With Mom Goodwin at her home 1989. 

 Aaaaah...Was I ever really that young and green?

     To this day I still remember that initial conversation. I said to her, “Sister Goodwin, the way you ministered for Brother Copeland the other night, that was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” She replied, “Well, that’s the Holy Ghost honey!” Amen, amen, amen.

     As was so typical in dealing with Sister Goodwin, after only a few moments had passed in the telephone conversation, the Spirit of God began to reveal things to her. She said, “I see before me a vision: A man’s shoe, with a man’s foot in it. The front part of the shoe is torn off, and the toes are exposed and bruised. I also see a stumbling block…Who has cast a stumbling block in your path, causing you to stumble and be bruised?” I shared with her some recent painful ministry experiences, and she ministered to me and helped to begin bringing emotional healing to me. After a bit she said, “Well Rev. Montgomery whenever you can, why don’t you come down and see me?” In a few weeks, I took her up on that invitation.

     At that time, Mom lived in a nice duplex with Grace Gruver, in Broken Arrow. When I knocked on her door, I was so amazed. Mom answered, and when she opened the screen door to me, the Presence of God seemed to just flow out of her house and engulf me as I stood on the front steps. That’s what Mom’s home was like–the Presence of God was there all the time, I suppose like in the Holy of Holies of Old. I used to tell people, “If you ever need to get ahold of God, just go over to Sister Goodwin’s house–He’s there all the time!”

     As the years passed, I visited her again, and we exchanged a number of letters which I still have and we spoke on the phone usually every few days.

     There are many things I learned from her about the anointing, the Gifts of the Spirit, and the prophet’s anointing. I will put these specifics in another post.

     Over the next few years, like Brother Hagin and so many other ministers who knew the Goodwins, I learned to have complete confidence in whatever Mom Goodwin told me. Whatever she said was sure to come to pass. For instance, I was visiting a church which was a branch of the ministry of a TV evangelist. His face was splashed all over Charisma magazine, and everybody thought he was God’s man of faith and power for this hour. Although I thought the man had some anointing from God, I was skeptical of some of his “revelations” that were being taught in this church.

     I asked Mom what she thought of this minister. I assumed that she was familiar with him as he had held numerous big meetings in Tulsa where she lived. Everyone was talking about him. When I asked, “Mom, what do you think of [so and so]?” She replied, “Who?” She didn’t have any idea who I was talking about.

     The next time I talked with her, she said, “Oh by the way, I know now who [such and such] is. Stay away from him. He’s in deep error, and he won’t last much longer!” He was at the heighth of his ministry. They couldn’t duplicate his tapes and print his books fast enough. What she said seemed impossible! How could this man in such a high position of noteriety in Spirit-filled circles, “not last much longer?” But sure enough, within a few months his ministry collapsed and so did he. Now his books can’t even be given away at garage sales. What Charismatic media and ministries were calling “new revelation,” Sister Goodwin called “error.” The man and the revelation they said would bring us into greater and greater victory, she said, “won’t last much longer.” Her words proved true. You could bet the farm on whatever the Goodwins told you.

     I remember a particular time of leaving Mom Goodwin’s house. After I got out into my car, I just sat there and wept over the beauty of the anointing I had seen flow through her. I prayed, “Oh God, how I wish you would use me like that someday!” Little did I know that God would answer that prayer one day.

     In March of 1989, I was visiting Sister Goodwin, and it came time for me to leave and make the long drive back home to Wichita. Each time I prepared to leave, it was a bittersweet experience for me because due to her advanced age and frailty, I never knew which visit would be our last. As it turned out, I spoke to her many times over the phone after this, but this visit was indeed the last time I saw her in person.

     As I got ready to leave, she called me over to her, and had me kneel down by her chair so she could pray for me without getting up. She reached over and laid her hands on my head, and prayed for God to use me in the gifts of the Spirit. I felt no impartation. Nothing. But I left there with tears in my eyes saying, “Thank You Lord!…Thank You!…Thank You!” I was so honored that someone so anointed would take the time to lay their hands on me and pray for me.

     As the days passed, whenever I would think back on Sister Goodwin laying her hands on me, I would stop and say, “Thank You Lord! I just believe I receive whatever You have for me.” I just kept rejoicing and thanking God.

     April passed–nothing. May passed–nothing. June and July passed–nothing. No impartation or manifestation of anything. Regardless, I just kept saying, “Thank You Lord. I believe I receive.” Then it came.

     August 1, 1989, I had taken my mother out to a restaurant to eat, and had returned home. I put my car in the garage and shut the garage door. I walked towards my front door, and as I stepped up on the step, I was suddenly caught up in a vision. Like Paul wrote, “Whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell, God knoweth.”

     In the vision, I was standing in a desert. This was the kind of desert where there are no cacti or rocks, just miles and miles of sand dunes in every direction. I looked behind me in the vision, and could see my footprints going off in the sand for miles and miles, like I had been walking in this desert for years.

     Suddenly I heard this big roaring wind. I turned from looking behind me, to looking up in the sky in front and above me. And I saw this big wind swoop down and pick me up off the top of that sand dune. And this wind lifted me higher and higher into the sky. And I somehow knew that something was imparted to me from the Spirit of God. Some kind of gift or something. Then just as suddenly, I was standing with one foot up on my step. The vision must have been only a few seconds long, because I hadn’t gathered a crowd as I stood there caught up in it.

     I entered my house, and as soon as the door clicked shut behind me, words in other tongues came pouring out of my mouth. I found myself making certain hand gestures as I spoke in tongues, and then the English interpretation of the message came–all identical to the way I had seen Sister Goodwin minister for years.

     No one was more surprised than I was that God had put some of Sister Goodwin’s prophetic anointing upon me. I went into my bedroom and fell on my face before God in thanksgiving.

     The messages in tongues, and the interpretations thereof, kept coming from then until now. I’ve seen God do many wonderful, miraculous things through these and other gifts operating through me.

     I waited awhile before sharing the news of this impartation with Mom Goodwin. I wanted to test it out over time and make sure it wasn’t some passing thing. But it stayed with me, so after a few weeks I told her what had happened. She rejoiced with me, and gave me some instructions on how to handle certain ways the Holy Spirit manifests in public services.

     I was reluctant to tell anyone who had been close to the Goodwins of how God had begun to use me. I didn’t want to appear to be mimicking Mom’s ministry, or using the Goodwin name and reputation to further myself. But I was contacted by the Goodwin family in 2000, which lead to a series of events that gave me the liberty to talk more openly about this.

     Grace Gruver sent me a notice that the Goodwin family was cooperating with Joe Jordan–a former staff member of the Goodwin’s church–in producing a biography of Mom and Dad. I was invited to send him a written testimony of my time with Sister Goodwin and the opportunity to share what I had learned from her. I was very thankful for the opportunity.

     After receiving my testimony, Joe asked me to do the final editing of the manuscript for the book, which I was honored to do. In working on the book, we had many conversations about what we each had experienced with the Goodwins. I finally told him that I believed a prophetic impartation had flowed from Mom Goodwin to me, and that I was being used in tongues and interpretation in the pattern that the Holy Spirit used Mom.

     Joe rejoiced with me and said, “I’m not surprised at all. Ron Smith [another former staff member of the Goodwins’] and I were talking the other day and we noticed something about ministers who came into contact with the Goodwins: Nearly every minister we could remember who humbled themselves and learned from the Goodwins came away with a spiritual ministry that they never expected to be used in. So I’m not surprised God is using you.” Joe’s reassurance gave me the liberty to share this part of the story more openly with others. Praise God.

     Some time after I had shared with Sister Goodwin in a phone conversation about this new anointing being imparted to me, she was lead of the Lord to tell me what lay ahead for me in ministry.

     Sister Goodwin was very bold, yet very careful and reserved in what she told people in the name of the Lord. She was no flatterer. So when she told me this, and told it to me so frankly, I knew she meant it and that it could be counted on to come to pass.

     She said, “Mel honey, MANY are called. FEW are chosen. You are chosen of God, I know that.  And I’ve known that ever since I first met you.

     Why do you think I’ve spent so much time with you?  I don’t spend this much time with everyone who contacts me!

     I spent this much time with you because I knew God was going to give you an anointed ministry, and you needed to know the things I could teach you so you wouldn’t mess yourself up.

     Now, I couldn’t tell this to you when I first met you, because you would have been lifted up in pride.  And you had enough in that already in you when I met you, didn’t you?”

     And I replied, “Yes, I did.”

     She continued, “Well, I can tell you now:  You are going to have a strong ministry, an anointed ministry, like some of the men of old.

     This WILL happen for you.”

     Her words have encouraged me greatly as the ups and downs of ministry have come.  Since then I’ve had many manifestations of the Holy Spirit and a visit or two from the Lord.  I’ve also had several times in which I’ve stepped over into the edge of that stronger ministry anointing that she spoke of.  It has been only in recent days that the stronger anointing has started manifesting more.  Praise God.

     When Sister Goodwin passed away, it was all pretty sudden.  She had been physically weak for all the years I knew her.  But Grace finally had to put her in a nursing home, and Mom passed three months later.  I had just moved to another city, and was caught up in the usual details involved in the moving process, so I had been out of contact with Mom for several months.  I sat down and wrote Mom a letter, and Grace answered back that Mom had passed, and she sent me some clippings.

     Funny thing was, from the letter I noticed the date of her passing.  I looked back in my journal, and I made an interesting entry for that day.  I wrote that I couldn’t explain it, but I had been driving to a minister’s meeting in a nearby town that day, and all of the sudden the Spirit of Prophecy had fallen on me.  When I got to the fellowship meeting, I couldn’t offer any comments to the conversation, because whenever I tried to talk, only prophecy came out. At that time, I had no natural knowledge that Mom Goodwin had gone to Glory, but I guess I knew it in my spirit.

     When spiritual giants of the magnitude of the Goodwins pass, it is normal of course to grieve.  But there is a temptation to think that the Body of Christ will never be the same, we will “never see their like again,” etc.  But since the Goodwins spent over 50 years imparting spiritual Gifts to others, and those gifts, anointings and ministries have continued, the Spirit of God they carried within themselves remains in the earth, still loving and blessing through others now.

     That fits in with the prophecy Kenneth Copeland spoke over Mom Goodwin at that service I saw in 1984.  This was about 5 years after Dad’s passing.  When it was noted that this meeting was the anniversary of the Goodwins’ entry into ministry 48 years previously, Brother Copeland was moved by the Spirit to speak the following word to Mom:

     “This is the anniversary of that month and that year.

     And those years that were spent in ministering before God, and ministering with God, have been of GREAT value to the Kingdom of God.

     And now, even though your husband has come here with Me, and even though you are there [on earth] with Me, that ministry still goes on and on and on. And as far as eternity rolls, it will never stop, Saith the Lord.

     Because My way is the best way, and you chose My way 48 years ago. And it is good that you did. And I appreciate it, saith the Lord Jesus.”

     Amen.

Copyright 2006 Mel C. Montgomery. All rights reserved. Material may be copied and shared with others if done so without charge, in entirety, and if attribution is given.