The message is entitled, The Beginning of Miracles,
Part One.
This is going to be one of the
most practical heart-to-heart talks that you
and I have ever had.
What I say will come from the deep
recesses of my heart, and I pray that
yours will be open to what I have
to say.
One of the very first questions that any
reporter will ask me, Catherine Kuhlman, just
how did these miracles begin happening in your
ministry?
Have you always had these miracles?
And then, I try to answer the question
the best that I know how, even as
I shall try to answer the question for
you.
I began preaching when I was young, and
all that I knew, of course, was just
a new birth experience.
And one can never give to anyone else
any more than one has experienced themselves.
And for a number of years, all that
I could give to anyone, as I stood
behind the pulpit, was just the gospel regarding
the experience of being born again.
I knew that I had had that wonderful
spiritual experience, an experience that I have never
doubted.
From the time that experience was real in
my life, as I sat in that little
Methodist church in Concordia, Missouri at the age
of 14, I have never doubted my experience
of salvation.
It was that real.
It was that wonderful.
That was my very first contact with the
Holy Spirit, but at that time, of course,
I didn't even know there was a Holy
Spirit.
I'd never seen any manifestation of the power
of the mighty Third Person of Trinity.
But that Sunday morning, in that little Methodist
church, a little church that probably doesn't hold
any more than, oh, maybe a hundred people,
I was back there recently, and I was
just amazed to find out how small the
church had gotten.
For when I was 14, it seemed so
large.
The same pews are there.
The same pulpit is there.
I think it's the same piano.
I really do.
But that Sunday morning at the age of
14, sitting next to Mama, sharing the same
Methodist hymnal, the last closing hymn having been
announced, something happened to Joe Kuhlman's girl.
I began to tremble.
Oh, I have relived it over and over
and over again.
Little did I know it was the mighty
power of the Holy Spirit.
Little did I know that this was my
very first contact with the Third Person of
Trinity.
I began to shake so that I could
no longer hold the Methodist hymnal in my
hands, and I laid it down.
It was the power of the Holy Spirit,
the same power that I have experienced over
and over again in even a greater way,
a thousand times since that time.
And in that moment, I knew I needed
Jesus to forgive my sins, not knowing what
to do.
I had never seen one accepting the Christ
as their Savior.
Oh, sure, I had seen them take in
members of the church, so I did the
only thing that I knew what to do.
I stepped forward and sat down in the
corner of that first pew in that little
Methodist church.
It wasn't a struggle.
It wasn't even praying.
It was a personal experience.
In that moment, the blood of Jesus Christ
and God's Son did cleanse me from all
sin.
It was glorious, the most real experience that
I'd ever had in my life, and I'd
never doubted it from that moment to this
hour, even as I speak to you now.
It was real.
It was definite.
I knew I had been forgiven.
I remember how I wept.
The preacher didn't know what to do with
me.
No altar call had been given.
I doubted whether he had ever given an
altar call in that little church, but I
knew that something had happened to me.
As I sat there weeping, Martha Johanson, a
little crippled lady in the church, stepped over
to my side and offered me her handkerchief,
and she said, Oh, Catherine, don't cry.
You've always been such a good girl, and
even as she spoke those words, we both
knew she was lying.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
For I was the most mischievous kid in
town.
Something had happened that nothing could stop.
Walking home that Sunday, I felt the whole
world had changed.
I felt that Mr. Quenicky had gotten a
new paint job on his house.
It was the same house, the same paint.
The house hadn't changed.
Concordia hadn't changed.
Nobody had changed.
I was the one who had changed.
Going home, Papa was standing in the kitchen.
Papa never overworked this thing of going to
church, and I'm putting it very mildly.
Ha, ha, ha.
Oh, sure, Christmas, when I gave a recitation
on special occasions, but it had to be
very special.
But that Sunday, I walked in, and I
said, Papa, something's happened to me.
Jesus has come into my heart.
Whether he understood or not, I'm not quite
sure.
I never knew.
But he just looked at me and said,
I'm glad.
But it was the beginning of something that
changed my whole life.
All I knew was that glorious new birth
experience.
When I went to preach in Idaho to
those farmers, I could tell them nothing more
or less than that Jesus would forgive their
sins.
Oh, those little country churches in Idaho.
I'm still getting letters from some of those
precious farmers, members of their family, who said,
we remember you well.
We see you now on television.
We remember you as the young girl who
came to our church.
We remember you as the one who preached
so simply.
You haven't changed.
You know, that's the greatest compliment that anyone
can pay me, is to say, you haven't
changed.
Why should I change?
The gospel is the same.
The word of God is the same.
And I pray to God I will never
change.
I used to wait until those farmers were
through with their milking, their plowing, their harvesting.
And then when it got dark, they would
file in one by one.
Emmett, Idaho.
Tyler, Idaho.
Pat, Idaho.
If you've ever been to Idaho, I've been
in every one of those little crossroads towns.
Every one.
If they didn't have a preacher, I offered
my services.
Nobody really wanted me.
I didn't blame them much.
But I would say to them, your church
is closed anyway.
You haven't anything to lose.
And you might gain something.
That was where I really began.
My spiritual education, you know.
I think so very often these days, everybody
wants to start at the top rung of
the ladder.
Everybody wants to be a big preacher.
A great preacher.
A famous preacher.
A wealthy man.
A celebrity.
I know where I began.
I know from whence I have come.
Only several weeks ago, sitting in the kitchen,
five o'clock one Sunday morning, I was
to preach in Youngstown, Ohio.
I'd just gotten off the plane at midnight.
And I always give my people the best
that I have.
They're so faithful, they stand behind me through
thick and thin.
That week, I'd been so busy.
Calls had come in from everywhere.
A call from Australia.
Three from England.
There was the call to come over to
Sweden.
Pastor Petrus was urging me.
Another call to Norway.
Would I come?
Five o'clock that morning, I looked up,
weary in body, for I'd gotten very little
rest.
And I found myself weeping, all alone in
the house.
And my tears were falling on my open
Bible.
And I just looked up and I did
it audibly, just as though I could see
my heavenly Father.
And I said, Oh dear Jesus, why didn't
you allow all of this to happen to
me when I was sixteen years of age?
Seventeen?
I never got tired in body.
I didn't know what weariness the body really
was.
I could ride those buses all night.
And then preach all day.
All I can remember was, I didn't need
sleep at all, I was so hungry.
And sometimes there was only the price of
a bowl of soup.
Rolls were five cents then.
That was a long time ago.
It seemed I was hungry all the time,
but never tired in body, not really.
I loved every minute of it.
Why didn't you let this all happen to
me when I never got weary in body?
But I never needed sleep.
Why did you wait so long, wonderful Jesus?
There wasn't an audible voice.
I would tell you an untruth if I
told you that I heard an audible voice
so that he spoke to me audibly.
But he did speak to me as definitely
as though I could see his person and
I could hear his voice.
And this is what he said, Catherine, had
I given it to you then, you would
have blown the whole thing.
And I knew exactly what he meant.
There was a growing process.
There was a time of learning.
There was a time of schooling.
Oh, not in some seminary, not in some
university.
The greatest teacher in the whole world is
the Holy Spirit.
You get your theology straight when the Holy
Spirit is your teacher.
I studied my Bible.
Oh, how hungry I was for the word
of God.
Those days, you know, I never stayed at
a hotel.
I never thought of staying at a hotel.
I don't think they had many motels then,
you know.
Not really.
Sometimes a deacon would put me in the
guest room.
In winter it was so cold, they didn't
have heat in their guest rooms then.
Those Idaho farmers had enough to do to
keep their kitchens warm.
Oh, it seemed that in every one of
those guest rooms they had these great big
pictures of grandpa and grandma.
Huge frames.
And why did those grandpas and grandmas have
to look so stern?
Oh, I never saw one smiling down at
me.
I would sleep in those cold bedrooms.
Sometimes almost freezing to death.
Almost afraid to open my eyes because somebody's
grandmother would be staring down at me with
a high lace collar.
Almost frightening me.
And those mustaches on somebody's grandpa almost scared
me to death.
I almost felt like I was sleeping with
them, you know, kind of like that.
Oh, my friend, those were the days.
Believe me.
I mean, how often to keep warm I
would lie on my stomach in the bed
and pour over the Word of God.
Studying it.
Reading it.
I know who's been my teacher.
I know why I know what I know
today regarding the Word of God.
It didn't just happen.
Beloved, nothing ever just happens and you never
get something for nothing even when it comes
to the spiritual things.
Always remember that.
I remember when I was still in my
teens someone said of me, my, but she's
a lucky girl.
It wasn't luck, my friend.
I know the price that I paid.
I know the price.
So all I could preach was salvation.
But suddenly I realized there was a third
person of the Trinity.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
I had to know more regarding this wonderful
third person of the Trinity.
I had to know more about it.
And I began studying the Word.
I knew that the divine healing was in
the Word of God and you cannot with
an open heart and open mind study the
Word of God without knowing, without seeing that
the healing for the physical, the healing for
the whole man is in the Word of
God.
When He died on the cross, when He
cried, It is finished.
He not only died for our sins but
remember there was also the body.
He died for the whole man.
Wounded for our transgressions.
Bruised for our iniquities.
And by His stripes we are healed.
We partake of the bread and the wine
at the communion table.
Everyone knows what the wine represents.
The shed blood of Jesus Christ.
At that first Passover, remember, the little lamb
was killed.
And He sprinkled the blood on the doorposts
of the house.
That blood representing the one which come in
the future.
The very Lamb of God.
It is the blood that maketh an atonement
for the soul.
Perfect blood.
His blood.
The blood of the Son of the living
God.
That's for our sins.
But at that first Passover there was something
more than the blood.
They were told to eat of the flesh
of the Lamb.
What did the flesh represent?
What does the bread represent?
Can you take communion?
His body broken on the cross.
By His stripes we are healed.
And there's healing through the body of the
Son of the living God.
Every time you partake of the bread and
the wine, remember the wine for the soul
representing the blood of Jesus Christ, the blood
that maketh atonement for the soul, and the
bread that has nothing to do with our
forgiveness of sins, but for the healing of
our body.
There's healing for the whole man through Jesus
Christ, the Son of God.
In every church where communion is served, and
every time communion is served, and the bread
is passed, and you partake of that bread,
there should also be the healing of the
body.
Oh, it's thrilling.
It's marvelous.
I saw it.
And only the Holy Spirit can reveal these
things to your heart.
Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto
thee, but to my Father which is in
heaven.
These things are only spiritually revealed.
That's the reason sometimes the most uneducated person
can know more about the deep truths of
the Word than someone who has spent years
trying to attain an education through much learning.
I saw healing, but I could not see
scriptural healing as I watched many who had
long healing lives, but I knew it was
in the Word.
I knew that whether or not I would
ever see a miracle in the healing of
the physical, it didn't alter God's Word one
iota.
I knew that if I lived and died
and would never see a miracle of the
healing of the physical, it still would not
change God's Word.
God said it.
He made probation for it.
But if it was there, then I wanted
it.
It was there, and I had to experience.
I shall not betray confidence in giving you
the name of the one who is conducting
a service under a great big tent.
I went there to see, but I didn't
find what I was seeking.
I began weeping.
I left weeping, and all that I could
say were these words, They've taken away my
Lord, and I know not where they have
laid Him.
I wept all that night uncontrollably.
I couldn't stop weeping.
They have taken away my Lord, and I
know not where they have laid Him.
I cried all the next day.
I couldn't stop.
I hungered.
I was thirsty.
The Bible says, Blessed is he who hungers
and thirsts after righteousness, for he shall be
filled.
It is a hungry heart.
You'll not mock the hunger in that heart.
I never gave up seeking.
I knew it was there.
I was waiting, patiently waiting.
And then it happened.
It happened in Franklin, Pennsylvania, in the old
Billy Sunday Tabernacle.
Think what a place God chose.
Think what a place.
I was standing on the same platform where
Billy Sunday, years and years and years previous
to that night, had stood, preaching the gospel.
I had gone to Franklin, not knowing what
I would find there, really by faith.
In the first service, there were 38 people
there.
The next service, there were nearly 200.
After that, the tabernacle never held the crowds.
It was my first service.
As I was preaching on the Holy Spirit,
the little that I knew about the Holy
Spirit then, when just before I began speaking
my second message, a woman stood up and
said, Catherine, may I say something?
I said, of course you may.
She said, last night, while you were preaching,
I was healed.
I was shocked.
I said, how do you know?
She said, because I'd had a tumor.
It had been diagnosed by my doctor.
While you were preaching, something happened to me.
Something happened in my physical body.
I was so sure that I was healed.
I went to my doctor, had it verified
today.
There's no longer a tumor there.
That was the first healing that took place
in this ministry without the laying on of
hands, without any prayer.
Just a woman sitting in the audience in
Franklin, Pennsylvania, while I was preaching on the
power of the Holy Spirit.
I have told you the best that I
know how.
How the first miracle of healing took place.
Since that time, there have been thousands and
thousands of healings.
The secret?
The third person of the Trinity.
For part two of this message, please stop
your machine at this point and turn the
cassette over.