The effects of God’s Word

Taken from "The Spirit Filled Believer’s Handbook" (1993) by Derek Prince. Nelson Word Ltd (1994).


The effect of God’s Word upon the mind, no less than its effect upon the body, has been made real for me in personal experience. I was privileged to receive the highest form of education that Britain had to offer in my generation. This climaxed with seven years at Cambridge University, studying philosophy, both ancient and modern. Always I was seeking something that would give real meaning and purpose to life. Academically I was successful, but inwardly I was still frustrated and unfulfilled.
Finally, as a last resort, I started to study the Bible simply as a work of philosophy. I studied it sceptically, as one who had rejected all forms of religion. Yet before many months, and before I had even reached the New Testament, the entrance of God’s Word had imparted to me the light of salvation, the assurance of sins forgiven, the consciousness of inward peace and eternal life. I had found what I had been seeking: the real meaning of life. (p. 67)

During World War II, while working with the medical services in North Africa, I became sick with a condition of the skin and nerves for which medical science, in that climate and those conditions, could provide no cure. I spent more than one year in the hospital, receiving every kind of treatment available. For more than four months at a stretch I was confined to bed. Eventually, I was discharged from the hospital at my own request, uncured.
I decided to seek no further medical treatment but to put the promises of God in Proverbs 4:20-22 to the test in my own case. Three times a day I went apart by myself, shut myself in with God and His Word, prayed and asked God to make His Word to me what He had promised it should be – medicine to all my flesh.
The climate, the diet and all other external circumstances were as unfavourable as they could be. Indeed, many healthy men all around me were falling sick. Nevertheless, through God’s Word alone, without recourse to any other means of any kind, I received within a short time a complete and permanent cure.
Let me add that I am in no sense criticizing or belittling medical science. I am grateful for all the good that medical science accomplishes. Indeed, I myself was working with the medical services. But the power of medical science is limited; the power of God’s Word is unlimited.
Many Christians of different denominational backgrounds have testimonies similar to mine. I received a letter from a Presbyterian lady who was asked to give a word of testimony in a service in which there were a number of sick people to be prayed for. While this lady was testifying and actually quoting the words of Proverbs 4:20-22, another lady in the seat next to hers, who had been suffering excruciating pain from a crushed disc in her neck, was instantly healed – without any prayer being offered – simply through listening with faith to God’s Word. (p. 64-65)