T.L Osborn- American Pentecostal Televangelist, Singer, Author And Teacher

Tommy Lee “T.L.” Osborn was an American Pentecostal televangelist, singer, author, and teacher who died on February 14, 2013. He was born on December 23, 1923, and died on February 14, 2013. Osborn was a preacher for 60 years and led the religious TV show Good News Today.

Biography

Tommy Lee Osborn was born on a small family potato farm in Grady County, Oklahoma, on December 23, 1923. He was the seventh and last son of Charles Richard Osborn (1883–1966) and his wife Mary (née Brown) (1885–1951), who had a total of thirteen children. His father, who was also a seventh son, was a regular Baptist who never went to church.

Osborn once said, “That’s supposed to mean something,” and then added, “Turns out, it did mean something.” Tommy Lee has been making music since he was a very young child. His parents and a few of his brothers and sisters were also singers. As he grew up in the second half of the 1920s, he saw how hard it was for his big family during the Depression. When Osborn was six years old, his family moved to Skedee, Oklahoma, because his father wanted to find a better farm.

At a church in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, he met Oral Roberts, who later became a televangelist. Roberts was his best friend for over 70 years, until Roberts died in 2009. Roberts and Osborn often went to religious meetings together to help out. Roberts did most of the speaking, and Osborn did everything else, including playing the accordion and piano during the musical parts of the meetings. Osborn became a Christian in 1937 when his older brother took him to a Pentecostal church in Mannford.

He was 13 years old at the time. Gradually, each of his six brothers moved out of the family home, leaving TL as the only boy still living with his parents and helping his 60-year-old father on the potato farm. He said that he didn’t want to ask his father for permission to move out and start traveling, and that he was even afraid to do so. He finally got the guts to ask his father while he was sorting potatoes in the cellar. His father’s answer was a big surprise.

In 1939, when Osborn was 15 years old, he was milking cows when he started to cry. He got down on his knees and asked God what was going on. He said that God had called him to be a missionary, laughing and crying at the same time because he was so shocked by what was happening to him. After finishing the eighth grade, he quit high school and went on the road with E.M. Dillard, a traveling preacher.

Osborn was in charge of setting up preaching meetings and putting on evening services for young people. He went through three states with Dillard. The last one was in California. He met Daisy Washburn at a meeting in Los Banos, California. In 1941, when he was only 17, he fell in love at once.

Daisy Washburn Osborn was born in Merced, California, on September 23, 1924, and she was a farmer’s daughter. On April 5, 1942, Osborn married her. She was only 17, and he was 18. Soon after that, they started a life of service and missionary travel, which included a trip to India when Osborn was only 21 years old. Over time, they told tens of millions of people all over the world about the Gospel of Christ. They did this with hope and confidence.

But that early journey to India, where they preached in Lucknow, didn’t work out. Their ministry in India lasted less than a year, and when a family member got very sick, they had to go back home. The Osborns’ only child, LaDonna Osborn, was born on March 13, 1947. She grew up with her parents at huge miracle evangelistic crusades around the world.

As evangelists on the Big Tent Revival tour in the United States and Canada, the Osborns first came to the attention of the public soon after they got back from India. There, they taught to crowds of over 10,000 people, often in the open air or under big tents at places like fairgrounds and stadiums. On the circuit were also young preachers like Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, Jack Coe, R.W. Schambach, and A.A. Allen. The Osborns focused on God’s love and kindness instead of the “fire and brimstone” theology that most evangelists of the time used. They also used healings from God at their meetings. Many conservative people also didn’t agree with the Osborns’ egalitarian approach to service.

By the beginning of the 1950s, they were focusing more and more on tasks outside of the United States. They held big crusades in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, where groups quickly grew to more than 100,000 at times. Pastor Fred Wantaate of Makerere Full Gospel Church said, “After that crusade in Mombasa, the source of the river of Pentecostalism spread in the heart of East Africa.”

This was after Osborn held crusades in Thailand in 1956 and Uganda in 1957. Around the same time, he met Marilyn Hickey, who would also become a televangelist, and her new husband, Wallace. Hickey was eight years younger than Osborn. The young couple went to different places in her husband’s car to hold tent revival meetings. Together, Osborn and Hickey prayed for people who were sick, and she started speaking at his meetings. Her family had known him all their lives, and he died just four months after Hickey’s husband Wallace.

Over the next 50 years, Osborn and his team went to more than 70 countries, including Kenya, where Apostle Dr. Joe Kayo was born again in 1957 during Osborn’s Crusade. Joe Kayo went on to be a great leader in the Pentecostal movement in East Africa. They made a lot of teaching and evangelism tools, some of which have been translated into more than 80 languages.

Daisy Osborn, who had been married to Osborn for 53 years, died in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May 27, 1995. She was 70 years old. After that, he spent another 15 years traveling and leading crusades all over the world.

Osborn passed away on February 14, 2013. He was 89 years old. LaDonna, his daughter, says that he was in good health until a few days before he stopped breathing, when his body started to get weaker. He was buried at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, next to his wife. This is the same cemetery where Oral Roberts was buried almost four years earlier. Osborn’s daughter, three of his four grandkids, and three of his great-grandchildren took care of him after he died.

LaDonna Osborn keeps running the ministry her parents started. Every year, she leads foreign crusades in the developing world. Tommy Ray O’Dell, his grandson, has a ministry in Asia, Africa, and Europe that focuses on evangelism and education, just like his grandpa did. Like his grandpa, he often has a lot of people at his services, and it has been said that miracles have happened there.

Publication

Healing 1951’s “The Sick”
Healing in the Bible (1954)
Frontier Evangelicalism with Healing Miracles (1955)

Three Keys to the Book of Acts (1960)
Soulwinning. 1963’s “A Classic on Evangelism”
The Reason for Easter (1963)
Away from the Sanctuary. The Case for Soulwinning was written in 1969.
How to Start Over (1977)
In His Name, from 1981,
Faith Speaks came out in 1982.
The 1983 book “One Hundred Divine Healing Facts”
Get (1984) Miracle Healing
You Are God’s Best (1984)
1984’s The Big Love Plan
The Gospel as T.L. and Daisy See It. The 1985 documentary “Classic”
1986’s The Best of Life
1986’s There’s Plenty for You
1994’s “The Good Life”
1996’s The Power of Positive Desire
The Message That Works: What We Have Told Millions in 73 Countries for 53 Years (1997)
Miracles: Evidence of God’s Love
If I Were a Woman came out in 2011.
Legacy of Faith Collection was released in 2011.
Health Renewed: Where Illness Comes From and God’s Plan to Heal (2012)