Healing Pioneers: AB Simpson’s Gospel of Healing
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
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.
