A. A. ALLEN’S SERMON ENTITLED…. SPEAK THE WORD ONLY “And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my roof; but SPEAK THE WORD ONLY, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me; and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. When Jesus heard it, he marveled, and said . . . I have not sound SO GREAT FAITH, NO, NOT IN Israel. . . And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and AS THOU HAST BELIEVED, SO BE IT DONE UNOT THEE. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour.” (Matthew 8:13). Few today have such great faith as that centurion! If they have someone sick in their house, and Jesus should come and say to them, “I will come to your house and heal him,” they would say, “That is just exactly what I want you to do. This is a very special case, and that is what it will take!” The centurion in this account had more faith than that. He said, “You don’t have t come to my house!” It is amazing how many people insist that I must go to the hospitals, or to their homes, to pray for their sick loved ones. One man said, “I will furnish you an automobile! Here is a check for $1000.00, or I will pay all your expenses if you just come and pray for my wife! It won’t take over six hours!” I replied, “I can’t go. If I had the time to go, I wouldn’t take your money! I don’t have time to go pray for your wife. But God has provided another way whereby your wife can be healed without my going to her!” I wish that I had the time to go everywhere people want me to go. I don’t have time even to pray individually for all the people who come to my campaigns, to say nothing of going everywhere to pray for those who don’t have time to come to the meetings! Although Jesus was willing to go to this man’s house, (for God’s Word records that He said, “I will go,” the centurion had so much faith that he said, “You don’t have to come to my house. All that you need to do to heal my servant is SPEAK THE WORD ONLY, and he is going to be healed instantly.” The split second he said, “Speak the word only,” his servant was healed! If all Jesus had to do in days gone by was to speak the word, and someone a long way off was healed instantly, ALL JESUS HAS TO DO TODAY IS SPEAK THE WORD! Do you believe that? Would you believe me if I told you right now that you were going to hear the voice of God, and that God was going to speak the word to you and heal you? Do you want to hear the voice of God? Do you want to hear Jesus say, “It is done?” Jesus commended this centurion and said that He had not found such faith in all Israel. Alone among the thousands who clamored to Him for their healing, this man realized the meaning of Christ’s authority. By faith, he understood that, even as his authority as a centurion made it possible for him to give a command with full assurance that command would be obeyed, so Christ’s authority as the Son of God made it possible for Him to simply give a command, and sickness must flee! Seeing such faith, Jesus knew that all was needed was to say, “Go thy way, thy servant is healed,” and having spoken, it should be so! If I were to say to you, “Go your way, your sick loved one, your sick friend is healed,” would you turn around and go to that person, expecting to find him or her healed when you got there? If you can believe, now, that Jesus has SPOKEN THE WORD, and that that is enough, you will be healed, or your loved one will be healed. The cancer will drop off. The tumor will vanish. Heart trouble, epilepsy, cataracts and goiters will go! You can be made completely whole! Just say, “SPEAK THE WORD ONLY, LORD!” “WILT THOU BE MADE WHOLE?” A man lay beside the pool of Bethesda (John 5). He had lain there for thirty-eight long years, totally helpless. The story is recorded in the Bible that a certain season, an angel went down and troubled the waters, and the first one that was put into the water after the angel troubled it was made whole (God has always provided means for the healing of His people!) Jesus one day went to this pool. There, the Bible declares, a multitude of people were waiting for the troubling of the water; the halt, the maimed, the crippled. Jesus saw this man lying there on his bed where he had lain for thirty-eight years. Jesus said to him, “Wilt thou be made whole?” Jesus was ready to SPEAK THE WORD and make him whole! But do you remember what he said? “I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool; but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me!” Here was the man standing by his side who was able to make him whole with a word! And he failed to recognize God’s method of bringing him healing. Thousands today don’t even recognize who Jesus is when He stands at their side, waiting to speak the word and set them free! For thirty-eight years, the man had waited there beside the pool, trying to find a way to get in. Some people; have their eyes on a preacher, on a prayer card, on an anointed handkerchief, a prayer line, or some specified color of card. I am not rebuking you. I am not saying God isn’t using evangelists, or that it is wrong to use prayer cards. But it certainly is wrong for you to tie your faith so firmly into that prayer card that you cannot accept healing unless your card is called and you get into the healing line. Don’t say, “Of course I wan to be made whole, but you see, my card is pink, and I am afraid they are going to call white cards this time!” People come from great distances into our Miracle revival campaigns. We find them discouraged, saying, “I want so much to be healed. But I didn’t get here in time to get a prayer card. I’ll just have to wait until I get a prayer card. And then maybe my card won’t be called!” They are broken hearted, because they feel they just can’t be healed! “Wilt thou be made whole?” Some reply, “I have been prayed for so many times! Brother _______ or Sister _________ prayed for me, and still I only grow worse. I have been prayed for by every deliverance evangelist in the country! Mine is a hard case. There are so many things wrong with me. Just let me tell you …” Jesus stands waiting to SPEAK THE WORD ONLY! Believe Him! Rest on His word! “We which have believed do enter into rest.” (Hebrews 4:3). Jesus was standing there by the pool, waiting and wanting to speak the word that would make that man whole. Do you know what happened? Jesus just spoke a few words. He said, “Rise, take up they bed and walk!” Immediately, that man was made whole! He picked up that bed upon which he had been lying for thirty-eight years, and began running with it. Jesus didn’t even touch him. He didn’t pray a prayer. All He did was SPEAK THE WORD! The power of God went through that man and made him completely whole! He didn’t have a prayer card! He didn’t go through a healing line. Nobody touched him. He wasn’t anointed with oil. No one placed him in the emergency section. No one dropped him into the pool! Jesus just SPOKE HE WORD. And after thirty-eight long years of suffering, he was healed instantly! You can be healed right now! All you have to do is invite Jesus to SPEAKTHE WORD! Raise your hand right now and say, “Jesus, speak the word only!” Believe that He does it. Hear me! Jesus speaks the word, and YOU ARE MADE WHOLE! So many people, like the man at the pool of Bethesda, begin to find excuses for not being healed, when all the time Jesus is standing by, desiring to speak the word that would heal them! There came a nobleman to Jesus, whose son was sick with a raging fever. He besought Jesus that he would come down to his house and heal his son. Jesus merely said, “Go they way; they son liveth.” (See John 4:46-53). And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way! That man knew his son was dying with a raging fever. But he also knew that if Jesus spoke the word his son would be healed. What happened? When he believed the WORD THAT JESUS SPOKE, his son was healed. As the man was on the way home, one of his servants met him and said, “Thy son liveth!” He asked the servant when his son began to amend. When the servant told him, he knew that “it was the same hour” when Jesus had said unto him, “Thy son liveth!” JESUS SPEAKS THE WORD TODAY! Some, bound by doubt and skepticism, may say, “But Brother Allen, you don’t really believe that Jesus is going to speak such words in this day, do you?” If I didn’t believe that Jesus still speaks the word in this day, I would be wasting my time, preaching a powerless gospel! But I am not wasting my time. Jesus does still speak the word today. You can find evidence in every issue of Miracle Magazine - the pictures and testimonies of many who have received remarkable healing! To say nothing of the thousands who give their testimonies under our great tent, and whose testimonies we never have space to publish! Just as He spoke the word for the centurion’s servant, just as He spoke the word to the man who had lain beside the pool for thirty-eight years, just as He spoke the word for the nobleman’s son and made him whole, Jesus will speak the word right now that will make you whole. Can you believe it? GOD SPSEAKS THROUGH PEOPLE “And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which he (the Lord) spake by Elijah.” (I Kings 17:16). That little widow could have said, “Ah, that is just that old bald-headed preacher!” But she didn’t. She realized that it was God speaking through a choice servant of His, that it was not just Elijah speaking, but God speaking to her through him. She had prayed to God to help her and her son in their distress. God spoke to her through Elijah, to bring her deliverance. He said to her, “Make me a little cake first, then go back and make for thee and thy son.” It wasn’t Elijah speaking. That was God speaking through him. She believed and obeyed, and God met her need! God still speaks through men and women that will yield to his moving. God has many ways of speaking to us. He can speak audibly. I know He can, because I have heard Him speak in such a way. Then, God speaks in a still small voice. (I Kings 19:12). We hear it with something inside us, something like a radio receiving set on the inside receives the message directly from God. We can read the Word of God, and that is God talking to us. We read that He spoke audibly to some, and His voice sounded like thunder. All the way through the Bible, God has called to His people, and spoken to them with an audible voice. “He called unto Moses and said unto him…” (Lev. 1:1, Ex. 3:4, 5 and 19:3). “He spake unto Joshua, saying…” (Joshua1:1). “The Lord called Aaron and Miriam…” (Numbers 12:5). But in I Kings 17:15, God spoke through a man. “According to the Word of the Lord, which He spake by Elijah. . .” It was Elijah’s lips, it was his voice, but it was God speaking through his voice, and “Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are . . .” (James 5:17). God still speaks through His ministers today. If you have lost confidence in the ministry, you will not have confidence in God either! That is exactly why some of you are not able to get anything from God! If you believe me, every one of you can hear the voice of God, now. And God will do mighty things for you! Ten men met Jesus. Every one of them was a leper. Jesus was the only one who could help them. But they dared not even come close enough for Him to touch them. He didn’t even pray one prayer for them. He didn’t say, “Come, and I will lay my hands on you.” He said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” (See Luke 17:11-19). As they went they were cleanse! A little Syrophenician mother came to Jesus. Her daughter was grievously vexed with a devil. No doubt, she would have liked to bring her daughter to Jesus, but she could not. Nevertheless, she believed that if she could get close enough to talk to Jesus about her daughter, she would be delivered. Jesus didn’t say, “Have someone get an ambulance and bring her to me,” nor ‘”I’ll go there and heal her.” Jesus commended her for her faith, saying, “Be it unto thee as thou wilt!” I can see that daughter running down the walk to meet her mother as she returns home, sound, free, delivered! What made her whole? The words that Jesus spoke! God is still the same today. He is not dumb. He still speaks the words of health and healing! I’ll tell you what makes Jesus speak the word of healing today. I pray; you pray; we agree, without doubting, and God in heaven forms the third angle of the triangle! When two of us agree as touching anything, Jesus speaks the word and says, “It is done!” Jesus says, in the Bible, “Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 18:18). But it takes two of us in harmony and accord with real living, true faith, without a doubt to move God so He will say, “It is done!” In a meeting in California about a year ago, I was preaching along this line. There was one little woman out there who had an arm six inches shorter than the other. She looked up to heaven and said, “Jesus, speak the word only, and this short arm of mine will grow and both my arms will be the same length!” She believed as she prayed! Suddenly, the Spirit impressed her to bend over to touch the ground. As she obeyed God, that short arm was lengthened. She knew that Jesus had SPOKEN THE WORD! This woman came running to give her testimony. She had no sooner finished when another woman ran to the platform. In her hand was an open safety pin, rusty, and sharp as a needle. She said, “While you were preaching, God gave me faith to believe for a miracle. More than a week ago, I swallowed this safety pin. I have been in pain all week. While you were preaching, I could feel it there in my stomach. I began to say to Jesus, “Speak the word only.” I felt it move up into my throat. I kept praying. It moved up and up. At last it was in my mouth!” Her prayer to God had been, “SPEAK THE WORD ONLY!” God heard, and spoke! He will speak the word today, for YOU! He spoke the word for the centurion’s servant! He spoke the word for the man at the pool of Bethesda! He spoke the word for the Nobleman’s son, and for the Syrophenician woman’s daughter! He spoke the word for the starving widow. He spoke the word for the ten lepers. He is speaking the word for men and women just like you today, every day! WHAT IS YOUR NEED? All you have to do is say to Him, “SPEAK THE WORD ONLY!” His word, spoken in heaven, will loose your son or daughter, your husband or wife, your precious old white-haired mother, though they may be a thousand miles away from you. Do you believe it? In His word there is life and healing. “Surely He hath born our griefs, and carried our sorrows . . .” (Isaiah 53:4). “Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.” (Matthew 8:17). “He was wounded for our transgressions . . . And with His stripes we are healed!” (Isaiah 53:5). That is God’s Word! If Jesus says you are healed, who are the skeptics, modernists, infidels, and atheists, to say you are not healed? If Jesus says you are healed, you make Him out a Liar when you say you are not! I believe what Jesus said! Raise your hand toward heaven now, and tell Him you believe IT IS DONE! Health, healing, deliverance, or a miracle can be yours, right now!