Biography
Manley Beasley was born in 1931, in Texas, in a family of modest means. He grew up in the American South and was converted as a boy. He felt a call to preach in his teens. He was a young man of energy and of strong faith. He attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Fort Worth, where he studied for the ministry. He became a Southern Baptist pastor and served several churches in Texas. As a young preacher, he had a gift for speaking and was noted for his zeal.
He was a man who suffered. In his thirties, he developed a series of serious illnesses, including a heart condition and a number of other ailments. He was told by doctors that he did not have long to live. He was bedridden for long periods and was in constant pain. He spent a great deal of his time in prayer and in reading the Bible. It was in those years of sickness that he developed a deep understanding of faith. He came to see that faith is not a feeling or a mental effort but an act of taking God at His word. He said that faith is acting on the promises of God, without regard to the evidence.
He became an evangelist, and he traveled widely, speaking at revivals and conferences. He was a man who preached while very ill. He is said to have been carried to the pulpit on occasion and to have preached from a chair. His message was on the life of faith, and he spoke with the authority of one who had been tested. He taught that faith is the way to receive the gifts of God and that the believer must learn to walk by faith. He stressed that faith had to be tested and that God often delays an answer to build faith.
He had a great influence on a group of younger preachers, among them Jack Taylor, Junior Hill and others, who became leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention. He mentored them and taught them the principles of faith. He was also a friend of Bailey Smith, who became president of the convention. He spoke at the Southern Baptist Convention and at the pastors' conferences. He was a plain man, who spoke in a Texas accent. He had a sense of humor and a gift for stories.
He was open about the difficulties of faith. He wrote that he did not always understand why some were healed and others were not. He spoke of his own illness and said that he did not claim to have faith to be healed. He believed that he was called to live with the illness. He said that God was able to heal him, but that He had not chosen to do so. He was a man of mixed experiences who did not hide his struggles. His honesty was one of his strengths.
He is also known to have been somewhat controversial. His teaching on faith was sometimes seen as too extreme, and he was criticized by those who thought he put too much stress on the believer's ability to receive from God. Some of those who came under his influence overemphasized the power of faith. He was careful to guard against presumption. He said that faith must rest on the Word of God.
He died in January 1990, at the age of about fifty-eight. The record of his life is limited, and the details here should be checked against fuller sources. His life shows the way that suffering can lead to a deeper understanding of faith, and how a sick man may be a source of strength to others.