She stepped into the pulpit at a time when women's callings were typically confined to the nursery, and she taught on the importance of a crucified life when self-promotion and prosperity were the hallmarks of many prominent ministries.

Who knew that one day this unassuming woman would impact some of the church's most influential leaders, including Myles Munroe, Judson Cornwall and others.

On January 30, 2004, at the age of 85, Pickett died peacefully in her Tennessee home and went to be with her beloved Jesus. But her life and her teachings will not soon be forgotten.

EARLY PREPARATION

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Pickett was born to God-fearing parents in Axton, Virginia, and faithfully attended a Methodist church during her early years. She married at 16, after graduating from high school.

Soon after, Pickett began observing the vibrant faith of a Presbyterian girl with whom she worked. Convicted, Pickett would often lie awake at night questioning whether she would go to heaven.

After attending an evangelistic rally, Pickett fell to her knees in her bedroom and cried out to God. That night, Pickett walked from darkness into light. Soon after, God began speaking to her.

Lying in bed one night, she heard a distinct voice calling her name, and she sensed that the room was filled with the presence of God. "I want you to preach and teach My Word," the voice said. "I knew I had heard the voice of God," Pickett told Ministries Today in her final interview.

God opened the door for her to attend John Wesley College, in Greensboro, North Carolina, and, later, Martinsville Bible College, Aldergate University and the University of North Carolina.

THE TEACHER MOVES IN

For the next 17 years, Pickett traveled throughout the country, preaching and teaching--although it was rare at the time for a woman to do so.

Her father dying of Hodgkin's disease, Pickett began to notice in her own body symptoms of a debilitating bone disease. "I felt instinctively that my days of ministry would soon be over," she said. Pickett tried to hide her condition from her family until the symptoms became unavoidable, and she found herself in a hospital bed, supported with braces and packed in sandbags to sustain her body.

She had written her own funeral, selected pallbearers and purchased a tombstone when a friend offered to take her to a meeting at a Pentecostal church. During the service, Pickett heard the Holy Spirit tell her to go forward for prayer. Her weakened body in braces, she dragged herself to the front and spoke to the preacher: "I don't know why I'm here. But I have a feeling that God would like these people to pray for me."

After a simple prayer and a smear of anointing oil, Pickett began limping back to her seat. It was when she reached the seventh pew that she saw her first vision. A voice said to her, "If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land" (see Is. 1:19). The voice continued, "Are you willing to be identified with these people--to be one of them?"

"Yes, Lord," she replied and began to lower herself into her seat.

At that moment, Pickett recalled that the power of God struck the base of her neck and coursed through her body. Minutes later, she was dancing and shouting, her unneeded braces clattering to the floor.

An hour later, having exhausted her vocabulary for praising God, Pickett found herself speaking in a language she had never learned or heard before. "Not only was I healed from the top of my head to the tip of my toes," Pickett said. "But I was filled with the Holy Ghost."

"My Teacher moved in," she said. "For the first time in my life I began to understand, through revelation, the same Scriptures I had studied and taught faithfully for many years. They came alive to me, not as information, but as power that was working in me and transforming my life."

DREAMS AND VISIONS

Soon after, God began to reveal Himself to Pickett in dramatic ways. "You run your classes based on 60- or 90-minute sessions," she recalled the Holy Spirit telling her. "I don't. I live here in your spirit. I have moved in to be your Teacher, and My classroom is never closed. I wrote the Book."

Pickett added: "As the Holy Spirit would quicken truth to me, whole books of the Bible would open and relate to each other in my mind. I saw how Leviticus related to Hebrews, Joshua to Ephesians, and I walked the floor, shaking my head and staggering in my ability to grasp it all."

Local Pentecostal pastors caught wind that a Methodist minister had received the Holy Spirit, and soon, Pickett was invited to speak at Pentecostal camp meetings and revival services. As she explained, a Spirit-filled Methodist was a novelty at the time, and her story was welcomed with applause and amazement.

But she was called to do more than just testify. Daily, God was revealing truths to her about Himself and His Word. Soon, her Pentecostal friend Ralph Byrd began to notice. "You remind me of a Guernsey cow," he told her one day. "You are so full of the milk of the Word that you are bursting with it and looking for every calf around you that you can feed."

A TEACHER AND A MOTHER

From that point on, Pickett traveled extensively, preaching at conferences, writing and teaching at Fountaingate Ministries and Bible College, which she founded in Dallas. Over the years, Pickett became respected as both a teacher and a spiritual mother in the charismatic movement. Her teaching was a unique marriage of prophetic revelation and verse-by-verse exposition.

Pickett applied theological principles from her formal training, but she never held them too tightly when she felt the Spirit move her in a new direction. "I don't despise what I have studied," Pickett said. "That knowledge of the Word brought me to the point that I could receive true revelation of it."

Unafraid to confront traditional understandings of difficult passages, she often embraced an unconventional allegorical interpretation of Scripture. Pickett described this as the living Word giving her insight into the meaning of the written Word.

For instance, in a vision, Pickett was transported to the court of Esther, where the Spirit explained to her the meaning of the book and its characters: Esther represents the church, Haman the flesh and Mordecai the Holy Spirit.

While some would argue that books such as Esther and Ruth are historical narratives to be taken in a strictly literal sense, Pickett taught that they are both historical and allegorical--or revelatory. "As Paul said, all these things were examples," she explained. "The Holy Spirit wrote the facts, but He also gave us deeper allegorical truths all the way through."

The core of her teaching, however, was the deeper life, death to self and the Spirit's empowerment for godly living. "It is obedience to the revelation we receive that enables the Holy Spirit to keep giving us new revelation," she said. "The test of true revelation is the power it has to transform our thinking and our lives to the image of Christ."

Was she afraid of making mistakes? "Not mistakes, but incomplete truths," she said. "No one person has it all because the truth is broken into bits." Never one to hold too tightly to her interpretations, Pickett encouraged her hearers to examine her teachings through the lens of the written Word.

But doctrine was not as much a concern for Pickett as was the disunity and spiritual apathy she saw in the church. Four years after being filled with the Spirit, she received the most dramatic vision of her life, and, like the prophetess Anna, she longed for its fulfillment.

While she was spending the night in a church in Klamath Falls, Oregon, Pickett saw a hydroelectric power plant being built by crews of laborers. It was surrounded by gates and connected to dammed-up rivers, representing streams of church tradition.

Pickett said that there will be a last-days awakening, in which God's river of truth will again plow through the mechanisms of the derelict power plant, releasing revival in the nation and around the world.

It's been nearly 40 years since Pickett saw the vision, but she held to its reality. "We are coming to the last session," she said. "God is digging out the reservoirs, filling them with His Word, connecting people who are hungry."

THE STATE OF TEACHING

As she looked at the current church culture, Pickett was both encouraged and concerned. "There seems to be a hunger for what God said rather than what so-and-so said," she said. "This hunger will bring in the presence of God. But if you're not hungry, you won't eat."

In order for true renewal to come, Pickett contended that the church has to be cleansed of denominationalism, culture and prejudice. "We're fighting over a lot of doctrinal nonessentials--man's opinions, like how to have church," she said. "Denominational lines can come down, and we can focus on what we agree on for the sake of relationship."

Pickett cautioned against minimalizing the importance of the Teacher--the Holy Spirit, that is. "He is the unveiler of the teaching," she said. "If we walk with Him, He'll talk to us and lead us beyond just what we're hearing or reading. The Holy Spirit is the Teacher, but the gift of God given to the church is the teaching."

In her last days, Pickett was still exploring challenging books of the Bible--but not the ones most consider difficult. "Ephesians," she says. "It's one of the books of hunger. In other words, it gives insight and provokes hunger, a book to the mature."

She also hinted that she would soon leave this world. In fall 2003, she told a congregation in Lavergne, Tennessee, that she "wouldn't be coming back."

Sue Curran, who pastors Shekinah Church, the Blountville, Tennessee, congregation attended by Pickett since 1988, visited the teacher shortly before her death. "During my last conversation with her, she was desirous to live as long as the Lord wanted her to," Curran says. "Our church prayed to that end."

A LEGACY

As she grew older, Pickett had lost the physical strength of her younger years but none of the passion and good humor. An interviewer once asked her how old she was. "Age is a number, Honey," she replied with a smile. "Mine is unlisted."

Although failing health prevented her from maintaining her rigorous speaking schedule, Pickett continued to address the Scriptures with this childlike faith and a sense of mystery, sharing her wisdom with Christian leaders who came to her for insight.

It was always hard to get Pickett to talk about herself, but you never had to look very hard to find someone who was willing to sing her praises. One of her closest earthly friends was charismatic Bible teacher Judson Cornwall, who had known her since 1961 when she came to his church in Eugene, Oregon.

"Her insight into the Scriptures was phenomenal," says Cornwall, 79. "The life that was in her seemed to be available to all who would listen with spiritual ears."

Cornwall attributed Pickett's gifting to an intimate relationship with God. "You had the sense that she heard from the Holy Spirit in her prayer closet, and I happen to know that she had," he says.

Still, Pickett always realized who really deserved the praise. "It's all about knowing who I am in contrast to who He is. It takes your pride down a number of notches," she said. "The praise that I receive doesn't belong to me. I just pass it on to Him--thank Him for it. I'm only the keeper and steward of knowledge--a trusted servant to handle the truth."

Fuchsia Pickett's books enjoy revived interest

Fuchsia Pickett's writings and teachings continue to enjoy a broad audience, as people seek to gain insight and encouragement from books such as Receiving Divine Revelation, Stones of Remembrance and The Next Move of God.

Shortly before her death, a new series of books was released, a compilation of her hallmark writings on spirituality. Repackaged in hard-bound collector's editions, the six volumes are a tribute to Pickett's life and teachings. Here are some highlights:

Five Laws of the Dying Seed: Discover the Secret to a Fruitful Life

"Resurrection life comes out of losing our lives. Jesus wanted us to understand that out of death comes life and that without death there is no life. His message focused on the antithesis of death--resurrection life that would glorify God alone. Yet, it underscored the necessity of death, a spiritual law that we must embrace if we are to become fruitful in the kingdom of God."

God's Purpose for You: Answer Life's Five Key Questions

"Many charismatic teachers deny the need for suffering. They have taught us to rebuke everything the cross brought, to confess that we don't have to endure anything that hurts or cuts away at our 'self' lives. They don't want to talk about the fourth baptism. We speak eagerly of the baptism into the body of Christ, water baptism and the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The fourth baptism, baptism of suffering, however, is not as readily taught. We don't want to suffer."

Possess Your Promised Land: Learn to Defeat Your Hidden Enemies.

"Even God's miracles, like the manna He fed His people daily in the wilderness, have the larger purpose of humbling us to teach us the reality of our dependency on our relationship with God. He tests us to see if we will obey His commandments, knowing that only if we do can we inherit our promised land.

To purchase these and the other three books in this series (Understanding the Personality of the Holy Spirit, Walking in the Anointing of the Holy Spirit and Cultivating the Gifts & Fruit of the Holy Spirit), visit www.charismahouse.com, or call 1-800-599-5750.

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