Granville Oral Roberts (1918-2009)

The death of a founder is never easy either for those who are left behind, or for the brave few who attempt to separate the man from the myth. Oral Roberts was no myth, but as a man lived many lives and not just one.

As husband, he grieved for the loss of family members including his beloved Evelyn, whom he outlived having died at a ripe old age. Most of his 91 years, together with the Roberts’ family was lived out in front of the camera and before the all seeing eye of the public.

As the founding president of both Oral Roberts University as well as the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association, he was a trail-blazer, bringing nightly, through prime-time TV, a totally unique genre that became known as ‘gospel media’ – a behind-the-scenes look at God’s healing hand during miracle rallies conducted in those days in big (10,000 seater) circus tents. The presence of the Lord to heal, became a point of contact for both the sick seeking instant cures as well as for his critics to denounce his unorthodox and irregular practices.

Anyone who has been on the campus at 7777 South Lewis Avenue in Tulsa would have observed many contradictions both in the man and also in the university that bears his name. The stellar list of graduates continues to grow including Don Moen and Kenneth Copeland to name just two known globally. The former was his chauffeur and pilot.

Over sprawling grounds, the Oral Roberts University is not only a tourist attraction, with its landmark Prayer Tower manned around-the-clock, but a futuristic (even by today’s standards) peek into what a campus might look like if God had a hand in its design. The library is 6 floors of polished glass and steel that is sanctuary to rare and out-of-print volumes that chronicle the early histories of Pentecost in modern times.

First-time visitors, including scores of his faithful partners that have followed the ministry since the days of black-and-white TV, are usually at a loss for words. In their mind, is an evangelist given the gift of tongues (he was born a stutterer) to reach the farmers, the small-town business men, the army veterans and especially the sick, aged and infirmed. What they are confronted with is a campus so out of time with the typical 2-traffic light towns that make up so much of mid-west USA.

From the Prayer Tower to the Learning Resource Library (LRC) to the Indoor stadium, the entire campus is a contradiction to its own pentecostal heritage. You have to remember that in those days (in the ’20s right up to the ’60s when ORU was incorporated) , the very idea of higher education was anathema! If a man was “called of God” why would you want him to suffer four years of theological training only to have him losehis salvation at the end? That was the mind-set that Oral faced. A paradigm shift was desperately needed to believe that God could and already had raised up a new breed of Spirit-filled professors “into every man’s world” and not only in theology (medicine, law, nursing, education, mathematics, etc).

Indeed, the man had to be separate from the myth. Here was a man, brought up from most humble beginnings, from a dirt poor family, plagued with tuberculosis from an early age, now the president of a pentecostal college with accreditation and a support base of thousands both at home and overseas. Through his (pre-Benny Hinn type) crusades, he touched a core group of supporters that allowed him the freedom to express the fundamental structure of biblical revelation as he experienced God’s love through the dimension of physical healing.

Sadly, the Church did not always stand behind Oral. But then again, the prophet is not honoured in his home town. He did what he saw, and seeing again, he spoke up again, and again often to the ire of his opponents (and they were many). Oral made hearing God’s voice into a fine art (and a compulsory subject in your Freshman year). All students are required to take the basic ‘Holy Spirit in the Now’ course at some point before you could graduate.

Was there one discernable thread that you could pick out from the various traditions of Oral, his public life, his personal struggles, his family crisis, his abundant life as author, speaker, evangelist and missionary? I don’t think we need to look too far beyond the pages of Scripture and further than the words of the Jesus whom Oral served. If history is to judge a man it will often not go beyond his works, the projects he designed, the buildings and institutions he raised and the people he was privileged to serve.

In the end, the foundation laid by the prophets of his father and mother, the culture and mystic that grew up in the milieu of fundamental middle America, the conservative cautiousness of Bible-belt Christianity of the pentecostal in the 20th century could mean only one thing. The man Oral stepped into the shoes of his father, took on the mantle of his pentecostal tribe, proclaimed in earnest an old old story and drew in the crowds not because he was called to the healing ministry, but because the gospel was called to the sick and Oral knew it and so did those who heard him.

Gladly, he says to us today: ‘I, Oral, bid thee farewell…’ We mourn today (15 Dec 2009) but we shall rejoice when we see him united with his beloved Sister Evelyn, and what a day that shall be!

We are sad because he is no more with us in person, but it is not Oral the man that we remember, but what he stands for, his commitment to his God and to the revelation of Jesus who is coming again to gather those who remain to finish the work.

Jesus had no business in the cold tomb, and I suspect, neither will Oral. He never liked the cold and its going to be wild rejoicing for some time as heaven receives back one of her darling country-boys.

Prayer Tower at Oral Roberts University that is symbolic of and at the iconic centre of all that the Hallelujah life stands for in our post-modern era.