Born and raised in San Jose, California; graduated a speech and drama major with a teaching degree from Pepperdine College in Los Angeles (before it became a University), married to Arlyne Wegner in August of 1959, with one son, Tim, born in 1964, Ray Mossholder has a background that reads like a "Who's Who in Ministry."
In late 1966, Ray accepted the full-time role of news director and weekday teen host at KEAR-fm, which was then in San Francisco. This was a Christian station and what Ray didn't know was that he wasn't a Christian! He had read the Bible through four times in his younger years and assumed that when he said "a terribly casual prayer without my heart at all involved, I now had eternal fire insurance!"
On Ray's show, "Spotlight On Teens," he dramatized Bible stories and played teen-geared Christian music, giving albums away for those teenagers who called in and were the first to answer weekly Bible quiz questions. Four more radio stations across America picked his program up and began airing it too.
During the next four years, Ray interviewed dozens of well-known ministers and celebrities from Dr. Billy Graham to the original Batman to Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend, James Brown. Ray also became known for his penetrating nightly five-minute news commentaries that continued to draw many new listeners each week to his half-hour nightly casts.
One Saturday in October of 1967, Ray accepted the invitation from four Christian leaders to join with them in a cabin in the mountains of Santa Cruz, California. Ray explains, "I was only there because as news director of a major Christian radio station in a very major city, they considered me to be one of their peers. Not one of them assumed that I wasn't born again. In fact, they would have considered that a foolish thought and I would have thought so too."
The men - one was a research scientist from Stanford University; another, one of the creators of the computer; the two others, the head of a world-wide missionary organization and the pastor of a very large church, talked all day long sharing wonderful details of what Christ had and was doing in each of their lives.
It's often said that if you place a counterfeit hundred dollar bill next to a real one, anyone can tell the difference. Ray was stunned by the things he was hearing these men share so matter-of-factly, and he knew in his hollow heart that he had only been playing the role of a "Christian." It wasn't so much the details of their lives that got to Ray, but how up close and personal Christ was to each of these men.
When the men began to leave the cabin that night, Ray asked the owner if he could borrow his key. Ray explained, "I'd like to stay here another day. I want to pray." Each of the men thought Ray was going to be praying for revival to sweep America, and for a multitude of other things that needed prayer nationally and internationally. None of them could possibly imagine Ray instead would be praying to be saved! But alone in the cabin after all the men had left, Ray went into a bedroom and knelt down beside a bed.
God placed the very prayer Ray prayed indelibly in Ray's memory so that he would never forget it. Ray's exact words were, "Jesus, I don't even know if you exist!" Ray says, "I really didn't know, and I knew I would never fake my relationship with Christ again. I also knew if Christ was real, He'd hear me" He continued, "But if You do exist, I want to know You. 1968 is Your year, Lord. You can do anything in it that You want to do. All I ask in return is that You prove to me, without a shadow of a doubt, that You're real."
Prayer to Christ is so powerful that it is the one narrow road to receive Him as Lord and Savior and to receive His gift of eternal life: Ephesians 2:8-10. John 3:16. God has made it easy to receive Christ. He died for every human and offers eternal life with Him for all who will receive Him. But one thing deeply matters at the moment of reception. This kind of praying ALWAYS requires the whole heart of the one who is asking Him to be their Savior ( Romans 10:8-11).
It was on the basis of Ray's honest doubting prayer that Jesus Christ came into his life with a loving force that has never left him even at Ray's worst moments. But Ray also knew instinctively that Christ wanted Ray to follow Him no matter where He led from this point on. Ray says, "I didn't have to wait for 1968. I knew the Holy Spirit instantly came alive in me the second after I prayed. I got up off my knees a Christian. It was the greatest decision I have ever made. I'd prayed a prayer basically of unbelief, but Christ wasn't listening to my words. He was looking at my heart. And He knew I was finally surrendering my life to Him. He looks at every human's heart because that's where our motives and intents really are. He's not a bit interested in lips that ridiculously try to hide the truth from Him - 1 Samuel 16:7.
Ray returned home and his wife saw immediately that he was glowing with the Holy Spirit. She asked Ray what had happened to him. He says, "I knew if I blurted out that I'd just gotten saved, she'd think I'd joined some cult. To her, I was already saved. So I asked Arlyne to sit down with me on the couch. She did and I carefully told her exactly what had happened to me in that cabin and about several things each man said that had deeply touched my life. Finally I told her, "And when I got alone, I prayed to receive Jesus Christ as my Savior, and He came. I was born again tonight." Arlyne looked at me and said, 'But you've been born again for as long as I've known you.' To which I answered, 'All I can say is that if Christ had come for His Church before I prayed that prayer, I don't think I would have been going home with Him."
Ray received the same kind of questioning his wife had given him when he returned to the radio station the following Monday. Everyone from from his fellow staff members to his listeners responded quickly, asking him what new thing had happened that made him seem and sound so amazingly different than he had ever been before. Ray kept telling them the same thing he'd told his wife. Ray recognized the newness in himself too and was suddenly in love with the Christ whose very existence seemed so distant until that time.
In January of 1968, the year that Ray had given to Christ, Ray received what he calls his "rocket-booster" - the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Before he received it, Ray spent hours with the friend who prayed with him. Ray biblically argued every negative thing he had ever heard about this experience, and especially about the tongues that accompanied it. In the two churches Ray had most recently attended, he had been taught two different things. In one church, he'd been taught the baptism in the Holy Spirit and all the gifts of the Spirit mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12 were only for the Christians of the first century and died out as soon as the New Testament was available. The second church said that all teaching concerning the baptism in the Holy Spirit and tongues was demonic and should be avoided like the plague. But during Ray's hours of debate, his friend gave him solid biblical answers to every single one of his questions..
Ray says, "Remember, I'd only been born again less than four months, though I knew the Bible as if I'd been a Christian for many years because of my several times of reading it through. All my questions answered, I finally said yes when my friend asked me if I was a candidate for the baptism in the Holy Spirit. And, like the apostle Paul put it, I could soon say afterward, "I thank my God I speak in tongues...." (1 Corinthians 14:18). Not that I burst into tongues when I was prayed for. In fact, I first spoke in tongues 28 hours later. after our Lord did one of His absolutely astounding miracles.Miracles began happening more and more as I prayed in tongues. Among these miracles were the many doors of ministry that kept opening wider and wider for me. I still pray that way and the doors are at the widest they have ever been.
Also in 1968, I became the youth director for Reverend Don Sheley of what was then Calvary Cross Church in Daly City, California. I loved working with high schoolers in what our church called "Teen Life." The first night of my becoming their leader, only three teenagers showed up. I told them, "You now have a choice. You can get drug here by your parents every Sunday night and hate it until you finally graduate from high school. Or you can go back to school and invite your friends to join you here. Then we'll have fun learning the Bible together."
The three teens took me up on this and brought their friends who brought their friends who brought their friends. Before I left this youth work, a youth group that started with three had become over a thousand teenagers joyfully involved in sharing Christ and His love in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had become a Youth For Christ director, a Chaplain at the Salvation Army Home For Unwed Mothers in Oakland, California, and still remained a youth director, host of Spotlight On Teens, and did two half-hour newscasts every weekday plus a commentary..
With all of the above happening, someone might think that I must have been very wise. Just the opposite is true. I was a baby in Christ and It is terrible how grassy green a Christian I really was; how easily led of the flesh rather than the Spirit. I was also "ignorant" according to 1 Corinthians 12:1, where Paul wrote, "Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware." That's exactly what I was -unaware" of "the Holy Spirit's gifts." Being in a church where no one paid attention to the gifts, either did I. I didn't even believe Christ healed through His believers anymore, in spite of John 14:12-14 and Hebrews 13:8."
Still another event happened in 1968. "In June, Arlyne gave birth to our only daughter - Elizabeth. Tim had been the apple of my eye ever since he was born. What else would he be when his very first words were "Get that ball!" He was a Christian before he was five. Now with our second little baby, I was one thrilled daddy. She too was a Christian by the age of five. It runs in the family!
Tim and Beth needed a little brother. So David was born in 1970. His sense of humor has kept us all laughing and his love for the Lord has kept us all praising God. As adults, all three of our kids are Christian leaders blazing trails in their own callings.
A phenomena had been happening ever since I became a Christian. Teenagers kept showing up at our doorstep needing parents! After checking, whenever possible, with their real parents and getting their approval, we took the teenagers in and raised them. In all, ten were part of our family for periods of time - most of them until they were adults."
In 1970, while Ray was still a news director, he received an invitation in the mail from the Kathryn Kuhlman organization. It said that Ray could come to the seven thousand seat Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and sit right on stage while Kathryn ministered healing to the crowd. Prior to receiving this, Kathryn. in Ray's mind, was a total fake. The whole story of what happened next can be found in another article on this blog called:Kathryn Kuhlman, God's Great Lady, My Great Friend. Ray returned home to Daly City after Miss Kuhlmans miracle service still carrying the anointing that was on that service. Ray says, "I knew now without a shadow of a doubt that Christ heals today and that He wanted me to minister healing with the laying on of hands everywhere I went.
My first goal when I got back to Daly City was to find sick friends I could lay hands on and fully believe for their healing (Mark 16:18). I was thrilled to find there were several who were sick! I went to their individual homes, laid hands on them and watched our Lord keep His Word. Soon I was being invited to do healing meetings in churches and that ministry grew beyond all I could ask or think."
The story is too long to tell here, but the Lord led Ray through a series of events to leave the Bay Area with his family and move to Chatsworth, in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California. Ray was without a job when he got there and had eight mouths to feed. Soon he and his wife had all but run out of money. One Wednesday night, Ray stood on the top of a small hill in front of the house they were staying in and waved his Daily Minder calendar towards Heaven. He told God, and Ray says he fully meant it, "If you want me to keep following You in ministry, start filling this calendar THIS WEEK. Otherwise, Monday I'm going out and will get a secular job because I have to keep feeding my family." That same Friday night, Loren Cunningham, at that time the International Director of Youth With A Mission, the largest missionary organization in the world, came to America from his YWAM base in Switzerland and spoke in only one church - the little Assembly of God Church where Ray and his family had begun attending. He had heard of Ray and the constantly growing amount of teens he ministered to while in the Bay Area. Loren asked Ray to speak to an international gathering of YWAM leaders in Laguna Beach, California, the next day. Directly after Ray spoke, Loren asked him to be a national representative for YWAM and Ray gladly accepted. His calendar was full for the next two years.
With YWAM's endorsement and the multitude of healings taking place in Ray's meetings, Ray was invited to larger and larger churches. It was easy for him to endorse YWAM and to promote this great work.
In 1970, Loren invited Ray to come to the YWAM base near Geneva,
Switzerland, and attend a two month Mini-Congress on Evangelism. He joyfully accepted and sat in awe to hear speaker after speaker. The first night there, the speakers included Loren, Don Thompson and Joy Dawson. Ray says, "Without any intention to do it, these three speakers brought me under great conviction. My marriage was in trouble and I realized it even more so far away from home. When the three were done, I got up from where I'd been sitting and started up the stairs to the room where I'd be staying during this time. With no one around me, I said something close to this to the Lord. "Christ, You've called me to follow You and share You everywhere I go. I know that. But why did you do it when you know I'm a hypocrite? I don't know how to love my wife.
I entered my room and the first thing I saw was my Bible sitting open on a desk and a pad of paper and pen sitting next to it. I didn't at all remember leaving this room before the meeting with my Bible on the desk. I actually thought I had my Bible with me. I walked over to the desk and looked down. My New American Standard Bible was open to the latter part of Ephesians 5. I remembered that I had read that passage quickly each time I read the Bible through and had never studied it. Since I'd just told God how frustrated I was with my own marriage, I decided to sit down and read this passage. The pad of paper and the pen allowed me to take notes, so I did, and I found Ephesians 5:21-33 the single most profound outline of what a Christian marriage should look like that I had or have ever seen.
I made a bunch of notes from that passage and then, rather than get up and go to bed, I simply put my fingers in my Bible and opened it at random. Once again my eyes hit more teaching on marriage for which I took more notes. And as long as I kept opening the Bible at random, new teaching on marriage came before my eyes. I finally did go to bed but the next night and the next night I kept opening the Bible without knowing what I'd find, and it would always be something more on marriage. That went on for two full months! I had written down notes on over a thousand Scripture verses. When I got home I began to apply as many instructions from the Bible on husbands that I could remember. Arlyne immediately saw the difference and our marriage began to improve."
As a spokesman for YWAM, Ray ministered as a healing evangelist throughout America and took ministry trips to South Korea and Japan, ministering to YWAM bases and to America's Eighth Army in Seoul. His biggest honor was to be taken to the demilitarized zone that divides the two Koreas so that he could minister to our troops there. "What a tense place that is with North Korean soldiers on the other side of a transparent fence, sitting at their machine guns that were pointed directly at us."
With YWAM's endorsement and the constant healings taking place, Ray began to believe this might be exactly what God had in mind for him for the rest of his life. But In late 1972, Dr. Jack Hayford of the now famous Church On The Way in Van Nuys, California, asked Ray to leave the evangelistic trail for nine months "to experience what pastoring a church is like." Because Ray accepted that invitation, he has been vital to pastors ever since.
While Ray was working with Dr. Hayford at this church, he asked Ray if he would "dust off the teachings" the Lord had given him in Switzerland so that Ray could teach a fourteen week course on marriage. Ray agreed and as soon as the classes began every Tuesday night, divorces began being canceled.
After the nine months, Ray went back to traveling as an evangelist. His family and Ray were active members of the Church On The Way for 25 years. Ray returned more than once each year to minister to the congregation and to Jack's yearly Leadership conferences. Ray says of Dr. Jack Hayford, "Although the Lord has given me several other outstanding mentors in my life, I consider Jack to be my father in the faith. I learned how to teach from him, and oh so much more."
In 1974, a vision came to a group of Full Gospel Businessmen in New Zealand as they were praying. God showed them that they were to bring powerful ministry from America to touch both of their islands with the Holy Spirit in 1975. It took a full year for them to gather the finances and plan each week of seven. During this time these men sought God to know who the two men in America were to be. He told them that these men were the anointed prophet/author Dick Mills and healing evangelist Ray Mossholder. Both Dick and Ray sensed even more than excitement when they received their invitations. They knew they would be there by Divine appointment. The whole seven weeks was called "Jesus '75."
The Mossholders and the Mills arrived and the couples split up to go church to church on both the North and South Island for the first six weeks. The two evangelists ministered in separate churches and the results were awesome. For the final week the FGBMI had rented the huge Ellerslie horserace track in Auckland. More than fifty thousand people crowded together there in the afternoons and evenings while Dick and Ray daily alternated which time they'd speak. Arlyne also spoke to a women's luncheon of over a thousand women that same week.
The greatest surprise to both these men was that Demos Shakarian, at that time the International President of the FGBMI, flew with his wife to Auckland just to introduce Dick and Ray to the crowd. His vision for reaching businessmen for Christ and the Holy Spirit worldwide was what Ray considers one of the two greatest ministry outreaches of the 20th Century. When the week at the racetrack was over, the Full Gospel Businessmen asked Ray and Arlyne if they would return to do Jesus '76. They agreed. That year the Businessmen asked healing evangelists Charles and Frances Hunter, who were known as "The Happy Hunters," to come for these seven weeks along with Ray..
Both Ray and the Hunters ministered healing with thrilling results for the first six week while they were in different churches. But when they began their seventh week, again at the racetrack, Ray decided to teach on marriage since the Hunters were focused on healing. The result was several divorces being canceled during the week.
As Ray and Arlyne prepared to fly home from Jesus '76, four pastors and four businessmen asked Ray if he would consider moving his family to New Zealand for the entire year of 1977 to become a national evangelist to the entire nation. In turn, these eight men said they would provide airplane tickets roundtrip for each family member, plus a house and car, and a great church for the whole family to be part of. Ray says, "It was an offer we couldn't refuse. Subsequently, when we arrived January 1st in New Zealand, we were moved into a home in Blenheim, a small town near the beginning of the South Island across the sea from Wellington. We immediately became part of the Elim Church under Pastor Ian Bilby who reminded both Arlyne and me of a young Jack Hayford.
It was an incredible year of ministry and home life. All three of our kids went to New Zealand schools and loved it. Tim became a leader in the youth group at church which led him to the life of ministry he now knows. Thousands were
physically healed that year, including the restoration of 14 blind eyes.
Ray would teach on healing the first week at any new church where he would go, but if asked to return for a second week of meetings, Ray would teach a marriage seminar. In November of 1977, Ray was invited to Parliament to explain why so many divorces were canceled that year wherever Ray went. Ray simply took his Bible with him. shared three passages from it, and pointed to it as the book that heals marriages. In all, Ray returned to New Zealand 20 times and to Australia. which is five hours away, 19 times. Ray calls these two countries, "My homes away from home!"
Returning to America in January of 1978, Ray was admittedly confused. He realized the continual importance of physical healing, but he also realized what a miracle the divorce cancellations were. He began asking Christ which our Lord found the more important - the healing of bodies or the healing of marriages. God remained silent and so Ray went on a forty day fast.
Ray explains, "I have now been on thirteen forty day fasts in the past 45 years, but I have NEVER fasted to EARN anything from God. Jesus Christ loves you and me, and WANTS to bless us. The only times I've fasted, God Himself has called me to the fast. When He does that, He also takes away my hunger FROM THE DAY BEFORE THE FAST BEGINS. So fasting has been relatively easy for me as a kind of self-discipline that sharpens my hearing of God's voice and makes room in and around me for miracles that God WANTS to give me (See Daniel 10:1-4, 12-13). He has also stopped me from fasting when I've started without His calling me to do it. Fasting watching television, eating sweets, or giving up anything you just love to do but isn't profitable to the kingdom of God, IS JUST AS VALID AS FASTING FOOD FOR HOWEVER LONG YOU DO IT."
At the conclusion of that fast the Lord showed Ray that not only were there several "healing evangelists" throughout the world, but that even many pastors were not speaking at all about marriage for fear they would say the wrong things. Ray had the biblical answers for marriage. God also showed him that if someone was physically sick, though they would want to be healed, they could die happy if they had a great marriage. But on the other hand, if they were physically sick and had a bad marriage, many of them would just as soon die. Recognizing these things, Ray made a quantum change and put the scheduling of marriage seminars above the healing seminars, though physical healing was always offered and many many physical healings still occurred.
Another thing Ray discovered upon returning to America was how quickly Americans can forget a ministry. No meetings waited for him and he prayed, asking the Lord what he should do about it. Almost immediately, Dr. Jim Bakker phoned Ray from PTL in Charlotte, North Carolina, and asked him to come and be on the PTL Club with him and Tammy. He made well more than a hundred guest appearances in the next ten years, making him a regular on the show. Often Ray stayed the whole week and taught whatever series God gave him for the guests of PTL.
Asked about Jim and Tammy, Ray says, "I knew them both as close friends. They have often been attacked verbally by multitudes who didn't know them at all. I saw the hard work they did, overseeing every aspect of their ministry and always going out of their way to bless their visitors and their TV guests.
For a long time, lunch for the guests on their show meant sitting with people like Dr. Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Rex Humbard, Charles and Frances Hunter, Dick Mills, and a group of celebrities whose names were household words. The meal itself was often a combination of exotic ethnic dishes that would be hard to find in one setting in the finest of restaurants in the world. Guests were taken to and from the airport in limousines. And the Southern mansion where guests spent the night had a sweeping 'Gone With The Wind' kind of staircase that led to canopied beds that were so high you felt if you fell out you'd be sure to land hard on the floor and break at least an arm!"
In 1988, when Jim and Tammy left PTL, I prayed and said, "Lord, the exposure Jim and Tammy have given me on their program opened doors for me all over America. Now that that's been completely stopped, what am I to do to get your gospel out?" Almost immediately, a staff member from CBN called and asked me if I would come to Virginia Beach, Virginia, and do a marriage seminar for their guests. "Oh, by the way, when you do that," the caller said, "You'll also be interviewed by Dr. Pat Robertson on the 700 Club!"
Ray's first marriage seminar for Pat resulted in more than fifty more that he did for him over the next ten years which resulted in nearly three thousand divorce cancellations, hundreds of salvations, and many physical healings too. Ray was also a constant guest on the 700 Club for the next ten years. Once again, as with his appearances on the Praise The Lord Club, Ray never lacked for meetings.
In 1994, Arlyne and Ray moved to Puyallup, Washington. near Tacoma. Ray explains, "We recognized a number of things in California that made us want to leave. One of the biggest was the damage our home sustained during the Reseda earthquake that same year whose epicenter was less than five miles from our Chatsworth home and office. My wife and I decided to leave California and it's many faults (pun intended!). Lord moved Arlyne and me to Puyallup, Washington. Though we'd only be there two years, most of which we'd be traveling to do meetings everywhere else, we loved the adventure of snow and the fun of driving and finding new beautiful scenery when we were home."
Also in 1994, the late Russ Bixler who was then president of Cornerstone Television Network in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, invested fifty thousand dollars to create 36 half-hour Marriage Plus programs and 26 Singles Plus programs featuring Ray as the teacher. They were seen through the end of 2001 in over half of America and eight foreign countries every week, and on Sky Angel as well.
In 1996, Arlyne and Ray moved again to buy their own home in Phoenix, Arizona, and had a lovely office there. Ray had already connected with the Phoenix First Assembly of God, working with the late Leo Godzich, the creator of NAME (The National Association of Marriage Enhancement). Not long after moving to Phoenix, Ray became staff evangelist for Reverend Tommy Barnett. Still he continued to travel to do marriage, singles, and healing seminars nationally and internationally.
Twice Arlyne and Ray did extended ministry in Indonesia. Ray also did a daily radio program that was broadcast in several cities, something he'd been doing most of the years he was in ministry. While on a two-month missionary trip to New Zealand and Australia, ministering in towns no American had ever ministered in before, a phone call came from the states one day telling Ray that his whole office staff had combined to embezzle him! Arlyne flew home to discover that ALL ministry money was gone. Even the electricity had been shut off because the bill hadn't been paid.! Had it not been for a loving Christian couple, Betty and Ron Moser, who came into our office and worked FREE for more than a year, our ministry would have been finished. But their painstaking work with Arlyne and me brought enough money to be fully restored.
In 1999, Ray and Arlyne moved one more time - so that Ray could join the Rock Church's staff in Baltimore and in 2000 he produced two national pastor's marriage schools where he taught a large amount of pastors each time on how to teach their own congregations on marriage. Both schools were huge successes but Ray's own marriage wasn't. Nevertheless, in 2001 Ray received the highest honor in ministry he could have ever received - an honorary doctorate from International University in Tulsa for the results of all the years of ministry. It was presented through Dr. Craig Lamb, president of International University.
Leaving the Rock Church and working with another church throughout 2001, Ray was burning out. Ray says, "I sometimes would hear a ministering person say they quit ministry because they burned out. I always thought that was just a cop-out, but when it happened to me, I finally understood." On December 31, 2001, Ray left Baltimore and his marriage and fully believed at that moment that all of his ministry life was over. But God had totally different plans for Ray.
Ray describes 2002 to May of 2006 as "Living on the backside of a desert. I still loved the Lord and went to church, but I kept my mouth shut and thought I was done for sure. I thought throughout those years that perhaps I had only been born to be a bad example." This period of Ray's life, like all Christian lives, was tsunamied by the blood of Christ. "There is NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1) except from Christians who don't believe that, from the world without Christ. and most of all strong condemnation of ourself.
What I couldn't see was that in all those dark years, Papa God had me on His Potter's wheel and was lovingly and completely reshaping me. At the end of the four and a half years, He had removed all of my pride, arrogance, crudeness, self-promoting spirit, name-climbing goals, and judgmental spirit, and replaced them with two things - a thrilling understanding of the unconditional love of God, and an equally thrilling understanding of the amazing grace of God.
Two signs that God wasn't at all done with Ray happened during those dark years. Ray is an actor who has been in over fifty plays. In 2004 Ray won the role of Pontius Pilate (type casting?) in the Passion Play presented by the combined churches of Las Vegas at the Riviera Casino during the week before Easter. Nearly a thousand people gave their lives to Christ that week.
In 2006, a book was published that Ray ghostwrote. Ray says, "It was such an honor to write that book after interviewing a former prisoner for twenty hours. He had led a horrendous life and I wrote three passages in the book that were designed to lead any inmate to Christ. I'd have never had time to write it if I had remained on the evangelistic trail."
May 26th, 2006, a woman in Mountain View, California, near San Jose, was praying intensely. She too remembers her exact words. Feeling like her life had never counted for anything, she was saying "Lord, I need a husband to love. Someone I can grow old with and take care of. And Lord, I need him NOW. I really really really (she said she prayed about 17 reallys!) need him NOW!"
Three nights later, Ray was in Henderson, Nevada, near Las Vegas. That's when he got a sudden urge to do something he's never done since and had never done before. He said he felt that he should go on to his computer and enter Classmates.com. Ray says, "I thought with all the school background I had, both attending and teaching, that I might find some of my old friends there." He did. He was delighted, but not near so delighted as he was when he came across the name Georgia Carter. That's because Georgia and Ray had gone steady in high school 53 years before! She was single and after a whirlwind courtship, mostly by cell phone and e-mail, Ray married Georgia Mae on August 9th, of that same year.
Thanks to Ray's lifelong ministry friend, evangelist Dick Joyce, Ray was contacted almost immediately by Pastor Bill Johnson of Bethel Church in Redding, California. Bill invited Ray to bring his bride to Bethel and undergo restoration under the counseling of Pastor Danny Silk. Ray and Georgia accepted. A year and a half later, after also attending Bethel's School of the Supernatural under the delightfully creative teacher, Pastor Kris Vallotton, Bill pronounced Ray restored and sent out letters to many ministries declaring that fact. He then asked Ray to teach courses at Bethel and the Mossholders' began a home Bible study that outgrew their home.
In 2010, Ray and Georgia were told by God, "You ARE moving to Fort Worth, Texas" and a couple whose marriage had been put together from chaos at an early '90's seminar at CBN, paid for the entire move. The beginning of their move was unpleasant. Ray developed insomnia and had it for 90 days. "The best I can describe it" says Ray, "is that for ninety days I felt like a burned out light bulb." On the ninetieth night Ray was attending a Christ For The Nations conference and Heidi Bakker's first words as she began to speak were "Insomnia. Someone out there has insomnia and you've just been healed." I went home and slept beautifully for the whole night and from then on.
Nothing was happening even by the end of 2010 to give any reason why God
had brought Ray and Georgia to Fort Worth. But in December of that year, Ray heard Bill Johnson quote evangelist Smith Wigglesworth on a CD. Wigglesworth was known for raising the dead and for more than a hundred thousand healings during his lifetime. Anyone else saying it might have been laughed off the block, but I knew Smith could say it and meant it. He said, "If the Holy Spirit isn't moving, I'll move Him!" I thought, "How can I move the Holy Spirit to show us why we're here." I immediately thought of yet another forty day fast. Entering into it wholeheartedly, it was on the 40th night of the fast that my prophetess friend, Cristina Foor, e-mailed me that a whole lot of people all over Wyoming wanted me to come and do healing meetings. One Christian group even wanted me to do a marriage seminar. As a direct result, Georgia and I spent a month ministering there with healing after healing after healing. And afterward we accepted two different church invitations from Oklahoma with the absolute same kind of results. Ray and Georgia will pray over any invitations they receive.
Ray is the author of eight books, including a teen novel, three on the family, and a complete commentary on the book of Ephesians. Many thousands have been healed in his healing meetings. More than 11,000 divorces have been canceled and more than fifty thousand people have come to Christ in his live seminars. He has traveled to 25 foreign countries for ministry, several of them many times, most recently in late 2012 when his wife and he spent a whole month in Wales.
At 76, Ray is far from done. For the past year he's been teaching more than 150 Christian leaders in Pakistan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, England, Wales and America to name only a few of the countries he now reaches several times a week with half-hour Bible training videos from his computer to theirs. For nearly a year, he's been centered on the book of Acts. The response to these videos has been astounding. Ray is in constant touch with many whom he teaches and he's been given the nickname "Papa." Many of those receiving Ray's teachings are translating them into course studies they use in church classes or out in the villages. Some even use his videos to take the place of a pastor on Sunday mornings at their church.
You can see all of Ray's teaching and entertaining readings of books like The Chronicles of Narnia because they are now available to be viewed and heard all over the world on www.reachmorenow.com. Ray says about these readings, "I love kids of every age and reading Christian novels to anyone who enjoys them makes them far more enjoyable to me." Ray's final words about all he's lived through is: "I know that my Redeemer lives."