GOD’S GENERALS DEMYSTIFIED (PART II)
“Kathryn Kuhlman: Publicly Pious, Privately Perverse”
By Akin Ojumu
Considered to be a forerunner to the present-day charismatic movement, Kathryn Kuhlman was a rockstar who drew millions to her miracle crusades in her time. Even now, the Queen of faith healing continues to enjoy godlike status in many Christian cycles. Many modern-day charismatic preachers draw their inspiration from Kathryn Kuhlman, and not a few of them borrowed their techniques, styles, and mannerisms from her.
As is the case with many charismatic preachers, Kathryn Kuhlman’s spirituality was performative theater characterized by public piety and private perversity. Not only were her teachings erroneous and based on flawed theology, but the woman also engaged in unsavory behaviors for which she never once publicly repented.
Early in her career as a faith healer, Kathryn Kuhlman became entangled in a sordid relationship with a married evangelist by the name Burroughs Waltrip. It all started when the pair began to share preaching in Kuhlman’s Denver Revival Tabernacle and Waltrip’s Radio Chapel in Mason City, Iowa. After the affair had gone on for a few years, Burroughs Waltrip divorced his wife, abandoned his two young children, and was joined in an unholy matrimony with Kuhlman in October 1938.
From here on, it was downhill for both Kathryn Kuhlman and Burroughs Waltrip. Both of their ministries rapidly collapsed as Church members, who could not stand such sinful behavior in self-professed anointed ministers of the Gospel, ran for dear lives, and abandoned the two adulterers and their religious organizations. The few short years that the marriage lasted was catastrophic for Kuhlman and Waltrip, as the two faded into obscurity and were lost in the wilderness of sin.
Confronted by angry Church members, Kuhlman refused to admit she was in an adulterous relationship. Instead of confessing and repenting of her sin, she attempted to validate her illicit union to a married man by claiming that “God had revealed a new plan” to her in a prophecy. She believed that God directed her to steal a married man from his family.
In an interview with a newspaper reporter, Kathryn Kuhlman would later on deny ever being married to Burroughs Waltrip. At one point during the interview, she got pretty mad. When asked to explain how, as a minister of the Gospel, she could justify her marriage to a married man, Kathryn retorted, with bulging eyes shooting out sparks of fury and fingers waiving right in the face of the reporter, “We were never married. I never took my marriage vows. Do you know what happened? I’ll tell you what happened. I fainted – passed out completely, I tell you – right before I was to take my vows. That’s the truth, so help me God.”
When the insistent reporter showed her the marriage license with her signature on it, Kathryn Kuhlman feigned amnesia. According to her, “If I signed an application for a marriage license, it was brought to me for my signature. I do not remember.”
When the marriage eventually collapsed and the sordid ordeal came to an abrupt end, Kathryn Kuhlman would go on to paint herself as a consecrated vessel doing the will of God. In her telling, she had now made a pact with the Holy Spirit which absorbed her of any responsibility she had to explain her adulterous relationship to anyone. As she put it:
“I can remember the day. I can remember the hour. It was at 4 pm on that Saturday afternoon on a dead-end street, I surrendered everything. It was all settled. The Holy Spirit and I made each other promises. And some things you don’t talk about, like personal things between a husband and wife. I knew at that moment what that Scripture meant, “If any man would follow me, he must take up his cross.” A cross always means death. If you’ve never had that death of the flesh, you don’t understand me…I spoke in an unknown tongue as he took every part of me. I surrendered everything. Then, for the first time, I realized what it meant to have power.”
Instead of fessing up to her adultery and seeing it for the sin it was, Kathryn Kuhlman took to the playbook of charlatans. She reverted to spooky-spiritual money laundering by trying to clean her licentious behavior with a claim of revelation or prophecy from God.
With a history of unrepented adultery buried under a mountain of false prophecies, fake healings, and creepy supernatural stage performances, Kathryn Kuhlman would go on to enjoy many more years of lucrative career as a faith healer. Today, she is undeservedly revered as a God’s General.
May God have mercy on you for this write up. Speaking about things in ways you don’t understand. I pray God doesn’t use this against you.
ReplyDeleteYou are hurt I feel your pains.
ReplyDeleteBrother you are absolutely wrong about the things you wrote. Also, subs she committed are given grace by God and forgiven. The only perfect person free of sin is Lord Jesus. She did perform miracles in the name of Jesus Christ. I pray the Lord will reveal to your spirit you were wrong to write about a servant of God like this. You lack spiritual wisdom and understanding
ReplyDeleteThe problem with you lots is that you have no idea about the sordid background of these charlatans you all revere as God's Generals. If you really want to know more about Katherine Kuhlman's fake miracles, I suggest you read the book written by Dr William A Nolen titled, Healing: a Doctor in Search of a Miracle.
DeleteAnd I suggest you read the book written by a very lettered, respected man, H. Richard Casdorph MD, phD. It's titled The Miracles, copyright 1976. You can find it online.
DeleteRichard Cassorph is a “very lettered, respected man?” A man with no Wikipedia profile? On what basis did you make the assertion that he is “very lettered and respected?
DeleteIf you can share a link to his Wikipedia profile, perhaps we’ll take you seriously.
He that is without sin… cast the first stone
ReplyDeleteKatherine Kulhman was a general in lucifer army!! Nothing else
ReplyDeleteI believe what is listed in this article. I think it is written to bring light to darkness. I do not judge her sins, but if she did commit them, as a public figure, she must openly confess them and repent from them. I do not believe she operated from the power of God, but I know many came to know God through initial encounters with her. Despite this, she is someone who I do not use for spiritual guidance.
ReplyDeleteBE CAREFUL HOW U TALK ABOUT MINISTERS OF GOD. IF THEY HAVE ANYTHING, LET THEM SETTLE WITH GOD HIMSELF. IF WHAT U 'RE SAYING IS TRUE, THEN WHAT? U NEITHER HAVE ANYTHING TO LOOSE OR GAIN, BUT IF YOU ARE WRONG, U HAVE NOTHING TO GAIN. BUT PROBABLY EVERYTHING TO LOOSE. WHY THEN ENTANGLE URSELF WITH OTHER MEN'S AFFAIRS, WHEN U CAN FOCUS MORE ON UR LIFE AND MAKE THE BEST OUT OF IT? A WORD THEY SAY, IS ENOUGH FOR THE WISE.
ReplyDeleteHello @WisdomisProfitable. Thanks, for your comment.
DeleteFirst off, writing in all CAPS is considered bad manners. It suggests you are yelling.
Secondly, I’m quite familiar with the sentiment you expressed in your comments. It’s the common refrain of indoctrinated church folks who have been caged into fear by unscrupulous charlatans and impostors who run most of the churches today.
Telling you not to question or speak anything bad about the “ministers of God” is a thought-stopping strategy charlatans use to make you not to ever critically examine what they are saying to you. Even when you know they are lying to you or that they are engaged in ungodly behavior, church folks have been taught to never question them. Leaving them to God to deal with is what they erroneously teach you. But it’s a lie from the pit of hell.
False teachers and charlatans succeed in silencing you because they scare you with Bible verses like 1 Chronicles 16:22 and Psalm 105:15.
“Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm!”
What they won’t tell you, though, is that these two verses are actually referring to physically harming God’s anointed ones and they are not talking about critiquing or questioning their actions. In these two verses, God is warning us not to physically harm or kill His anointed.
You won’t find it taught anywhere in Scripture that we are not to criticize charlatans like Kathryn Kuhlman. In fact, the Bible teaches us the opposite. We are commanded to refute false teachers and impostors who preach a gospel contrary to the true Gospel or whose conduct is ungodly.
Titus 1:9
“He must hold firmly to the faithful word as it was taught, so that he can encourage others by sound teaching and REFUTE those who contradict it.”
Titus 1:10-11
“For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They MUST BE SILENCED, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach.”
Remember that Apostle Paul, when he was still a fairly new Believer, rebuked Apostle Peter, the elder statesman of the Christian faith.
Galatians 2:11-14
“But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
Apostle Paul – one of the 13 real Apostles of Christianity – showed us an example of how to deal with false teachers and bad behavior of ministers of God. We are not to keep quiet, but rather, to call them out. The reason we have to do that is for the sake of those whose faith are weak who can get easily deceived and derailed by following in the footsteps of the minister of God who is engaged in an ungodly conduct or teaching false doctrines.
If you see any minister of God behaving badly or teaching erroneous doctrine, don’t be afraid to call him out. You are doing the LORD’S work and it’s the right thing to do. There’s no harm that can befall you if, in good conscience, you are obeying the LORD’S command.
Thank you for your good work.
ReplyDeleteI thank God for people telling the truth about false prophets, which are many!!
ReplyDeleteWow! The title clearly reveals your true intentions behind the name Kathryn Kuhlman. First, no woman can snitch a man without his wish and desire to engage. If nothing else the man was usually the one who pursued a woman. Your inability to even mention that that man was just as guilty, ( left his wife and two children to marry Kathryn), tells me there is a big problem with this article. By the way, that man married again and divorced again after Kathryn, you should have mentioned that in your article. This indirect attempt to picture the woman as the problem and the man the victim, even though he also had a ministry, and did the same work, is an insult to the intelligence of an educated person with a critical thinking abilities. Kathryn dedicated her entire life to serving God, her ex-husband abandoned God and became a salesman. I won't even engage in the content because the title told me everything I needed.
ReplyDeleteDear Saimira Tola, every time I expose charlatans and impostors for who they really are, I tend to get the sort of knee-jerk reaction you just expressed. So, color me unsurprised.
DeleteIf you actually read the title of the commentary, you'd have noticed it is about the so-called "God's Generals". Last time I checked Burroughs Waltrip, the man with whom Kulhman engaged in adulterous relationship, is not considered one of the God's Generals. Kathryn Kuhlman is a "God's General". This is commentary is about her and not about her paramour.
It's notable that you are not refuting any of the facts of the commentary. Facts that, if you are a true Christian, should have bothered you greatly. But that's not the case with you. All that seems to concern you is the fact that I brought Kuhlman's perversion to light so that people would know who she really was in private.
And that's the problem with Christianity today. Church folks don't seem to be troubled whenever the immoral lives of the people they call men and women of God are exposed. Instead, they want to stone to death those doing the exposing.
And by the way, since you know so much about the illicit affair between Kathryn Kulhman and Burroughs Waltrip, you are free to write about it. When you do, make sure you talk about the man.