Jack Coe
Jack Coe began his ministry in a revival tent in the years following the Second World War. Coe was an orphan with a fondness for liquor when he joined the Army during the war, during which he later claimed to have experienced a miracle which led him to seek a career as an itinerant minister. Ordained in 1944 he led several revival-style meetings while still in uniform, although he was not an Army chaplain. When the war ended he began his new career by first visiting his acquaintance Oral Roberts.
Roberts was then an itinerant preacher and Coe measured the tent Robert’s used for his meetings, ordering a larger one for himself. Coe from then on would frequently brag about the size of his tent, calling it the world’s largest.
In 1950 Coe began a magazine to support his ministry. It was called the Herald of Healing and in its pages, Coe included messages which supported his revival meeting oratory, which opposed the ingestion of medicines of any kind, recommended avoiding anyone who practiced medicine in any form and remaining focused strictly on the spiritual message of healing.
Coe’s collections at his revivals were sufficient to support him in a more than comfortable lifestyle, and when criticized for it he responded by comparing his homes to the larger and more sumptuous homes of other ministers. He also criticized the Assemblies of God hierarchy for not providing more support for his message of divine healing.
At a 1955 revival meeting in Miami, Coe told the parents of a young boy suffering from polio that their child had been healed and instructed them to remove the braces from the boy’s legs. When they did so the boy writhed with pain. Coe insisted that the braces remain off and after days of agony the boy’s parents complained to the authorities, who charged Coe with practicing medicine without a license. The charges were eventually dismissed on a technicality, but only a few months later Coe was stricken with bulbar polio, which he failed to heal as well. He died in December 1956, at the age of 38.
Sources For Further Reading:
History Collection – Ten Crazy Facts You Do Not Know About Rasputin
Los Angeles Times – Rev. Ike Positively Glitters on Crusade
New York Times – The Golden Gospel of Reverend Ike
Literary Hub – Religious Cult, Force for Civil Rights, or Both?
Medium – When God Drove a Cadillac: The Remarkable Story of Father Divine