God Is So Good: The Testimony of J.H. Walker Sr.
“I guess you remember the little girl you prayed for at Brother Linwood Slay’s tent revival here in Alabama City, who had been sick for two years and five months. She was six years old and weighed only fifteen pounds. Well, Brother Walker, I just want to tell you and praise the Lord for He has really and truly healed her. She began to mend from that night on and now she weighs over thirty pounds and can pull up to a chair.” –Sister Mary Morgan
This “after” photo revealed a healthy young Maxine.
General Overseer J.H. Walker was thrilled to receive this letter from an Alabama City mother regarding the healing of her daughter, Maxine. A second letter three months later brought further confirmation along with “before” and “after” photos revealing the dramatic improvement of the young girl. During the summer of 1938, Overseer Walker had been assisting Linwood Slay in “an old time, Pentecostal revival” when the distraught mother brought her precious daughter for prayer. Doctors had given up on the young girl, but according to General Overseer Walker’s testimony, as he prayed the power of God came upon the girl and all those around her. Mary Morgan was confident that her daughter was healed, and she sent the photographs and letters to confirm it. For J.H. Walker, this confirmation that God still heals was one of many he experienced throughout his lifetime.
Louisiana born John Herbert Walker Sr. was the oldest son in a family of six. Born in 1900, he experienced many healings during his seventy-six years of life. Along his journey, he served as evangelist, pastor, state overseer, president of the Bible Training School, editor-in-chief of Church of God publications, executive missions secretary, member of the Executive Council, and fourth general overseer of the Church of God. Well respected outside the movement, Walker was a member of the constitutional committees of both the National Association of Evangelicals and the Pentecostal World Fellowship.
Walker first heard the Pentecostal message at the age of fifteen when Evangelist W.A. Capshaw preached in the community of Holly Ridge, Louisiana. Soon the teenage Walker was both a charter member and pastor of his home-town congregation. When the young minister contracted malaria and seemed near death for three weeks, his mother called for the evangelist, who quickly traveled two hundred miles to pray. Walker was instantly healed and experienced many other healings during his lifetime, including healing from a ruptured appendix and his first stroke.
Yet, he also experienced the pain of sickness, suffering, and death. His first fiancée died during the 1918 influenza epidemic, and the young Walker was called on to preach her funeral. Another stroke confined him to a wheel chair for the last nine years of his life. Through it all, his faith remained unshaken. Even in a wheelchair, he brought encouragement, hope, happiness and optimism to those who visited him. His testimony until the end was always “God is so good to all of us!”
This article was written by Church of God Historian David G. Roebuck, Ph.D., who is director of the Dixon Pentecostal Research Center and assistant professor of the history of Christianity at Lee University. This “Church of God Chronicles” was first published in the June 2005 Church of God Evangel.
