Kathryn Kuhlman’s Life: A Key for This New Era
For many years now, the Lord has been speaking to me about the major demonstrations of His healing power that are going to be seen in the new era that we have entered. As the Lord has spoken this to me over the years, He has continually highlighted Kathryn Kuhlman to me. If you are not familiar with Kathryn Kuhlman, she lived from 1907 to 1976, and she was an evangelist known for her healing services.
I came across a quote of Kathryn’s taken from A Glimpse into Glory, and I want to share it with you. I want you to really take a moment and read this carefully and allow the Holy Spirit to minister to you, because in Kathryn’s words there are keys of wisdom and revelation for this new era we have entered:
"There are literally thousands and thousands in the great charismatic movement who have never become acquainted with the person of the Holy Spirit, only with His gifts." (Kathryn Kuhlman and Jamie Buckingham, A Glimpse into Glory)
Kathryn Kuhlman referred to the Holy Spirit as her “best friend.” She is also quoted:
“He knows that I will be true to Him as long as my old heart keeps beating, and I know that I will be true to Christ. We have a pact.
“…All He needs is somebody who will die, and when I died, He came in. I was baptized. I was filled with the Spirit. I spoke in an unknown tongue as He took every part of me. In that moment, I surrendered unto Him all there was of me, everything. Everything. Then, for the first time I realized what it meant to have power.”
[Kathryn] often spoke of the responsibility of being entrusted by the Holy Spirit with the administration of His gifts, particularly with the kind of ministry she had. She trembled at the thought of grieving Him. She knew that He is a literal person, and that the only way to be used by Him was to follow Him.
Many times in her messages, Miss Kuhlman warned Christians not to try to “use” the Holy Spirit, but only to let Him lead them. His power, she said, is under His sole authority, not ours. She insisted that a Christian can be yielded enough to the Holy Spirit until there is nothing left of one’s self.
“You have to be dead,” she would say, because there cannot be two different wills or two conflicting personalities involved. There must be only one, and that one is His alone. (“An Hour with Kathryn Kuhlman,” qtd. in Roberts Liardon, Kathryn Kuhlman: A Spiritual Biography of God’s Miracle Worker)
Kathryn Kuhlman had a healing ministry during a time when there were many Voice of Healing evangelists, but she operated apart from her contemporaries. She felt that they used too much showmanship and would blame the sick if they were not healed. Kathryn didn’t distribute prayer cards or form healing lines. She wanted people to pray and fast, to demonstrate faith with action. She didn’t even usually pray for people personally. She just created an atmosphere of worship and faith, and people received their healing.
Kathryn believed the greatest miracles transpired in worship as the Holy Spirit sovereignly moved through the auditorium. The “circus sideshow” and tent theatrics were unnecessary. Bill Johnson writes in his book Defining Moments:
Kathryn realized that simply by honoring the Holy Spirit and by being in God’s presence, healing could be released.
“The Holy Spirit, then, was the answer, an answer so profound that no human being can fathom the full extent of its depths and power, and yet so simple that most folk miss it! I understood that night why there was no need for a healing line; no healing virtue in a card or a personality; no necessity for wild exhortations “to have faith.” That was the beginning of this healing ministry which God has given me; strange to some because of the fact that hundreds have been healed just sitting quietly in the audience, without any demonstration whatsoever, and even without admonition. This is because the Presence of the Holy Spirit has been in such abundance that by His Presence alone, sick bodies are healed, even as people wait on the outside of the building for the doors to open.”
Even though great healing was released through her ministry, Kathryn, like Carrie Judd Montgomery and many other healing revivalists, denied having a gift of healing. In response to the question of whether she had the gift of healing, she said:
“I would never say that I have ever received any gift. The greatest of the Christian graces is humility. All I know is that I have yielded my body to Him to be filled with the Holy Spirit, 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; it’s what the Holy Spirit does through a yielded vessel. That is one thing I am so afraid of: I am afraid lest I grieve the Holy Spirit, for when the Holy Spirit is lifted from me I am the most ordinary person that ever lived.
“As I have said before, I am not a faith healer. I have not been given anything special. What I have is something that any Christian could have if he would pay the price of full surrender and yieldedness. I am absolutely dependent on the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ." (Kathryn Kuhlman, I Believe in Miracles and “Healing in the Spirit,” Christianity Today, July 20, 1973)
The Lord brought these quotes to my attention because there are keys for this new era in the life of Kathryn Kuhlman. Kathryn Kuhlman was not only known for the amazing miracles that followed her, but she was a plumb line. She was a bold voice of purity calling God’s people into the place of consecration and deep, abiding yielding to Him. I remember hearing a message of hers online, and her call to people was to “die today”—to die to self, to let go of idols, and to come to the place of life, of deep surrender. People came to the front weeping and wailing in repentance as they encountered His love and the weight of His presence that brought them deeper into the place of alignment with the Holy Spirit and Jesus as their first love, the place of life found in Christ.
Over the years, I have been so impacted by Kathryn’s humility, yieldedness, purity, and the deepest one I felt the Lord wanted me to focus on here was her intimacy. Her focus was not the signs, wonders, and miracles. She lived from the place of friendship with God where the Holy Spirit was her best friend. She lived deeply in the fear of the Lord; she would tremble at the thought of grieving Him.
In this wonderful outpouring in this new era, the healing wave that we will see take place is going to be astounding, but it will be one that will flow from the place of intimacy and friendship with Jesus. The alignment that is taking place and will continue to take place is to rapidly bring the Church deeper into the place of honoring the presence of God without “using” Him.
“I Will Take Center Stage Again”
The Holy Spirit showed me many months ago that “man” was on center stage in many ways. There has been an attribution of glory to titles and to “look at my ministry.” The hand of God is coming in such a profound way to bring a significant alignment and recalibration. As the Lord whispered to me, “I will take center stage again.”
I am not saying that God is not going to heal in prayer lines or healing lines or through the laying on of hands, but I believe that there is going to be a major increase of the power of God in the adoration of who He is. His presence and His worship are going to bring a right focus back to the Church. Jesus is going to take His rightful place again. There has been a “touching of His glory” and a “taking of His glory” in titles and in what Kathryn often described as “showmanship” or “circus sideshow.” But the Lord is going to fall so sovereignly and supernaturally in greater increase to remind the Church that it is not by any human power that signs, wonders, and miracles come, but through the power of His Spirit and the presence of God.
The wave of His healing is going to mark this era. Those who live in deep intimacy with the Holy Spirit in and from the fear of God will see some of the greatest signs, wonders, and miracles. The wave of healing that is going to crash into the body of Christ will not only be the greatest healing revival and outpouring we have ever witnessed, but it will be carried by those who walk in purity of heart and are friends of God. The move of His Spirit is going to bring forth a mighty purging and purifying, and Jesus is going to take the stage again, where He will get the glory.
Now, this is not to say that the whole body of Christ and all those who move in the gift of healing have fallen. That is not accurate at all. There are many wonderful leaders, ministers, and people of God moving in stunning healing ministries who are walking in purity, integrity, and friendship with the Holy Spirit, but there are obviously areas in the Church where this “taking the glory” has become a very serious issue that the Lord wants to deal with. In those places, He is going to deal with it, calling His people back to the place of repentance. Any focus upon man, any impurity, sin, or manipulation in these movements will be exposed and purified as the Lord brings the alignment and focus back on Jesus and His presence.
He wants to remind the Church that the power of the Holy Spirit is not just available to those who have great influence in the Church. He wants to remind the people of God that every person who has the Holy Spirit living inside of them can walk in His power to heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out demons (see Matt. 10:8).
“You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”
I have been hearing the Holy Spirit for over two years now whispering to me, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” It was such a strong feeling of not having even scratched the surface of what He is going to do and what we are going to see Him do. The healings we have seen Him perform in the earth and in the Church have been amazing, and there are countless millions of testimonies of God’s healing power increasing. But can I suggest, compared to what is coming, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
The major outpouring of healing that is going to take place in this new era will be in astronomical proportions compared to what we have seen, and it will be marked by intimacy with Jesus in ways we have never seen. We are not going to see an exact replica of Kathryn Kuhlman’s ministry. There’s a new wave coming, but God is highlighting her life because of the fear of the Lord she walked in. Kathryn Kuhlman lived in constant communion and communication with the Holy Spirit and the purity and boldness she carried was inspiring, and that impartation is going to be released into the Church in this new era in ways we have never seen before. The cry of her heart resounded so loudly that Benny Hinn shared this in his book Good Morning, Holy Spirit:
As the service continued and I quietly prayed, everything stopped suddenly. I thought “Please, Lord, don’t ever let this meeting end.”
I looked up to see Kathryn burying her head in her hands as she began to sob. She sobbed and sobbed so loudly that everything came to a standstill. The music stopped. The ushers froze in their positions.
Everyone had their eyes on her. And for the life of me I had no idea why she was sobbing. I had never seen a minister do that before. What was she crying about? (I was told later that she had never done anything like that before, and members of her staff remember to this day.)
It continued for what seemed like two minutes. Then she thrust back her head. There she was, just a few feet in front of me. Her eyes were aflame. She was alive.
In that instant she took on a boldness I had never seen in any person. She pointed her finger straight out with enormous power and emotion—even pain. If the devil himself had been there, she would have flicked him aside with just a tap.
It was a moment of incredible dimension. Still sobbing, she looked out at the audience and said with such agony, “Please.” She seemed to stretch out the word, “Plee-ease, don’t grieve the Holy Spirit.”
She was begging. If you can imagine a mother pleading with a killer not to shoot her baby, it was like that. She begged and pleaded.
“Please,” she sobbed, “don’t grieve the Holy Spirit.”
Even now I can see her eyes. It was as if they were looking straight at me.
And when she said it, you could have dropped a pin and heard it. I was afraid to breathe. I didn’t move a muscle. I was holding on to the pew in front of me wondering what would happen next.
Then she said, “Don’t you understand? He’s all I’ve got!”
I thought, “What’s she talking about?”
Then she continued her impassioned plea saying, “Please! Don’t wound Him. He’s all I’ve got. Don’t wound the One I love!”
I’ll never forget those words. I can still remember the intensity of her breathing when she said them. (Benny Hinn, Good Morning, Holy Spirit)
Her cry was, “Please don’t grieve Him, please don’t wound Him!” That purity of intimacy, that purity of communion with the Holy Spirit and reverence for who He is and His presence, that place of deep intimacy is going to be a marker in this great healing outpouring that’s coming. The sole, pure focus upon Jesus! Those who treat His heart with care.
Proper Alignment of the Heart and Life
God is using the life of Kathryn Kuhlman again to remind us of the proper alignment of the heart and life. The signs, wonders, and miracles are amazing and will be astounding, but if the use of gifting takes the place of deep communion with the Holy Spirit, then there’s a problem. There is a danger that can be fallen into in this new era through what God is doing to do, and that is to make signs, wonders, and miracles the main thing. Jesus is the main thing—nothing else but Jesus and seeing His name glorified. God is going to take the focus on man out of the body of Christ in many ways in this new era and put it back on Jesus. God’s heart is to bring the Church deeper and back to this place.
Was Kathryn Kuhlman perfect? No, none of us are. Kathryn Kuhlman’s ministry was marked with miracles, but the legacy she left behind is not just one of amazing miracles but one of a woman who was completely yielded and surrendered to Him, the Holy Spirit, as her best friend. From that place, she saw incredible signs, wonders, and miracles. She didn’t leave the stage and come away and out of that anointing. You just have to read about her life and her ministry to see she lived in that place all the time. We are going to see that more and more in this new era as the fire of God purifies and purges, and we will see a greater alignment into this place of purity of relationship with Jesus in the body of Christ.
Kathryn’s life, ministry, and purity show what God can do with a laid-down life. It’s an invitation for you and I to step into. Not to be “copycats” of Kathryn Kuhlman, but to take the keys and treasures God placed within her life as keys and foundational stones of what is coming and how to steward it.
Lana Vawser
