God’s Battle Axe – Jack Coe

Jack Coe was born on March 11, 1918 in Oklahoma City, United States of America. He was abandoned by his parents, and was raised in an orphanage where he stayed until he was aged 17. He joined the army during World War II, where he experienced a miraculous healing. Thereafter, he became a minister and began conducting healing revivals while still a soldier. In early 1944, he was ordained an Assemblies of God minister.

      Coe had a dynamic personality and stage presence and soon won the allegiance of thousands. He rented his first tent in 1947 and was an established evangelist when the healing revival broke out in 1947. From then on his influential ministry career enjoyed a meteoric rise to national fame, placing him on the same pedestal as Oral Roberts, the popular leader of the revival. Coe was a powerful preacher. His messages were peppered with humour, presented boldly and dynamic in their effect. Some found him too controversial and impulsive but thousands of people, both black and white, were attracted to his lovable and tender-hearted personality.

     However, his healing ministry was the main attraction. He would walk down rows of wheelchairs and crutches commanding people to be healed and to walk normally. Not all did, but there were large numbers of afflicted who got out of their wheelchairs, threw their walking aids away, or got up from their sick beds and walked out of the meetings healed.

Coe later visited one of Oral Roberts’ crusades to check out his tent. After taking its measurement, he ordered one slightly larger. In July 1951, he announced that his was the largest gospel tent in the world, seating 22,000 people. In 1950, he began to publish his own magazine. It was called the Herald of Healing until 1955 when it was renamed Jack Coe’s International Healing Magazine. Within the first tear, its circulation reached 35,000 and by 1956 it had reached 250,000.

        In 1952, Coe felt led to build an independent congregation in Dallas. Soon, church leaders began to struggle with his extreme independence and were embarrassed by some of his methods. Though he enjoyed good relations with the Assemblies of God, the Dallas situation finally caused his expulsion from the church in 1954.

However, he was able to raise $50,000 in six months to complete the new church building and move from the rented theatre where the church initially met. In 1954, the Dallas Revival Centre was opened with a gala celebration featrueing sermons by leading revival figures such as O. L. Jaggers, A. A. Allen, Gayle Jackson, W, V. Grant, Mildred Wicks, and the then leader of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International, Demos Shakarian. Within two years, it was one of the largest churches in Dallas.

         There were two events in 1956 that seriously affected the healing revival. In February, while preaching in Miami, Florida, Coe was charged with practising medicine without a license. In 1955, he had told the parents of a three year old boy while conducting revival in the city, that he had healed him of his polio. He then told the parents to remove the boy’s leg braces. However, the boy was not cured of the disease and removing the braces left him in constant pain. As a result, the Police arrested Coe and charged him with practising medicine without license: a felony in the state of Florida. He was detained and later released on $5,000 bail.

      Thereafter, Coe appealed to evangelists all over the world to come to Miami and testify in his defense. Many came to take the witness stand, including Gordon Lindsay, Raymond T. Richey, Gayle Jackson and Richard Vinyard. After a two-day trial the judge ruled that he could not “condemn the defendant or anyone who in good faith advocates and practices divine healing” and dismissed the case.

The trial received national publicity bringing the healing revival to the attention of America. Coe maintained that the trial was the result of conspiracy between atheists, reporters and the Churches of Christ, whose ministers were among his main accusers. Their opposition represented the general feeling of many evangelical leaders across the nation. Some thought that the claim of divine healing was a threat to public health. Others had theological objections.

      In December of the same year, Coe became critically ill. Like all itinerant healing evangelists of his day, he ran a tortuous schedule and had been careless with his health. He had long been badly overweight. At first people concluded that it was sheer exhaustion but then his disease was diagnosed as polio. Of all the early healing evangelists, Coe was the most outspoken against medical treatment but he gave his wife permission to admit him to the hospital, to satisfy her own conscience. He died from the illness on 17 December, 1957.

       It is easy to be critical of people who make mistakes in their quest to prosper the Kingdom of God. The people who prefer the seat of the Pharisees to taking risk for God are always the loudest critics. One thing is clear Coe did his best with whatever he was given by God. We should ask ourselves, what would the records of heaven say about us? What citation would the Lord Himself read on us? Would we hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant?” (Mathew 25:23).

        **** Culled from Jack Coe – March 11, 1918 – December 17, 1956, https://www.revival-library.org.