George Malkmus

I am a Christian! I believe the Bible to be the very Word of God! Yes, I believe that:

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”
(II Timothy 3:16-17)

In fact, I believe the Bible so much that in the margins of my Bible, opposite Genesis 1:1 where we read “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, I have penned the words “AND I BELIEVE ALL THE REST!”

However, 36 years ago there was a verse in the Bible I questioned. It is found in Romans 8:28…

“And we know that all things ‘work together for good’ to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Thirty-six years ago, at the age of 42, I was told I had colon cancer. Though I believed the Bible, I had to question how Romans 8:28 could fit the situation I found myself in. How could a cancer in my body “work together for good”?

God Used Various Circumstances

God used various circumstances in my life to prepare me for “such a time as this.” You see, I was raised by a mother who was a registered nurse, a graduate of Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City.

Mother raised me to believe that when I got sick I should get to the doctor just as quickly as possible because the doctor was the only one capable of making me well.

So when my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer at age 59, in keeping with what she believed and what she had taught me, she very willing submitted her body to the treatments the doctors told her were necessary. She had great faith in doctors and medical modalities.

Mother submitted her body to surgery, chemotherapy, and cobalt treatments (called radiation treatments today). Her death was a slow and agonizing one following these treatments. Though no single one of these treatments killed her, she was in and out of the hospital until she died at the age of 65.

At the time of mother’s death I was convinced that it wasn’t the cancer that ultimately caused her death, but the cumulative damage done to her immune system by the many treatments she had received.

Because her immune system had been so compromised by the treatments she had received, her body finally had to give up and give in. I remember saying “good-bye” to my mother as we placed her in the grave. It is a very sad event that you do not soon forget!

Now It Was My Turn

Now picture this if you will… I have just watched my mother go through this horrible cancer experience and death when I am told that I have the same form of cancer she had.

I was scared. How should I respond? What should I do?

Mother had raised me to put my faith in doctors. She instilled in my mind from my earliest remembrance that “when you get sick you go to the doctor and do what he says.”

But I had just seen mother get sick, I had seen her go to the doctor, and I had seen the horrible consequences of doing what the doctors said.

Should I do what mother had programmed me to do while growing up? Or should I seek an alternative way of dealing with it?

Breaking a lifetime of programming by your mother is not an easy thing to do.

How I Broke The Programming

But because of the horrible suffering and eventual death I had seem my mother experience following her acceptance of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, I broke programming and went searching for an alternative.

That search led me to an Evangelist friend in Texas by the name of Lester Roloff.

Brother Roloff was a great preacher but he had some very strange ideas about how we should feed the body, ideas totally contrary to the programming I had received for the previous 42 years of my life. Brother Roloff taught that we should not eat animal flesh but rather only the plant foods that came from the garden.

For his dietary ideas, Brother Roloff received lots of ridicule and rejection from fellow preachers! And I must admit that I had joined in with fellow preachers in ridiculing his admonitions to eat a plant-based diet and drink lots of carrot juice.

In fact, we preachers used to affectionately call him “Ole Carrot Juice Roloff.”

But now I had a dilemma. Though I had previously ridiculed Brother Roloff’s beliefs and his efforts to get fellow preachers to eat a plant-based diet, I had been told I had a serious and potentially life-threatening physical problem.

Perhaps it was time to reevaluate what he had been teaching and listen to what he had to say.

So I contacted Brother Roloff and shared my dilemma. His response was that I not go the medical route with my cancer, but rather do something as simple as change what I had been eating for the previous 42 years of my life. He told me to eat only what God told Adam he should eat in Genesis 1:29. He also encouraged me to drink a lot of carrot juice.

How Cancer Can “Work Together For Good”

Thinking I had nothing to lose by accepting Brother Roloff’s advice — and a lot better than accepting the horrible medical modalities that I felt had caused my mother’s death — I changed my diet overnight. I stopped eating animal flesh, stopped all forms of dairy, eliminated all refined sugar, refined grains, and all forms of caffeine.

The next day I ate nothing but raw, plant sourced foods and began drinking lots of carrot juice and distilled water. That was quite a drastic change from what I had previously been eating!

But the amazing thing was that after a few days of not feeling well (detoxing – as my body was throwing off accumulated poisons), I began to feel better.

Within a very short time my rectal bleeding stopped and within a year my baseball size tumor had disappeared and I was well! WOW! Within a year I had learned that “all things (CAN) work together for good”!

Hallelujah Acres Is Born

I was a preacher. I was saved at a Billy Graham Crusade in New York City on May 29, 1957, went to school for four years to prepare for the ministry, pastored various churches for many years, preached some 5,000 biblically-based messages, and read through the scriptures Genesis to Revelation in daily devotions most years. I thought I knew the Bible quite well.

But Brother Roloff had to re-introduce me to a verse in the Bible (Genesis 1:29) that I had probably read hundreds of times; it had just never registered. In this verse God had given Adam a diet intended to nourish his human physical body.

Who would know better what was proper nourishment for the human physical body than the creator of that body?

Now, at the encouragement of Brother Roloff, I had accepted and consumed that same Genesis 1:29 diet that God gave to Adam. Within a year of adopting it, my cancer was gone and I was well.

What should I do with this experience and knowledge?

Yes, not only did “all things work together for good” as far as my own physical health was concerned, but now God was using that same cancer experience to show me once again that “all things work together for good” when He led me to start a ministry called Hallelujah Acres. Little did I know it would bring health and healing to millions around the world.

On February 12, 2012, Hallelujah Acres will celebrate its 20^th anniversary.

Next week, the good Lord willing and if the creeks don’t rise too high, we will share how God used “all things working together for good” to take Hallelujah Acres from just a vision to a reality – from a ma and pa ministry in 1992 – to a worldwide ministry today. Trust you will join us.