The fact that I was born in 1940 makes me a pre-baby-boomer, which maybe is why I have trouble with tech stuff. Before television 16mm films were a big thing. I had a Bell & Howell projector and used it to screen films featuring crusades by evangelists Oral Roberts and A A Allen in the USA, and films featuring missionary evangelist T L Osborn from around the globe. We never tired of doing “the Lord’s work” and grew through our ongoing experiences
We were driven to halls around Melbourne in a small Morris Oxford sedan owned by Edna, an elderly Christian lady who shared her home with us. Lorraine sat next to our firstborn daughter Deborah, who was in a bassinet in the back seat, and I sat next to Edna in the front. The projector and films were in the boot (trunk) and we had pushed the screen into the car through a side window — one end was between Edna and myself and the other between the seats into the back beside Lorraine’s head. Then, praising God, off we would go!
On arrival at a hall or a home, Edna would take care of Deborah as we set to it. We had a routine: Lorraine would set up the screen and I would thread the film carefully through the gate of the projector, the lens of which threw light from a strong bulb and projected the film’s scenes onto the screen at a rate of 28 frames per second.
One evening I discovered that the film on the spool that fed the projector appeared longer than the spool onto which it was being wound after passing through the projector. I could not stop the film without ruining the evening, so I let it run. So while T L Osborn preached and Jesus did miracles of healing on the screen, I saw the film fill up the spool and then fall off into a growing pile on the floor. The tension mounted until the film ended and I busied myself in rewinding the film onto the original spool. While doing this, due to the tension of the whole thing I developed a painful migraine.
Enter an anti-Pentecostal evangelical, who had in mind to challenge me on the validity of miracles today. A young man, he proceeded to tell me that the age of miracles had ceased with the deaths of the first apostles. With his own eyes, he had seen miracles of healing on the screen, but to him doctrine was more important than evidence. So while with a pounding head I wound up the film onto its original spool, the zealous evangelical began hammering me with opposing questions. Not really what I needed.
However, the Lord was with me and enabled me to answer his questions scripturally to his satisfaction. At the end of which he shook my hand and informed me that I was “the first intelligent Pentecostal” he had met — and left. With the film fixed and everyone gone, I went around the side of the hall into the dark and with a pounding headache bent over and dry retched. !
Lorraine, Edna and I saw a few people saved and healed while viewing those dramatic miracle-healing films. It wasn’t ministry as we would later know it, but it was a start.
God is Good and Jesus is Lord!