VELMER GARDNER

VELMER GARDNER

1913-unknown

Velmer Gardner began his life as the unfortunate son of an alcoholic in Washington. However his father was miraculously converted before his accidental death, which was the provocation that the caused the teenaged Velmer to commit his life to Christ.

He felt a call to the ministry and trained at Northwestern Bible College in Seattle, graduating in 1938. Thereafter he married Wilma Estelle Burns and launched an itinerant evangelistic ministry and held several brief pastorates after he was ordained by the Assemblies of God in 1942.

He studied the older healing ministries like Smith Wigglesworth and Dr. Charles Price and asked God why he did not see the same anointing as they did. God told him “You can if you’ll pay the price.”

Velmer Gardner, already a man with ‘a tremendous personality and a tremendous preaching ministry,’ launched a successful healing and evangelism ministry after attending an Oral Roberts revival in 1949. After much prayer, healings began to flow. Already known by Gordon Lindsay, he soon became one of the central figures in the Voice of Healing group.

Many of the older ministers retired from tent and auditorium revivalism in the early 1960s as the revival waned. But Velmer Gardner, was forced to abandon the strenuous life of a healing revivalist through ill health.