Roberts was married for many years to wife Evelyn. She died several years ago following a fall.
Story:
Born Granville Oral Roberts in Pontotoc County in January 1918, he was the fifth and youngest son of a poor Pentecostal minister, the Rev. Ellis Roberts.
At the age of 17, Roberts was told he had tuberculosis. He was bedridden for months, and doctors gave no hope for his life.
On the way to a healing revival in a nearby town, Roberts said God told him that he was going to be healed and that he would take God’s healing power to his generation.
Roberts said the TB left him at the revival that night. The healing was later confirmed by a clinic in Ada. In addition, a stuttering problem was gone, and two months later he gave his first sermon.
Commenting on his childhood, Roberts once said, “I couldn’t have gotten to where I am today from where I started without God’s power.”
On Dec. 25, 1938, Roberts married Evelyn Lutman.
Ordained by the Pentecostal Holiness Church, Roberts preached for several years in various churches in Oklahoma. He studied at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee and Phillips University in Enid. He went to seminary at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Roberts resigned from a pastorate in Enid in 1947 to begin the Healing Waters ministry, “to pray for the healing of the whole person.”
In the 1950s, Roberts’ tent crusades gained in popularity. In the latter part of the decade, crowds of more than 15,000 would spill outside his huge circus tent, which it took eight tractor-trailer rigs to carry. The tent, which seated 12,500, was advertised as the “largest gospel tent in the world.”
The prominent feature of these emotion-packed crusades was the “healing line.”
Every night, Roberts would give an altar call and lay his hands on hundreds of people to pray for them to be healed. He claimed to have personally laid his hands on more than a million people.
I remember well these early revival shows. Oral would say "heal" to different people who were in line. I always thought it was charlatanism writ large, but many people liked him. He rivaled Billy Graham in popularity back in the 1950s.
Roberts later founded Oral Roberts University. Roberts had huge ambitions including a law school and of course the City of Faith hospital. Both ultimately failed.
The City of Faith fiasco:
At one time, ORU had a dental school, law school and medical school. All were closed due to financial problems.
In 1977, Roberts told his partners that God had told him to build a medical complex that would merge “the healing streams of prayer and medicine.” Construction of the $150 million City of Faith complex began in 1978.
Although Roberts had encountered controversy before, this project stirred intense debate and proved to be one of the biggest financial burdens on his ministry. During the construction, when donations were down, Roberts said he saw a vision of a 900-foot-tall Jesus lifting up the City of Faith complex and saying, “I told you that I would speak to your partners and through them, I would build it!”
A $25 million debt forced the closing of the City of Faith and its medical school in September 1989.
Roberts died of complications from pneumonia.
Here is a vintage clip of Oral in action:
A recent interview with The 700 Club is here.
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