Intercession of Rees Howells
by Doris Ruscoe

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. –Mark 12:31 Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart….Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people. –Leviticus 19:17,18

One of my early converts, Joe Evans, was in the last stages of consumption and the doctor advised him to go to a tropical country, but his parents were very poor. I was baffled at first when the Holy spirit told me to follow the doctors advice and also sent me £300. Madeira was decided upon, but who was to take him? A great future was beginning to open up for me. Would you attend to a consumptive in the last stages of the disease, and share his room? Was I willing to lose my health for the sake of Joe’s healing? I was tested to the hilt but I gave up preparation for the ministry in order to take him to Madeira.

The cheaper of the two hotels was Portuguese but the food soon upset Joe so the Lord told me to let Joe go to the English hotel and live myself on 10d. a day. The English missionary offered me the Sailor’s Rest, which was the basement of his mission house. This had not been occupied for months, except for numerous insects. My food was covered with them in the morning and this, along with everything else, seemed altogether too much. I began to have thoughts in my mind against the missionary, and as I nursed this feeling I wanted to cry. But the Holy Spirit said, ‘Let me speak to you. Have you not preached on the way Ezekiel lived? Would you like me to put you on that instead of the Sailor’s Rest?’ I asked the Lord to forgive me and he said, ‘It is not that. I brought you to Madeira to show you that there was a position you had not come up to—loving those who do something against you.’ I saw the difference between the Saviour and the way I was limiting the Holy Spirit in me. That day I went out to the hills of Madeira and worshipped the Saviour. I said, ‘Don’t let me free until you gain this in me.’ The Saviour was ‘wounded in the house of his friends’ and I knew now that I had not gone to Madeira only so that my friend would be healed but for this change to be made in me. In six weeks I changed, and what a life I came into! Oh, that perfect love that was in me! Next day the evangelist asked me where I was living and I said, ‘In the Sailor’s Rest.’ He said, ‘Not in the house but in the Sailor’s Rest? Do you call that Christianity in your country?’ I replied, ‘Do you pay for your electric light or your laundry? That is what the missionary does for me.’ What victory!

Soon after this Joe became very ill and wanted to go home to die. I said I could not do that: it would be the first defeat in my life. I said, ‘Surely the Lord will speak to me,’ and within an hour he did. He told me he had brought Joe to Madeira to go to the very end of the law of nature, but he would be healed within a month. A specialist who examined Joe said he was in a very critical condition and should go home. When I announced that Joe was to be healed, the effect on everyone, including the missionary, was very great. Meanwhile I wrote home to say we would be back in a month’s time and that Joe was to be restored. We would send a cable on the morning of the healing. Early that morning Joe came into my room and there was not change in him. The Lord said, ‘Are you sending that cable?’ I asked the cause of the delay and he said, ‘If you take the healing from me against what you can see and what Joe says, you will have gained a higher position than in the healing of your uncle.’ Within an hour I came through and sent the cable: ‘Victory.’ Next day the Lord came down on Joe like a shower of rain and he was healed on the spot. Two days later we left Madeira, and when we reached home Joe’s doctor examined him and could find no trace of the disease. On the Sunday the doctor went to chapel for the first time since he had come to the district.

–from The Intercession of Rees Howells