Allen, A.A. - The Price of God's Miracle Working Power

About the Author:

Asa A. Allen (March 27, 1911 in Sulphur Rock, Arkansas - June 11, 1970 in San Francisco), better known as A.A. Allen, was a controversial Pentecostal evangelist and faith healer of Voice of Healing. At age 59 he died from liver failure brought on by acute alcoholism in San Francisco, and was buried at his evangelistic headquarters in Miracle Valley, Arizona.

His middle name, given only as "A." on his birth certificate, was changed to "Alonso" around age four. Asa A. Allen's father was an alcoholic and his mother was a full-blooded Cherokee.[citation needed]. At age 23, Allen became a pentecostal at the Onward Methodist Church in Miller, Missouri. Later, he learned of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost from a Pentecostal preacher who was conducting meetings in his home. He soon felt the call to preach and affiliated himself with the Assemblies of God (A/G) and subsequently obtained ordination from them in 1936. By 1947, Allen was pastoring a large A/G church in Corpus Christi, Texas. After attending an Oral Roberts tent meeting in Dallas (1949), Allen testified that as he left that meeting he hoped to spread God's "miracles" and asked his church board to allow him to start a radio program. They refused. Allen soon resigned from his church and started A.A.Allen Revivals, Inc. holding his Healing Revival Campaigns. Stemming from purported healings, he established a large following. Allen became one of the first to develop a national television ministry and broadcasting prophecies, unverified healings, and "claimed to communicate with the demon world" over the airwaves.

In 1955 Allen purchased a tent for $8,700 that would seat over ten thousand people, and Allen was soon one of the major healing evangelists on the revival circuit. Allen’s revival meetings were similar to the other leading evangelists of the time (such as Jack Coe, Oral Roberts, Thomas Burdett, and William Branham) where there would be an extended time for music and testifying, then a sermon, then an appeal for those in need to come forward and be prayed for.  Allen was arrested in 1955 for suspicion of drunk driving in Knoxville, Tennessee and was defrocked by the Assemblies of God. After he "jumped bail," Allen re-ordained himself and set up the "Miracle Revival Fellowship". Allen kept drinking and according to Don Stewart Allen would be too drunk to preach and his staff cover for him as Allen was put to bed.

Allen continued on the revival circuit, and in 1958 he purchased a tent that could seat over 22,000 (the tent was the one used by evangelist Jack Coe up until his death in 1956). Allen became one of the first evangelists to call poverty a spirit and believed in God's ability to perform miracles financially. At his peak, he appeared on fifty-eight radio stations daily, forty-three TV stations, and even owned an airfield with 150 aircraft. At the time of his death, his Arizona headquarters was 2,400 acres (9.7 km2) with 55 million pieces of literature published a year and a circulation of "Miracle Magazine," a monthly magazine, at 350,000. The magazine retold stories sent in by admirers claiming Allen cured the sick, but gave a disclaimer that the magazine does not "assume legal responsibility" of its accuracy.

Few of his supposed miracles ever underwent "scrutiny of physicians" and at his revivals in small print his disclaimer read: "A. A. Allen Revivals, Inc. assumes no legal responsibility for the veracity of any such report."[4] Furthermore according to The Encyclopedia of American Religions, Allen did not like press coverage and "resulted in his hiring of 'goon squads' to punch out anyone who showed up for Allen's tent revivals with a notepad or camera." According to Stewart trickery was common for faith healers:  Eventually, most of the evangelists had wheelchairs available for people who had bad backs and couldn't stand in a healing line for hours. But when the evangelist got to them and pulled them up out of the wheelchair, some in the audience thought they were walking for the first time or that they had come to the revival in that wheelchair.

At a revival meeting on January 1, 1958, at Phoenix, Arizona, Urbane Leiendecker, a recent convert, approached Allen and offered him 1280 acres (5.2 km²) of land in Arizona. Within days a deed was recorded in the name of A.A.Allen Revivals, Inc. at the Cochise County Courthouse. Using this property, Allen founded a Bible school in Miracle Valley.

His teachings on prosperity were a major theme in his meetings during the 1960s. He began selling "prosperity cloths" for $100 and $1000 dollar donations. Furthermore, he claimed to have "visions, divine voices, and prophecies." In 1963, A. A. Allen Revivals, Inc. successfully sued the Internal Revenue Service in an attempt to get the government to refund collections of the Federal Insurance Contributions Act taxes for 1958-59.

Allen died at the Jack Tar Hotel in San Francisco, California on June 11, 1970 at the age of 59. Allen died after a heavy drinking binge and Don Stewart, his successor, "attempted to clean up evidence of his mentor's alcoholic binge in a San Francisco hotel before the police arrived." Stewart says he wasn't trying to cover up anything, but was trying to protect Allen. Nonetheless, police found his body in a "room strewn with pills and empty liquor bottles." Following a 12-day investigation and an autopsy, the coroner's report concluded Allen died from liver failure brought on by acute alcoholism. The coroner reported that when Allen died he had a blood alcohol content of .36, which was "enough to insure a deep coma". Allen was buried at Miracle Valley, Arizona on June 15, 1970.