GREAT HEALING REVIVALISTS - HOW GOD'S POWER CAME: WALTER VINSON GRANT, SENIOR
di Andrew Strom
A number of great healing evangelists have been led by God to "fast and pray" for quite long periods in order to break through into greater realms of anointing and communion with God. Walter Vinson Grant Sr, who was a mightily used and anointed man of God from earlier this century, was one such evangelist. Before coming into his full ministry anointing, he was one who spent all his spare time with Jesus in the secret place. This man constantly sought God, and fasted on the weekends. He read many books of God's servants in the past and studied his Bible day and night. He would pray for a couple of days until he got answers. He would not leave his prayer room until he got an answer from God. This and Christian work was virtually his lifestyle for fourteen years.
He had already received the baptism in the Holy Spirit fourteen years earlier, and he spoke in tongues. "Yet, I felt like I had a bow without an arrow, a car without a battery, or a boat without a paddle. I read how Peter did it, but I could not do it. I had the highway map. I was on the right road, but on the wrong side." (W.V. Grant, 'Searching for the Supernatural', pg 6). "I prayed around the altar. I fasted three days at a time. I testified about a supernatural God. I told people that I had the Holy Ghost. I spoke in tongues to prove it. All the time my heart was crying out, Where are all the miracles the Bible tells us about?" (Pg 2).
"I was a director over 13 churches... I saw people saved, filled with the Holy Ghost with other tongues. I saw a few people healed. I preached that we had the Pentecostal power. But where were the results we saw in the early church after Pentecost?... I read about 200 books written by Godly men. I read every word in the Pentecostal Evangel for years... After I fasted three days I still felt empty. That longing surely can be satisfied in some way? Who was putting that longing and searching in my soul?" (Pg 3).
"What was I waiting for? Nothing else mattered to me. I wanted to see His Glory. I wanted to see His Miracles. I wanted to see the dead raised. I wanted to see the devils cast out. I wanted to see the deaf, blind, and the mute made whole. Did not God say in the last days the lame man would leap as a hart, the tongue of the dumb would sing, and the eyes of the blind would be opened? (Isaiah 35:5)... John said in Luke 3:16, 'He shall Baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with FIRE'... It was fourteen years after I received the Holy Ghost and tongues before I received the Holy Ghost and power." (Pg 13).
"If God has called you into a full time ministry of healing the sick and casting out devils He usually gives you time to give yourselves to fasting and prayer... Then one night to my surprise the Lord appeared to me and told me to go on a seven day fast, which I was willing to do. After the fast was over the Lord appeared to me. I heard the angels singing a song I had never heard. I wrote it down. It was beautiful! It was like heaven. Then an angel just above my head spoke these words, 'In My name shall ye cast out devils, ye shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.' As I began to eat I felt something like an electric current run out at the ends of my fingers and down to the bottom of my feet. The fire of God was all through my body!" (W.V. Grant Sr, 'Must I Fast for Forty Days', pg's 20, 36, 37)
"But on the last day just about break of day, the Holy Spirit began to speak to me. Mark 16:17-18 - 'These signs shall follow them that believe. In My name shall you cast out devils, they shall take up serpents, if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them, they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover'... I got up, and walked, and my feet were burning like they were connected to a high voltage wire. The Holy Spirit, and Fire was running all through my whole body from my head to my toes. It seemed like all my strength had been drained out of me, and the strength of Christ had taken its place. For several years since, devil's have been cast out, and people healed."
"I had the Holy Spirit for years, but it seemed that now, I was not only filled, but baptized with zeal, compassion, and with the divine nature of Jesus, with virtue, and with the fire... If you feel like the Lord has called you into a special ministry of casting out devils, then remember this: There are many more things which are just as necessary as fasting. Fasting within itself will not be sufficient... But when I was called to fast, it was just as real as being called to preach. I was conscious of the fast, that it was the Lord's doing and not my own... It takes a longer fast for one man to be brought to the place where he is yielded to the Lord enough to receive certain gifts in his life than it does for other men. It took a certain amount of days for me to fast and to become so yielded to the Lord; it seemed that all my strength left my body, and the Lord's strength came into its place! Then I felt the virtue and divine nature, and the fire of the Holy Ghost dwelling in my body, which gave me power to meet devils and to cast them out."
"But I still have to be led by the Lord when and how to do it. It is not myself that doeth the works but the Father that dwelleth in me. God will not trust you with a ministry if you do not know the leading of the Spirit. I have talked personally to several evangelists whom God has called into a supernatural ministry. None of them went on forty day fasts without any food. Since God has given other people ministries of deliverance without a long fast you can take courage and believe for a ministry without fasting forty days..."
