I STILL BELIEVE IN DIVINE HEALING
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Yesterday I was at the Graduation Service of the International Bible Training Institute, the College where I teach. This year also happens to be the 70th Anniversary of the IBTI which was founded by Fred Squire in 1947, soon after the end of World War II. He was a true evangelist with many people coming to Christ under his ministry and many signs and wonders – healing miracles happening in his meetings. His evangelistic work resulted in something like 80 churches being established, some of which are still going strong today (Fleetwood, Rushden, Northampton, Falmouth and Coventry to name a few). That qualifies him to be an apostle. He would never have claimed such a thing for himself, but he certainly had more signs of an apostle following his ministry than some who claim to be apostles today.
He was also a man with a Pastor’s heart – a man of compassion who wept for people in need. That’s how IBTI came into being – out of the need that he saw in Europe immediately after the end of World War II. He had been involved in helping to get food and clothing to Christians and non-Christians in Holland during the war. Soon after the war God gave him unique opportunities to travel across Europe at a time when travel was not only very difficult, but almost impossible… and he wept over what he saw and heard about how people had suffered and were still suffering - but more than that, he saw the spiritual need of the people.
Although Britain itself was devastated by the war it was not as bad as in mainland Europe. Rev Squire had already started a small Bible school in conjunction with the church he was pastoring, to prepare young men and women for ministry. In 1947 at a Pentecostal Conference in Zurich called together to look at ways of helping the countries that had been occupied by the Nazis, Fred Squire heard God’s call to offer training to young people with the potential to become evangelists and pastors to equip them for ministry and send them back to their own people to preach the gospel.
That was the beginning of the INTERNATIONAL Bible Training Institute. It was a faith venture – the students at that time could not raise the money to pay for their training in England but the Lord provided and worked many miracles to make it possible. Fred Squire was a man of Faith and Vision. The college he started has trained hundreds of young people since 1947 and many of them are serving God all around the world today.
Sadly in 1962 Rev Squire died of cancer at the age of 58. I met someone recently who knew him personally and she told me the story of how she used to come to the annual summer camps which were held at IBTI. During that last summer of his life, Fred knew he had terminal cancer but he went around telling everyone that he still believed in Divine Healing. So many had been healed under his ministry but he did not have that miracle himself – but he still believed and his vision and ministry lives on through all the students who keep coming year after year.
Last summer my wife went to be with the Lord also at 58 years old, after a short but painful battle with cancer. We really believed for a miracle but it did not happen. Like Fred Squire I still believe in Divine Healing but someone may ask how we can do that when it did not happen for us?
The temptation is to try and explain it away, to give an answer as to why some are healed and some are not, but I do not have an explanation. I do not know why the Lord chose to take these dear ones to be with Himself so early. However, I do know that for believers death is not defeat – it’s victory.
“O Death, where is your sting?...The sting of death is sin… But thanks be to God, who gives us the VICTORY through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 5:55
Basilea Schlink once wrote “Lord I do not understand You but I trust You.” Here’s a word for some of you today:
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths."
Proverbs 3:5-6
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