A SON FOR A SON (AN ORAL ROBERTS' STORY)

Rain fell in drenching torrents, blowing leaves and debris across the cold, farm landscape. The sun setting below the horizon made the dark, ominous clouds seem even more threatening. Thunder crashed; the following lightning revealed the barren fields. It was early in winter of 1917, and a half-Cherokee woman was walking determinedly across the farmland of southeastern Oklahoma.

Claudius Roberts had been called out of her home by a panic-stricken neighbor because the doctor had announced that his ailing son was close to death. “Please, come pray for my boy, Sister Roberts,” he’d pleaded. House calls had become a burden of her faith.

Claudius Roberts believed firmly in the power of prayer to a God who heals the sick. She went out on that cold, rain-swept night seven months pregnant with her fourth child, believing in a God who would keep her safe, in a God who is the Healer. As Claudius approached the heavy, barbed-wire fence that separated her home from the neighbors, she prayed that she would reach the young boy in time. The gate was broken, and it stuck tight.

A Promise Made In Faith

Even though heavy with child, she lifted up a piece of barbed wire, pressed her foot down on the wire below it, and crawled through the fence. As suddenly as it had begun, the storm stopped raging, and, in the quiet night, Claudius “felt the Spirit of the Lord hovering near.” God was speaking to her: the child she carried in her womb “was a special child that would have God’s anointing upon him.”

On that dark night, as she made her way to the neighbor’s home, Claudius made a promise to God. If He would heal the neighbor’s sick child, she would dedicate the baby in her womb to the Lord as Hannah had dedicated Samuel. (See 1 Samuel 1:11.)

The Miracle Of Healing

As she neared the sick child’s bed in a spirit of prayer, Claudius felt the power of the Holy Spirit fall upon that small room. She prayed for healing, and the little boy was healed instantly and completely! From that day forward, she knew that God had anointed her unborn child, who would be dedicated in service to Him.

Claudius Roberts had prayed that her last child would be tall and strong and would show features of his Indian heritage. She’d asked God for a blue-eyed boy, even though all of her other children had dark brown eyes.

The Birth Of An Anointed Child

When the baby boy was born, Claudius rejoiced that God had answered every one of her prayers. What she couldn’t fully realize at the time was that this baby—Granville Oral Roberts—would become one of God’s most anointed men in the second half of the twentieth century.

Are there enough words to do justice to Roberts’s powerful preaching and healing tent ministry to tens of thousands in the 1950s? Can we explain his inspirational call to build the largest Christian university in the world in the 1960s, the wisdom of his trendsetting television ministry to millions in the 1970s, the controversies and personal tragedy that surrounded his ministry in the 1980s, or the place that Oral Roberts holds in the church today?