Martha Richmond

I surely praise God with all my heart for this wonderful Gospel and what it has done for me. I was raised in Iowa and went to a church which taught it was impossible for a Christian to live above sin. They also said the days of miracles were past, and those things were not for us at all. One Sunday afternoon the church members gathered behind the hay stack of a country home, and we each told about what God had done for us. I was just a little child, but God saved my soul that day.

As time went on, my heart hungered for more, for the reality of the Gospel, but I was not encouraged. I became a church member and a Sunday school teacher, but I drifted from God.

I always had a longing for what I had lost, and one day as I was in my husband’s clothing store, a neighbor woman came in and gave me a paper on divine healing. Thinking that was all I was lacking, I embraced the doctrine immediately and cast away all my medications. I had been diagnosed at the famous Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and told I would need to take medicine for the rest of my life. At first, I got worse and was told, “You better go back on your medicine.” Instead of giving in, though, I sought God with all my heart. I prayed, “God, give me something in Your Word to stand upon!” While I was praying, God in His faithfulness uncovered my sin-sick soul and showed me the thing I needed most was to confess my sins, repent, and make right the wrongs I had done. I humbled myself at the foot of the Cross, and plead guilty. I told the Lord I would do anything He required of me if He would just give me peace in my soul. For three days I sought with all my heart. Then, He came down and rolled away the burden of sin. He gave me an assurance that my sins were washed away in the precious Blood of Jesus. He put a song in my soul, and I began to sing and rejoice, offering up the sacrifice of praise. That night, God became the living Word in my heart and healed my body.  

It was so wonderful that I wanted to tell what had happened everywhere I went. I testified in my church, and they said I had gone too far. After that, there was such a hunger in my heart to be with a people who believed and preached the whole Word of God.

The wife of the supreme judge of Sioux City, Iowa, came to my home for a visit and gave me an Apostolic Faith paper. How my heart rejoiced when she told me what God had done in her life. She said she had been full of worldly ambitions for her husband thinking that if he achieved a certain status, she would be satisfied. However, when he reached those ambitions, she just hungered for more. Then she received a lasting satisfaction through salvation and sanctification. After that, some ministers from the Apostolic Faith came to her home and told her about the Latter Rain Gospel. They asked what she thought and she replied, “Let’s pray.” They did and she received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. I drank in everything she said as I sat at her feet looking at an Apostolic Faith paper. I was so glad there were still people on earth who had the old-time religion and preached it. My heart just hungered for it. She invited me to visit her in Des Moines, Iowa, and I did. As I sat in her mansion with her and her husband, I saw the contrast of his haughty pride with her humble spirit. I was impressed by what God was able to do in the heart of a woman who was so entitled.

Later, I prayed and received sanctification. Then, God made a way for my husband and I to travel to Portland, Oregon, for the first camp meeting. My husband was dying with consumption of the lungs and tuberculosis of the glands at the time, but the Apostolic Faith people held on to God in prayer for him, and he was healed.

My husband prayed through to salvation and afterwards wanted to make restitutions. When I had wanted to do the same when I was first saved, he tried to stop me by saying it would be published in the newspaper and he wouldn’t be able to stand that. I made the restitution anyway and he stood it. His also got published in the paper, and he stood it, too.

I praise God for all He has done for me. He baptized me with the Holy Ghost, and when I was sick for six months and it seemed every star had gone out of my sky, He healed my body. My health had broken down and it seemed like a dark cloud enveloped me. One day I was sure I would not live much longer, and I was so discouraged, but the saints of God held on in prayer. I told my unsaved children I would not be here much longer, and one of the girls cried out, “You will too, because there are so many people praying for you.” Not long after that, God wonderfully restored me.

God’s banner over me is love; He has surely brought me to His banqueting table, and today there is a purpose in my soul to give Him my life as never before.