Rex Humbard, Premier Televangelist Who Blessed Millions
By Julio Severo
The first time Rex Humbard met
Elvis Presley, “the King of Rock and Roll” asked the televangelist a pointed
question:
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| Rex Humbard |
Maude Aimee Humbard, Rex’s wife,
said to Presley, “I’ve been praying that you would dedicate your life to Jesus
Christ.”
“Elvis went to pieces,” Humbard
wrote. “He cried so hard he began to tremble.”
Humbard wrote that he and his wife
joined hands with Presley and prayed for him. Then, at the end of the meeting,
Presley said, “You and Maude Aimee coming here today and praying with me is the
most wonderful Christmas present that Elvis Presley has ever received, and I
want to thank you.”
Humbard preached a sermon at Presley’s
funeral in 1977 in Memphis.
According to the New York Times,
“Elvis Presley was a loyal viewer” and admirer of Humbard.
Even though coming from a
background as a gospel singer in the Assemblies of God, Presley draft away from
the Gospel. He began to get interested again in the Gospel only through the
simple message of Humbard, a charismatic televangelist.
Presley
attended no church and Humbard’s program became his weekly service. Just as
Presley, millions of people did not attend any church, or because they were not
Christian or any other eventuality.
“The vast majority of people do not
go to church and the only way we can reach them is through TV,” Humbard wrote
in his autobiography, “Miracles in My Life.”
“We must go into their homes — into
their hearts — to bring them the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
The special slogan of his program was
“You Are Loved!”
His program became an important
service even in Brazil. There was a time when my mother had no church near to
go, and Humbard’s program was our only church service and encouraged us as nothing
else did.
Rex
Humbard was the first evangelist to have a weekly national television program
in America. His program combined some elements of popular entertainment with
evangelism, an approach also followed by Billy Graham. They were pioneers in
combining preaching and music.
In spite of the modern approach, he
said to his audience, “What America needs is an old-fashioned, Holy Ghost,
God-sent, soul-savin’, devil-hatin’ revival!”
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| Humbard’s grandchildren singing in his TV program |
Humbard began his career in
broadcasting at age 13, singing gospel songs on radio. He was ordained during
the 1940s and in 1949 he began airing his sermons from a CBS-TV affiliate
in Indianapolis, when the visual medium was largely untapped by evangelists. In
1952, weekly Sunday messages began broadcasting from his nondenominational
Cathedral of Tomorrow, a renovated theater that seated 5,400 people, in
Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.
Later, his program, carried by more
than 2,000 TV stations and broadcast in some 77 languages, featured revival
preaching mixed with lively musical numbers, including folksy guitar music and
songs performed by Humbard, a choir, and guest performers such as Johnny
Cash and June
Carter Cash.
In
the last 1970s, B.J. Thomas, a popular singer, appeared in Humbard’s show,
telling his testimony of conversion to Jesus Christ and singing Christian
songs. After Elvis Presley, B.J. Thomas was probably the most famous American
singer in that generation.
His ministry eventually extended to
Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Far East, Australia, Latin America and Africa,
giving it a worldwide reach of 8 million viewers, greater than any of his
contemporaries by the late 1970s. In Brazil, he attracted large crowds at the
giant soccer stadium in São Paulo for weeks.
Critics of televangelists often accuse:
“Why are not televangelists going to preach the Gospel in faraway poor nations?”
Rex Humbard did it. He spent millions of dollars, of the donations from his
U.S. supporters, to have a Christian program reaching Africa, Brazil and Latin
America.
Poor nations could not afford his
program. Even so, U.S. supporters donated to helped Humbard to reach these
nations.
“One
of the distinctions of Rex Humbard’s ministry is the popularity maintained in
South American countries, especially Brazil, where during a recent crusade
appearance in Rio de Janeiro, more than 180,000 people filled a soccer stadium
to hear the word of God,” according to Fort Worth Star Telegram.
Humbard’s
Sunday television program premiered in Brazil in the old Tupi Network,
currently SBT, in 1975. This program, which was the first major charismatic
influence in Brazil and began when there was no charismatic (neo-Pentecostal)
church in Brazil, drew soon the attention of evangelicals from different
denominations, and when Humbard visited Brazil for the first time in 1978,
80,000 people filled the Pacaembu stadium, in São Paulo, and 100,000 filled the
Maracanã stadium, no Rio de Janeiro.
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| Humbard family in Brasília, Brazil |
In one service alone, in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, more than 180,000 Brazilians attended the one televised
crusade meeting and over 100,000 came forward to dedicate their lives to
Christ. In the South American crusades, over one million people attended in
person to hear the family sing and Rex bring the word.
In
his crusades, he would ask: “How many of you here believe in Jesus Christ?
Let’s see your hands.” A sea of hands would rise.
Last
month, my Portuguese blog received this message from a reader:
“Today, August 8, 2017, as a 57-year old man
reviewing my papers and an old picture of him [Humbard] and wife and children
dated February 1978, I had the curiosity to see (know) on internet news about
my spiritual father wondering if he still was in this our material world, but I
learnt about his passing 10 years after. On October 1977, I was a teenager when
I began to watch on TV Pastor Rex Humbard, and I fell in love with his
messages. I was extremely Catholic in that time, but one day on October 1977 I
was watching him in a very small TV set that my father had received as a gift
from his boss, a kindhearted bank clerk. In this point the Holy Spirit touched
me powerfully and I spent some three days silently and discreetly crying, so that
my family would not perceive it. Afterwards, a Baptist minister explained to me
that it was a conversion and, to sum up, from that point on my life experienced
only victory.” — Deli, in Ibirataia, Bahia, Brazil.
Humbard’s reach was incredible. He
had a major role in the expansion of the evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic
(neo-Pentecostal) movement in Brazil.
In 1977, 500 million heard or saw Humbard’s
one-hour radio/TV gospel service broadcast from Jerusalem on Christmas Eve in
seven languages simultaneously.
He was termed one of the “Top 25
Principal Architects of the American Century” by U.S. News & World Report
on December 27, 1999.
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| Humbard grandchildren praising Jesus |
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| Televangelists, 1979. Left to right Demos Shakarian, Billy Graham, Rex Humbard, and Pat Robertson. |
In the late 1960’s, Time Magazine
came to Akron, Ohio, to meet with Rex Humbard in preparation for a feature
story. The magazine’s editor-in-chief himself flew to Akron to write the story.
After
meeting with Rex and his family for many days, he explained to Rex that he did
not know what to call Rex and his ministry. As far as the editor-in-chief understood,
Rex was a pastor, evangelist and a television preacher. When the article came
out in print, the editor had chosen a unique phrase to describe Rex, referring
to him as simply “the Tele-Evangelist.”
This was a totally new phrase,
never before used to describe a television pastor.
Time
magazine said, “Today, Rex Humbard has come closer than any other human being
in history… to preaching the Gospel in all of the world… more than any other
evangelist, he has taken up the challenge.”
His full name was Alpha Rex
Emmanuel Humbard and he was a son of an itinerant preacher, Alpha E. Humbard,
and Martha Bell Childers Humbard. When he was 2 days old, he said, his mother
consecrated him to God’s service.
His
father was born in 1890 near Little Rock, Arkansas, and he had a rough
childhood. Poverty, fights, liquor, and hard work dominated the world in which
young Alpha was reared. However, he sensed God’s calling at a young age and
overcame the odds to answer this call. Alpha was a practical, direct,
no-nonsense kind of preacher whose compassion for people overcame any deficit
created by his lack of formal education. Perhaps it was this lack of high
culture — combined with a dependence upon God — that allowed him to touch the
masses where they were at.
Alpha once recalled that a
seminary-trained minister bitterly complained that, while he was a learned man
with good diction and degrees, he could not draw the crowds like Alpha, whom he
described as “an old farm boy, a clodhopper who can’t talk good English.” Alpha
recalled that he recommended that the minister throw away his cigar, which he
was smoking while complaining, and get on his knees and pray. Alpha was not
alone — his innovative, sometimes rough-and-tumble ways reflected a whole
generation of early Pentecostal preachers.
He attended the Assemblies of God
in 1914, but never joined that church. Alpha built up a thriving church,
orphanage, and publishing house near Hot Springs.
Alpha’s group seemed not to espouse
strange tongues as the initial evidence of the Holy Spirit, as taught by the
Assemblies of God. This view would put him in par with modern charismatics, who
do not see the gift tongues as the first evidence. It attracted
independent-minded Pentecostals from across the nation.
It
was into this Pentecostal entrepreneurial preacher’s family that Rex Humbard
was born in 1919. In the summer of 1932, young Rex watched a Ringling Brothers
and Barnum and Bailey Circus tent fill with crowds in Hot Springs. While he was
not allowed to attend such “worldly” diversions, he did draw some heavenly
inspiration from the event. He promised himself that he would “spend [his] life
trying to put God on Main Street.” As he grew up, he saw how gospel music
attracted crowds.
It should come as no surprise,
then, that Rex met his wife, Maude Aimee, while singing gospel music. Rex not
only impressed Maude Aimee, but also her pastor, Albert Ott of Bethel Temple
Assembly of God. Ott brought the Humbards on staff at his Dallas church. Rex
and Maude Aimee married in 1942 and traveled with the Humbard family ministry
for the next ten years. Following a successful meeting in Akron, Ohio, Rex
decided to leave the family ministry and to pastor a local church in 1953. The
Akron congregation, Calvary Temple, was renamed Cathedral of Tomorrow when a
large round building was erected in 1958. Seating 5,400 people, it became one
of the largest churches in the United States.
Rex,
like his father, did not teach initial evidence doctrine of the baptism in the
Holy Spirit and emphasized evangelism rather than Pentecostal doctrines. This
caused some confusion among some evangelicals and Pentecostals, who were
uncertain which camp he was in.
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| Rex Humbard praying for prayer requests from viewers. Each program had room to pray for healing, salvation, deliverance and prosperity. |
Unlike
Pat Robertson, Rev. Jerry Falwell and other televangelists, Humbard, as Billy
Graham, avoided the political messages of the religious right. “For me to
preach about the Vietnam War,” he said in the early ’70s, “would be like going
to a blacksmith to get a tooth pulled.” If Jesus were preaching today, he said
a decade later, “He would never get into politics.”
His television programs were essentially
praise and preaching programs that highlighted God’s love and forgiveness and
avoided controversial political or doctrinal debates.
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| Humbard family in Brasilia, Brazil |
In 1998, Humbard told about the
major influences in his life. He said:
In my more than 66 years of full-time
ministry, four great religious leaders have had a profound impact on my life.
Dr. Billy
Graham, who I have known for more than 50 years.
Oral
Roberts, who in 1949 prayed the
prayer of faith for the healing of our oldest son, Rex, Jr., who suffered from
tuberculosis and was healed.
Kathryn
Kuhlman, probably the closest
friend my wife, Maude Aimee, and I have ever had, touched our lives in a
wonderful and personal way.
Benny
Hinn, who I have had the
privilege of ministering with in his crusade meetings throughout the United
States and Canada.
Humbard’s comment is a part of his
introduction in the biography “Kathryn Kuhlman, Her Spiritual Legacy and Its
Impact on My Life,” written by Benny Hinn. This Pentecostal biography was
published by the originally Calvinist publishing house Thomas Nelson Publishers
in 1998.
Kathryn
Kuhlman (1907–1976) was no stranger to Calvinists. In the late 1940s, she held
her healing services among Pentecostals and mainline Protestants, including at
the First Presbyterian Church and at Carnegie Hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
One
of the major sources for this article on Humbard was the book “The Century of
the Holy Spirit: 100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal, 1901-2001,”
written by Vinson Synan and published by Thomas Nelson Publishers.
Paradoxically, in 2013 Thomas
Nelson Publishers published the book “Strange Fire,” by the radical Calvinist
theologian John MacArthur, which misrepresented many
experiences of Pentecostal televangelists as “demonic.”
Christians should avoid aggressive ministers who are busy attacking other Christians over petty issues. In the 1980s, I had
several Humbard’s books, including on biblical prophecy and on how to be
prosperous. I had received these books free of charge because, when I received
them in the 1970s, I could not afford them. I kept them with me for years.
Among
Humbard’s books there were: The Prayer Key New Testament, How to Live Life and
Love It, Your Key to God’s Bank and many others. They were books encouraging supernatural experiences
when there was no charismatic (neo-Pentecostal) church in Brazil.
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| Your Key to God's Bank: How to Cash Your Check for Spiritual Power, Physical Healing, Financial Success |
While anti-charismatic ministers
accuse ministers like Humbard of exploiters and nothing else, the Rex Humbard
ministry in Brazil had a wonderful policy that you could order books by paying
whatever you could afford. If you could afford nothing, they would send you
their books anyway. It is a generosity I never saw anti-charismatic ministers
doing. It was through this generosity that I received Humbard’s books and I
learnt.
Although
Rex Humbard came from a Pentecostal background and sometimes he talked about
prosperity, he did not emphasize such issue in his ministry. There was balance.
The following statement was made by the director of public relations for his
church: “The Cathedral of Tomorrow is not Pentecostal; neither is the pastor or
any of the staff. Neither are we affiliated with any Pentecostal organization,
and the magazine is not slanted at the Pentecostal message at any time. We are
an interdenominational evangelistic church.”
The
statement should not be interpreted to mean that the church was anti-charismatic,
but rather that it was determined to avoid controversy. Prayer for the sick and
anointing with oil were a regular part of the service, but the stress was
always on the message of salvation. It was a formula that worked with a great
deal of success.
Humbard (August 13, 1919 — September
21, 2007) was the most balanced charismatic preacher in his generation, and his
ministry blessed millions.
With
information from:
Catholic
University of Pernambuco.
The Cambridge Companion to
Pentecostalism (Cambridge Companions to Religion). Cambridge University Press.
New York Times.
Darrin J. Rodgers, in Flower
Pentecostal Heritage Center.
Britannica Encyclopedia.
Washington Post.
Christian Broadcasting Network.
Akron Beacon Journal.
George Thomas Kurian, Nelson’s
Dictionary of Christianity: The Authoritative Resource on the Christian World,
Thomas Nelson.
The New International Dictionary
of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements: Revised and Expanded Edition. Zondervan.
Encyclopedia of Religion, pages 7711-7712.
© 2005 Thomson Gale, a part of The Thomson Corporation.
Christian Post.
Portuguese
version of this article: Rex
Humbard, o primeiro e mais importante televangelista que abençoou milhões
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