Oral Roberts’ Life Story

Black-and-white cover of Oral Roberts’ Life Story showing Oral Roberts walking from a revival tent while holding a Bible

Oral Roberts Life Story: His Autobiography

Oral Roberts life story is the firsthand account of a young man who rose from poverty, sickness, and a severe stutter to become one of the best-known healing evangelists of the twentieth century. In this autobiography, Oral Roberts recounts the experiences that shaped his faith, his call to ministry, and his determination to bring hope to people who were suffering in body, mind, and spirit.

First published in 1952, this book takes readers behind the public ministry and into the private struggles that preceded it. Roberts writes about his childhood, his family, his illness, his conversion, and the events he believed prepared him for a worldwide evangelistic ministry. The result is a personal testimony about faith, perseverance, healing, and obedience to God.

Read the Oral Roberts Life Story in His Own Words

Long before crowds gathered beneath his large gospel tent, Oral Roberts was a boy whom few people expected to succeed. His family lived with limited means, and his stutter made speaking difficult. He remembers being mocked and misunderstood, yet his parents continued to believe that God had a purpose for his life.

At seventeen, Roberts became seriously ill with tuberculosis in both lungs. He spent 163 days in bed and believed he might not live. His brother Elmer used his last thirty-five cents to buy gasoline and borrowed a car to take him to a tent meeting in Ada, Oklahoma. During that journey, Roberts says he sensed God telling him that he would be healed and would carry God’s healing power to his generation.

The Oral Roberts life story presents this turning point as the beginning of a new direction. Roberts describes his healing, his early preaching, and the gradual development of a ministry centered on salvation, faith, and prayer for the sick. Whether you are already familiar with his ministry or are encountering his testimony for the first time, this autobiography offers direct insight into what he believed and why he pursued his calling with such urgency.

What You Will Discover in the Oral Roberts Life Story

Across 20 chapters, Roberts traces the defining moments of his early life and ministry. Readers will discover:

  • How poverty, illness, and a speech impediment affected his childhood
  • The influence of his parents and siblings on his developing faith
  • The thirty-five cents that helped make a life-changing journey possible
  • His first experiences as a young preacher
  • The dissatisfaction that drove him to seek a deeper relationship with God
  • The Bible passage that reshaped his understanding of spiritual and physical well-being
  • The financial and practical challenges behind his early evangelistic campaigns
  • The growth of the large-tent meetings and the attention they received nationwide
  • Why Roberts taught that salvation must remain more important than public recognition or physical healing

These episodes make the Oral Roberts life story more than a record of meetings and milestones. They reveal the doubts, setbacks, decisions, and convictions behind the ministry. Roberts does not portray his path as effortless. He describes opposition, financial pressure, exhaustion, uncertainty, and moments when continuing seemed nearly impossible.

Faith, Healing, and a Life-Changing Scripture

One of the book’s central moments occurs when Roberts reads 3 John 2. He interprets the verse as evidence of God’s concern for the whole person—spirit, body, and daily life. That discovery becomes an important foundation for the message he carries into his evangelistic work.

In the Oral Roberts life story, healing is presented through Roberts’s own testimony and Christian convictions. He explains how his experience of illness influenced the compassion he felt for sick and hurting people. He also emphasizes the priority of salvation, describing spiritual reconciliation with God as the first and greatest purpose of his ministry.

Readers interested in Christian history will also find an eyewitness account of postwar American revival ministry. Roberts describes crowded churches and auditoriums, the decision to obtain a large tent, and the complex work required to move people and equipment from city to city. He recounts the first tent campaign in Durham in 1948, later gatherings beneath a tent that seated thousands, and national coverage of the meetings in 1951.

Who Should Read This Christian Autobiography?

The Oral Roberts life story may be especially meaningful for readers who enjoy:

  • Christian autobiographies and personal testimonies
  • Books about faith during illness and hardship
  • The history of evangelism and healing ministries
  • Accounts of perseverance in the face of rejection
  • Stories about discovering and following a call from God
  • Early accounts of Oral Roberts before the later expansion of his ministry

This book may also encourage readers who feel limited by their circumstances. Roberts’s early life included obstacles that appeared to disqualify him from public ministry, especially his poverty, poor health, and stutter. His account shows how those struggles became part of the testimony he later shared with others.

What Is Included in This EPUB Edition?

This digital edition of the Oral Roberts life story includes the complete autobiography in a reflowable EPUB format. The text adjusts to the screen and font settings of a compatible reading device or app, making it suitable for phones, tablets, computers, and many e-readers.

The book contains a foreword, dedication, and 20 chapters. Because EPUB pages reflow according to device and text size, the displayed page count can vary. This edition is approximately 122 digital pages, while the original 1952 print edition was 160 pages.

Please confirm that your preferred device or reading application supports EPUB files before downloading. After purchase, follow the download instructions provided by the store and save a backup copy for your personal use.

Begin the Oral Roberts Life Story Today

The Oral Roberts life story preserves the testimony of a major figure in twentieth-century American evangelism at the beginning of his public ministry. It tells how a sick and struggling teenager became a preacher, how a personal search of Scripture shaped his message, and how a growing burden for suffering people led him into large-scale evangelistic work.

Download this EPUB edition to read Oral Roberts’s account in his own words. If you would like to discover more Christian books about faith, leadership, spiritual growth, and ministry, visit the Acts 29 Ministry International shop.