When God promises to heal the land, as he does in II Chronicles 7:14, he is predicting the return of the Jew to Israel the homeland, though contingent upon national repentance. When missionaries leave their home country for a foreign field, they often harbor hopes of “healing” the land, or preaching the gospel and serving needy peoples. But when Agnes Sanford, charismatic author and lecturer, moved from the East Coast to California in her later years, she had something far more literal in mind as she applied her extraordinary gifts. She writes in Creation Waits (1976):

When I moved to California in order to be nearer to my children and also to be handy to the San Andreas Fault in order to pray for it, I looked for a house….When I pray for the San Andreas Fault, that is settle its differences, or make its adjustments to the earth that is even now being gradually pushed up from the ocean, I see with the eyes of faith God’s healing and constructive power, God’s life-force of light, shining into the mountains beneath which the fault lurks, and causing these areas of new land to develop so gently, so gradually, that there shall be no destructive earthquakes. Many people, encouraged by the newspapers, seem to gloat in the prospect of a destructive earthquake, and to delight in foretelling it. However, God is more powerful than all newspapers and gloomy prophets who foresee calamity.

The paper of Agnes Sanford (SC-174) are archived in the College Archives & Special Collections.