Deaf Woman Healed On The 4th Command

Kurt Simms & Rob Short trained with The Elijah Challenge

March 2012

"During our time in Crosby, Texas the Lord answered our prayers and was gracious to open many doors to preach and to minister healing to the sick.  Many were born again, healed, and delivered in the name of Jesus Christ.

Kurt Simms and I taught the Elijah Challenge on Friday and Saturday in Crosby, Texas.

On Sunday at the end of the service, I issued a Texas-sized Elijah Challenge for someone who was deaf to come forward and proclaimed that they would be healed in Jesus' Name!

As the stage musicians were playing, a woman came forward.

We commanded healing the first time. The mountain did not move!

We commanded healing the second time. The mountain still did not move!

We engaged the congregation the third time to command healing. The mountain still did not move!

We commanded healing the fourth time and stood our ground without any doubt. The mountain finally gave away and was cast into the sea! 

Immediately she started rejoicing that she could hear. Many came forward and many healings and miracles followed which confirmed the Word and proved the One True God. 

In summary, during our time in Texas:

Many disciples were trained in The Elijah Challenge according to Matthew 28:20.

Sixteen people were born again according to John 3:5.
Five people were baptized according to Acts 2:38.

Twenty people were healed according to Matthew 10:8
Four people were healed of deafness according to Matthew 10:8.

Seven people were delivered from demons according to Mark 16:17."


-Rob Short

Praise Reports of a Hospice Chaplain

Houston, Texas

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Dear Brethren in Christ,

We just received a report from Dave Diamond in Covington, Louisiana. Dave has been exposed to Elijah Challenge Training a total of three times, if we remember correctly---once in Houston, and twice in Louisiana.

The area in which Dave ministers healing is perhaps more challenging than any other. He is a Hospice Chaplain.

Do read his report to us below...

Dear William & Lucille,

The healings are happening almost daily as I go about my work as a Hospice Chaplain.

First understand that I very rarely seek healing for my Hospice patients simply for  the reason that, by the time they come to me, most are old and very tired and not seeking healing.  They are usually at a point in life where death is a blessed release, and I don't often seek to intervene in the ultimate disposition other than the following:

 

(1) To make sure they have placed their faith in Christ.

 

(2) To address symptoms of their condition which are painful or causing anxiety.  I very often, very often see "miraculous" changes in this regard.

If a Hospice patient tells me he or she wants to "get well," then I minister as you have taught and am seeing more and more dramatic changes.  I have seen a man healed of lung cancer so that, in the weeks before his death, he transitioned from a position where he could not walk from his chair to the bathroom even with oxygen without having to stop and rest to catch his breath to a condition where he put in a complete garden and cleaned and organized a 10' x 20' "toolshed" without oxygen or discomfort.  The week before he died last year he told me that he had not felt as healthy or as strong in 20 to 25 years.  When death came, he contracted pneumonia and died painlessly within 72 hours of the first symptoms.

More dramatic at this point is a man who came to me as a Hospice patient with pancreatic cancer.  The cancer had wiped out his pancreas so that the smell of food even from the next room would send him into waves of nausea.  My brother, a retired trauma surgeon, and our Hospice medical director confirmed for me that this condition was one of the final indicators of terminal cancer and was entirely irreversible.  When we met, Jesse had not eaten in ten weeks, and his weight had dropped from 260 lbs. to 158 lbs.  He accepted Christ on my second visit and asked me to "pray for" his healing.  I ministered healing as you taught me.  Now, six weeks later, he is eating three meals a day, is gaining weight and strength, has no symptoms of pancreatic cancer, and is leaving on April 7 for a three-day cruise out of New Orleans with his wife.  Even though he asked me to pray for his healing, he has had some trouble actually grasping the truth that he is healed.  His wife has also been healed of nagging knee pain associated with a knee replacement done several years ago. 

My brother, who is not a believer, was so stunned by the report from the pancreatic cancer patient that he called me to ask me to travel to Pennsylvania to minister to a relative there who had just been diagnosed with appendiceal cancer.  I spent two days with "Jackie" who accepted Christ and received the Holy Spirit in a really remarkable way.  Although I believe she is healed as well and there are indicators that show no cancer in her system, appendiceal cancer is extremely small celled, very hard to detect, and almost completely invisible.  Even when she was diagnosed the first time before our time together, she was told by surgeons examining tissue from her appendix, ovaries and fallopian tubes that there was no evidence that the cancer had metasticized (sp) only to find after lab examination that the very same tissue was riddled with cancer cells.  For this reason, she is continuing an aggressive and extremely difficult regimen of chemo-therapy and will undergo surgery unless God provides doctors with some convincing evidence that the cancer is indeed completely eradicated.  This is an important prayer request because the chemo regimen, without God's intervention, could come very close to killing her even if she is healed of the cancer itself.

In a workshop that I've taught over the past two weeks, we've seen a man with a broken shoulder and two broken ribs healed as women I instructed laid hands and ministered to him.  Another man was healed of scoliosis so that his spine actually moved and eighteen years of daily pain came to an end.  In a chance encounter with a young park ranger at Fountainebleau State Park last Thursday, I ministered to a shoulder in which he had very limited range of motion.  That is dramatically improved, and I am ministering again tomorrow over the phone.  In another incident on Thursday, an elderly woman was cured of arthritis in her shoulder and arm.  

Even though our office is dominated by medical staff -- a physician, several RNs and a host of LPNs and CNAs -- office staff who are struggling with physical issues are often coming to me for healing.  One social worker, still not a believer, was healed of chronic pain surrounding her artificial knees and is referring me to others.  A staff member was healed of chronic back pain.  An LPN was healed of a back injury suffered, I think, in moving a heavy patient.  Another was healed instantly of an "incurable" blood condition in which oxygen would not bind to her red blood cells.  The symptoms included severe shooting pain in her head several times a day, frequent episodes of shortness of breath, muscle spasms, panic attacks, etc.  After ministering to her only once, all the symptoms immediately  ceased; two weeks later, her physician confirmed that the entire condition had mysteriously vanished from her system.  The woman's husband has now embraced Christ, and the entire family was baptized two weeks ago.

In a Bible study I conduct on Thursday nights with a small group of eight or ten people, we've seen a tumor on a woman's thyroid disappear so that scheduled surgery was unnecessary -- even though an aneurism in her brain did not respond to our ministry and required surgery to correct.  (???)  More importantly, another woman to whom Debbie and I have ministered for nearly two years has been healed of severe demonic oppression that manifested in serious depression, constant voices, frightening sounds such as hundreds of dogs barking, drug abuse, night fears and frequent compelling thoughts of suicide.  She is a different woman now and growing daily in the Lord.  Other healings in this circle include back pain, painful bone spurs on a woman's feet, a tumor on a woman's hand, high fevers, etc.

Another woman was healed of chronic severe pain associated with a broken neck and disks crushed in a horse-back riding accident.  I baptized her within an hour of that healing.  She is still struggling with emotional and financial issues in her life, but the pain which had almost entirely incapacitated her no longer exists.    

There are incidents where no healing is immediately evident, but I am seeing greater frequency of dramatic healings.  

The book "John G. Lake: His Life, His Sermons, His Boldness of Faith" has been a great encouragement to me.  

The best thing from my perspective is that, as I become more and more attuned to the voice of the Spirit in ministering healing, I often have the boldness to tell people even before I lay hands on them something like this:  "Listen, with your permission, I'm going to pray for you.  Now understand this: a hundred people will offer to pray for you.  Maybe 20 or 25 will actually do it, and, out of that number maybe one or two will actually expect God to act immediately.  What's going to happen here is that, first, I'm going to pray for you.  Then, I'm going to stop praying and, with my hands on you, I'm going to speak to your illness (or injury). Immediately when I take my hands off of you, you're going to be healed."  When I sense the freedom to tell people this, I see dramatic results almost every time.  I am also finding that I am more effective in recognizing, as held by John G. Lake, that EVERY illness has a demonic source or affective influence.  In speaking healing to someone's shoulder or fever, for example, I will also address "any demonic power, any spiritual entity opposed to the Lordship of Christ," rebuking, binding and commanding those spirits to go to Christ for judgment.  

That's a lot, brother, but that's my report.

God bless you!  He is so very good!

Dave Diamond  

Our reply to Dave:

"We are extremely thankful that the training the Lord has entrusted to us is bearing such fruit. Not infrequently other nameless servants of God around the world who like you have been trained will share with us reports of very powerful miraculous healings which we personally have never witnessed. Some as taught by the Holy Spirit have gone beyond the foundational principles we presented to them. So we know that it has little to do with us, but simply the word of God being faithfully applied by trained disciples. It's the Lord fulfilling John 14:12, teaching His disciples to do the works that He did when He was on earth 2,000 years ago. We are now anticipating reports of the "greater works" through fellow disciples like you. And we are blessed simply to be the instruments by which it was originally taught and given away."

The Fulfillment of a Vision Seen in 1999

Rev William Lau

By Rev William Lau, 

Director, The Elijah Challenge

On a Sunday morning in June 1999 as I was preparing to preach at the Sunday morning service in our church in Houston, I received a vision from the Lord.

We had been in full-time ministry since 1978 when we began serving as missionaries preaching the gospel and making disciples in unreached areas of Indonesia. Following our return to the United States in 1987, we planted and pastored churches in New York City and Houston. But by June 1999 I had made a decision to step down from the pastorate. Although we could plant churches, I discovered that staying on to pastor them in the traditional manner was not my calling. Although my salary at our church was helping us to pay our bills and feed our family of three daughters, I could no longer serve. You could say I was miserable.

But I had no idea what I was going to do after stepping down from the pastorate. For all I knew, I might end up flipping burgers at McDonald’s. Nevertheless I was going to trust the Lord, just as I had done in 1978 when by faith Lucille and I gave up everything we possessed to follow the Lord the ends of the earth to minister in primitive regions of Indonesian Borneo.

The vision

During that Sunday morning in June 1999 while in prayer in my living room, my eyes were opened. No longer in my living room, I was walking down the street in a somewhat dilapidated neighborhood. To my left I saw a drab rectangular structure of some kind by the side of the road. It seemed to be made of adobe or concrete and was unpainted and unattractive. There was a single window-like opening in a wall that faced me as I walked toward the structure. Curious, I left the road and walked toward the structure to peek through the window.

As I stuck my head through the opening, the entire structure turned to dust around me in the blink of an eye and disappeared. There was no trace of it. Suddenly I was lifted up into the air and whisked away high in the sky. In rapid-fire movie clips as it were I was taken to different places around the world; I could see them from the air above. Finally I saw what appeared to be heavenly sights that were not of this world. Then the vision ended as abruptly as it had started. The vision appeared to take a few minutes.

The dream

Needless to say I was amazed at what I had seen. In view of my giving up the pastorate in just another week to live by faith, I wanted to know what the Lord was showing me. And so I prayed to the Lord to reveal to me the meaning of the vision. I then fell into a sleep during which the He gave me a dream. The quality of the dream was identical to that of the vision which I had just seen. In the dream I was riding in a vehicle which I can only describe as similar to a train car. I was the only one in the “train.” However, there was no locomotive pulling the car and no one operating it. The car was moving over the ground at very high speed all by itself. Nor was it traveling on rails as normal trains do; it did not touch the ground at all. And I was simply a helpless passenger on the train looking out the windows in wonder as it powered ahead irresistibly.

The train did not slow down regardless of where it went. When it ascended a steep mountain its speed was not diminished in the slightest. I was terrified when it rounded a sharp curve high up on the mountain but kept going at full speed. Amazingly it stayed on course and did not go flying off the mountain as I thought it surely would.

In the car I was taken to all kinds of distant places around the world. Finally I saw glorious sights which appeared heavenly.

Then I woke up. Though I did not understand the meaning of the vision and the ensuing dream, I felt that the Lord was somehow telling me that He would be with me as I left the pastorate in one more week to live by faith in Him. At that time we had one daughter about to start college at New York University and two younger ones to follow.

The fulfillment of the vision and dream for us personally

The following year in 2000 I went on a mission trip to North India as one of the team members. I was given an opportunity to preach in open-air evangelistic crusades, and I witnessed the Lord heal the sick miraculously to confirm the message of the gospel. During our nine years as missionaries in Indonesia, the Lord had taught us how to heal the sick as Jesus did in the gospels and as He taught and commanded His disciples (Luke 9:1-2; 10:9). Because of the many miracles which took place through us and the Indonesian disciples we had trained, many who had never heard the gospel before came to saving faith in Christ. On that mission trip to India in 2000 I began to minister to the infirm in the same way, and many were healed.

Then I decided to train the Indian believers, including those who had just received Jesus Christ, how to heal the sick as I had learned from the Scriptures while we served in Indonesia. And as these believers laid hands on the infirm and exercised their authority in the name of Jesus Christ, people were being healed. I was so excited to be able to give away what the Lord had so freely given to me.

When I returned to the United States from this short mission trip, I knew what the Lord wanted me to do. I was to train ordinary believers to heal the sick and cast out demons as Jesus did and as He taught and commanded His disciples to do when He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God. The ultimate purpose would be the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

Since then we have taught The Elijah Challenge to tens of thousands of believers in 37 nations, including pastors, evangelists, and missionaries. Some of these have gone on to have very powerful ministries in miraculous healing and are also training others as they themselves were trained. We now witness miraculous healings every time we teach and when we preach the gospel. In India, churches are been impacted and new churches are being planted following the preaching of the gospel accompanied by miraculous healings performed through trained servants of God. Unreached people groups are now being reached by disciples we have trained. The gospel can be preached much more effectively to the lost when miraculous healings confirm the truth of the gospel to them.

As we train the Lord’s disciples, we are beginning to see the fulfillment of John 14:12 in which Jesus promised that those who believe in Him will do the works that He did, including the miraculous works of healing the sick and casting out demons.

The Lord is graciously fulfilling the vision and dream which He gave to me in June 1999. I now understand their meaning more fully.

The drab, unpainted concrete-like structure which I saw in the vision represented my ministry as a traditional church pastor. As the structure had turned to dust before my eyes, so my ministry as a local pastor had disappeared. The Lord has since then taken us to distant nations around the globe to teach and preach. The speeding “train” in my dream was not anchored to the ground on rails and did not touch the ground. Instead it was carried by the Spirit and powered by the Spirit. And that is what the Lord has so graciously done for us since 2000. Wherever we go the enemy has not been able to stand against us and we see victory.

He has graciously fulfilled many prophecies made over us by His prophets over the years, all of which have been consistent in theme with the vision and the dream He gave me in 1999. One such fulfilled prophesy is:

2 Samuel 7:8 This is what the LORD Almighty says: I took you from the pasture, from tending the flock...  9  I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have cut off all your enemies from before you.

We are extremely grateful to the Lord.

The wider meaning of the vision?

But now (March 2012) we are sensing for the first time that the vision and dream might not only be for ourselves personally, but perhaps prophetic in a wider sense.

We believe that the teaching and practices of the Nicolaitans (Revelation 2:6 & 15) which Jesus hates are alive and well to varying degrees in the Church today. This teaching erects a wall of separation between a special, professional class of clergymen and the “lay people” who are forever subject to their authority. Only the elite class of clergy are entitled to perform ecclesiastical duties. The Roman Catholic Church of course excelled in the teaching of the Nicolaitans. This in part resulted in the Protestant Reformation over 500 years ago which sought to reinstate the “priesthood of all believers” according Revelation 1:6, 1 Peter 2:5 & 9, and especially John 14:12.

However, the Reformation fell short. Today the Nicolaitan teaching is still firmly embedded in the Church of Jesus Christ. The result is the failure of the Church to fulfill the Great Commission in which Christ commanded us to make disciples of all nations. God’s people are not being discipled to maturity, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13). They are not bearing much fruit---the evidence by which they show themselves to be disciples of Jesus Christ (John 15:8). Most so-called believers bear little fruit at all for Jesus.

We believe this is the result of the Nicolaitan establishment in the Church today.

Before Christ returns, the Great Commission must be fulfilled. If His return is near, then it may mean that He will seek to destroy the Nicolaitan establishment He hates which has spread like a cancer through much of His Church in varying degrees.

The teaching of the Nicolaitans

The wider meaning of the structure which turned to dust

At the beginning of the vision which the Lord gave me in June 1999, I saw a drab-looking, unpainted concrete-like structure by the side of the road where I was walking. When I stuck my head in an opening in one of the walls to look inside the structure, it suddenly turned to dust around me and disappeared. Up until now I had interpreted this structure to symbolize my ministry as a local pastor which had turned to dust, setting me free to do what I am now doing around the world. But now I am sensing that the meaning of the structure could be much broader than that.

Could that concrete-like structure also represent the prison---the Nicolaitan establishment---which has kept believers from maturing to become fruitful disciples of Jesus Christ? The victims of the Nicolaitan system also include the many thousands of frustrated pastors around the world who are unfulfilled in their calling to equip God’s people for works of service. Well-meaning and sincere pastors and ministers are just as much victims of the Nicolaitan system as are the believers who have been imprisoned by it. Because of the very nature of the system, their “church members” will never mature to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Of course, in the Church there are those who have personally benefited from the teaching of the Nicolaitans, and will continue to hold to it. They have power and wealth, and these of course are exhilarating and addictive. These are the ones Christ spoke of who come in His name, claiming, “I am the anointed one,” and will deceive many (Matthew 24:5). In Greek the word Messiah means “anointed one.”

Is it possible that during these last days the Lord is turning this Nicolaitan prison to dust, setting the Church free to be the Church in order to fulfill the words He spoke two thousand years ago?

John 14:12  Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

Only then will we fulfill the Great Commission. Only then will Jesus Christ return.