said to Saul, ". . . The asses which thou wentest to seek are found: and, lo, thy father hath left
the care of the asses, and sorroweth for you, saying, What shall I do for my son?"(1 Sam.
10:2).
The Word of Knowledge To Samuel Regarding Saul
The word of knowledge also operated in the Old Testament to discover a man in hiding.
Although Samuel had already anointed Saul to be king over Israel, when it came time to reveal
him
as the king, Saul hid ". . . among the stuff. . ." (1 Sam. 10:22). When the people couldn't find
him, they inquired of the Lord instead of sending everyone to look for him. (Many times that is
the quickest way to find an answer.)
The people knew that the Lord knew where Saul was. And the Lord told them exactly where
Saul was. When they looked where God told them to look, they found Saul. That was the word
of knowledge in operation. Remember, the word of knowledge reveals certain facts in the mind
of God.
The Word of Knowledge Manifested To Locate a Lost Daughter
Before we discuss other Old Testament examples of the word of knowledge in operation, let
me give you a modern-day example of how God uses the word of knowledge to locate
someone who is lost. That is scriptural, as we have seen in the examples of Samuel locating
both Saul's donkeys and Saul himself when Saul was hiding.
I was teaching on the subject of the gifts of the Spirit in a church in 1943, when a couple asked
me if the Lord could show them how to find their lost daughter.
This daughter had been involved with a gang when she was sixteen years old, and when she
disappeared, the police thought the gang had killed her. Twenty-two years had gone by and in
the meantime her mother and daddy, brothers, and sisters had all gotten saved and filled with
the Holy Ghost.
The family, with the exception of her mother, had all given the girl up for dead. The mother
kept saying that something on the inside of her told her the girl was still alive.
After I taught on the gift of the word of knowledge, the couple asked me, "Doesn't God know
where our daughter is or whether or not she is alive? Would it be all right for us to pray about
it?"
I said, "Surely," and while they were praying about it one day in the church, one of the women
present had a vision. She saw a woman, now thirty-eight years of age, in a garage apartment
with two children, a boy and a girl. She saw the woman chained and held captive in that
apartment. Then in the vision she saw a letter come and she saw the girl's father going to the
post office to get the letter. Later, the woman told the couple about her vision and said that
within thirty days they would receive a letter saying their daughter was alive.
At the end of thirty days, the father went to the post office and got a letter from his daughter
who had been missing and presumed dead for twenty-two years. She was in Houston, Texas.
The letter began, "Dear Mom and Dad, I don't know whether you are alive or not, but if you are