The Secret Place of Kenneth E. Hagin

Kenneth Erwin Hagin was born on August 20, 1917 in McKinney, Texas. His childhood was marked by weakness of body and by a searching heart. At age fifteen he suffered paralysis and a grave diagnosis that doctors said would end in death. Confined to a bed with a failing heart and a blood disorder, he read the Gospels again and again. The words of Jesus in Mark chapter 11 and verse 23 and 24 arrested him. He prayed, believed, and on an August morning in 1934 he acted on what he had seen in Scripture, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and standing. His strength returned. He never told the story as a legend. He told it as a Scripture lesson that pushed a boy into a life of prayer and trust in the Word of God.

Soon he sensed a call to preach and began to hold services in small Texas towns and schoolhouses. He learned to pray before he spoke, to listen for the inward witness of the Spirit, and to keep a tender conscience. In those early years he served in small congregations, visited the sick, and spent long hours with an open Bible. In 1937 he received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and from that point onward his prayer life deepened with long seasons of praying in the Spirit and with a growing emphasis on both the written Word and the present help of the Holy Spirit. In the early 1940s he pastored congregations in Texas and taught his people to pray the promises of God, to forgive quickly, and to walk in love. In 1949 he laid down the pastorate and entered itinerant ministry, traveling from church to church with a Bible, a simple outline, and a heart given to prayer for the sick and the lost.

He often spoke of a series of encounters in prayer beginning in 1950 in which the Lord corrected and commissioned him. The message that emerged was steady and practical. Jesus has given authority to His church. Prayer must be offered according to the Word and in the leading of the Spirit. Faith speaks in line with Scripture and refuses to draw back. Through the 1950s and 1960s he crisscrossed the United States, preaching in evenings and holding morning teaching services for pastors and believers. He taught the Ephesians prayers for revelation and strength. He led congregations to pray for their cities and to expect God to confirm His Word. Along the way he founded a small publishing arm to get sermons and study outlines into the hands of ordinary saints. In 1968 a monthly magazine began to circulate so that testimony, Bible teaching, and calls to prayer could reach beyond the tent or the auditorium.

In 1973 he convened the first summer Campmeeting in Tulsa, a gathering that blended preaching, teaching, worship, and unhurried corporate prayer. In 1974 he established RHEMA Bible Training Center in the Tulsa area to train workers in Scripture, prayer, evangelism, and the life of the Spirit. Healing School and Prayer School soon followed, daily laboratories where students learned to pray for the sick, to intercede with Scripture in hand, and to keep the love of God as the atmosphere of every ministry. Graduates carried the same habits into churches and mission outposts across many nations, forming networks of prayer groups and congregations that prized the Word and the secret place.

He never tried to build an empire of novelty. He tried to build a people who pray and believe. He taught believers to feed on the epistles, to renew the mind with Scripture, and to hold fast the confession of faith without letting go of humility or love. When critics misread his message as a scheme to get things from God, he answered by preaching longer on love, on forgiveness, on the motives of the heart, and on the fact that the greatest blessings are the knowledge of God and the joy of obeying His will. In his later years he wrote steadily, preached in conferences, and watched RHEMA campuses multiply. On September 19, 2003 he went to be with the Lord in Tulsa after a morning spent with family. The river of teaching and prayer he had helped to start continued to flow through the workers he had trained.