“After being sufficiently enlightened [by God’s word] our attitude toward sickness should be the same as our attitude toward sin. Our purpose to have our body healed should be as definite as our purpose to have our soul healed.” F. F. Bosworth, Christ the Healer

I tried to imagine receiving 225,000 written testimonies of physical healing coming in via mail. If I were in ministry for 50 years, that would be 4,500+ testimonies per year that people took the time to write out and send, and more than 12 testimonies every single day.

This was the legacy of Fred Francis Bosworth, or F.F. Bosworth as he was known.

Moreover, Bosworth saw over one million people come to Christ through his evangelism.

Dying of Tuberculosis

Bosworth was saved at a Methodist meeting, but later contracted tuberculosis as a young man. Weak and dying, he boarded a train to Georgia. There, a Miss Maddie Perry (a Methodist healing evangelist) laid hands on Bosworth; the tuberculosis died on the spot and the young man was given new lungs.

With this wondrous healing, Bosworth began a career as a businessman and at age 27, married. After reading of the miraculous healings through John Alexander Dowie, Bosworth and his wife decided to move to Zion, Illinois where Dowie was ministering.

After being trained in healing and evangelism, Bosworth and his wife heard about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit happening at Asuza Street. They decided to travel there and see it for themselves.

Asuza Street and Maria Woodworth Etter

The revival at Asuza Street was not only replete with signs and wonders, but the presence of the Holy Spirit created the level playing field for every believer spoken of in Galatians 3:28, where “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Bosworth received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and consequently refused to adhere to the segregation that separated whites and blacks in the south, even in the church.

Because of this, he was attacked by a violent mob in Texas following a service in which he ministered to both races. The mob beat him and kicked him so that, missing his train, he had to walk with a broken wrist nine miles back to the pastor’s house where he was staying. He later wrote to his mother what an honor it was to suffer for Christ.

In 1912, Bosworth started a church in Dallas, Texas and invited Maria Woodworth Etter to preach for him. Etter was moving in the gifts of the Spirit before Asuza Street, and her tent meetings would see over 20,000 people flock to hear the gospel, and repent and receive healing.

After six months, Etter ignited Bosworth’s own ministry in such a way that he felt to give over the pastorship of his church and begin traveling full-time, preaching and praying for the sick.

Bosworth saw the Lord move powerfully, and he had a particular anointing to pray for the deaf. David Du Plessis reported that in 1928, he attended a Bosworth meeting in which they’d brought in children who attended a school for the deaf to receive prayer. Bosworth prayed for each child individually, and instantly, each child began to hear perfectly. An outcome of this was that the school for the deaf shut down because they no longer had any students.

No retirement for God’s servants

Although he had settled in Florida and was no longer doing much public ministry, Bosworth was sought after as a mentor by a young Oral Roberts, T. L. Osborn, and William Branham. Bosworth traveled with Branham to Africa where crowds of up to 75,000 gathered. He was astounded to watch God heal multitudes wholesale at one time, without anyone laying hands on individuals. Reignited at what the Lord was doing, he took up ministry again and began preaching on his own.

Rather than finish his last years in ease, Bosworth preached in Africa, Cuba, and Japan. His final campaign was in Japan, and when he returned home to Florida in January 1958, he reportedly took to bed. When family asked him why, he said that the Lord had told him that he had finished his race. Each night, he urged them to go on to bed. He was excited that this might be the night the Lord took him home.

Three weeks later, Bosworth graduated to glory at the age of 81.  His son Bob later wrote that in his final moments his father “greeted people on the other side for several hours and then he stopped breathing.”

A Marriage of Spirit and Word

The sermons of F. F. Bosworth, compiled in the book Christ the Healer, offer a wonderfully solid approach to the revelation that healing is always God’s will; that healing is in fact part of the atonement, and that the wearisome faith-killing philosophies that plague the church today and keep it from moving in power were very much present a century ago when Bosworth had to fight through them to see victories.

References:

https://roscoereporting.blogspot.com/2021/10/tl-osborns-farewell-to-his-mentor-ff.html