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

 

A.B. Simpson’s Gospel of Healing

 

Healing Pioneers: AB Simpson’s Gospel of Healing 

by Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

-published in the January 2025 Light Magazine

A.B. Simpson was a remarkable Canadian pioneer of the healing ministry. Born on Prince Edward Island on December 15, 1843, Simpson was such a workaholic that he destroyed his health: “I carried a bottle of ammonia (smelling salts) in my pocket for years and would have taken a nervous spasm if I had ventured without it. Again and again, while climbing a slight elevation or going up a stair did the awful and suffocating agony come over me, and the thought of that bottle as a last resort quieted me.”

After moving to New York City, Simpson’s medical doctor gave him three months to live.  But after being prayed for by an Anglican physician, Dr. Charles Cullis, at Old Orchard Camp in Maine, he experienced a remarkable healing of his heart.  Simpson made the following pledge: “As I shall meet Thee in that day, I take the Lord Jesus as my physical life, for all the needs of my body until all my life-work is done; and God helping me, I shall never doubt that He does so become my life and strength from this moment, and will keep me under all circumstances until His blessed coming, and until all His will for me is perfectly fulfilled.”

The next day, Simpson was able to climb a 3,000-foot mountain, and successfully pray for his daughter Margaret’s healing from acute diphtheria – the very disease which had earlier killed his son Melville.

Word spread fast in 1881 of these healings. He was besieged by many with pleas for help. By others, he was vilified and ridiculed as another quack miracle worker. Despite such criticism, Simpson received strong support from medical doctors like Dr. Jenny Trout, the first female doctor & surgeon in Canada, Dr. Robert Glover from Toronto, and Dr. Lilian Yeomans, a Canadian-born surgeon living in Michigan. Simpson commented: “Not a few beloved physicians of the highest standing have taken Jesus as their Healer and when their patients are prepared for it, love to lead them to His care.” While he was not opposed to medical doctors, he wanted people first to pray for healing.  

In May 1882, Simpson started Friday-afternoon healing & holiness meetings, which quickly became New York’s largest attended spiritual weekday meeting, with 500 – 1,000 in attendance. These services involved the laying on of hands or anointing with oil, as described in James 5:14-15. On a wall at his Gospel Tabernacle was all the medical paraphernalia that had been discarded by those who had been healed. Because he did not want people to see him as a healer, he would not pray individually with others at the Friday healing service. Instead after preaching a healing sermon, he would go to another room to take part in intercessory prayer. Thousands, said Simpson, were healed: “One of the most remarkable in the early days was a woman who had not bent her joints for eight years, and used to stand in our meetings on her crutches, unable to sit down during the whole service. She had not sat for eight years. She was healed in a moment, as if by the touch of a feather, and all in the house were filled with wonder. Another was cured of spinal curvature. A great many have been delivered from fibroid tumors; and a few cases from malignant and incurable cancers. We have had two cases of broken bones restored without surgical aid. Many cases of the worst forms of heart disease, several of consumption, and some desperate cases of hernia, when it would have been death to walk forth as they did if Christ had not sustained. 

He even turned his own home into a Healing Home where people could come for prayer ministry. Many of the early pastors and missionaries in the Christian & Missionary Alliance had been dramatically healed from many diseases.  The early Alliance history books often recorded dozens of such healings at the back of the books. 

His four-fold gospel emphasized “Christ our Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer and Coming King.” Simpson’s Christian and Missionary Alliance logo uses a pitcher of oil to symbolize divine life and physical healing.  He refused to make healing his only focus: “I have four wheels on my chariot. I cannot agree to neglect the other three while I devote all my time to the one.”  Simpson developed a profound theology of healing that has impacted many denominations even to this day.  He saw that the healing ministry was vital in the fulfillment of the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations.  Simpson published over 70 books, edited a weekly magazine for nearly 40 years and wrote many gospel songs and poems.

In his 1890 book The Healing Gospel, Simpson documents 27 case studies of healings in the Bible. These include Job, Naaman, Hezekiah, Peter’s mother-in-law, the Gadarene demoniacs, and blind Bartimeus.  He taught that the healing ministry remained for hundreds of years: “In the second, third, and fourth centuries, fathers as famous as Irenaeus and Tertullian, bear testimony to the prevalence of many undoubted miracles of healing, and even the raising of the dead in the name of Jesus.

Simpson held that the healing ministry only gradually disappeared because of growing worldliness, formalism and unbelief: “the dear Master never contemplated or proposed any post-apostolic gulf of impotence and failure. Man’s unbelief and sin have made it. The Church’s own corruption has caused it. But He never desired it or provided for it.”

The revival of the healing ministry was linked for Simpson to spiritual renewal, a growing openness to the Holy Spirit, and the nearer approach of Jesus’ second coming. Even apart from the physical benefits, healing was seen as valuable because of its aid in spiritual awakening, as it: exalts the name of Jesus, glorifies God, inspires the soul with faith and power, summons to a life of self-denial and holy service, and awakens a slumbering Church and an unbelieving world with the solemn signals of a living God and a returning Master.”

Healing and holiness were closely linked for Simpson: “the spiritual results far outweigh the temporal; and it is one of the most powerful checks and impulses in the lives of those that have truly received it.”

He held that the healing ministry was vital to world-wide evangelism: “The next great missionary movement will and must incorporate this mighty truth.”

Jesus Christ and his healing ministry, for Simpson, was the same, yesterday, today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8). He rejected the popular doctrine of Cessationism, that the gifts of healing had ceased, being only for an earlier dispensation. Signs and wonders of Bible times continue today: “We are in the age of miracles, the age of Christ, the age which lies between two Advents.” At the heart of the healing ministry was “a presence never withdrawn, a love, a nearness, a power to heal and save as constant and as free as ever, even unto the end of the world.” For Simpson, all the charismatic gifts were still available today, especially overseas where they were most needed. Praying for healing was not always instantaneous, but sometimes more gradual. Simpson knew that healing was a mystery, not a formula. He would not say that a person necessarily lacked faith because he was not healed, died in sickness or died young: “Sometimes the Master is taking home His child and will He not, in such cases, lift the veil and show the trusting heart that its service is done? How often He does! (…)”

A key verse for Simpson was 3rd John 2, which prayed that we may prosper and be in health, even as our soul prospers.  

Simpson cautioned against ‘if it be thy will’ prayers for healing:  “Be fully assured of the WILL OF GOD TO HEAL YOU. Most persons are ready enough to admit the power of Christ to heal. The devil himself admits this. True faith implies equal confidence in the willingness of God to answer this prayer of faith.”

Many Christians disqualify themselves from receiving healing because of their supposed unworthiness.  Simpson encouraged people not to give up: “We never can deserve any of God’s mercies. The only plea is the name, merits, and righteousness of Christ.”

Simpson wanted people to not merely ask for healing but by deliberate faith to receive the gift of healing: “You must take Christ as your Healer-not as an experiment, not as a future, perhaps, but as a present reality.” He expected trials of faith as people chose to trust Christ in this area.  

Simpson rooted his understanding of the healing ministry in the miracles of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. He drew particularly on Isaiah 53:4-5 and Matthew 8:16-17.  Both the finished work of the cross and the resurrection were vital for Simpson’s approach to healing: “It is the resurrection life of Christ in us.”  Healing was seen as the receiving of the very Life of Jesus. Healing for Simpson often went from the inner to the outer and physical: “He works from within outwards, beginning with our spiritual nature and then diffusing his life and power through our physical being. Many persons come to God for healing whose spiritual life is wholly defective and wrong. God does not refuse the healing, but He begins in the depths of the soul, and when it is prepared to receive His life, he can begin to heal the body.”

Many other healing pioneers like Smith Wigglesworth, Aimee Semple McPherson, Kathryn Kuhlman, and Oral Roberts drew inspiration from Simpson’s writings and ministry. Also, the official publication of the Assemblies of God, The Pentecostal Evangel, published more than 100 of Simpson’s articles on healing and holiness.  Virtually every denomination is indebted to Simpson’s pioneering healing ministry, far more than they might suspect.  

How might we more intentionally incorporate Simpson’s four-fold gospel insights in our lives and local churches?  

Editor’s note: See also A.B. Simpson, Canadian founder of a global missionary alliance and A.B. Simpson, a Canadian maverick

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.

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