RR: Hallelujah. Come to Tulsa this summer. Tour the Healing University. Make your clinic appointment at the City of Faith. Come and see us in Tulsa this summer. And speaking of miracles, I’m happy to present to you God’s man and God’s woman for this hour today, Oral and Evelyn Roberts, my dad and my mother. (Applause) Praise the Lord. Dad, I want to talk to you, Dad, because I know that God has been dealing with you over these past days and weeks very heavily concerning the future of this ministry, concerning what His next move for you is to make. And I felt like that today was the day that you should share it with the people.
OR: Well, this is a rather shocking announcement and experience. And, Richard, people will have to hear with their spirit because many are not accustomed to God speaking to a human being like He does me and some other people.
RR: Well, if that’s so then, before you start, could we just stop and pray that people will hear in their spirits? (Yes) Everybody just join hands. That’s a good word. (Yes) Father, in the name of Jesus, You’ve given my dad a special message for everyone watching this program today. And I pray that they would hear with more than their ears. I pray that they would hear down in their hearts and receive this word which is from You, in the mighty name of Jesus I pray it and I believe it and I expect a miracle to happen because of it. Amen and amen.
ORU: Well, just before I tell you how God came to me in my room and spoke to me about a major turning point in the nations of the world that involves your life and mine, let me remind you that know and tell you that do not know that God raised me up from tuberculosis as a 17-year-old boy, saved my soul and told me to take His healing power to my generation. Then later He told me to raise Him up a university and in that university raise up my students to hear His voice and to go where His light is dim in this world, where His voice is heard very small, His power is not known and even to the uttermost bounds of the earth. And that their work would go far beyond mine, and in that He was well pleased. And He gave me a call to take His healing power through myself, through my associates, through my students, through my parents, and we have been doing that, in crusades across America, around the world, in the Oral Roberts University with thousands of students, going in summer missions and some going in the nations, but all over America and Canada. And then building the City of Faith, the Medical and Research Center to merge His healing streams of medicine and prayer. And millions of people have been touched for God. And I really thought I had pretty well done what God had told me to do, and did I get a shock in my spirit. When I became 68 this year, the following morning God spoke to me again and He said, “You’re on the last rung of the ladder and your next move you’ll be standing before me telling Me why you’ve not sent the healing teams from ORU to the nations of the earth.” And I said, “God, I’ve tried everything I know. I raised up my students to hear Your voice, I’ve told them how to go to the ends of the earth, I’ve built the medical school that You told me to build. We’re turning out young doctors and ministers and all kinds of workers. I’ve done everything I know.” And He said, “You will not be rewarded just for trying. You will be rewarded for doing. You are saved by grace. It’s a gift of God. But you will be rewarded for your works.” Now that was not entirely new to me, but in the context in which God spoke, it really struck deep in my heart. And there was a flash, just like you have a flash across your eyes and you are able to see something. And God pulled back the curtain and let me see the cross. He said, “Do you think that I told My Son to go to the cross to die for the sins of the world? And I said to Him, ‘Now, Son, you get up on the cross and you try and you do Your best. And if You can’t do anymore than try and you come down from the cross and you’ve not done it, why everything will be fine.’” I said, “No, that’s not what You said to Him. You told Him to die for the sins of the world, and He did it.” God said, “That’s right, He did it.” “I didn’t call you and your partners just to try. I called you to do, and you will be rewarded for your works.” And I said, “God, all my life I’ve been taught that if we get to heaven, that’s all we can ever ask for. In fact, I’ve heard people all my life say, ‘If I could just get my foot in the door of heaven, that will satisfy me.’” And God said, “That is not true because there’s more on the other side of life than coming to heaven. (Applause) There’s a mighty work that you’re to do once you get to heaven.” And I’d not really thought of that. And I said, “What do You want me to do?” He said, “I want you to turn the medical school around and I want you to put your spirit into your medical students. And I want you to send them as medical missionaries.” Now that was not new. That was the reason that we established the Oral Roberts University School of Medicine in 1976 and opened it in ’78. And all of our students have known that and many of them have been excited about going to the ends of the earth. But we’ve had great difficulties because the students are not from rich families and they are common young people who are very skilled. As a matter of fact, only one in ten thousand can get into medical school so you know that they have to have a great mind and ability to learn the things about the human life, the body, the earth, and medicines and skill and compassion. But they have to borrow money. Medical education is the most expensive education in the world and it may be the most difficult to obtain. It takes a rare dedication. And when we graduate them they come out of medical school for the most part owing thousands upon thousands of dollars because it’s expensive, even beyond what we ourselves raise and put in the medical school. And they have to go out and practice in order to get that money and pay their debts back. And by that time most doctors then somehow don’t feel deeply again the missionary call that God puts upon so many of them. As a matter of fact, there’s a startling figure that you should know about that I have learned, there are 530,000 doctors in the United States, 530,000 doctors in the United States. In the whole doctors. I have ministered in 46 nations and I’ve only met one medical missionary. And he took me to his clinic and hospital and because he was a Christian and believed God heals through prayer also, he had me to lay hands upon every patient in the clinic and in the hospital and I was able to be of assistance to him and he of course to the gospel. And we did a great work for God together. And in the Bible Luke, the doctor, and Paul became a healing team. They were the things I have known. But the problem has been a debt one, where the young people coming out of the Oral Roberts University School of Medicine have to face their debts, sometimes $75,000, $100,000. And so they have many offers to practice medicine across the land or in Canada and they have to choose the offer and go and then pay those, wasn’t aware how deeply God felt. Oh, I knew He called me to open the medical school and I knew that we had brought in these young people who felt the call, but somehow we just were not pulling it off. God said, “If you don’t turn the medical school around, I’m going to call you to heaven. Your work will be done. You will be able to do no more.” And I said, “Lord, I want at least 20 more years to preach and to heal and to reach humanity for the gospel, and I’m counting on that.” And He said, “Then turn the medical school around and scholarship every medical student, everyone of them, so that they will give a year to the mission field in a missionary nation for each year that you scholarship them. (Applause) And they will not come out with all these debts. They will be ready to go when they finish their residencies to the nations.” You see, the nations have been closing up to the gospel. The rise of nationalism, the rise of communism in certain countries, have been shutting off these nations from the gospel. But they are desperate for doctors. And God knew that when He had us to open up the Oral Roberts School of Medicine. As a matter of fact, later this month Dr. Winslow, who I call my Luke, we are going to East Africa to meet with the president of one of the great nations there who has asked us to give him doctors for his nation where there’s only a few score in a whole nation of 30 or 40 million people. In fact, there are areas of one million people in that nation that doesn’t have one doctor. Do you know in Tulsa, Oklahoma where there’s a half million people in greater Tulsa, there are 900 doctors. And in some of those areas of a million people there’s not one doctor whether Christian or non-Christian? They are desperate for doctors. And if we will give them a doctor, they will take the rest of our healing team, evangelists and nurses and other kinds of workers.