“The Miracle Man”
Night after night, the waves of Divine Glory so sweep over the
congregation that many testify of being healed while sitting in their seats.1
Asa Alonzo Allen was perhaps one of the most important revivalists to emerge
during the Voice of Healing revival.
2 He was certainly the most sensational of
his time, and not surprisingly drew a great deal of criticism and controversy.
But all told, he was faithful to pursue God’s call on his life and as
a result ushered a mighty move of the Spirit that swept the nation with powerful
miracles, signs and wonders. In a time when the impact of other healing evangelists
was diminishing, Allen was gathering momentum. Throughout the 1950’s,
and into the 1960’s, Allen built a far-reaching worldwide ministry ultimately
comprising an international radio program, magazine, Bible school and ministry
training center, as well as overseas missions programs. The backbone of his
ministry, however, was the massive tent revivals and healing crusades.
The Dreadful Past
What makes Allen’s ministry success all the more amazing is the childhood
he had to overcome. Of all the hardship stories, his home life was among the
most dreadful. Allen and his six siblings had two alcoholic parents who were
wild drunks, brewed their own liquor, and grew their own smoking tobacco. For
entertainment they gave their kids this moonshine and watched them get drunk.
Allen’s mother put home brew in his baby bottle to keep him from crying,
and he was smoking before he was old enough to go to school.
Needless to say, the Allen home was not a happy one. There were constant tussles.
Allen’s mother left his father when A. A. was only four years old to marry
another abusive, alcoholic. By the time he was six, he was carrying tin buckets
of beer home from the saloon to his stepfather. This man left his mother when
A. A. was eleven, at which time Allen attempted to run away himself. If the
weather had not turned bad, he might have succeeded. He left home for good when
he was fourteen.
Meeting Jesus
By the time Allen was twenty-one, his health had badly deteriorated. He had
the shakes so bad he couldn’t light a cigarette or hold a cup of coffee
without spilling it. His chest burned and he was racked with a deep, hacking
cough. Even his memory was slipping. He was already dying the death of an old
man. Hoping to restore his health there, he returned home to the farm where
his mother still lived. The two of them soon slipped into their old ways and
started stilling their own liquor and hosting wild parties. Their regular Saturday
night shindig became known as the “Allen Dance Hall and Still.”
A neighbor had a different type of celebration in mind. He was a Pentecostal
preacher who wanted to start a Holy Ghost revival out of his home just down
the road. He and his little flock started to pray that the Allen parties would
stop—they prayed that the Lord would either run him out of the neighborhood
or kill him.
God did better than that. Allen happened upon a country Methodist church one
day where they were singing and dancing inside. Out of curiosity he went in
and was mesmerized by the woman preacher and the celebratory atmosphere. He
knew he wanted what they had. The next night he returned and answered the altar
call to be saved. From that point on, the parties and bootlegging ended.
Hook, Line, and Sinker
Allen went home and found an old Bible up in the attic. He read it voraciously,
from cover to cover. He showed up at the Pentecostal home meeting down the road
and after he left the people there prayed he would be filled with the Holy Spirit
and used to win souls for Christ. The next day he visited a Methodist pastor
who told him to stay away from the Pentecostals because they spoke in tongues.
This just piqued Allen’s curiosity even more and now he wanted that too.
Not long afterward, he and his sister attended a Pentecostal camp meeting where
he received the baptism and shouted out in tongues.
When drought hit Missouri in 1934, Allen moved to Colorado where he was offered
a job on a ranch. There he came across a Foursquare Church and met a young neighbor
named Lexie Scriven. She felt she was called to preach and soon the two became
close friends. When she left for Missouri to attend Central Bible Institute,
Allen also returned to Missouri to help his mother. Allen wrote Lexie daily
and finally proposed marriage. On September 19, 1936, the two returned to Colorado
to marry.
The couple knew they were called to preach, so they both enrolled at Central
Bible Institute. On the way there they stopped to see Allen’s ailing mother
and ended up staying to nurse her back to health, spending all the money they
had saved for school in the process. After her health improved, they continued
on their way searching for jobs and a place to live. During this time Allen
had the opportunity to preach at a church meeting in a local home.
The Journey Begins
The Allens wasted no time holding meetings wherever they could. They struggled
with money, having to chop and sell wood to survive, sleeping in a dilapidated
shack on a bed made from their car seats, and eating nothing but beans for weeks
at a time. In the late 1930’s, Allen was offered the pastorate of an Assembly
of God church in Holly, Colorado, when they also licensed him.
It was while pastoring that Allen began to truly seek God. He was determined
to discover the secret of God’s power and how to flow with it. He prayed
and fasted until he heard from the Lord how to increase his effectiveness as
a preacher. And as promised in the Bible, those who seek will surely find. God
revealed Himself to Allen in a powerful, life-changing way.
The Price Tag
Allen received clear direction from the Lord about exactly what he should do
in order to operate in the miracle-working power of God. Allen recalled that
“God revealed to me that the things that were hindrances to my ministry
. . . were the very same things which were hindering so many thousands of others.
At last, here was the price I must pay for the power of God in my life and ministry.
The price tag for the miracle-working power of God!”
3
Here are eleven of the thirteen things Allen said the Lord told him he must
understand and do to see His Miracle-Working Power:
- He must realize he couldn’t do greater quality miracles than Jesus.
- He could walk as Jesus walked.
- He must be blameless like God Himself.
- He must measure himself to Jesus alone.
- He must deny his fleshly desires with fasting.
- After self-denial, he must follow Jesus seven days a week.
- Without God, he could do nothing.
- He must do away with sin in his body.
- He must not continue in shallow, pointless discussions.
- He must give his body wholly to God forever.
- He must believe all of God’s promises.
The remaining two guidelines were “pet sins” that God had pointed
out by name, which Allen felt he could not share.
4
Miracle-Working Power
Shortly after this visitation, Allen resigned from his position as pastor. The
Allens had an invitation to minister in Missouri and here is where their first
miracle service took place. A blind man came forward for healing in response
to the altar call. Allen asked for all those with faith for the healing of this
blind man to come up and pray with him. Then he said, “There is unbelief
in this room, I can feel it!”. With that a man got up and stomped out
the door. When the believers finished praying, the blind man could name the
color of Allen’s tie!
5
Throughout the first half of the 1940’s, Allen traveled around the country
leading miracle-working healing revivals. Lexie was left alone for months at
a time to care for their young babies. It was a difficult time for the family
as they continued to struggle financially and Lexie was left with the burden
of raising the children single-handedly. Then, in 1947, Allen was offered the
pastorate of one of the largest Assemblies of God churches in Texas. He accepted
and the family moved to Corpus Christi in search of a more normal family life
and financial stability.
Going to the Next Level
For the next couple of years, Allen threw himself into building the church and
the congregation grew until they needed a new building. He oversaw the exciting
and successful church building project, but then searched for the next great
adventure to throw himself into. He felt called to pursue a radio outreach,
but the church board rejected the idea and Allen fell into a severe depression.
Lexie recognized it as a spiritual attack and commanded the tormenting spirit
to leave him. Miraculously it did, and Allen was back to his ambitious self.
By the fall of 1949, Allen began to hear stories of miraculous healing meetings
from church members and the widely circulated Voice of Healing publication.
He attended an Oral Roberts tent revival in Dallas, Texas, with some ministry
friends and felt God tugging on his heart about the vision he originally gave
him. He rededicated himself to fulfilling that calling and upon returning home
resigned the pastorate once again.
In May of 1950, Allen sent his first report to the Voice of Healing after the
awe-inspiring results of a miracle campaign he held in Oakland, California.
People were healed sitting in their seats as “waves of divine glory swept
over the congregation.”
6 In 1951, Allen purchased a tent and on July 4,
1951, the A. A. Allen Revival Tent went up for the first campaign in Yakima,
Washington.
In November of 1953, Allen finally broke into radio with the
Allen Revival
Hour on eleven stations. By 1955 he was being broadcast on seventeen Latin
American stations and eighteen American ones.
7 Allen conducted yearly revivals
in Cuba and Mexico from 1955 until 1959 when Castro took power.
Persecution and Progress
As Allen’s fame grew, so did opposition. At the height of his ministry
success, his enemies slandered Allen publicly with accusations of being a drunkard.
The newspapers published accounts of public drunkenness and he was even arrested
for drunk driving. The charges were trumped up and widely disputed across factions
of friend and foe. R.W. Schambach, who was traveling with him at the time, testified
that he was in the car the night he was arrested and that Allen was by no means
under the influence of alcohol. Nevertheless, the bad press did great harm to
his ministry and reputation. Ultimately he was forced to withdraw from the Assemblies
of God denomination and Voice of Healing network.
However, what the enemy means for harm can often work for good. In the midst
of persecution, Allen launched the Miracle Revival Fellowship, which licensed
ministers and supported missions. Five hundred ministers were licensed in its
first ordination. During this time he also began publishing the Miracle Magazine,
which boasted two hundred thousand paid subscribers by the end of 1956. In January
of 1958, he established the International Miracle Revival Training Camp for
ministers near Tombstone, Arizona. He was given 1,250 acres of land and called
it “Miracle Valley.” In 1960, he built a four thousand seat church
hoping to one day to develop a city there with flourishing neighborhoods, recreational
facilities, and media centers.
A Sudden End
Throughout the late 1950’s, great public controversy continued to surround
Allen, as well as hostile persecution, yet he pressed on. The miraculous followed
his preaching in unprecedented forms. Unheard of signs and wonders were manifested
during his campaigns, such as a flame appearing above his revival tent, oil
flowing from the heads and hands of people in the audience, crosses appearing
on foreheads, and a radio listener having organs reappear that had previously
been removed.
Allen worked as hard as ever well into the next decade. He continued to fervently
teach on healing, and then more and more on financial prosperity. By 1967, the
ministry suffered a debilitating blow when it was sued for $300,000 in back
taxes. By 1969, Allen’s health began to deteriorate and he battled severe
arthritis in his knees. He suffered with so much pain that a protégé
had to fill in during the crusades. Allen had already undergone surgery on one
of his knees and in June of 1970, was considering surgery on the other knee.
Allen arrived in his hotel room the night before his scheduled doctor’s
visit and made a disturbing call to a close friend. This friend became alarmed
and immediately headed over to the hotel. After banging on Allen’s door
and receiving no response, he had the assistant manager open the door, and there
they found Allen dead in a chair in front of his television. A. A. Allen was
pronounced dead at 11:23 p.m. on June 11, 1970. The Coroner’s Report recorded
the cause of death being “fatty infiltration of the liver” as a
result of the few times he used alcohol in his last days to alleviate the excruciating
pain of his arthritis.
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