In our online celebration of Charisma’s 40th anniversary, we are each day publishing two of the leaders we featured in our August 2015 issue as “40 People Who Radically Changed Our World.” Today we feature Kathryn Kuhlman and Dr. Bill Bright.

Sunday I wrote my Perspective column about how I interviewed Miss Kuhlman for the cover story of our second issue. I felt it had enough historical significance as one of the last articles written about her before she died in 1976 that we published it yesterday. If you missed it click here.

The other leader we featured was Dr. Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, who died in 2003.  

Even though he was at one time opposed to speaking in tongues, Bright softened over the years. While theologically he was never “charismatic,” he was full of the Spirit. He emphasized fasting and prayer and made a huge impact on our culture and the evangelical church.

Over the years he became a friend of Charisma and wrote for us several times. In 1991, Campus Crusade for Christ moved its world headquarters to Orlando, Florida, not far from the Charisma headquarters. Bright addressed the staff once and was a guest in my home for an event we sponsored in his honor.

All month in August we are celebrating Charisma’s anniversary. Beginning today we are focusing on that first decade—1975 to 1985.

We won’t simply report on history. We will be sharing insights on what happened in each of the four decades. For some who lived it with us, it will bring back memories! For a younger generation, it will give you understanding of what God has done and hopefully bless you as we reprint some of our best articles from the past.

One of the most noted female leaders in Pentecostalism, Kathryn Kuhlman died in 1976, shortly after appearing on the cover of Charisma’s second issue. Though widely heralded for her healing ministry, she insisted her primary purpose was the salvation of souls.

Known for her electric personality, unique style of dress and speaking in a deliberate voice, Kuhlman captivated audiences and frequently called out healings occurring in the auditorium. Long before the Toronto Revival, people were slain in the Spirit at her meetings, although she banned outbursts of tongues, dancing or prophecy.

The author of a series of best-selling books, in the 1960s and ’70s her weekly TV programs (I Believe in Miracles) aired nationwide and in Canada. Over the last 11 years of her life, she hosted monthly, typically packed services at the Shrine Auditorium in Pasadena, California.

Evangelist Benny Hinn openly acknowledges Kuhlman’s influence on him. Ralph Wilkerson—pastor of Southern California’s Melodyland Christian Center (demolished in 2003)—also patterned his ministry after her. “She was unique in her time period,” says Pentecostal historian Vinson Synan. “She was a woman minister at a time when most healing evangelists were men. She was a later version of (Foursquare founder) Aimee Semple McPherson, who influenced her.”

Born in Missouri to strict German parents, Kuhlman received Christ at age 14 at an evangelistic meeting in a Methodist church. Her born-again experience quickly led to ministry; two years later she convinced the elders of a small Baptist church to let her preach and filled the place.

Later ordained at the Evangelical Church Alliance in Joliet, Illinois, at one time she pastored a large church in Denver, although it closed during the Depression. In the 1940s she began traveling extensively to hold healing crusades, sparked by the testimony in 1946 of a woman who told of being healed of a tumor the previous night. That marked the first healing at one of her meetings and set the course for the rest of her ministry.

A favorable article in Redbook magazine in 1950 further propelled her ministry, which carried her across the world and led to a meeting with Pope John Paul XI in Rome. TIME magazine once called her a “one-woman Shrine of Lourdes.”

Synan says the Redbook article helped establish Kuhlman as a national figure. It also caused the public to take another look at divine healing, Kuhlman biographer Wayne Warner told Charisma in 1995. “Suddenly the gifts of the Spirit weren’t just for that little gospel mission on the other side of town,” Warner said. “They were for everybody.”

On her part, Kuhlman disclaimed any responsibility for healing, saying it originated with the power of God. In Charisma’s 1975 story, she spoke of an anointing that came over her on stage that was difficult to explain. “These things are supernatural,” she said. “That’s the reason it’s so hard for the natural mind to comprehend … I am completely taken over by the Holy Spirit—just completely.”

Kuhlman established the foundation that bears her name in 1954. At its peak, it had a staff of 30, funded her radio and TV ministry, and helped establish two dozen missions around the world. Today, the foundation has downsized to four employees. Yet Executive Director Carol Gray says the Pittsburgh-based group receives emails and letters from around the world with prayer requests and requests for books and DVDs. Gray attributes much activity to a budding interest in the work of the Holy Spirit, a topic covered extensively in a 1997 collection of Kuhlman’s sermons, The Greatest Power in the World. Last year the foundation released a DVD that included messages on the Rapture and the Second Coming.

Since healing came second to salvation in her ministry, the Kathryn Kuhlman Foundation still exists to reach as many people with the gospel as possible, its director says.

“We get testimonies today of people being filled with the Spirit and receiving salvation, so God is still using the ministry, for which we’re very grateful,” Gray says. Although with the passing of time fewer people are familiar with Kuhlman, Synan says she remains a model for female college students and ministers.

“When I was at ORU, students loved to see her videos,” says the retired Regent University professor. “I thank God I met her one time. I was impressed. It was rather remarkable and miraculous.” —Ken Walker

A weeping, flowering cherry tree is one of the most beautiful of all of the ornamental trees. We bought my mother-in-law one for Mother’s Day many years ago. She was so excited. Being a certified nurseryman, I planted the tree exactly the way it should be done. The next year it bloomed nicely—and even better the next year. 

However, after about four or five years, my mother-in-law called me right after the tree had bloomed. She expressed concern because the tree barely bloomed at all that spring. In fact, she said it was pitiful. The next time we went for a visit, I took my pruning clippers and small pruning saw. While she watched, I got the ladder and went to work. Several times I heard her say, “O my,” and “O dear.”

Correct, effective pruning is different than just “shearing” the tree to look like a lollipop. There are two basic types of branches that need to be removed. The first is a branch that is growing the wrong direction. These branches rub the other branches and can cause disease. They also block out the sunlight that is needed for flower buds to form. 

The other type of branch to prune is a “sucker” branch that shoots out beneath the graft. These branches are incredibly dangerous to the life of the tree. They will draw all of the strength and energy from the tree into themselves, and the tree will often die—but only above the graft, which is where the blooms grow. 

When I completed pruning, there were enough trimmings to fill a pickup truck. My mother-in-law had gone inside and explained to the rest of the family that she was very sure I had killed her tree. I told her to trust me, but it was pretty obvious that I had lost “favorite son-in-law” status. 

Then, nine long months later, I received a phone call from her. She was so excited. Her tree had bloomed—and not just bloomed. It was covered in so many blooms that it looked like a huge pink snowball. And my “status” was instantly reinstated (whew).

John 15 says that we are the vine, and that our heavenly Father is the Vinedresser. Verse 2 says that “every branch that bears fruit (blooms), He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit (bloom even more)” (NASB, emphasis added).

Hebrews 12 tells us that the Father disciplines the children He loves. We picture that as the proverbial “spanking,” or punishment. In reality, the word discipline has the same root as the word disciple. Our Father loves us so much that He wants to disciple us—and sometimes He uses pruning to do just that. 

He prunes the “branches” of our lives that are growing the wrong way. He prunes the branches that are growing from beneath the “graft,” sprouting out of our flesh. This pruning is not done to hurt us or punish us. We are not being sent into the corner, grounded until we decide to “be good.” No! That’s not it at all. He is simply pruning us to make us more like His Son. He lovingly disciples us to look and act like Jesus. How deeply He loves us! He loves us enough to prune branches that have some blooms—in order that we can have many blooms.

This week in your Christ walk journey, understand that the “testing and trial” time that you are going through may in fact be a time of pruning. Try to understand that this is a sure sign that your Father loves you—that He desires for you to “bloom.” Not just a few small simple blooms, but tons of blooms with lots of fruit.

Perhaps some of your branches have begun to grow in the wrong direction. Or maybe your flesh has “sprouted” a branch that, if left un-pruned, would drain the strength out of your spirit and your spiritual life. It’s an unholy branch that would eventually destroy your effectiveness, causing you to have no beautiful blooms and no fruit. Blooms display a healthy, vibrant, intimate walk.

Relax! Your Father is lovingly pruning you. When the “springtime” of your journey comes around again (and it will), you will bloom more beautifully than ever. I promise.

Prayer Power for the Week of August 3, 2015

This week thank God that He prunes the “branches” of your life that are growing the wrong way, and that He knows what He is doing to get the most beautiful results. Determine to stay connected to the vine (Jesus) so that you can produce the abundance of fruit He desires for you.

Continue to pray for an outpouring of His Holy Spirit around the world, and especially in our own country. Pray that the body of Christ would unite in prayer and purpose to see God’s will done on earth as in heaven. Continue to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, the persecuted church and those in authority over us. John 15; Heb. 12; I Tim. 2:1-4

Kathryn Kuhlman doesn’t like the faith healer tag the press has placed on her.

It’s difficult, she says, to have reporters come to her miracle services who know nothing of the power of God to scrutinize her healing ministry.

Yet the press seems mesmerized by the little lady from Concordia, Missouri, to whom thousands flock to receive prayer for healing. It continues to give her nationwide exposure.  

In the past year, she has been the topic of two articles in People magazine, one in McCalls, one in Ms. magazine, in scores of lesser known magazines and in newspaper articles, as well as a guest on talk shows.  

People magazine called her “the country’s reigning faith healer.”

Christianity Today called her the best-known woman preacher in America.

In spite of all of this, Kathryn Kuhlman seems awed by it all.

“All I know is that I have yielded by body to Him to be filled with the Holy Spirit,” she once told an interviewer, “and anything that the Holy Spirit has given me, any results there might be in this life of mine, is not Kathryn Kuhlman. It’s the Holy Spirit.”

This kind of simple humility makes the ministry of Kathryn Kuhlman all the more believable.

It gives her credibility in a profession of “faith healers,” if you will, that is full of charlatans like Marjoe, whose self-confessed hypocrisy made him a movie star and gave a black-eye to all genuine evangelists.

This is one reason why people flock to her. In the 125 public appearances a year, she ministers to an estimated 1.5 million.

They come by the busload.

Wheelchairs line the backs of the auditoriums where she ministers.

Some are carried in on stretchers; the blind are led in by the hand.

The well come, too, just to be a part of the miracle services.

In a typical service, an all-volunteer choir sings as the people file in.

When Miss Kuhlman arrives on stage, she leads several rousing, refrains of “How Great Thou Art,” or her theme-song, “He Touched Me.”

Then, pronouncing each word distinctly in her own unique accent, she says “I know that not one of you has come here today to see Kathryn Kuhlman. I have not healing virtue whatsoever. I am an ordinary woman, an instrument of the Holy Spirit.”

A holy hush falls over the crowded auditorium.

“Father God,” she prays. “We bow in the presence of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, careful to give You all praise; all honor; all glory. We don’t want to share in that glory.”

The service is lively. Jimmie McDonald, a black man from Tampa, sings. There are testimonies of healings and a light monologue from Miss Kuhlman.

She told once about meeting Pope Paul VI in Rome.

“He took my hand and told me I not only had his blessings, but his prayers,” she said. “That couldn’t have happened 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. I, a Protestant lady minister. He, the Pope. I tell you, this is the work of the Holy Spirit, moving in our day.”

The moving of the Holy Spirit is a frequent topic in her meetings. She emphasizes the unity among denominations brought by the Holy Spirit. She stresses that it is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that produces the many miracles.

“It is simply unbelievable when you see these priests and Catholic sisters meeting with all the Baptists and the Methodist—you can’t tell one from the other,” she says. “It’s the unity of the Holy Spirit.”

She also talks about not knowing why God called her to the ministry she has.

“I do not believe I was God’s first choice in this ministry, or even His second or third,” she once said.

“This is really a man’s job. But someplace men failed. I was just stupid enough to say, ‘Take nothing and use it.’ And He has been doing just that.”

“I think that in God’s plan there are those, however, whom He calls for a definite work,” she continues. 

“For instance, I could not do the work of Billy Graham. I do not think that Billy Graham is called do my work.”

“I believe that God has chosen certain people for certain ministries. But everyone can have just as much of the power of God. Every minister can have just as much of the power of God as I have if they will pay the price.”

Miss Kuhlman began her evangelistic career at age 16 when she set out with a pianist friend on a bus to Twin Falls, Idaho. She begged the elders of a tiny Baptist church to let her preach. They did, and she packed the church.

She traveled for years, preaching where she could. During a revival service at the Evangelical Church Alliance in Joliet, Illinois, she was ordained. She continues to hold papers with that organization, although she considers herself a Baptist. Oral Roberts University since that time has conferred upon her the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.

In 1946, a woman stood during a service and testified she had been healed of a tumor the night before during one of Miss Kuhlman’s meetings. That was the first healing in one of her meetings, and it set the course for the rest of her ministry.

Today, she heads the Pittsburgh-based Kathryn Kuhlman Foundation, which is said to gross $2 million a year. That funds her radio and television ministry, pays the office staff of 30 and helps fund some 22 mission stations around the world that she sponsors.

In spite of the size of her ministry, and the years she’s been in it, she says she often “dies a thousand deaths before I walk out on the stage.”

“You’ll never know how I feel, ” she once told an audience. “All people see is the glamour—the white pulpit dress. They don’t see the hours in prayer, the heartache. It’s a hard, hard ministry.”

Yet she says that learning to believe God to do miracles is so simple, even a child can do it. “I’m overwhelmed by God and His power.”

“When I come out on stage, there is an anointing that comes on me, and it is very difficult to explain.”

“These things are supernatural. That’s the reason it is so hard for the natural mind to comprehend. But there is an anointing that comes upon me. I am completely taken over by the Holy Spirit—just completely.

“But there is a price you pay,” she continues. “You cannot expect an anointing for four hours during a service if for 20 hours you have lived a different life than one totally consecrated to Him.

“And He gives you this wonderful anointing, but I still have nothing to do with these miracles.”

Miss Kuhlman says that even after many years of ministry, she still does not understand why some for whom she prays are healed and some are not.

“I don’t understand why God performs miracles. I don’t know why some are healed who have no faith and others who have faith aren’t healed.

“Whether or not anyone is healed is in the hands of God. At no time is it my responsibility. But I’m human and you’ll never know how I hurt on the inside when I see those who came in wheelchairs being pushed into the street again,” she says.

“I feel for them; I love them; I want them all to be healed so badly,” she continues. “And yet it is not within my power to give it to them.”

“I think that maybe by being a little longer in the service, or maybe if I had cooperated more with the Holy Spirit, they might have received their healing.”

The fact that everyone is not healed is criticized by some.

Dr. William A. Nolen in his book, Healing, A Doctor in Search of a Miracle,  followed up some of the ones who testified of healings in Miss Kuhlman’s meetings.

Some of the people, he found, had ailments which improved if one’s attitude improved. Others had symptoms that go in cycles such as multiple sclerosis. Still others, Nolen said, were not healed at all.

Nolen, who wrote about his investigation of Miss Kuhlman’s ministry in McCall’s magazine, asked her if any of the “patients you cure are simply hysterical?”

“Of course,” she told Nolen, laughing. “Aren’t any of the patients you treat hysterical?”

“I admitted they were,” Nolen wrote.

Then, he asked her how she gets along with the medical profession.

“Wonderfully well,” she told him.

“I have nothing against doctors, and hope they have nothing against me. I don’t cure people—the Holy Spirit cures through me. Doctors cure people too. I think doctors are wonderful.”

Nolen concluded Miss Kuhlman knew little of medicine, then added, “I don’t believe she is a liar or a charlatan or that she is consciously dishonest.

“I think she sincerely believes the Holy Spirit works through her to perform miraculous cures.”

People like Nolen who know nothing of the power of God are unfair to themselves when they scrutinize her ministry, Miss Kuhlman says.

“(The person) may be otherwise very intelligent, but it is quite unfair, really, to himself and to the servant of God. And so I leave them also in the hands of God,” she once told an interviewer.

She admits she knows practically nothing about medicine and therapeutic science.

“That’s why I have doctors on the platform,” she says. “One doctor who came to our service wondered how I could take the healings of arthritis so lightly. He regarded them as the greatest miracles, because as a physician he knew there was no cure.”

But more than the healings, Miss Kuhlman says her ministry has a greater purpose.

“My purpose, she declares, is the salvation of souls. Divine healing is secondary to the transformation of a life.”

Over the years Charisma has celebrated it’s anniversary in various ways.  On our tenth anniversary we had a banquet featuring Phil Driscoll.  On our 20th we had a banquet with Oral Roberts.  At year 25 we sponsored a conference featuring Benny Hinn and others.  At year 30 we had a huge food giveaway in downtown Orlando to the poor.

So how to celebrate our 40th anniversary?  We decided to make the celebration in the magazine itself.  I believe the result is one of the most beautiful issues we’ve ever produced!  My congratulations to Dr. Steve Greene, the newly named publisher of Charisma and his team for an outstanding job.

While this isn’t a promotion to subscribe, I urge you to track down a copy. The easiest way is to subscribe this month so that your subscription begins with this keepsake edition.

We decided to not focus on ourselves as much as on the people we covered. In 40 years we’ve covered hundreds of people and written thousands of stories. It wasn’t easy to narrow it down to 40.  Today we reprint here the article from the August 2015 issue of Charisma in which we explain how we selected the “40 People Who Radically Changed Our World.”  It’s an overview telling about all 40.  

Beginning tomorrow with Kathryn Kuhlman and Bill Bright, we will print two of these stories every weekday (Monday through Friday) all month.  In most instances we will also publish an article these leaders wrote in Charisma.  I’ve been spending time going through old issues and being reminded of some great teaching articles, many of which are as helpful today for our readers as when we published them!

On weekends we will run other articles from the past that we believe will edify and inform our readers.  These will go on social media for a new generation to benefit from.

Today because we’re kicking off our month-long celebration I decided to run the cover story from our second issue about Kathryn Kuhlman.  It is a rewritten version of a story I wrote for The Orlando Sentinel where I worked at the time.  I pitched my editors on a story on this famous “faith healer” (as the media liked to call her.  They made it the cover story for the newspaper’s Sunday magazine.

I took a bus from Orlando to St. Petersburg, FL where her meeting was held.  I wrote about the experience including a couple of people who said they were healed!

I found a wonderful video on YouTube of a Kathryn Kuhlman service from 1974 at the Mabee Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  It is classically Kathryn Kuhlman! We plan to run that video on our website today and I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did.  It was much as I remember the service in St. Petersburg.

I was able to interview Miss Kuhlman backstage after the service. It was a powerful meeting and she seemed to be excited by the experience.  She was known for gesturing and being overly dramatic.  She was like that in our interview which was conducted standing as a bodyguard with a nasty scar on his face stood by and watched.

I took no photos of the interview and I can’t remember if I recorded it on a cassette tape recorder.  But I vividly remember asking her who would take over her ministry someday.  She was about 68 at the time and apparently in good health.  It seemed like a reasonable question for a reporter to ask.

She bristled and said that Jesus was going to come back before her ministry was over.  And we moved on to another question.

Later when I read Jamie Buckingham’s biography of her called “Daughter of Destiny,” I discovered her health was not good and she probably knew she was had not long to live.  She died the following February 20, 1976 only four months after this article appeared in Charisma.  I rewrote the Sentinel story for this fledgling magazine.  I believe it was the last feature written about her before she died (It’s a glimpse at the last year of her ministry and is sufficiently different than what we will run tomorrow that I felt it warranted republishing today).

A couple of years later I got to know Benny Hinn and he and I have been friends for many years.  Some have said that he took up her healing mantle.  However, while he sang in the chior at some of her services, and was influenced by her, he never met her.  And when I interviewed her she probably had no idea who Benny Hinn was!  

I was pleasantly surprised as I went back through our bound copies of the printed magazine to be reminded of how interesting many of the articles were even in those early days of our magazine.  Each weekend we will publish ones we think will bless you.  And all will have appeared in our first decade leading up to 1985.

Let me comment on another article we will post today.  It’s called “My Friend the Bible” by my longtime friend John Sherrill.

He and his wife Elizabeth wrote or coauthored many books including The Cross and the Switchblade and God’s Smuggler which I read as a teenager.  As a beginning journalist I considered them to be famous authors and never imagined I might get to know them someday.  That happened through Jamie Buckingham who considered Sherrill his writing mentor!  I continue to be in touch with John, now 91, and entertained he and Elizabeth in our home last year.  So when we came across this article I was reminded how good it was.  And with our emphasis on Bible engagement with the publishing of the Modern English Version, we decided to republish it later today.

It will be interesting to post these articles from our archives (we are calling them “Pages from our Past”) on social media for a generation who never saw them the first time.  And to think that when they were printed, the internet didn’t exist and computers were just becoming common.  

If you don’t subscribe to the print issue, click here for a special rate and start with this keepsake edition. And keep coming back each day.

Editor’s note: How the Holy Spirit guided Charisma from a magazine to a media company is an amazing story of God’s grace and blessing. This article appeared in the anniversary issue August 2015. For the entire month of August we are having an anniversary celebration on charismamag.com with giveaways each week day, pages from our past, and more.

My favorite Scripture is Ephesians 3:20: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all we can ask or imagine, according to the power that works in us.”

As I look back on the 40-year odyssey of Charisma, this has been true again and again. God has done exceedingly abundantly more than I could have dreamed as a young newspaper journalist who in 1975 wanted to use my talents to do something significant for God. My talent was to write and to network. I’m not a singer or a preacher. I didn’t feel called to be a foreign missionary. What could I devote my life to where my wife could also serve with me?

In hindsight, I can see God’s hand and I want to give Him glory for anything that has been accomplished! But at the time I merely had an opportunity to start a small magazine for my church, Calvary Assembly in Orlando, Florida. On a practical level, it provided a way for me to supplement my meager salary as a beginning reporter. I’m not sure I even had a great vision for a magazine. It was merely the door God opened and I walked through.

Steve Strang with the 1979 Charisma staff

At the time there were several well-known, successful Christian magazines, so competition was tough. I had no money personally to start a publication, let alone a business. But God must have had a plan, and it was a good plan. Slowly I was able to learn the publishing business. I learned to network with leaders. And I wrote or published articles on Christian growth, on charismatic teachings and on new ministries that were popping up—like TBN, Kenneth Copeland or Marilyn Hickey.

As time passed I began to develop a vision and I could see what our unique position was in the world of publishing. I could cover the burgeoning charismatic movement as a journalist, informing and inspiring and covering stories the secular press didn’t cover or the mainstream evangelical press ignored.

The first year I worked full time at the local newspaper—one of the largest in Florida—and did Charisma as a part-time job. Then I took a leap of faith, quit my job and delved full time into what has become my life’s work. Little did I know about the changes that would happen in the charismatic renewal, in the culture or in the media. Nor could I envision a company where four decades later we would publish best-selling books like The Harbinger in both English and Spanish, release a new translation of the Bible (the Modern English Version), or publish several magazines including Ministry Today and Christian Retailing. In 1975 the personal computer hadn’t been put on the market. And I could never have envisioned what we know as the Internet or how it has changed our lives.

Charisma staff reading through a magazine issue

While I’m known as the founder of Charisma, no one accomplishes anything alone. My wife, Joy, has not only stood by me as a wife, but she has been a leader in our company, competently guiding our finances and figuring out in the early days how to do what we had to do with very little cash flow. Today the issues we face are much more complex and she has a steady hand as a financial person. But even more importantly, she is a spiritual woman who has helped keep me and our organization focused on pursuing the Holy Spirit.

Over the years leaders such as Jamie Buckingham, Jack Hayford and Marilyn Hickey have come alongside to encourage and help guide. And the Lord has brought us a talented and motivated team of people who understood that what we did was more than just publishing or media; it was a ministry. Over time people come and go, but those who buy in stay a long time. Today our average staff person has been with us nine years. And we have a very diverse staff—43 percent minority—which reflects the diverse readership we have. They are motivated to inspire our readers to radically change their world.

Steve Strang with a group in the 1970s

Forty years is a long time to cover in a few words. In 1986 we incorporated Christian Life magazine, which included book publishing and another magazine. Its founder, the late Robert Walker, had been doing back in 1939 what I was doing in my generation—reporting on what God was doing in the world. So our “merger” was smooth and helped catapult us into the big leagues of evangelical publishing. As an organization, we have moved several times in Central Florida and built several buildings before our present headquarters in Lake Mary, Florida. We’ve won many awards. I’ve had some great experiences ranging from interviewing three U.S. presidents to getting to speak at the United Nations. But it’s not about me. It’s about the vision and serving the body of Christ.

In many ways these last 40 years have been difficult. When we face new struggles I try to encourage the staff that struggle is not new. We’ve always struggled. But that’s when we must have faith and God comes through! And yet they have also been great years. I have few regrets. I am richer because of the people I’ve met, those I’ve worked with and the articles we’ve written or the books we’ve published.

The changes of the past few years in our culture and the wave of iniquity is like nothing I’ve seen in my lifetime. At a time like this I believe what we do is even more important. As far as media companies go, we are small. What can we do? We can merely be a light! In the middle of a sunny day, a candle doesn’t add much light. But where there is total darkness a single candle brings a lot of light. There is so much darkness that shining our light is more important than ever.

Charisma staff at one of the early offices

As Christian journalists, we must stand for righteousness. We must publish the truth. We must report on those people and ministries who are making a difference. We must encourage and motivate—and sometimes confront. We see ourselves as part of the body of Christ trying to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ and to stand for righteousness in our world. But we can’t do it alone. We must partner with you and together we can accomplish more than anything we can do alone.

Someone said life begins at 40. Charisma (and our organization) is 40, but we’re not done. We’re just beginning. While Joy and I are getting to the age when we are thinking about succession, we’re thankful we have a new generation of leaders in Charisma Media who are committed to carrying the vision into the future.

I thank the Lord Jesus Christ for His mercy and grace and for whatever has been accomplished! And we know we need Him more than ever. So I ask you to pray for us—that we will be strong and full of faith; that we will follow after righteousness and not compromise. And that we will withstand the attacks of the enemy as we try to be faithful to the vision God gave me as a young journalist to report on what God is doing around the world.

Steve Strang is the founder and publisher of Charisma

Editor’s note: This article was from the first issue of Charisma—August/September, 1975. That was the beginning of the bicentennial celebration, and this brand-new magazine wanted to tie in to what America was celebrating. Founding Editor Steve Strang wrote this article (as he wrote many of the early articles.) As history, it’s as thought-provoking today as when he wrote it. Do you agree with the arguments he gleaned from what various historians have written?

Fifty years before a Lexington minuteman fired the shot heard around the world, another revolution began that shook the American colonies.

It was a spiritual revolution which historians call the Great Awakening. It was marked by waves of religious enthusiasm as preachers like George Whitefield traveled the seacoast from Maine to Georgia, preaching that sinners should repent.

American history’s most famous sermon—”Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”—was preached in 1741 by Jonathon Edwards at the height of the great revival.

History records that sinners repented by the hundreds. Taverns closed as whole towns repented. Often people were so moved by conviction they trembled and shrieked and fell to the ground moaning and begging God to forgive their sins.

Edwards writes about a young woman in his congregation who was so convicted of sin she declared that “it was pleasant to think of lying in the dust all the days of her life, mourning for sin.”

The preaching about turning from sin and the importance of salvation over the rituals of the state church in places like Massachusetts, was important in the light of history.

The result of the revival, which continued strong for 15 years and the effect of which continued for many more years, was to establish early in American life the importance of a man serving God as his conscience, not the state, dictated.

Thousands of newly converted people were forced by their churches to leave because their new convictions about the importance of salvation often threatened the existing ecclesiastical power structure. This fostered the growth of new churches like the Methodists and toppled any hope of one denomination becoming dominant and becoming the American state church.

Some historians consider the Great Awakening a major turning point in American history, yet it is frequently overlooked. While the national remembers its 200th anniversary this year and next, the Christian community can be inspired by remembering one of the greatest revivals on this continent.

The Great Awakening, besides being a major spiritual renewal, did much to foster a feeling of independence in the colonies and helped wipe out the class structure brought to the New World from Europe.

It also fostered education and several major universities like Dartmouth, Princeton and Brown, had their genesis in the revival. In addition, it stimulated missionary work among the Indians and slaves.

Historian Monroe Stearns wrote: “The Great Awakening’s essential purpose was to fulfill the royal law of love—to cause men to serve not themselves but one another and to join in an effort to improve society. The vision it revealed of the social good led to a challenge of the rulers of colonial society in America and into the discussion and activity that produced the movement for independence.

The Great Awakening has been, however, relegated to relatively minor role by most historians who view it as only emotional hysteria that they say has characterized revivals throughout our history.

The truth is, however, that despite emotionalism that characterized some of the Great Awakening from 1720 to 1760, it was the first great move of God on this continent and was the first of many revivals that have come to America since then.

To understand the importance of the revival and its impact on America, it’s important to understand the religious and social structure of the day.

Many of the early immigrants to America came because of religious oppression in Europe.

The French Huguenots were the first Protestants to flee to America. In 1562, more than half a century before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, a small group of Huguenots arrived in Florida in present day Jacksonville, hoping to escape the massacres of Charles IX of France. But within months, their settlement was destroyed by an agent of Philip II of Spain. Not one Huguenot survived.

In 1620, the English Separatists among them soon headed for Rhode Island with Roger Williams looking for religious freedom the Puritans did not give them.

The Pilgrims were followed in 1656 by the early Quakers who, being unwelcomed in New England, settled in New Jersey, then in 17682 in Pennsylvania.

By the early 1700’s, group after group of other Protestants seeking freedom from European intolerance began to arrive.

Of course, not every new settler in the new world came for religious liberty. Many came for economic and political opportunities not available to them in Europe. But many of the immigrants did come to worship God as they saw fit.

This desire for religious liberty and their deep faith in God was all that strengthened many of these early colonists to brave the perils of the American wilderness.

But after a few decades the original closeness to God that drove the early settlers to seek religious freedom was replaced by the coldness and rituals of the churches the settlers established.

This is what Theodorus Frelinghuysen found in 1720 when he was sent by the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands to minister to Dutch settlers in New Jersey.

Frelinghuysen was a member of the Pietists who believed the power of the Holy Spirit could only be felt because it worked on the heart, not the brain. They put no emphasis on complicated church doctrines, but on having a “change of heart,” and becoming one with God.

Frelinghuysen preached that in order to be a member of the church and take communion, one must be born again. He caused quite a stir among the young and the poor who readily responded to his message.

The established, more prosperous members at first resisted, then began to become converted. Within five years his congregations had so increased and so many people had become converted, other ministers began inviting Frelinghuysen to preach at their churches, hoping for similar results.

Frelinghuysen greatly inspired a Presbyterian minister, Gilbert Tennent, and worked with him, breaking down denominational walls.

While Tennent and Frelinghuysen were preaching in New Jersey, Jonathon Edwards was causing a stir in New England with his sermons.

When he became minister in 1729 of the church of Northhampton, Mass., he found a generation of New Englanders who had grown up in spiritual confusion and who didn’t know how to be saved.

In addition, the churches of that area were controlled by the wealthy merchant class—the same people who controlled the government and who oppressed the people.

The Puritan Church had for many years preached salvation, but as the merchants began to seize control, more liberal ministers began to say salvation was not necessary for church membership.

Edwards resisted this trend, and preached faith in Christ was necessary for salvation. He began to see results.

In 1734, after five years at the church, he reported “a concern about the great things of religion began…to prevail abundantly in the town, till old and young, and from the highest to the lowest…Scarcely a person has been exempt, and the Spirit of God went on his saving influences…in a truly wonderful and astonishing manner.”

Word of the revival spread up and down the Connecticut River valley and by May, 1735, 25 towns had experienced similar awakenings.

The revival subsided until 1739 when a 24-year-old minister from England named George Whitefield began to preach in the New York area.

Whitefield had come to America in 1738 to establish an orphanage in Georgia.

Whitefield was such a magnificent speaker that many people came to hear him merely because of his speaking and acting ability.

He frequently preached on streets or in open fields.

Benjamin Franklin, who heard him in Philadelphia, estimated that Whitefield’s voice was so powerful 30,000 people could hear him at once, because he repeated key sentences four times—once in each direction.

Whitefield was so eloquent at raising money for his orphanage, that Franklin wrote he left his purse home on purpose when he went to hear him. Still, he had in his pocket several pieces of copper, several silver dollars and five pieces of gold.

“As he proceeded,” Franklin wrote, “I began to soften and concluded to give him the copper. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined me to give him the silver; and he finished so admirably, that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collection dish, gold and all.”

The Great Awakening was not without its problems, however.

Often when people felt convicted of their sins, they thrashed about on the floor, moaning and shrieking. Emotionalism was so widespread that it turned off many who had not been touched in their hearts with the Gospel message.

Rev. Jonathan Parsons of Lyme, Conn. wrote that some converts acted as if “the joints of their limbs were loosed and their knees smote one another…Several stout ones fell as though a cannon had been discharged and a ball had made its way through their hearts.”

One lady, Sarah Sparhawk, of Marlboro, Mass., was “like one deprived of her reason” and “was brought home (from church) by some young men. She often lay there crying out, screaming and striving much in her fits for an hour or two.”

Trances, visions, and something called “the jerks” became commonplace.

The opposers of the revival were led by Charles Chauncy, pastor of the old First Church in Boston. He objected to the “preaching of terror” and the “bodily effects.” He attacked the whole movement as a dangerous explosion of emotion.

Edwards saw the extremes of the revival, but still considered the Awakening a “surprising work of God,” and stedfastly defended it. He said the excesses of emotion were “enthusiastic delusions” or “impressions upon the imagination.”

He thought, however, that to oppose the revival as some ministers did, was evil. The “prevailing prejudice against religious affections at this day, in this land” was caused by none other than Satan, Edwards wrote.

He warned the critics of the revival that “for persons to despise and cry down all religious affections, is the way to shut all religion out of their own hearts, and to make thorough work in ruining their own souls.”

There were other great preachers in the revival. John Wesley, father of Methodism, was one. He preached in Georgia a number of years, and had an impact on the life of George Whitefield. But mostly Wesley’s influence was limited to England where a similar revival was taking place.

Samuel Davies, a Presbyterian, spread the revival to Virginia in 1748 where he had to get a license from the governor to preach.

The Anglican clergy opposed this non-Anglican in Virginia and took him to court saying he had no right to preach. The issue went to London in 1753 for a verdict and Davies won in 1755. It set a precedent for religious freedom in the colonies.

As the Great Awakening began to subside people like Davies continued to spread it until the 1750’s.

The Awakening had a long-run effect on education, social and moral structure of America for many years. But its main impact—and this should never be forgotten—was spiritual.

Men’s lives were changed when they encountered a personal faith in Jesus Christ. Despite the emotionalism that accompanied the movement, many new converts were made, and these converts had a different way of living.

Jonathon Parsons wrote of the new converts that “bitterness and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil-speaking seemed to be put away from them, with all malice…Rough and haughty minds became peaceful, gentle, and easy to be entreated… Their faith worked on love, and discovered itself in acts of piety towards God, charity and righteousness toward men and sobriety toward themselves.

That’s what true revival is all about.

Editor’s Note: The following are sidebars that appeared in the original edition of this article.

John Wesley

The founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley, was a methodical man. While at Oxford University, he scheduled his intellectual activity by the clock-meditating perhaps from 11 a.m. to noon on the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and from noon to 1 p.m. on the doctrine of free grace. He and other students, including George Whitefield (below) worshiped together in what some students ridiculed by calling “Holy Clubs” or “Methodists.”

Early in his ministry, Wesley was sent to minister to the convicts sent to Georgia colony. He traveled throughout the colonies and England a total of 200,000 miles—by his own estimate—traveling by foot, by horseback and carriage to preach an estimated 40,000 sermons in his 87 years.

His brother, Charles, during his lifetime wrote about 6,500 hymns, many of which we sing today, like “Love Divine, All Love Excelling” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” When a man once said he wished he had a thousand tongues to sing the praises of Jesus, Charles wrote “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing!”

Another time, when a bird fell onto his window while being chased by a hawk, Charles wrote the most famous of his songs, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul, Let Me to Thy Bosom Fly.”

George Whitefield

The Great Awakening’s most rousing speaker, George Whitefield, is said to have been able to stir crowds just with the way he said “Mesopotamia.” The great English actor, David Garrick said, “I would give a hundred guineas if I could say ‘Oh! Like Mr. Whitefield.”

In Boston, such a revival swept the town while Whitefield was there that the Rev. John Webb wrote that “the very face of the town seemed to be altered” and that the taverns were as empty as the churches were full, for “about a year and a half after Mr. Whitefield left us.”

In one sermon, Whitefield is said to have cried, “Father Abraham, whom have you in heaven? Any Episcopalians? No? Any Presbyterians? No? Have you any Independents or Seceders? No? Have you any Methodists? No, no, no? Whom have you there?”

“We don’t know those names here. All who are here are Christians.” Whitefield would quote the answer from heave. Then, he would add: “Oh, is this the case? Then God help us, God help us all, to forget party names, and to become Christians in deed and in truth.”

Jonathon Edwards

Historians record that Jonathon Edwards was a small, frail man who preached in a quiet monotone, without gestures. He was also one of the greatest intellectuals American society has produced.

Edwards pastored in Northampton, Mass., when the Great Awakening broke out. Like other preachers during this period, he began traveling to nearby churches. The reason – there were so few converted ministers that those who were saved were in great demand as the revival spread.

It was on the road that Edwards preached a sermon that historians say is the most famous in American history – “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” It is said he preached it as a last-minute substitute for another preacher at Enfield, Conn., on July 8, 1741.

Historian Monroe Stearns credits Edward’s sermon with ending the superstitions of the Middle Ages and initiating the concept that man is responsible for his own happiness through coming to God.

The sermon had a great impact the day it was preached. The congregation shrieked and groaned and cried out “Oh, what shall I do to be saved.” It got so bad, Edwards stopped his sermon to ask the people to be more quiet.

The 76,000-word sermon is still studied by seminary and Bible college students. An excerpt follows:

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

Deuteronomy 32:35

-Their foot shall slide in due time.-

In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites, who were God’s visible people, and who lived under the means of grace; but who, notwithstanding all God’s wonderful works towards them, remained (as verse 28)voice of counsel, having no understanding in them. The expression I have chosen for my text, “Their foot shall slide in due time,” seems to imply the following things, relating to the punishment and destruction to which these wicked Israelites were exposed.

1. That they were always exposed to destruction; as one that stands or walks in slippery places is always exposed to a fall. This is implied in the manner of their destruction coming upon them, being represented by their foot sliding.
2. It implies, that they were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction. As he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall, he cannot foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once without warning.
3. Another thing implied is, that they are liable to fall of themselves, without being thrown down by the hand of another; as he that stands or walks on slippery ground needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down.
4. That the reason why they are not fallen already, and do not fall now, is only that God’s appointed time is not come. For it is said, that when that due time, or appointed time comes, their foot shall slide.

Application

The use of this awful subject may be for awakening unconverted persons in this congregation. This that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of Christ. That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor anything to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock.

Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment, for you are a burden to it. The creation groans with you; the creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly.

The sun does not willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts, nor is it willing a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon. The air does not willingly serve you for breathe to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service of God’s enemies.

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. This wrath towards you burns like fire. He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight. You are 10,000 times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful, wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell…but that God’s hand has held you up.

God seems now to be hastily gathering in his elect in all parts of the land; and probably the greater part of adult persons that ever shall be saved, will be brought in now in a little time, and that it will be as it was on the great out-pouring of the Spirit upon the Jews in the apostle’ days; the election will obtain, and the rest will be blinded.

Therefore, let everyone that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is not undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation. Let everyone fly out of Sodom. “Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed.”

Welcome to the special 40th anniversary celebration of Charisma. Beginning on the first of August and running to the 31st, we will give perspective on what has been going on in the Spirit-empowered movement.

For this month, we are “taking over” the charismamag.com website to celebrate this special milestone. But it’s not about us. It’s about those whose lives have been touched by the Holy Spirit and hopefully in some way by Charisma.

We won’t just report on history, but we’ll be sharing insights about each of the four decades. For some who lived it with us, it will bring back memories! For a younger generation, it will provide understanding of what God has done and hopefully bless you as we reprint some of our best articles from the past.

Every weekend we will run articles from our archives—we call it “Pages from our Past.”  We’ve published thousands of articles but these are ones we believe are still relevant today.  

Since today kicks off our celebration I’m including some things from our very first issue that I believe you’ll find interesting.   For example, we reported on how the Great Awakening shaped the colonies in the period leading up to the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War that followed.  It’s an article I wrote (as I wrote many in the early days).  It represented what some historians have postulated in the past but it’s not something most secular historians would consider.  Read it and decide if it’s valid.

You will also read a short article by Jonathan Edwards and an excerpt from his famous sermon: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”  It’s a powerful sermon that most Christians have heard of but few have read.  The short excerpt merely gives you a taste of what that sermon was like.

The year 1975 started a yearlong celebration leading up to America’s bicentennial in 1976. Both events were featured in the first 32 page issue of Charisma, which cost only 50 cents. Charisma initially appeared as a church magazine for Calvary Assembly in Winter Park, Florida. I remember, we printed 10,000 copies and gave most of them away!

I’m showing the first issue. That’s Thurlow Spurr of Spurlows fame on the cover.  At the time Thurlow was the minister of music at Calvary Assembly.

Space will not allow us to reprint as many articles from other issues as I am reprinting from the first issue, but that issue was special because it was first. When we do republish articles, it is because the editorial team feels they will minister to you. There is one exception: it’s the first editor’s column I wrote in the very first issue.

It was a wrap-up of what would be in the issue (much as I’m doing here for this anniversary celebration) and I tried to give a bit of a vision for why we were publishing Charisma.  I have added it at the end of this to give you a glimpse into how this really was a church magazine yet in a sophomoric way I had a vision for something much more.  In hindsight what I wrote doesn’t seem very profound. I was only 24 and I had no idea what the future held.  I knew there would be a few people who would enjoy reading it.

That leads me to an article we will run online tomorrow, Sunday, August 2. The article is taken from our anniversary issue in which I took my monthly column to recount our own 40-year odyssey not only as a magazine but as a publishing/media company that it spawned.

Tomorrow you will also read about the “40 People Who Radically Changed our Lives.” This was the cover story for the anniversary issue. The phrase gives a nod to our own company motto that we coined four years ago, which we hope inspires you! Even though the words are new, I think it represents what we’ve been trying to do since we began in 1975.

If you read our print magazine, you’ll see how we ran short features on each of these leaders. To include all 40 we will run two a day each weekday all month. Many of these leaders also wrote articles for us. As appropriate we will reprint some of the articles that are still pertinent today. I believe you’ll be inspired by them.

If you are not a subscriber to the print version of Charisma magazine, click here now for a special rate and begin your subscription with this keepsake edition.

Give me your feedback. You can reply in the comments section online or email me at [email protected] and tell me your memories of Charisma or if you like the articles we are putting up.

Now here’s “The Editor’s Column” I wrote in the first issue under the headline “Introducing Charisma magazine.” Notice how much I refer to Calvary, often referring to it as “the Body” (which was religious jargon popular at the time). Notice how I referred to myself in the third person. Notice how I referred to the magazine as being “first-class.” It was printed on uncoated paper and the artwork and layouts were amateurish; it was anything but first-class. Maybe that showed we had a vision for when the magazine would be better. Finally the run-down of the articles gives you a sense of what that first issue was like, which is one of the reasons I’m reprinting this here.

The publication of this magazine begins a bold new ministry for Calvary Assembly.  

The church already has one of the best youth ministries in America; a top-notch choir and nationally-known minister of music, and is one of the state’s fastest growing churches.

The church also has been experiencing a move of the Holy Spirit and a new depth of Christian growth as God teaches the Body, most recently about the necessity of discipleship.

There’s a love that permeates the entire body. The feeling of love is one of the things most visitors notice most frequently.

But the ministry of the body is limited to the 2,000 or so people who attend services weekly or the ones who hear the daily radio broadcasts.

This magazine was designed to broaden the ministry-to share the Gospel to thousands more in Central Florida.

When we decided to publish, we decided to go first-class, with colorful, lively layouts and top-notch writing.

We didn’t want to become the kind of boring publications many “religious” journals are.

Instead, we decided to be contemporary so we could speak to the secular community while still being a religious publication.

We live in a secular society and we believe in reaching that society with the Gospel in a contemporary way. That is why we went first-class with this publication.

Of course it cost money. That’s why we accepted advertising. We felt it was a way to defray costs, because our readers, after all are consumers.

The real emphasis of this magazine, is to communicate the love of Christ and the joy of serving Him.  We’ve experienced this in our own lives and Christ’s love is evident in the body at Calvary.  We want to share that with our readers.

The result is the magazine you are reading.

We even chose the name – Charisma – because it goes along with the philosophy behind our beginning this new journal.

The word originally refers to the Holy Spirit. It is the word from which the charismatic renewal gets its name. We are a part of that move of the Holy spirit of which Joel prophesied.

But the name also has a secular meaning today- referring to men who are leaders whom others follow.

We seek to communicate the Gospel in secular world. We believe we can, like Paul, say to those in the secular world- follow us as we follow Christ.

Also, in these pages, we will feature, from issue to issue, people who have not only a secular charisma, but are filled with the charisma of Christ.

In each issue we will bring you articles that speak of Christ in a contemporary world. We will also print articles that teach believers and edify the Body.

Each issue will feature an interview with a well-known person in the religious community. This month we featured Thurlow Spurr, who is pictured on the cover.

Thurlow has been for the past 20 years an innovator in contemporary sacred music has been and where it’s going, and how it is able to edify the body of Christ.

There is also a photo feature of the tremendously popular “Freedom Celebration”  produced in June by Thurlow and the Calvary Concert Choir in Orlando.  The patriotic program emphasized that there will always be good in America as long as it remains one nation under God.  

The authors of articles in the issue have varied backgrounds.

Our pastor, Dr. Roy A. Harthern, comes from Great Britain.  He has pastored in Beaumont, Texas, as well as Jacksonville and West Palm Beach, Florida.

Pastor Harthern is also beginning a regular column under his byline in this issue.

He writes about people in the nation’s capital who have a personal faith in Christ.  In addition, he writes in this issue about the necessity for discipleship in Christ’s Body, if it is to grow as it should.

George Clouse- who wrote of how God helped him dissolve a $38,000 debt after he claimed Romans 13:8 – is the head machinist at the Orlando Sentinel Star.  In the three years George has been filled with the Holy Spirit, he has been a dynamic christian witness at the Sentinel Star as well as recently becoming a shepherd in the local Body.

Joyce Strader is the wife of Pastor Karl Strader, of First Assembly of God in Lakeland, Fla.  Besides being a vital part of her husband’s ministry, she is mother of four.  She writes this issue of how her youngest daughter taught her a new truth about love.

Alex Clattenburg wrote “A Trial Is No Error.”  He is a local businessman and youth pastor of Calvary Assembly’s Rock House – one of the most dynamic youth ministries in America.

Your editor is a reporter for the Sentinel Star, covering local government, as well as being a sometimes freelance writer.  He is also director—with his wife Joy—of the college and career division of the Rock House ministry.

The next issue of Charisma will feature a person interview with Kathryn Kuhlman as well as a story of her ministry of healing and the testimonies of people miraculously healed by the power of God.

The Bible says that to those whom much has been given, much will be expected. Church leaders bear a lot of responsibility for their congregations and need to be diligent to avoid spiritual pitfalls.

Recently, Bishop Ron Webb spoke to Jim Bakker about a specific type of spiritual warfare that targets those church leaders. The Absalom spirit, he says, spreads division among leadership and provokes rebellion.

Thankfully, Webb knows how to fight back.

Watch the video for his words of wisdom.

Divorced women do worse than divorced men when it comes to heart health. Family therapist Linda Mintle explains why the sudden shift in lifestyle is often more stressful for women than men.

Surprisingly, the trend even extends into remarriage. When divorced men remarry, their heart health improves, but divorced women who remarry still are at high risk for heart attack.

Watch this video featuring CBN News Medical Reporter Lorie Johnson:

For the original article, visit CBN’s Healthy Living blog.