Learning By Doing

I’ve been sharing with you some of the truths that I believe God has been leading us into concerning apostolic teams. I want to emphasize once more that I believe there’s a lot more for us to learn. We’ve also had some pretty intensive hours of teaching, line upon line and precept upon precept, and I appreciate the attention and the concentration that you’ve given. If you look now at that board that contains the outline you’ll see a blank sheet. There is no outline for this particular session. I’m going to share with you from my own personal experiences. I’m going to try to show you some of the experiences and some of the steps by which God has led me to the point at which I have now arrived. Emphasizing once again that I haven’t arrived. Paul says, “Not as though I had already attained or were already perfect. But I press toward the mark…” I want to share some experiences that I believe all have some bearing on this theme.

I need to begin by saying that I was educated in Britain, and by 1940 I had become, what Americans would call basically, a Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University. That’s not the real correct title. Then World War II swept me up and I was drafted into the British Army and took a Bible with me to read as a work of philosophy, and through reading the Bible I had a personal encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ one night in an Army barrack room which totally, and permanently, and radically changed the whole course of my life. From then on without any doctrinal knowledge or any process of reasoning, I knew somehow that God had a plan for my life and very soon He showed me that it would be connected with the land and the people of Israel.

About six weeks after I came to know the Lord our unit was sent overseas. After a two-month journey by sea we arrived at Suez, in Egypt, and I spent the next three years in the deserts or North Africa, Egypt, Libya and the Sudan. Then the Army transferred me to what was then Palestine, but is now Israel, and that was really the beginning of the outworking of God’s plan for my life.

Now in the course of these and other experiences I was confronted with a number of practical truths. And I would like to say that my discovery of biblical truth has never been merely theory. I have never sat behind a desk and pondered on abstract truth. Always God has confronted me with situations in which I had to learn and apply the truths that He wanted me to know.

One of the results of the way that God led me was that I was unable to attend church or to have fellowship with other believers for the first three years of my Christian experiences. It was not that I didn’t want to, it was impossible. Consequently I was shut up with a Bible as my only source of spiritual help, and in those three years I read the Bible through a number of times.

In 1942, while in the desert, I became sick with a condition of the skin that in that climate and those conditions, the doctors were not able to heal, and I ended by spending one year on end in military hospitals in Egypt. After a while I came to the conclusion that the doctors were not able to heal me, that my only hope was God. I turned to God sought Him and God spoke to me in various ways through various Scriptures, that He was the Healer, that He had provided healing through the atonement of Jesus on the cross, and that if I could appropriate it my healing was there. The particular passage of the Bible that got me out of hospital was Proverbs chapter 4 verses 20 through 22 which says,

My son attend to my words;

Incline thine ear unto my sayings.

Let them not depart from thine eyes;

Keep them in the midst of thine heart;

For they are life those that find them,

And health to all their flesh.

And when I read those words I said, “Either they mean what they say or they’re meaningless.” But I understood them to mean that in God’s word He had provided that which, if I could receive it, would be health to all my flesh, my whole physical body. And as a logician I realized that if I had health in my body there was no room for sickness. They’re opposites; they’re usually exclusive. When I read the alternative version in the margin, for healthit said medicine. So I said, “That’s it. I’m sick. I need medicine. I’m going to take God’s word as my medicine.” I was a medical orderly or a hospital attendant, I said to myself, “How do people take medicine. The answer is three times daily after meals. That’s what I will do.”

I decided to take God’s word as my medicine three times daily after meals. When I did that the Lord spoke to me and He said, “Wait a minute. If the doctor gives the person medicine, the directions for taking it are on the bottle. And if you don’t take it according to the directions the doctor doesn’t guarantee any results.” He said, “This is My medicine bottle and the directions are on it. You’d better read them.” So I turn back and I saw four directions: attend to My words, incline thine ear unto My sayings, let them not depart from thine eyes, keep them in the midst of thine heart. On that basis they are life and health or medicine.

Now I learned countless other lessons which I cannot share at this time, but I did for the next three or four months, every day after each main meal, I went aside, opened my Bible, bowed my head and said, “Lord Jesus, You have told me that these words of Yours will be medicine to all my body. I’m taking them as my medicine now, in the name of Jesus.”

I was discharged from hospital at my own request, uncured, on my own responsibility. The doctor said, “We can’t do any more for you and we don’t take the responsibility for discharging you.” I went to the base depot of my particular unit in Cairo and five days later they sent me to the Sudan. Now the worst thing for my condition was heat. Cairo was hot but believe me, Khartoum was a whole lot hotter. In Khartoum the temperature regularly goes up to a 127 degrees. It was in that climate that God healed me. You need to know that the promises of God do not depend on circumstances. They depend on meeting the conditions.

Now in the Sudan God gave me a number of unexpected and wonderful experiences which in many ways became the basis of the rest of my life. I want to share a little of them. After a little while the Army sent me from Khartoum northward to a rail junction called Atbara, and I was put in charge of what they called a Medical Reception Station. I was the only person there. Well the British Army never gave us pajamas. We always slept in our underwear, and after years it gets wearisome sleeping in your underwear. Now in this Medical Reception Station for the patients they had white sleeping garments. You understand? What do they call them? White gowns. That’s not the word I want. Night dresses, that’s right. Well since I was in total charge I thought well I’m going to sleep in a nightdress. And I did for a short while in that place.

One night something strange happened. It’s very hard to communicate this, but I could not sleep for praying for the people of the Sudan. Now I had no interest in the people of the Sudan. They were not easy to love by any means. They were really difficult people to get on with. But I just had this tremendous pressure to pray for them. I didn’t know technical words like burdenin those days. And as I was praying I got up and I was walking around in this medical depot, reception room, in my white gown and something strange happened. My gown began actually to shine, it was luminous. And it was almost somehow, if I can explain it, as if I was Jesus in that gown. I hope that doesn’t trouble you. And I was praying the prayers that He would have prayed for the people of the Sudan. Now I had not idea what would come out of that. I didn’t have any plan.

Then the Army sent me to another place called Djibate in the Red Sea hills overlooking the Red Sea, and there I was in a small hospital which catered only to Italian prisoners of war of whom there were thousands at time in the Middle East. There were two medical officers and about five or six British medical personnel and then the Italians provided the rest of the staff. And there was a staff of Sudani native laborers who did the cleaning. Well I ended up in charge of the hospital rations which is always a good job, let me tell you that. If you ever get into the army, head for the rations store. And I found my other job was I was in charge of the local Sudani labor. And I discovered that the raieseas they called it in Arabic, the man in charge was named Ali. So Ali and I used to meet every morning in my store and discuss the jobs to be done in the hospital. I’d give him the jobs and he’d go off and see that they got done.

Well we had nothing in common and we just met and dealt with sort of what you’d called practical issues. He was a Moslem of course. I didn’t know anything about Moslems which was good. And we communicated in English but his English was soldier’s English. He couldn’t read or write but he had a very quick memory. And he’d learned English from British soldiers. Well, that’s not the best place to learn English. And a lot of his English had to be expurgated. So we made no real contact with one another until I discovered one day he believed in Satan (Shaitan). “Well” I said, “I believe in Satan too.” So strangely enough that was a basis was that we both believed in Satan. And then I began to tell him that I believed the Bible.

And then one day he was late coming to the store. And when he came in he said he’d been to the hospital dressing room because he had a sore on his foot that wouldn’t heal and he had it dressed. Well I had just been reading Mark 16 these signs shall follow them that believe. I’d never seen it done but I thought, I’ll offer to pray for him. So I said, “Would you like me to pray for you?” He said, “Yes,” which rather frightened me. “But” I said, “I want to tell you I’m going to pray for you in the name of Jesus. Is that all right?” He said, “That’s all right.” I said, “I’m going to lay hands on you.” “Okay.”

So I laid hands on him, rather as if he was a bomb about to explode, and prayed a short prayer in the name of Jesus, and I thought well, what’s going to happen? About a week later he came as usual to my store and he showed me his foot. His sore was completely healed, and he attributed it to my prayer. So after that I said, “Well, listen. I want to teach you what’s in the Bible.” So every morning from then onwards when we met I would read him a short passage from the New Testament. But I had to read from the King James and translate into soldier’s English which was quite a task.

Then one evening in my barrack room, just about dusk, I was walking around and I got stung with a hornet on the anklebone. Now hornets are bad anyway, but Sudanese hornets are in a class by themselves. The pain was excruciating. I jumped up and down and walked up and down, and then I thought to myself, “Jesus said you can tread upon serpents and scorpions and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” So I said, “It’s not going to hurt me.” And I went on saying that for about ten minutes and the pain ceased. There was no swelling but there was a hole in my ankle where the stinger had entered. So the next day in a casual I said to my friend Ali, I said, “You know, I got stung by a hornet last night.” He said, “You did? Where?” So I showed him the place on my ankle. He said, “It didn’t swell?” I said, “No.” “Why not?” I said, “I prayed in the name of Jesus.”

Well he took me outside and showed me a man who was hobbling around the hospital compound with one knee bent up. He said, “You see that man with the bent knee? You know what caused that? He was stung by a hornet.” Well I saw that this had made a real impact on him. So we continued with renewed interest reading the Bible together.

He really became a good friend of mine. He was very interested in teaching me to ride a camel. And I, in those days, was more enterprising probably than I am now. I said, “Okay.” Well now you who may have been as tourists to Egypt and ridden a tame camel around the pyramids, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Sudanese camels are real camels. So, and I mean, the thing about a camel is when there’s one part going up, there’s another part going down. It’s never stable. It’s tests your victory. Well anyhow I mastered the elements of riding a camel. Then we decided one day we would take a picnic. We would go out on our camels and somewhere into the foothills, and eat there and have some fellowship. I’d have to say at this time I was more interested in Ali than anybody else in the world. He had become the focus of my interest.

So I got some food from the ration store and we set out an arrived and sat down and ate but we had nothing to drink. So there was a stream of brackish water running out of the hill and Ali said to me, “Well, we drink this.” Meaning we Sudanis. “But you [white people] don’t.” “Well,” I said, “Since there’s nothing else I’ll drink it.” “Well” he said, “how come you drink it and other white people don’t?” And I said, “I’m drinking it in the name of Jesus. The Bible says if I drink any deadly thing in the name of Jesus it will not harm me.” Well again he was deeply impressed.

Now it happens at that particular time what I was reading to him was John chapter three about being born again, and somehow this phrasebeing born againjust stuck in his mind. So as we were riding back on our camels he was talking all the time about being born again. He said, “What’s that? What does it mean?” Well in typical Western language, I said, “I means God gives you a new heart.” Well he just roared with laughter. “How does God give me a new heart?” Well I said you know it’s this and it’s that. Then I said to him, “Would you like to be born again?” He said, “Yes, I would.” I was a bit timid but I said, “Listen, tonight when we get back, six o’clock when the sun sets, you pray in your hut, I’ll be praying in my barrack room, and you ask God to be born again.” “Okay”

Next morning I met him as usual at ten o’clock. The first thing I said to him was, “Did you pray?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you born again?” He said, “No.” I was so grateful that he practical, you know? He stated something real. Well I was tremendously disappointed and then the Holy Spirit whispered in my ear, “He’s a Moslem.” Which really didn’t mean much to me at that time. I said, “Wait a minute. Did you pray in the name of Jesus?” He said “No.” I said, “You can’t be born again unless you pray in the name of Jesus. Are you willing to pray in the name of Jesus?” He said, “Yes.” I mean if I’d known what I know today about Moslems I don’t think I would have dared to say some of these things. But I did anyhow. So I said, “Tonight you pray in the name of Jesus, and I’ll be praying in my barrack room.” Next morning I met him at ten o’clock I looked at his face. I said, “You’ve got it.” He said, “Yes I do.” I mean he was changed! He was a rogue before that. He would purloin the wages of the laborers under him. He was a brawler, all sorts of thing.

Well, the change in him was so dramatic that all the people in the hospital said, “What’s happened to you friend Ali?” I said, “He’s saved.” The commanding officer of the hospital sent for me and said, “What’s happened to Ali?” I said, “He’s saved.” He said, “What’s that?” I said, “Let me tell you.” Before I left that place I baptized him in the swimming pool of the hospital.

Now I don’t believe I’d have ever begun to have access to his mind without the supernatural, you understand? Three supernatural things opened his mind. I prayed for him, his foot was healed. I was stung by a hornet and it didn’t hurt me. I was willing to drink water that other people wouldn’t drink, and believe me I wouldn’t do it in a foolhardy way. That opened his mind to the truth. And that was really my first contact with Moslems. I loved that man dearly. I maintained contact with him by mail for probably two, or three or four or five years after that. I think without any doubt he was the first member of that tribe that had ever been confronted with the gospel. The tribe was called the Hadundewa (sp). The British soldiers called them “fuzzy-wuzzies” because they would dress their hair with mutton fat and make it stick up twelve inches over their heads. They were fierce people. They didn’t wear many clothes, they carried spears, and they would normally throw a spear and ask questions afterwards. I mean God—but you see His wisdom. The British administration wouldn’t allow any missionaries in that area because it was so fanatically Moslem. But nobody bothered about this little corporal in the Royal Army Medical Corps getting in there, you see.

What I want to emphasize to you more and more as we get near the end of the age it’s going to take unconventional methods to penetrate the defenses of the enemy. I would have gladly given my life for the people of the Sudan. But when I offered to do so God told me, “You are not sent to many people of a strange speech and a hard language, but to the house of Israel are you sent.” So that’s one little example. You understand I had no doctrinal background. I’d never seen a healing campaign. I just did in simpleness what the Bible said which is the safest thing to do.

Well after that I got married in Israel, was blessed with a family of eight adopted daughters, six Jewish, one Arab, one English. Together we went through the turmoil and the war that marked the birth of the State of Israel. We were living right in the middle of Jewish Jerusalem when the state was born. When we came up out of our washroom, which was the lowest room in the house, after the fighting was over we counted about a hundred and fifty spent bullets on the floor of our living room. However, that’s not what I’m going to deal with.

Then I went to Britain with the family, pastored for eight years a small Pentecostal congregation in London. Then I was given an opportunity to go to Kenya to become principal of a teacher training college for African students in Kenya, from 1957 to 1961. Now God gave me deep love for African people. And in the course of our time there, my first wife and I adopted our ninth daughter, a little sick dying African baby girl who is now twenty-seven years old and serves in our ministry in Fort Lauderdale. For me I have to say that from that time on that black is beautiful. In fact, I used to sometimes I would think why do these white faces mar the landscape? And I became passionately involved in my students. It was a small college, it didn’t have a very good reputation with the government. The system was the British government couldn’t get enough, what should I say, secular teachers to make the sacrifices to teach in Africa, so they used missionary institutions but they were under the direction of the Education Department of the government.

Well I began, first of all, to hold meetings with the students, which had not really been happening much before in the sense of really taking time with them. I have to say this because I think it’s important: My fellow missionaries, who were wonderful people, said “Why do you waste your time on the Africans? They’ll never really understand.” “Well I say if they really won’t understand, I’m in the wrong place. But I believe they will understand.” So my wife and I didn’t go to the missionary meetings. We went to the students and I began to teach them just out of the Bible.

After a while I realized they had a mental block. Now this is one of the fortresses that I’ve been teaching you about. So I called them together one day and I said, “I want to thank you people. You’re so helpful. You’re so cooperative. Whatever we tell you to do, you do it. If we say study, you’ll study. If we say get baptized, you’ll get baptized, because you know that your education depends on us. And the most important thing in your minds is education. So you’re willing to do anything for education. But,” I said to them, “there’s one big unanswered question in the mind of most of you.” And they got really interested. I said, “I’ll tell you what the question is. The question is this: Is the Bible a book for Africans or is it just a white man’s book with white man’s customs, that doesn’t apply to Africans?” And I said, “A lot of your own elders are telling it doesn’t apply.” Then I said to them, “I can’t answer that question.” Well that surprised because they thought missionaries could answer every question. I said, “The only way you’ll find out the answer to that question is if you have a personal experience with the supernatural power of God in your lives. When that happens you’ll know it didn’t come from America, and it didn’t come from Britain. It came from heaven.”

And I didn’t say any more. I just put the word of God before them in every way that I could and prayed. Well about six months later a young man, a young African turned up from the coast, from Mombassa, who had witnessed a healing crusade by T. L. Osborn in 1958. And this young African had been saved and he’d come to the simple-minded conclusion that if T. L. Osborn could do it, he could do it. So he turned up at our house and he said, “I’d like to preach to your students.” Well, he’d never gone beyond grade four and Africans at that time were very education conscious, and I thought, How will my students, who are training to be teachers, ever listen to a man who never got beyond grade four?

Well I talked it over with my first wife and she said, “Let’s pray with him. When we pray with him we’ll know what kind of a person he is.” So we said, “Let’s pray.” And when he prayed it was like being at the gates of heaven. “Well,” I said, “if he can pray like that, we’ll turn him loose.” And that young man brought a visitation of God to our college. His teaching was simple, he strummed a guitar which he couldn’t really play, but the Holy Spirit was there. And God visited our college. Before that we used to say to them, “You need to pray.” After that we couldn’t stop them praying. We’d go down to the dormitories in the middle of the night, and they were praying. This was not just a service, this was a visitation.

The following year we graduated fifty-seven students. About forty men and seventeen young women approximately. Now our college had had a rather poor reputation at the Education Department, but that year every one of our fifty-seven students passed in every subject which was a record for the whole of Kenya. It had never happened. And every one of those students was saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit. I want to tell you that when you get God on your side you’ll be a better student.

I must tell you about Suzanna. In order to extend the outreach of the college I went into some remote areas where there was very little penetration by missions, and I picked out students from a background that really had no education. Most of them were just struggling through. I picked two girls who seemed to have something. One of them, Suzanna, really wasn’t up to the standard, but I thought, “You know. Let’s get the gospel to this area, we’ll take a risk.” Well, when the examinations came every student had to pass in practice teaching. That was essential.

So out goes Suzanna with the representative of the Education Department for her practice teaching and failed. And the lady from the Education Department was very friendly to me. She was a Catholic and she was very cooperative. She said, “I’m sorry Mr. Prince, but I have to tell you Suzanna has failed.” “Well,” I said, “I know you’ve been very fair and I accept your estimate and there you are, she failed.”

Well having failed her practice teaching, she couldn’t pass as a teacher. So I told Suzanna who knew this well, and she said, “Well I’ll pray.” I thought, “How dumb can you be. You’ve failed. I mean that’s it.” I didn’t say anything. Well we came to the written examinations and to my astonishment, our students as I say, passed in every subject, even Suzanna. So I went down to the Education Department office with all the papers and the results and the figures and the marks to just finally assess—and she was very, very complimentary and said, “These are the best results we’ve ever had in this province.” And we were over with the situation and she looked at me and she said, “Now what about Suzanna? Her written papers are pretty good.” I didn’t say anything. “And we do need teachers desperately in that area.” She said, “I think, Mr. Prince, I’ll leave the decision to you.” I said, “If you leave it to me Suzanna will pass.” And pass she did. I went back to Suzanna, and I said, “Suzanna, you’ve passed.” That was faith, you know, to be told you’ve failed and then pass.

I want to tell you in the course of that period, all the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit came into operation amongst our students. We would get words of knowledge, miracles, healings. In the passing of that time two of our students were raised from the dead, with very personal testimonies of what happened while they were out of their body and what happened when they came back. Our problem there really was we had extension, and we didn’t have conservation. I want to emphasize you can’t do without conservation. There’s got to be somebody there to conserve the results.

So I come on now to the third and last phase of what I want to talk about which is recent experiences. Ruth and I have been involved in about four apostolic teams with men and women associated with us. We’ve been twice to Zambia, once to Zimbabwe, and the second time we were in Zambia, after we’d been together in Zambia we split up. Which is another benefit. One of our couples went to the north of Zambia, the Copper Belt. Ruth and I went to Zimbabwe and the fifth member of our party, Mahesh Chavda who is an Indian by background from Hindu parentage but a tremendous evangelist, was invited to Zaire. And he discovered that for twenty-five dollars extra he could go from Zambia to Zaire. So he said I’ll go. The people that invited him said, “We want you to teach the leaders in the morning and then hold public meetings in Kinshasa each evening.” Well, he said, “About how many people do you expect?” They said “Between thirty and fifty thousand.” He said, “My.”

Well the first morning meeting they had about thirty thousand for the leaders. And there wasn’t any place that could accommodate them so after that the leaders meetings were held in the open air just like the others. The first night meeting I think they had about seventy thousand people, or maybe about a hundred thousand. And they counted the people by the areas that were occupied, so many thousand people in an area. God began to perform tremendous miracles through our dear brother, and by the end of the one week the crowds numbered a quarter of a million or more. They just filled the whole of the center of Kinshasa. And what brought the crowds, brothers and sisters, was miracles.

One of the outstanding miracles I think, about one night before the end Mahesh said, “Tonight we’re going to pray for absent family members. Those of you who have family members not here, want prayer, we’re going to pray.” And then he said, “I believe the power of resurrection is here.” What happened was a man was there who’d left his son in the hospital dead. He’d died of malaria. He came to the meeting, went back to collect the body of his son, and found his son alive and well and walking around. He’d brought his son to the meeting the next day and showed him to all the people including the marks on his legs where they’d used shock treatment to try to revive him after he died.

The other remarkable incident was that the Lord gave Mahesh a word of knowledge about two or three nights before the end. He said, “There are two men here who have been robbing God’s people, and if you don’t repent the angel of death is going to visit you.” And two of the ushers started to tremble violently, and they went to the head usher and said, “We’ve been taking money from the offerings every night but we’re bringing it back.” Well you don’t have to have many things like that happen. The highest levels of Zairean society were reached, the top general, the top administrative of the civil service, and even the president wanted to meet Mahesh but was unable to do so. So the whole of that central area of that nation was impacted in one week. They estimated a hundred and twenty-eight thousand people prayed for salvation. What did it? Well let me say it’s not being a super minister. It’s being the right person in the right place at the right time.

Now I want to relate to you finally a little about Pakistan. This past September I led a team of seven people: Ruth and me, Mahesh, an Arab from Israel who had a wonderful experience of conversion here in the United States named Nabil and his wife Peggy, and a pastor from Kansas City and his wife. Seven people. We were invited by a very tiny little group of Christians in Pakistan to come and hold meetings. They had obtained permission from the government to hold the meetings. Pakistan is at least ninety-eight percent Moslem. The Christians are less than one percent of the nation, and they are very much despised and downtrodden. Basically Christians are sweepers. That’s the lowest level of society. They clean latrines and do jobs which Moslems won’t do. They live in abject poverty and they’re despised by the Moslems. Now that’s not true of all the Christians. There’s just a little sprinkling that have risen a little higher, and they were the people that invited us. They were not a denomination. They were a local group.

They obtained the cooperation of the other major denominations: Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and so on. There was just one denomination that wouldn’t cooperate. Guess who? The Baptists because they heard we were going to pray for the sick, so they boycotted the meetings. I just mention that. I’m not you know mad about it, but I’m just rather sad about it.

Well we started off in Karachi, which is the largest city, about eight million people. But they said Karachi’s had preachers so we’ll just give you one night in Karachi and then we’ll take you on to other cities. So I thought I’m the leader so I need to be the first one to speak. I said where are you going to hold the meeting? They said in our church. I said how many does your church hold? They said three hundred. I said how many people are you expecting at the meeting? Well he said maybe six hundred. I thought how are they going to work that out. Anyhow I just left it. They brought us to this area of the city where the church was. We were at lest an hour late getting there which was standard Pakistani time. And when we got there the whole of that area of the city was covered with people. There were at least three thousand people at an intersection of two roads. No traffic could get by. They had set up lights, they had a P.A. System, and I stood behind this platform, and the nearest member of the audience was just there. I mean there was no room to move. Nobody could move around.

Well I thought what could I talk about. So I said to them, all of this was interpreted in Urdu. I said, “Listen, if you people were hungry and I owned an orange grove I could do two things. I could give you one orange or I could take you to the grove and say help yourself.” I said, “I’m going to take you to the grove and you can help yourself.” So I told them in outline, very simple language, what was accomplished by the death of Jesus on the cross: that the evil due to us was visited on Him that the good due to Him might be received by us.At the end I said, “How many of you want to receive Jesus?” I think about half the crowd stood instantly, about fifteen hundred people at least.

Now I do know something about Islam now. I know the two major areas of disagreement with Christianity are number one, they do not acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God. They vehemently deny that. And they do not believe that Jesus died on the cross. An angel spirited Him away. So there’s no salvation without the death of Jesus, So when these people stood I knew that probably at least a third of them were Moslem. I led them in a prayer and every prayer that we led the people in after that started this way: “Lord Jesus Christ, I believe that you’re the Son of God, the only way to God, that you died on the cross for my sins and rose again from the dead.” So we brought them to the acknowledgment of the two great truths that Islam denies.

Now it’s difficult to say exactly what happened, but for a Moslem to stand up in front of his fellow-Moslems and make that statement publicly is a major breakthrough anyhow. Then after that I said, “Now we’ll pray for the sick. How many of you are sick?” Well ninety percent raised their hands. And they were ninety percent sick. So there wa no way to move amongst the people, I’m going to pray a prayer for you all. If you’ve got sick in someplace, put your hand on yourself where you’re sick, and expect God to heal you. I have to say I did not feel any quote “anointing.” It was hot, it was dusty, the crowd was very difficult to control, some of them were talking to one another, one or two of them were fighting with one another. I had no sense of what could happen, but I just had to do it. I was on the spot, what else could I do. So I prayed this prayer. I said, “How many of you were healed.” A few people rather timidly put their hand up.

But then there was a commotion in front of me just about where that camera would be. And it turned out there was a Moslem boy of about twelve, born deaf and dumb, who had received his hearing and was beginning to speak. They forced their way through the crowd to bring him up to the platform and let the people see that he could hear, and the crowd just broke loose. I mean there was no controlling anything or anybody. Strangely enough they had this fixation that if we would lay our hands on them, that was it. Now I didn’t intend to lay hands on anybody, but I laid my hands reluctantly on about a hundred people because they just came up to me, grabbed hold of my arm and made me put it on their head. Well that was Karachi.

We went on from there to Faislabad, which is a major city in the center of the nation and we held meetings there for about four days, mornings, afternoons, and evenings. The crowds grew to about sixteen thousand. And again at least one third would always be Moslems. I want to say now it didn’t make any difference which of us preached or which of us prayed. The results didn’t seem to depend on that. No matter who preached, people got saved, and no matter who prayed people got healed.

The women were terrible. They were totally undisciplined. They had no education, they were illiterate, they’d never been in any situation where they had to submit to discipline. And they created so much disturbance. They always sat where they weren’t supposed to sit. If the ushers told them to move one place, they’d move another. Some of them went out to a pump on the right hand side and washed their babies under the pump while we were preaching.

So one morning I said to them “Now you women have been so bad I’m going to punish you today. We’re not going to pray for any women, we’ll only pray for men.” So that morning we had three or four hundred men come up for prayer, and that’s the only time I think we laid hands on people. So all of us descended into this pile of men, couples together, Mahesh on his own and started praying. Well after a little while I found myself opposite a man who pointed at his ears and his mouth and I understood he was deaf and dumb. Well theologically I knew the thing to do. I said “You deaf and dumb spirit in the name of Jesus come out!” Then I thought what do you do next? And I said to the man, “Say hallelujah.” It was obvious that he heard me and he began to form the sound of hallelujah. I realized he was instantly healed of deafness and dumbness. I don’t know whether he was more surprised or I was!

But after that I expected people to be healed. And Ruth and went round looking for the deaf and the dumb. And in the next ten minutes at least ten deaf and dumb people were instantly healed. Meanwhile the same sort of thing was happening with the other members of our team. It would be impossible to estimate how many people got healed because the whole thing was very difficult to control and keep together. But the local Christians would call up those who were healed, so far as they could and they would say what is your name, what village do you come from, what has happened to you, I’ve been healed. Then they always say, “Who healed you?” And they’d always say Jesus. You see it was not safe for Christians to tell Moslems Jesus healed you. But if the Moslem said Jesus healed me, that was okay.

Before that Ruth and I had been praying for some time along this line, that we see a lot of people healed in our meetings. But there are some kinds of people that don’t get healed, the blind, the dumb, to some extent we’ve seen the deaf healed, but not totally deaf. So we were praying for God to increase this and in the course of these meetings we saw many deaf and dumb healed. I think deafness and dumbness is a curse that follows Islam, because the proportion of such people was unnaturally high.

We saw a number cripples get up and walk, some for the first time in their lives. We saw a considerable number of blind people healed. I think the most astonishing healing to me was a blind woman of about sixty. Strangely enough one night she was sitting, squatting in front on the women’s section, right in the front. And she looked so miserable and so totally hopeless that Mahesh took a photograph of her just as a specimen of Pakistani misery. The next day we prayed and she was healed. She came forward and she could see perfectly. Now she was born blind and she was at least sixty years old. I think that was a major miracle. We can’t take credit for it. We didn’t lay hands on her. It just happened.

All through this there was this sense of tremendous opposition. I’ve talked about, you know, identifying the strong man. Let me say thestrong man of Islam is the spirit of antichrist. The spirit of antichrist is a spirit that’s heard about Jesus and denied His claim to be the Christ. You understand? And that I think is the most powerful evil force in the world today. That’s the spirit behind Communism, atheistic Communism, the denial of the claims of Jesus. That kind of spirit does not operate in paganism. Where people have never heard about Jesus, there is no spirit of antichrist. They have different problems. But where people have heard about Jesus and deliberately rejected His claims, that opens the way to the spirit of antichrist.

I would say the other main forces, and there were many of them… One was ignorance. The appalling weight of ignorance, remember more than eighty percent illiterate, nearly all the women we illiterate. Another was poverty. It was like poverty just ground the people down. Another was hopelessness and another was violence. And another was, I don’t know how to describe it, an absolute disregard for the value of life, their own lives included. They would right down the middle of the street with a big truck coming down and hardly bother to move. And they treated other people the same way.

We were conscious all the time that we were fighting a war with unseen forces. Some things that happened were truly remarkable, like Mahesh was really in some ways a spiritual child of mine, is essentially an evangelist. But he takes my outlines and he preaches them. And her never preaches better than when he preaches my outlines, but they come out totally different than when I preach them. And I have a series that I go to in situations. Number one is what Jesus did at the cross. Number two is how to receive what Jesus did at the cross. Number three it the release from the curse, which is absolutely vital. Because people who are under a curse cannot receive what God has for them. And number four receiving the Holy Spirit and being healed. If I have time that’s the order that I would follow. It works.

Well Mahesh was the evening speaker so he was really following my outline. On this particular night I was not well so I wasn’t there. Ruth was with me in the quote “hotel.” And Mahesh taught on the curse, what are the marks of being under a curse, how do you get under a curse, and then how to be released from the curse. The release is through Jesus. Christ has redeemed us from the curse being made a curse for us, for it is written cursed is everyone who hangs on the tree.

He came to the point when he was going to pray and break the curse over the people. It had been a perfectly still, hot evening. The meetings were held in an awning, a kind of I don’t know what you’d call them. A kind of quilt stretched out on poles. And nothing moved. But when Mahesh started to break the curse there came such a violet wind that three men had to hold every pole down to keep them from blowing away. As long as he prayed to break the curse the wind went on. The moment he stopped the wind stopped. It was completely supernatural. It had nothing to do with the natural order. You just felt that you were in a battle with unseen forces. In fact, really the sense was what happened in the unseen realm was what determined what happened in seen realm.

Another night when we were there, Mahesh habitually, before he preaches prays. And I mean he can pray for ten minutes. And by the time he’s finished praying you are on a totally different spiritual level from what you were when started. In fact, sometimes it’s hardly necessary to preach. And as he prayed this prayer in this particular place it was like there was a jet passing by, or something , or a roll of thunder, but it continued the whole time he was praying – at least five minutes. When he finished praying it kind of ended with a cough, like that, and it was over.

I think the hardest message that I preached… I was determined to take them beyond healing if I could. But that’s all they came for basically was to get healed. You see how foolish to say we won’t come because we’re going to pray for the sick. Eighty percent of those people came because we were going to pray for the sick. They would have never come if we hadn’t. Anyhow I decided one day to teach them on the baptism of the Holy Spirit, one morning. And I have to say I think that’s the hardest message I’ve ever preached in my life. I felt like I was assailing a wall of bronze about fifty feet high. Beating against it. I was physically exhausted when I’d finished preaching. But a number responded. Some received the baptism. One young Pakistani woman of about eighteen received the baptism, came forward, spoke in tongues over the P.A. System. That was a major breakthrough for those people. She was the only really happy looking person basically we saw. She was radiant. One of those who stood to pray for the baptism was a young Moslem of about eighteen. He didn’t receive the baptism but while he was praying he had a vision of Jesus. Now, he came back to the front. They knew he was a Moslem, but “I had a vision of Jesus.” You see the impact of that is measureless.

What are we going to do now? I could go on a lot more about Pakistan, but I think I’ve proved to you in a sense that this concept works. I said to the members of our team afterwards. I said, “Listen, if it will work in Pakistan, it will work anywhere.” And I believe it. I believe it.

Now I would like to challenge you people and I want to say this in the right way. I wonder how many of you would be willing to commit yourselves to God for some kind apostolic outreach, be a member of a team? Get out of the rut. Get out of the church pew. Stop being one of ninety-eight percent and become one of two and half percent. Okay? I believe the two percent is going to become fifty percent. I believe that’s what’s going to happen to the Church. But blessed are those who lead the way. If I have said anything that really stirs you and inspires you and challenges you here, I think it would be unfair not to give you an opportunity to respond.

I want you to consider this carefully. I’m not looking for an emotional appeal. I’m very careful when I make appeals, not to try to touch people’s emotions. I want to touch the will. Are you willing to be used by God in some kind of outreach to the unreached, to the unloved, to the billions of poor and needy and hopeless people on this earth? If you are willing to make some kind of move toward God, I would like to pray for you and I would like to ask the leaders of YWAM here who are present to join me on the platform. We’ll only pray for those who will really make a sincere commitment, that if you hear God, you’ll say hear am I Lord, send me. I want you to think this over because it’s not an easy task. If you feel sincerely that God has spoken to you, challenged you, and you want to respond, then I’d like you to stand to your feet. And I’d like to ask the leaders to come with me. I don’t want to stand alone. Will you come and join me on the platform?

I want you to think over what you’re saying. I do believe God is doing something new in America. I was recently in Midland, Texas, for a group of people that came from a lot of different backgrounds, and I preached on Matthew 24:14, this gospel of the kingdom. There were about eight hundred or a thousand people present. My message was not emotional and at the end I said now how many of you will commit yourself? Every single person in the auditorium stood as one man. I have never seen anything like it. It just convinces me that the Holy Spirit is doing something new.

Brothers let’s join hands and pray for these people. If you get a word, any of you brothers, just release it.

Father we want to thank you for those who are standing before You now. We want to commit them to You. We want, if You will receive them, Lord, and place Your hand upon them and train them and equip them for all that Your will is for them to do. Lord, if there are any hidden barriers or bondages, we want to release them now in the name of Jesus. We want to declare to the enemy that they’re off limits to him from this time forward, and he has no more claims on them, that they’ve been redeemed by the blood of Jesus, that they’re first fruits unto God and the Lamb. Thank you Lord. We just give you praise. We lift them up to you. The arms of faith, we place them God in Your mighty arms. Amen, Lord. Receive each one and give each one in some way an inner witness by Your Spirit that they are accepted in this commitment. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.