Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!
By the time Sister Etter reached age forty she was a national phenomena. Various denominations recognized her ability to stir dead churches, bring in the unconverted, and cheer on a deeper spiritual walk with God. Doctors, lawyers, drunkards, and adulterers-people from all walks of life-were gloriously saved and filled with the Holy Spirit in her meetings. Because of one of her meetings in 1885, the police said they had never seen such a change in their city. The city had been so deaned up that they had nothing to do!
One newspaper reporter wrote of Sister Etter: "She goes at it like a foot pad tackles his prey. By some supernatural power she just knocks em silly when they are not looking for it, and while they are down she applies the hydraulic pressure and pumps the grace of God into them by the bucketful."
Eventually the Lord led Maria to begin praying for the sick. At first, she was reluctant, feeling it would take away from her evangelistic call. But God continued to make His will clear, and she agreed. She studied the Word and began preaching His divine will in healing It didn't take long to see that evangelism and healing went hand in hand as thousands were won to Christ as a result of seeing others healed.
Maria preached that the strong manifestations of the Spirit were "nothing new; they were just something the Church had lost."And she refused to get caught up in the pet doctrines of the day, desiring only for the Holy Spirit to do His works.
Once in a meeting, a crowd rushed to the platform and cried out, "What shall we do?"
Maria finishes the story: "They went down by the mighty wind power of the Holy Ghost. He sat upon the children of God till their faces shone like Stephen's when his enemies said he looked like an angel. Many received gifts; some for ministry, some as evangelists, some of healing, and hundreds of sinners received the gift of eternal life."
In another meeting, over twenty-five thousand people crowded in to hear Sister Etter. And remember, in those days, there were no public address systems! Maria wrote that before she even finished preaching, the power of God fell on the multitude and took control of about five hundred as they fell to the ground.
📕GOD'S GENERALS
| Google commons |
William James Roop