Sid Roth

Sid:  If you heard yesterday’s broadcast and for some strange reason you didn’t hear it, you better go to our web page, Sidroth.org, Sidroth.org.  Because we found out from Billy Burke that as a young nine year old, he just had days to live.  He had terminal brain cancer and he didn’t know anything about the healing ministry, the charismatic movement, any of these things.  He was in a nice evangelical church.  But his grandmother knew, she watched Kathryn Kulman who had one of the greatest healing ministries of her day, maybe of any day short of Jesus!  And she would watch Kathryn on TV and somehow she had it in her heart that her grandson Billy Burke who was nine years of age that only had a few days to live.  Was it difficult for her to get a nine year old out of the hospital that had days to live with terminal brain cancer Billy?

Billy:  Yeah, it was.  They had a little go around with the doctors and the officials there, but she was fully persuaded at that time. 

Sid:  I’m amazed that she even convinced your parents to do it.

Billy:  That’s what she had to do it, because they were my legal guardians, but she had evidently looking back at it as we would say today, she must have had a clear Word, a God breathe Word from the Lord.

Sid:  Okay, the whole time and it was a few days, she gets you out a few days before the service she going to take you to and you’re in horrible shape.  The cancer had spread to your lungs, your neck, you had lumps all over your body, you lost your motor skills, your eyes you had a patch over one of your eyes.   In fact I think that your whole side was paralyzed, is that correct?

Billy:  One side I couldn’t…I mean I had to take my one leg and they would put, back then they would, the medication that they had then, whatever they used wasn’t working so we had buckets of ice water with towels soaking in ice water to put one over the other on my head just trying to alleviate the pain.

Sid:  And the pain was really bad.

Billy:  Horrible, horrible, Sid, horrible.

Sid:  How did you deal with your grandmother who keeps saying to you over and over again that, “When that woman touches you, you will be healed?”

Billy:  Well, I was annoyed because I didn’t understand it, I didn’t know what she was doing and now I do when I teach the fact that, “How do you prepare for a miracle?”  You know we prepare for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Weddings, vacation, hunting, fishing, golfing; we know how to prepare for everything in life, but a miracle.

Sid:  Okay, over and over and over again can you picture his grandmother saying this? “When that woman,” she is talking about Kathryn Kulman, “When that woman touches you, you will be healed!”  So you finally get there, did you see many healings going on?

Billy:  Yeah, I mean what I perceived at that time to be healing, of course I had never seen people fall under the power, this was 1962 Sid; so it wasn’t as common as it is today.  And so these people are falling and I’m thinking what’s that all about? So I was caught up in the awe of it.

Sid:  Okay, she points at you, you know that she’s talking about you, now did she actually say cancer or what did she say when she pointed at you?

Billy:  Young boy, you’re being healed of cancer, get down here.  And so then after three tries because I didn’t want to come down on the first I was too afraid, “I screamed real loud no!”  And she said, “I said get down here!”  I said, “No!”  The second time and the third time she said, “Ushers, you bring him down here!”  So she sent two men in the balcony to get me down, Abraham was one and Domhoff, Norman was the other and they came up in up in the balcony and ushered me down there with my Grandmother and Mother.  And I stood in front of her and we chatted for a little bit and as she went to touch me her hand was coming towards me in slow motion it seemed like.  I could hear my Grandmother’s voice, “When she touches you.”  So my Grandmother had done her job, she had prepared me to receive, she had gotten me ready.  I could see Kathryn’s hand and I could feel something coming out of her that was just something incredible, but I could hear my Grandmother’s voice.  Now when that hand hit me and it was, the power that hit me was incredible!  I could not stand, and after I fell I could not get up, I could not move my body it was believable feeling. 

Sid: And, just out of curiosity, “Were you hearing anything when this was going on?” you are pinned to the ground you couldn’t move, you are feeling things.  “Were you hearing everything people were saying?”

Billy:  I could hear her, it was in and out, because understand I still had one patch, I never felt anything like that, I could not move any of my limbs, any of my extremities were pinned to the floor and so I never had an experience like that in my life so I could hear, I could hear parts of what she said, not all of it.

Sid:  Okay, she eventually had them pick you up, she prays for you again, you go down again, “Did you realize there was a change in your body?  What did you realize was happening?”

Billy:  “That’s the funny part I didn’t even know it, and when I got up the second time I didn’t even realize here my whole paralysis was gone on my one side of me;” and then she said, “Remove that patch.”    And I said, “No, no, no.”  And she said, “You take that patch off or I’m taking that patch off.” Ha-ha. 

Sid: Ha-ha.  We have a Hebrew word and the Hebrew word is chutzpa, that’s nerve.

Billy:  She had, she had chutzpa and so I reluctantly didn’t take it off, but I flipped the bottom of the patch up, because I hated double vision, it was horrible.  And I pulled the patch and here my eyes had gone straight, perfectly straight, the double vision was gone.  My side, where the paralysis was, was gone and of course my Grandmother was crying, my mother was crying, and it was, it was a pretty emotional moment to say the least so.  You know that’s what happened there.

Sid:  Okay, when you went into the doctor’s I understand that they insisted that you have x-rays, tell me about that.

Billy:  Well, it wasn’t immediately it was I went home from that and we were such in shock as much as everybody wanted that to happen, the shock of that and again I keep emphasizing 1962, we’ve come so far in our knowledge of the Holy Spirit, the acceptance of miracles since back then it wasn’t that way.  And people even though you came back and you were still like that people still looked at you like wow; this can’t happen you’re still going to die.  But my Grandmother said, “Oh no, no, what God does he finishes, He completes.  And we went back in for x-rays I believe it was, I think it was within that week, it was, I can’t give you an exact day for that, but the Doctor came out then and he was absolutely amazed!  He said, “I don’t know what you have done?” But he said, “This is amazing!”  And so that was the documentation of that of course, that was all we needed at that moment.

Sid:  But, there’s two more things that I want you to bring out.  The fact that the presence of God was so strong on you that several rows of people fell under the presence of God just when it hit you and then Kathryn Kulman asked any one that’s had any type of cancer to come and stand near you.  There must have been such an explosion of God’s power just coming from you which had just gone into you to have that healing.  And then many years later you got together with one of the head usher there, and what did he tell you?

Billy:  Well, I met him just maybe it has been seven or eight years ago now, I met him in California and I was sharing my testimony and he was in the green room when I had finished.  He said hi Billy, let’s go to lunch, I said I don’t know you Sir, he said, “Well, I’m the usher, I’m one of the ushers that Kathryn sent to the balcony to get you.  And I want to make sure that you know everything she said to you.  And I thought, and then I said “What?”  We went to lunch and he said to me that “Do you remember all the details of that day?”  I said, “Well, I don’t remember everything, I remember what my family told me, what I remember.”

Sid:  You were just nine years old.

Billy:  At nine years old, you can’t retain everything and he said that, “There were so many people healed that day especially blood cancer, and all kinds of lung cancer, liver cancer, the reports of that day of that service he said, were amazing.”   But he said, “Kathryn, the second time when you were under the power she said; “You will do, what I do, this boy will do what I do.”

Sid:  If I were you, I would have been so grateful that he told me that!

Billy:  Yes, because my family never told me that, I never heard that, they never told me that and of course I went right away to the phone after we had that lunch I called my Grandmother and I said that I just met a man and I told her who he was and she said, “Yes, he was there, he was there and I said, “He told me Kathryn said,”  And she said, “Billy we were traumatized that day; you know we were…”

Sid:  Billy, we’re out of time right now.