Healing and Revival

"The Voice of Healing"

James Gordon Lindsay was born and raised in an atmosphere of healing and Pentecostal experience. He was born in Zion City, Illinois, on June 18, 1906. His parents were Thomas Lindsay and Effie (Ramsey) Lindsay. They were followers of John Alexander Dowie, the famous healing evangelist. When the city went bankrupt after Dowie's decline, the Lindsays moved first to a Christian Community in California, Pisgah run by Finis E. Yoakum, and then to Portland, Oregon. He was converted during a meeting led by Charles G. Parham, the initiator of the Pentecostal Movement in Topeka, Kansas. He then developed relationship with John G. Lake, who started the Divine Healing Missions in Spokane, Washington and Portland, Oregon. Lindsay traveled with Lake on healing campaigns in California and the southern states. He eventually became a pastor of churches in California, but returned to Oregon where he married Freda Schimpf.

Lindsay accepted a call to pastor a church in Ashland, Oregon in the early 1940's. By 1947 he had heard and met William M. Branham, who was having a significant healing and evangelism ministry. He resigned and became Branham's campaign manager. In order to promote the campaigns Lindsay started the "Voice of Healing" in April 1948. Branham was struggling and announced that he was no longer going to be doing the evangelistic meetings. This was devastating to Lindsay, and his staff, since the focus had been on Branham's ministry. Jack Coe had come on as a coeditor of the magazine. It began to focus on other ministries such as Jack Coe, Oral Roberts, and A. A. Allen. The Voice of Healing group sponsored a convention of healing evangelists in Dallas, Texas and Kansas City in 1950. Eventually some of the ministers involved developed their own magazines and the group became less diverse.

Lindsay, much like Charles Cullis 70 years before, felt there was a need for literature that covered the history, theology, and experience of healing. He wrote more than 250 books and pamphlets, as well as being a regular contributor to the "Voice of Healing" magazine. Feeling a call to develop missions and evangelistic works, he sponsored international missions campaigns. He wrote literature that was sent all over the world through the Native Literature Work. He started a radio program and organized, with W. A. Raiford, the Full Gospel Fellowship of Churches and Ministers International. During 1956 he conducted a Winning the Nations Crusade with the goal of sending teams of ministers all around the world. Lindsay died unexpectedly on April 1, 1973. The Voice of Healing magazine eventually changed its name to Christ for the Nations.

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