US Evangelist Oral Roberts was a role model during the early years of my Christian life. I had seen Oral during his visit in Melbourne but was not then a Christian. But after the Lord called me at age 21, Lorraine and I began screening Oral’s tent crusade films around the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria.
Dangerous Marxists had combined with other haters to close his tent meetings in Melbourne in 1954, but in the early 1960s many people viewed the films that Lorraine and I screened in halls around that city. A few were healed when the Spirit of God touched them as they viewed the healings on screen. Edna, an elderly lady, drove us to the halls in a Morris Major sedan, into which we crammed our daughter Deborah in a basinet next to Lorraine in the back seat. The screen went between Lorraine and Debbie from the back window, next to the gears, and ended next to my feet in the front. The 16mm Bell & Howell projector was in the small boot at the rear of the vehicle.
Lorraine’s job on site was to set up the screen while I prepared the projector, running the film through the gate so the light bulb behind it could throw the moving scenes about 5m and onto the screen. Meanwhile, our tiny Debbie slept quietly through the whole thing.
There were critical issues from time to time, the worst of which was when the length of one film exceeded the size of the take-up spool and the final minutes of the story quickly piled up in a heap on the floor behind me!
Those were the days! Well, nights mostly. Our first steps into ministry… Oral’s representative in Victoria sounded me out on whether I would be able to accept a scholarship for the opening year of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but Lorraine’s second pregnancy and other commitments prevented me from accepting the offer.
I don’t allow my mind to dwell on ‘What ifs’ because of the words of Jesus in John 14:2 “If it were not so, I would have told you.” I reckoned that if Jesus had wanted me to accept certain offers, he would have told me so. Hypotheticals have no place in the Christian life. Evangelist Jim Spillman’s wife asked me on his behalf if I would move to their church in LA and write books for him. I declined. I had been Clark Taylor’s first assistant pastor for about four months when the offer was made, but my reason for declining it was that the Lord had placed me at Christian Outreach Centre to work under the anointing on Clark’s life (and to receive it, as it turned out).
Jim Spillman had received God’s call to a worldwide salvation and healing ministry through well-known evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman, but the Lord had called me to C.O.C in West End Brisbane, and that’s where I stayed. There are no ‘What ifs’ or ‘If onlys’ as far as Lorraine and I are concerned — just “Keep on keeping on” doing the will of God just as you’ve been doing…