The Stutterer God Set Free

Oral Roberts grew up in rural Oklahoma in a family shaped by poverty and hardship. As a teenager he developed a severe stutter that made ordinary conversation humiliating, and then tuberculosis settled into his lungs, leaving him gaunt, weak, and confined to bed for months. Doctors held out little hope, and Roberts later described those years as a season of shame and despair.

In 1935, his older brother Elmer insisted on taking the dying teenager to a healing revival led by evangelist George Moncey. Too weak to walk, Roberts was carried into the tent on a cot. As the evangelist prayed and commanded the disease to leave in the name of Jesus, Roberts felt strength surge through his body. He stood to his feet, and for the first time in years, spoke without a single stammer.

The healing was not partial or gradual. Witnesses in the tent watched a boy who could barely form sentences suddenly speak clearly and with conviction, while the wasting effects of tuberculosis visibly reversed in the following weeks. Roberts later said the moment convinced him of a truth that would define his entire ministry: God is a good God, and His will is to heal.

That single encounter under canvas launched one of the most far reaching healing ministries of the twentieth century. Roberts went on to hold massive crusades, pioneer religious television broadcasting, and found Oral Roberts University, but he always pointed back to the night a stuttering, dying teenager was made whole. His story remains a testimony that no diagnosis is beyond the reach of God's power.