Roberts Liardon - Maria Woodworth-Etter: The Complete Collection of Her Life Teachings

Copyright 2021Roberts Liardon

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version.

Published by Harrison House Publishers
Shippensburg, PA 17257

ISBN 13 TP: 978-1-6803-1695-7
ISBN 13 eBook: 978-1-6803-1696-4
ISBN 13 HC: 978-1-6803-1698-8
ISBN 13 LP: 978-1-6803-1697-1

Previous ISBN: 978-1-60683-425-1
First Printing 2000

For Worldwide Distribution, Printed in the U.S.A.
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Introduction

R elevant has become the new buzz word in the Christian world and has been for over the last 10 years. Churches are undergoing face-lifts, changing their services around to be more appealing, trying to rid themselves of the old religious order.

Im for it. Previously serving the Lord as a pastor, I remember working hard to improve our image striving to be relevant to my community. I had a Saturday night service in which we tried to appeal to a younger, career-focused crowd in particular by changing the music. We all wore jeans that night. On Sunday mornings we had a ministry team available to help single mothers as they pulled into the parking lot, pulling strollers out of trunks and getting kids to Sunday School. We also sought to appeal to the youth and children with all the latest techno gadgets. We even had an espresso bar and a bookstore that looked just like Barnes and Noble. I do not regret making any of those changes.

But if in our attempts to be relevant and make people comfortable coming to our churches we somehow cross a line and make it uncomfortable for the Holy Spirit to be there then weve lost the only thing that separates us from a club. Only the Holy Spirit can make us truly relevant since only He knows what is in the hearts of the people who sit in your pews and green or blue chairs. Only He can meet their needs and transform their lives.

Imagine the following scenario:

You came to your church one Sunday and someone other than your pastor stood behind the pulpit and spoke to the congregation in tongues for half an hour while your pastor sat leisurely in the front row and listened. Would you remain in the service or slip out after 15 minutes? Would you come back next week even if there was no explanation or interpretation of the tongue that morning? If you had brought your neighbors to church that particular service would you be embarrassed and apologize to them afterward?

I dont know many pastors who wouldnt begin to get uncomfortable in this situation, and possibly take the control of the service and get back on course with the plan. And every pastor I know has someone in their congregation who would send a rebuke via email the minute they got home from church for allowing such a thing, especially since there was no interpretation of the tongue.

Surely, this would be a strange day at church especially for the visitors; or would it? Strange as it was, this is something that actually happened in one of Maria Woodworth-Etters church services.

And for her congregation, experiences like this 28-minute tongue were as common for them as singing the doxology was for other congregations. The Etter congregation may not have had understanding of what exactly was transpiring during that near half hour but evidence would suggest they were content to trust that something divine was going on. And it was. On that particular morning the woman with the tongue, unbeknownst to her, was speaking fluent Romanian. She would find out later that she was speaking directly into the needs of a Romanian family who were first-time visitors. Only the father spoke English.

I cant think of anything more relevant for this Romanian family than to have their heart cry answered in their own language. Put yourself in their shoes. They were completely out of their comfort zone here in the States in the early 1900s, perhaps lonely and feeling isolated from any help, as is normal for someone feeling the confinements of the language barrier and culture shock. They heard about Mother Etters church, they took a chance and God met them as He was so desperate to do.

At another Mother Etter meeting for one womanwhose breast was so overtaken with cancer that it had become an open, puss-filled sorewhat happened at the altar that night was certainly relevant to her and to anyone in the tent, including the reporter who witnessed it firsthand and wrote about it in the paper. According to the report, Mother Etter jumped down from the pulpit unbuttoned the womans blouse and put her hand right on the mangled breast. Someone reading this introduction right now is screaming: lawsuit. I do understand and know firsthand the screaming flesh that accompanies this kind of brave step of ministry. But I assure you that this woman did not sue Mother Etter since she was healed on the spot. Her breast, it was reported, became as new before everyones eyes.

Maria Woodworth Etter had one hero, Jesus Christ. She had been overcome with His love for her and the world as a young girl. She wanted to do what He did and so she studied His life and copied Him. She expected miracles because she had come to know intimately the One who loved so much He would reach through a small, womans frame to restore human lives. She ended up causing quite a commotion and lost her reputation in the eyes of many along the way but irrelevant she was not.

My heart for this book is to let Mother Etter herself prove to you in her sermons that the supernatural should not be extraordinary but ordinary to the life of the believer. In her life story youll read how God anointed her for the spectacular work she was called to. Youll see in her messages that she didnt think it was something God intended to do for her exclusively, but was something He longed for all believers to have operating in their lives.

Maria proved her point when she called upon other ministers in her meetings to work the same miracles as she was working. These unsuspecting men and women were just at the tent meetings to serve in the area of ministry of helps. Help they did when she lined them all up along the altar and started forming lines of needy people in front of them. These ministers were amazed when the same power they had observed in Mother Etter was now flowing through them successfully.

Oh, give me an easy case, one minister begged of her. Mother Etter laughed within herself and directed someone in a wheelchair over to him. That person was healed.

The stories told here and others like them in the next chapter on her life are the product of Mother Etters obedience to the Holy Spirits every unction. You wont come away without the following impressions:

First, God is love. He is hot, penetrating, laser-beam accurate love looking for entrance into peoples lives, their questions, longings, hurts, loneliness, sickness, poverty and oppression.

Second, because of His great passion and compassion that He longs to pour out, there must be a terrible backup of His power in heaven since there is such a small percentage of His people who expect that it would have entrance into the world through them.

Third, God wants to use you, right where you are, to make the difference in peoples lives. God aches for all people and youve got the answer. I hope you will commit with me to be a conduit for this Love, this God we know and enjoy so freely. Let Him touch a fearful and oppressed world through you.