This article was inspired by the wave of social media posts celebrating camp-meetings happening across the United States this season. Seeing those posts stirred a curiosity about the rich history of camp-meetings in the American church, which led to the re-discovery of a remarkable firsthand account of the 1913 Anderson, Indiana Camp-Meeting — one of the most powerful gatherings in the early history of the Church of God movement. That account, found in the opening chapter of Camp-Meeting Sermons 1913, originally published by the Gospel Trumpet Company and now digitally preserved by The Gospel Truth at here is so rich with timeless truth that it seemed wrong to let it sit unnoticed on a digital shelf. Three themes emerged naturally from that chapter — divine healing, Spirit-led unity, and global mission — and each one felt as urgent and alive for the church today as it was for the thousands who gathered on that Indiana camp ground more than a century ago.
Written by Timothy Downing, Missionary in Ecuador
“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”
— Hebrews 13:8
There are moments in history when heaven seems to lean especially close to earth. When the veil between the eternal and the everyday grows thin, and the power of God moves among His people in ways that leave no room for doubt and every reason for praise. The camp-meeting held in Anderson, Indiana, from June 6 through 15, 1913, was one of those moments.
People came from every direction — from the East and the West, from the North and the South. Some traveled more than a thousand miles. They came hungry, some of them desperate, carrying burdens of sin, sorrow, and sickness that only God could lift. And lift them He did. What unfolded over those ten days was not a carefully orchestrated program of religious performance. It was the living God moving among His people in sovereign, unmistakable power — healing bodies, delivering the oppressed, and reminding a watching world that the Jesus of the Gospels had not retired from the business of miracles.
He never does.
A God Who Still Answers Prayer
Before a single service began, the prayers were already rising. In the weeks and months leading up to the meeting, 1,272 prayer requests poured in from across the country and around the world — sent by telegraph, telephone, and mail. Men and women who could not make the journey to Anderson still longed to touch the hem of His garment, and so they wrote. They asked. They believed.
This is worth pausing over, because it tells us something important about the nature of faith. These people did not wait until they were in the room. They did not hold back their faith until conditions were perfect. They prayed from their homes, their sickbeds, their places of quiet desperation — and God heard them. Letters began arriving before the meeting had even closed, reporting that the Lord had already answered. One woman wrote that she had been healed of cancer, her body restored in direct response to the prayers offered on her behalf hundreds of miles away.
The prophet Isaiah had spoken of a day when God would come and save — when blind eyes would open, deaf ears would hear, and the lame would leap like a deer (Isaiah 35:4-6). At Anderson in 1913, those ancient words found fresh and vivid fulfillment. And the anchor of it all was a simple, bedrock truth drawn from Hebrews 13:8: Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever. The same Jesus who opened blind eyes in Galilee was present in Anderson, Indiana. The same compassion that moved Him to touch the leper, to raise the widow’s son, to say to the paralyzed man “Rise, take up your bed and walk” — that same compassion was moving through those meetings, service after service, day after day.
He has not changed. Not then. Not now. Not ever.
The Lame Walked, the Deaf Heard
The testimonies from those ten days read like pages torn from the book of Acts.
An elderly woman arrived at the meeting so crippled with rheumatism that every step was an ordeal. She had depended on her cane for so long that life without it seemed unimaginable. Prayer was offered over her in simple, believing faith — and she stood up and walked. “This is the first step I have taken without my cane for a long time,” she declared, and she walked to her car with the cane tucked under her arm like a trophy of grace. A day or two later she returned. The cane stayed home. She came praising God.
Sister W. R. Bradshaw of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, had spent more than nine years as an invalid, most of that time unable to walk. She was brought to the meeting in a wheelchair. When hands were laid upon her and prayer was offered in faith, she rose and walked — and from that point on, she made the journey back and forth from her tent to the meeting on her own two feet.
Three crutches were held up from the pulpit during the healing services — physical evidence of what God had done, displayed before the congregation like Ebenezer stones of remembrance. Among those who no longer needed his crutches was Henry Hill of Reed City, Michigan, who had been afflicted with paralysis for eight months. He hobbled into that meeting on crutches. He walked out without them, saved in his soul and healed in his body at the same moment, because the God who forgives sin is the same God who restores broken bodies.
Deaf ears were opened. One woman who had struggled with deafness found she could suddenly hear a person speaking in a low whisper. Another sister, whose hearing had been severely diminished for years, received such a healing touch that she could hear a clock ticking across the room — a sound she had not been able to detect in longer than she could remember.
And then there were the cancers.
Three people stood in the congregation and testified that they had been healed of cancer at some point in their lives through the power of God. One sister — afflicted with a cancer that had spread almost entirely around her body — testified that when hands were laid on her and prayer was offered, she was instantly healed. Not gradually. Instantly. And not a scar remained on her body.
A woman from the city of Anderson itself was brought to one of the healing services by a trained nurse. She was sorely afflicted with a large cancer. She had never heard teaching on divine healing before, but word had reached her of what God was doing at the camp-meeting, and something in her heart stirred toward hope. A group of skeptical onlookers came with her — not to worship, but to watch. The nurse monitored her patient’s pulse throughout the prayer, watching for any change. And then the change came. The woman rose from her place, moved back and forth among her friends, pressed through the crowd, said she wanted to shake hands with everybody, and seemed — the account tells us — almost to forget that she had been afflicted at all. Many who had come merely to observe came forward themselves that day, asking that prayer be offered for them too.
That is what an encounter with the living God tends to do. It turns spectators into seekers.
One Man’s Long Road to Sight
Of all the healing accounts from those ten days, perhaps none is more layered — or more searching — than the story of George Petty of Urbana, Ohio.
George was not always a man of faith. By his own testimony, he had been a wicked and reckless man. When conviction of sin found him, he did not yield to it. And so God, in His severe mercy, allowed blindness to come upon him for three days. In the darkness, George finally surrendered his heart to God. The blindness lifted. And with his restored sight came a clear sense of calling — God was asking him to preach the gospel.
He made a promise. If God would help him pay a debt of several hundred dollars, he would answer the call. God prospered him, and by mid-December the debt was fully paid. But when January came, George told the Lord he could not — or would not — step into the responsibilities of ministry. That very night he went to bed at ten o’clock, and at half past two in the morning he woke up completely blind.
He spent years in that darkness. And for a time, he used the blindness as his reason to retreat further from God rather than run toward Him. But a few months before the 1913 camp-meeting, George Petty yielded himself fully to God and determined to do His will — whatever it cost. He came to Anderson blind, but he came expecting. That is the language the account uses: expecting to receive his sight.
He was prayed for in one of the earlier services, and for the first time in more than five years he could recognize his wife’s face. He could describe a person standing near him. And in the afternoon healing service, he testified that he was believing God for even more — he wanted to be able to read the Word of God with his own eyes. Prayer was offered again, and he testified that his sight had improved further.
George Petty’s story is not simply a healing account. It is a story about the cost of delayed obedience and the faithfulness of a God who pursues His children even through affliction, who does not abandon the one who finally turns home. His story asks each of us a question we would do well to sit with honestly: Is there a calling, a step of obedience, a surrender you have been delaying? The God who pursued George through years of blindness is the same God who is patient with you today. But His patience is not indifference. He is calling. He is waiting. And He is able to restore far more than physical sight.
What This Means for Us
It would be easy to read accounts like these as inspiring but distant — remarkable stories from another era, another place, another kind of faith. But the verse that anchored the 1913 healing services anchors us still: Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.
He has not grown weaker. His compassion has not cooled. The same Spirit who moved through that camp ground in Anderson is available to every believer who comes to God in humble, expectant faith. James 5:14-15 still stands in our Bibles: “Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.” This is not a historical artifact. It is a living command.
What we see in the Anderson meetings is not a strange anomaly of religious history. We see the natural result of a people who gathered in genuine unity, who prayed with believing hearts, who submitted themselves to the Word and the Spirit without reservation, and who expected God to be exactly who He said He is.
So let us ask ourselves honestly:
- Do we approach God’s promises about healing with genuine faith, or with a kind of polite skepticism dressed up in theological caution?
- When was the last time you prayed for someone’s physical healing with the kind of bold, expectant faith described in James 5?
- Is there an area of your own life — body, soul, or spirit — where you need to come before God with open hands and say, “Lord, I am expecting”?
A Closing Word of Hope
The woman who walked away from that Anderson meeting with her hands raised, praising God for her restored sight, did not walk away because she had everything figured out. She walked away because she had encountered the living Christ. The sister who returned to the meeting with her cane under her arm did not need a theological treatise on healing. She needed — and received — a touch from the same Jesus who once said to a blind man beside the road, “What do you want me to do for you?” (Luke 18:41).
He is still asking that question.
The 1913 camp-meeting reminds us that God’s power is not rationed by the century we live in or limited by the smallness of our expectations. Where His people gather in faith, in unity, in humble submission to His Word — He shows up. He always has. He always will.
Come to Him today with whatever you are carrying. Come expecting. Come believing. The Jesus of Anderson, Indiana — the Jesus of Galilee, of Jerusalem, of every generation — is the same Jesus who meets you right where you are.
And He is more than enough.
Take a moment right now to write down one specific need — your own or someone you love — and bring it before God in prayer. Ask Him for faith that trusts His character, submits to His will, and waits expectantly for His answer. He hears every prayer. Not one is lost.
