-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 15th 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
No comments:
Post a Comment