Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!
Sister Maria Woodworth-Etter was an outstanding minister during the early days of the Pentecostal movement in this century. Born in 1844, she began her healing ministry in 1885. When she was 70 she had a tent which would seat 22,000, and she preached without a public- address system.
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I saw a 1911 issue of the Dallas Times Herald, and right on the front page it said concerning her meeting, "Take your umbrellas down, boys, and come out to the tent meeting at Fair Park. God is healing the sick like He did in the days of Jesus and the Apostles."
It went on to tell how person after person was healed, and how the doctors of the city were examining them before and after. Some of the most amazing miracles you've ever heard of occurred in her meetings. That woman was a powerhouse for God.
But she didn't even enter the ministry until she was older. God had called her to preach as a young woman, but her church said that women ought to keep silent — and she wouldn't obey God and thus got out of His will. She suffered many things. Five of her six children died. Did God kill them? No. But because she was in disobedience, the devil could. Her first husband died. And finally, when she was almost 50 and near death herself, she said, "All right, God. I'll do it. I don't care what the men say, what the church says, or what anyone says. I'll go preach and pray for the sick." Then things began to go well for her.
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Because she was one of the leading Pentecostal ministers of the day, though not associated with any particular group, she was invited to speak at the biannual General Council meeting of the Assemblies of God in the Stone Church in Chicago. I read her sermon, and I thought as I read it, "1916 — but how well it would fit today!" She spoke to these leading Full Gospel preachers about riding "hobbyhorses'."
"So many preachers," she said, "get off onto one thing and ride it like a hobbyhorse. Some get off on women's dress. That's all they ever preach about — and dressing one way or the other will not get you to heaven, or send you to hell. You need to preach Jesus, get the people saved and filled with the Holy Ghost, and let the Lord tell them what to do.
"Don't fight other denominations. Don't fight fellow Christians," she advised. "Just preach Jesus, the Cross, the Blood, and the Resurrection. I've learned God will meet people I never thought He'd reach, because their hearts are hungry. I don't preach against anything. I preach for something".
