How T.L. Osborn Dared to Touch the World
“I was dumbfounded when I saw him preach in a simple way, and when he made an invitation to accept Christ, lots of people came,” Osborn says. “Then, when he prayed for the sick, they were instantly healed.
“It shocked me. It profoundly affected me, and it seemed to me like a thousand voices swirled over my head saying: ‘You can do that. That’s what Jesus did. That’s the way Peter did it. That’s the way Paul did it. That proves the Bible is true today. You can do that.'”
Osborn’s third revelation came after he followed what he believed to be a divinely inspired unction to read the Gospels as if he had never read them before. Both he and Daisy poured through the Scriptures and began to see Jesus in His Word.
“This is the pledge we made,” Osborn says. “Whatever Jesus said He would do, we would expect Him to do it. Whatever He told us to do, we would do it.”
After making this commitment, the Osborns decided to host a healing service. They put ads in the paper and promoted the event on radio broadcasts.
That night the church in Portland was packed. Many were saved, and people began lining up to receive healing.
“It worked,” Osborn says. “We prayed for them and they were healed, and I had the fourth vision. I discovered Jesus in me. When that happened, Daisy and I said: ‘Now we can go back to India. Now we can convince them.'”
But this time, they couldn’t get funding from the church organization. They had to mortgage their car, sell some furniture and go only as far as their money would take them. The first stop was Jamaica, where in 13 weeks they saw 135 deaf-mutes healed, 90 blind people receive their sight and hundreds of crippled people walk away on their own two legs.
From Jamaica, they traveled to South America and then to Java and Japan. Ultimately, they landed back in India. Since those days, Osborn or others in his family have traveled to more than 90 countries.
Sowing Good Seed
When Daisy passed away in 1995, it seemed fitting to engrave this defining phrase on her tombstone: “The seed is the Word of God. The field is the world.”
That’s because sowing the Word has been foundational in the Osborns’ ministry—both orally and through evangelical literature. Sam Osborn, T.L.’s nephew and the ministry’s international general manager, helps oversee many of the programs that facilitate translation, printing and distribution of the Osborns’ books.
“The printed word is very important to [T.L.],” he says. “You can tickle people’s ears with the spoken word for a little while, but it doesn’t have the staying power it does when it goes through the eye gate as well. To preach and deliver the Word and then leave books for them to study has made a lasting impact.”
Ask someone at Osborn International what that impact looks like in raw numbers, and even an educated guess will be hard to come by. What they can tell you is that T.L., Daisy and their daughter, LaDonna, have collectively had their books translated into more languages than most evangelical organizations have.
“The real engine that generates our will to go—[my will] at my age to keep going—is our faith in the seed of the Word of God,” T.L. says. “That sounds so ho-hum in America, but that is the touchstone of everything about a successful gospel ministry. … And that’s the reason for the books.”
LaDonna Osborn, vice president and CEO of her father’s ministry, says that one of the unseen results of the sowing is the way it influences indigenous missionaries and preachers. She once traveled to the remote region of India known as Mizoram, where the preacher who extended the invitation got his start in the ministry after reading T.L.’s testimony 40 years before.
People in Russia, Poland and other astern European countries sometimes show the Osborns handwritten copies of their books that they use to minister to the lost. T.L. has never directly mentored other would-be world evangelists.
Yet throughout his years in ministerial service countless pastors, teachers, missionaries and even major world evangelists have been birthed from his far-reaching influence—men such as David Yonggi Cho, Reinhard Bonnke, R.W. Schambach and Sunday Adelaja.
“These are like the grandchildren [of his ministry],” LaDonna says.
The Final Frontier
When T.L. was born in 1923, commercial radio was in its fledgling stages, full-scale network television broadcasting in the U.S. was still 23 years off in the future, and the personal computer was more than 50 years away from mass production.
Though widely available today, these modes of communication have seldom been used in the Osborns’ ministry. Daisy briefly hosted a radio program, and the couple once published a magazine that has long since been replaced by a newsletter used to communicate with financial partners. T.L. makes token television appearances but has never produced his own program.
The Internet, on the other hand, is one technological advance the Osborns have fully embraced. Supporters can keep track of the ministry at www.osborn.org, where they can also download a series of e-books. This has given the ministry access into countries such as China.
Osborn remains hopeful that he will one day be able to take advantage of opportunities to minister in these difficult places.
“I would like to go to the Muslim countries,” he says. “I would like to go to Arabia and talk to the governments. And this is what I would like to say to them: ‘Gentlemen, can you explain to me why you believe so much in Jesus?’
“And they would say, ‘No, we don’t.’ And I would say: ‘You do and I’ll prove it. You know if you would give us freedom to preach Jesus you would have no Muslims left. You believe Jesus is greater than Muhammad.
‘You use your laws, your parliament, your guns and your tanks to keep Jesus out. Is He that great?’ I’d like to go to China and say the same thing.”
At 83 years old, Osborn laughs at the idea of retirement. He admits that his body will eventually keep him from traveling extensively, but at that point he plans to tackle a significant writing project. Osborn has already compiled a thick stack of notes based on what he deems are the most important elements of a successful ministry.
Like the rest of his life’s work, the time-tested concepts he writes about may not be embraced by the American church. Osborn has never felt fully comfortable sharing his message in his own homeland due to a disconnect between modernized, Western culture and developing Third World nations.
He can only pray that his fellow citizens will—in some shape or form—follow the example he has inconspicuously set for nearly six decades.
“I want American Christians to share what they have with other people and with the world,” he says, “because the world is really poor, really hurting, really neglected, really in trouble—and we have the answer.”
Chad Bonham is a jousrnalist, author and broadcast producer who has worked in mass media for more than 20 years. He served as the contributing editor for New Man magazine for three years and recently released the book Life in the Fairway.
