Evangelist Stripped and Left in Field

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 195, 7 November 1927, Page 1

Evangelist Stripped and Left in Field

FAITH HEALER’S STORY SENSATION IN MELBOURNE By Cable.—Press Association. — Copyright. Received 9.5 a.m. MELBOURNE, To-day. The police are investigating a remarkable story told by Pastor Evan Thomas, a Welsh evangelist and faith-healer, belonging to the Pentecostal Church, of Richmond, who recently has been holding meetings at Warragul. Pastor Thomas states that three men accosted him in the main street of Warragul, and asked him if he -were a faith-healer. On receiving an affirmative reply, they told him a woman was serionsly ill at Nilma, and requested him to go to see her. Mr. Thomas joined them ill a car. Just after passing Nilma, he declares that he received a heavy blow on the head, and remembered no more till he recovered consciousness in a paddock. He had his clothes on then, but apparently lapsed into unconsciousness, for when he again became conscious he found he had been stripped of his clothes. Another version of the story says that a passing motoring party found Mr, Thomas in a paddock, stripped and blindfolded and covered with tar. His hands bound with barbed wire, which had cut into the flesh. They brought him to Warragul.—A. and N.Z.