto, “unity is not uniformity” characterizes how welcome he made others feel, regardless of whether or not they were Anglican (Church of England). Boddy had a Kingdom mindset rather than a narrowly denominational mindset.

In the first 1908 edition of the Boddy’s magazine Confidence, the ministry of healing was emphasized. C. Peruldsen from Edinburgh wrote that in her visit to Sunderland,

Not only did the dear Lord fill me with the Holy Ghost, but He healed my body at the same time.  The doctor had been attending me almost daily for six months up to the very day I visited Sunderland.  I could take no solid food of any kind, but now I am able to eat anything.  I have seen my doctor many times since and he is amazed. Glory to God for His great love and kindness to me.

This magazine, which had 141 issues until 1926, was read globally by thousands. In the second edition, Mary Boddy wrote about ‘Health and Healing.’  Alexander taught in the Confidence Magazine about the importance of James 5:14 laying on of hands and anointing with oil for divine healing:  

It is the prayer of faith –not the oil – that saves…The Lord is restoring the gifts of the Church, and many in this land have, in measure a gift of Healing.

Boddy the veteran world traveler ministered extensively in Europe, Canada, and USA. The founder of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, A.B. Simpson, became Boddy’s good friend, inviting him to preach on Divine Healing in July 1914.

Bishop Dr. N. T. Wright said, “Those who pray for a fresh work of the Spirit on our own day will do well to learn from such earlier events (as the outpouring at All Saints Sunderland).”

Like Alexander and Mary Boddy, may we in 2025 also seek for a fresh outpouring of the healing ministry in Canada.

Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird, co-authors of God’s Firestarters

Dr Jordan Peterson’s Wrestling with God

 

By Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

-a article for the Light Magazine

Why have Dr. Jordan Peterson’s videos been watched by almost a billion people since 2017? Other Canadians rarely have this kind of social media coverage.  His regular 8.56 million subscribers have been closely following his spiritual/psychological journey regarding the meaning of the Bible.  God seems to be using him to soften millions of young people to the gospel and even to do the ‘unthinkable’ -- attending church.  In this book, he throws down the gauntlet to Dr. Richard Dawkins and the new atheism. 

In Peterson’s new book, he has become absolutely fascinated with the Bible and its shaping of western culture:

…the biblical corpus, the compilation of drama that sits at the base of our culture and through which we look at the world… is the story on which Western civilization is predicated.

The biblical stories are maps of meaning.  These maps function at the psychological, scientific, and spiritual levels. True meaning is found in narrative, particularly the biblical accounts.  Being made in God’s image is Peterson’s core theological and psychological starting point.  The Bible reveals a true moral order that can be ignored and subverted at our own peril.  The voice of conscience is very close to the voice of God, the still small voice: “…the possibility of establishing a relationship with God by attending to conscience.”  This will result in people being “in some sense reborn, and become new people.”

The word Israel given to Jacob means wrestling with God.  Peterson sees this wrestling with God as our true destiny that we are wise to embrace.  To refuse this call is to hide our light under a bushel and embrace hellish chaos.

Will Jordan help bring about a revival of biblical marriage instead of living together? This book helps young people realize that marriage is not just a piece of paper but rather is a deep-rooted covenant involving the very core of our social identity. As he says, “why would anyone with any sense not want their sexual relationship consecrated?” To embrace the responsibility of marriage and family is to choose a life-giving adventure.

God appears to approve of sex, if only in the context of consecrated, covenantal relationships—but, of course, why would it be otherwise?

Jordan Peterson speaks of Jesus revealing his divine identity during the Transfiguration. He moves back and forth seamlessly in discussing the Old and New Testament.  The Kingdom of God is a major theme in his book. “Elijah is delivered into the Kingdom of God.”  Christ as King of Kings is “by definition, the spirit or essence of sovereignty, its very embodiment.”

In his book, he uses the metaphor of ‘upward’ for spiritual connection with God and societal transformation. As Jordan mentions, “life is well portrayed as a series of uphill journeys.” Upwards for Peterson is about aim and purpose versus nihilism and despair: “We aim at the upward target we deem central…” Upward represents the Promised Land. Carrying our cross and embracing suffering is the Upward path of adult maturity:

To “pick up the cross”—that means to voluntarily face the reality of mortality and malevolence and to struggle uphill nonetheless.

Aim and character development are deeply connected: “character is nothing more than the habitual embodiment of aim.” Where we aim is all about voluntary sacrifice: “the sacrifice that makes such aim possible…” Without such sacrifice, society becomes ruled by sexual hedonism and tyranny.  Covenantal Kingdom faith is all about upward sacrifice:

This is an act of faith as well as one of sacrifice: faith, because the good could be elsewhere; sacrifice, because in the pursuit of any particular good we determine to forgo all others.

Because Peterson is Jungian, he both embraces the gospel and perhaps redefines it subjectively:

God himself does the same with his son, a sacrifice played out as the Passion of Christ—an offering and transformation that brings about the end of the dominion of death, harrows hell, and reconciles the sinful progeny of Adam to their heavenly Father.

At face value, it looks as if Peterson is affirming Jesus as God’s Son, who sacrificed his life for us on the cross, breaking the power of death and sin.  Does Peterson’s new love for the Bible and Jesus trump his allegiance to Jungian psychology?  Does he believe that Jesus physically rose from the dead?  Has he encountered Jesus in a life-transforming way?  We hope so. If so, he may become the next C.S. Lewis for our very lost generation.

 

Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird, co-authors of God’s Firestarters