ORAL ROBERTS (1918-2009) 
 

Granville Oral Roberts was born in 1918 in Pontotoc County Oklahoma to Ellis and Claudia Roberts, both ordained ministers in the East Oklahoma Conference of the Pentecostal Holiness Church. He was raised in a typical PH Church on the Oklahoma frontier made up mostly of very poor farmers. His father was a farmer who pastored local Pentecostal Holiness Churches and held evangelistic revivals in the area.

As a youth Oral went through a period of rebellion and, along with his high school basketball team, joined a Methodist Church. Soon after, he was stricken with tuberculosis and almost died. He was instantly healed when his family took him to a tent healing crusade. He was soon back in the PHC and was ordained to the ministry in the East Oklahoma Conference in 1936.

A young man of limitless drive and ambition, Oral pastored several PHC churches before beginning his healing ministry in 1947. These included PH churches in Toccoa, Georgia, and Enid, Oklahoma, as well as an independent church in Fuqua-Varina, N.C. He also traveled as an evangelist holding many revivals in local Pentecostal Holiness Churches. In 1948, he preached the Falcon N.C. camp meeting along with J.A. Synan who later served as his bishop.

Impressed with the ministry of William Branham, Roberts prayed for a healing ministry and held his first healing crusade in Ada, Oklahoma, in 1947. After this his healing crusade ministry mushroomed. After the organization of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association (OREA) he held mass crusades in the United States and abroad. Using a large “Tent Cathedral” he drew crowds of 20,000 or more with thousands of converts and healings recorded. Most of his early workers were from the Pentecostal Holiness Church, including Lee Braxton and Collins Steele.

In 1955, he took his healing crusades to the television screen where he preached to millions of enthralled viewers. Later, he moved on to primetime television gaining millions more followers. Along with Billy Graham, he is credited with creating the new genre called “televangelism.” Many of his viewers later became leaders in the charismatic movement which broke out in the mainline churches after 1960.

In 1965, Oral founded Oral Roberts University in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Many of his pioneering faculty members were from the Pentecostal Holiness Church, including R.O Corvin, Carl Hamilton, Paul Chappell, and Harold Paul. It was the first Pentecostal University in the world and grew to over 5,000 students on the impressive space-age style campus that he built. His dream of building a hospital called the “City of Faith” to combine “faith and medicine” did not succeed but did encourage movement in the American medical establishment to a more holistic approach in its methodology.

Though much has been written about Oral’s life and ministry regarding his television outreach and the founding of Oral Roberts University in 1963, little has been said or written about his equally vital role in the founding of Southwestern Christian University in 1946. Oral, while still a pastor in Shawnee, Oklahoma, led his congregation in giving the first offering towards the purchase of the “Abe Hale Night Club” which was the beginnings of Southwestern Christian University, then called Southwestern Bible College. In those early years he served as Secretary of the Board, Chairman of the Executive Committee and as a professor.

Throughout the 1950’s he continued his support by generating donations for the college. In 1953, he told his friend, then president of Southwestern, R.O. Corvin to select a calf from the Robin Hill Farms near Tulsa. Roberts then proceeded to sell it at auction for over $5000 and donate all the proceeds to the college. In the 1950’s, Oral gave the first $50,000 towards the construction of the college administrative building. In 2005, Southwestern Christian University presented Oral Roberts with a Lifetime Achievement award in recognition of his influence at the university and around the world.

After the Berlin Conference of 1961, Oral Roberts was widely accepted and recognized as a major Christian figure. Although Roberts joined the Methodist Church in 1969, he was not re-ordained and chose to retain possession of his IPHC ordination certificate until his death. In 2005 and again in 2009, he was invited by the Executive Leadership of the IPHC to be a primary evening speaker at the denomination’s General Conference but he was unable to do so. Through Oral Roberts, a son of the Church, the theology and faith of the Pentecostal Holiness Church has changed the face of Christianity and the world.