Trudel Took God at His WORD with Amazing Results
[Above: Trudel—public domain because of age]
JAMES, the Lord’s brother, left a procedure for dealing with sickness (James 5:14-16).
Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the assembly, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will heal him who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. If he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your offenses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.
Does God still honor this method? Dorothea Trudel believed God’s words and found him true.
The daughter of an alcoholic father and a pious mother, Trudel grew up in poverty. Not having money for doctors, Dorothea’s mother turned to the Lord in prayer whenever one of her children became ill. One such illness left Dorothea blind, but upon her mother’s prayer, the girl’s sight was restored. Despite her healing, Dorothea did not follow Christ but was respectful of her mother’s religion.
Things changed in her early twenties when Dorothea fought off her attacker in an attempted rape and injured her back. After this injury and a severe bout of illness, she lost her beauty and became “a crooked, dwarfed, withered being,” to quote her own words. An uncle rescued her from hard labor in a silk mill and taught her flower making. She worked for a nephew who employed several other workers.
Four of them fell ill, and, as each could do as he pleased, all four summoned a doctor.
It was remarked, however, that they got worse after taking the medicine, until, at last, the necessity became so pressing, that I went as a worm to the Lord, and laid our distress before Him. I told Him how willingly I would send for an elder, as is commanded in James 5; but, as there was not one, I must go to my sick ones in the faith of the Canaanitish woman, and, without trusting to any virtue in my hand, I would lay it upon them. I did so, and, by the Lord’s blessing, all four recovered.
This was the genesis of a ministry that led her to open her home to the sick where she tended to them physically and spiritually. Many experienced miraculous cures. Eventually the work expanded into three houses. Jealous physicians brought lawsuit against her for practicing medicine without a license. Another lawsuit followed the death of four patients in one of her homes. About 150 people submitted testimonials for her second trial. Eventually Zurich’s high court ruled in her favor, noting that she did not actually practice medicine and that many of her patients had come to her only after doctors were unable to relieve their ills.
As the court case showed, not everyone who came to Dorothea found healing. Nor did all who went away healed accept the lordship of Christ. However, she herself learned much about love and submission to Christ. She became wise in expounding the Bible to her household.
On Sunday, 16 August 1862, she addressed her last meeting. The text was from Psalm 97. Among her comments were these,
Clouds and darkness will surround us so long as we stand in our own righteousness, not espoused to God, and wearing a garment of our own works. …. We must feel certain that we have laid aside our own righteousness....Much knowledge is needed to keep us from serving idols; if we do not in everything seek God’s glory, we may well be ashamed....Only those who are born again can overcome the world; they need no longer care for themselves, for the Lord preserves the souls of his saints. If I abide in Him, He abides in me; but we must be in earnest if we would be Christians. When I look to myself and my own strength, I know that I cannot stand three days.
After that last meeting she became tired. On this day, 21 August, 1862 Trudel was able to visit a sick person outside her home, but by 6 September (some sources say 20 September) she had passed from this world.
Two notable workers in Christ’s kingdom who found healing in her homes were Elias Schrenk, who became a missionary to the Gold Coast, and Arnold Bovet, who became a revival leader. Otto Stockmayer, an evangelist and faith healer, opened a home modeled on Trudel’s.
—Dan Graves
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For more on divine healing, read CH 142 Touching the Hem of His Garment
