Marilyn Hickey, the pioneering global evangelist and Bible teacher, went home to be with the Lord on April 25, 2026, at the age of 94. In a previous interview on Sid Roth’s It’s Supernatural!, she shared the remarkable stories behind a ministry that defied every human limitation. We look back on that conversation as a tribute to her extraordinary legacy.
A Destiny Almost Missed
Before Marilyn Hickey became one of the most recognizable voices in Spirit-filled Christianity, she was a schoolteacher and a self-described “nice Christian” who wasn’t fully committed to God’s call.
It was her fiancé who issued the challenge that changed everything. “I’m not going to marry a woman who’s half-hearted for God,” he told her plainly, according to Hickey’s account in the interview. He went on a three-day fast, and God used those three days to confront her with a choice. On the third night, she recalled, the Lord spoke to her heart: “I have something so wonderful for you. You cannot imagine.”
She said yes — and the destiny that unfolded would take her to over 100 countries and millions of souls.
Faith That Refused to Quit
One of the most powerful testimonies Hickey shared was about her own body. Doctors had told her she could never have a child due to an inherited condition. At a William Branham crusade in Dallas, she was called out of an audience of 5,000 people by a man who had never met her, and told to “go home and receive your child.”
Ten years passed. Two doctors dismissed her condition as something other than pregnancy. A third confirmed she was five and a half months along. Her daughter Sarah was born, a miracle held in suspense for a decade.
“You don’t have three strikes and you’re out,” Hickey told Roth with characteristic directness. “You are only out if you quit swinging.”
That same tenacity carried her through another health scare years later. After discovering a fast-growing lump, she spent 24 hours confessing healing scripture over her body — once per hour, for 24 repetitions. “This word is health to my flesh,” she declared aloud. By morning, the lump was gone.
The Woman Who Walked Into a Mosque
Perhaps the defining image of Hickey’s ministry was what she described as a historic first: a woman proclaiming Jesus inside an American mosque, with healings following.
The breakthrough came through years of relationship-building with an imam in Detroit who had initially refused her request. When she returned to the city months later, he had changed his mind. “We can do that,” he told her. Hickey taught one miracle of Jesus from the Bible, prayed for the sick and healings broke out — including a young man who had opened the service reading from the Quran and had no distance vision. God healed his eyes that night.
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“It wasn’t a big crowd,” she recalled, “but afterwards they always have refreshments, and I just decided to go from table to table.” Imams asked her to pray for their backs, their families. The same imam who had once said no later invited her back, and after Hickey prayed over him and his wife, who also could not conceive, they went on to have two children.
210,000 Muslims and ‘Ridiculous Favor’
In Pakistan where she had first traveled in 1995, despite warnings that she would be shot, Hickey eventually ministered to over 210,000 people in a single crusade. She was 80 years old.
“God’s not looking at your age,” she told Roth. “God’s not interested in your color. God’s not interested in your gender. What he responds to is your faith in Jesus.”
Her bridge into Muslim communities, she explained, was healing ministry. “They love healing miracles because in the Quran it says that Jesus heals,” she said. On her second trip to Pakistan, a blind imam received his sight and came to publicly testify on video. “You’ll never forget Jesus when you’re blind and you can see,” Roth observed.
Marilyn Hickey finished her race well. Her message to every believer who felt too old or too unlikely for greatness remained as simple as it was unshakable: “God thinks you can do anything.”
Abby Trivett is a writer and editor for Charisma Media and has a passion for sharing the gospel through the written word. She holds two degrees from Regent University, a B.A. in Communication with a concentration in Journalism and a Master of Arts in Journalism. She is the author of the upcoming book, The Power of Suddenly: Discover How God Can Change Everything in a Moment. For interviews and media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
