I want to pass on to you what I have experienced, a dynamic faith from a life committed to Christ. For over 60 years I have lived and live to fulfill the command of Romans 12:1, offering my life in 'reasonable service'.
In 1972 I was thrown into a communist prison when I was found, on my way to Russia, with 5000 Russian Bibles in a secret compartment in my tour bus. But I'm an evangelist, so I carried on preaching the Gospel in the prison! I faced the same problem the church faces today: how could I convince these people, these criminals, of the truth and the power of the Gospel I was preaching? The difference between our faith and other religions, is that our God is alive and He is a prayer answering God. I determined I would not stay for the ten years I should have spent in the prison. I was determined to prove - in the 20th century - the truth of the power of the Bible. But how could I get out? In my praying I remembered Paul and Silas, and Peter. I said, "Oh God, if You could get them out of prison, send an earthquake, break the chains, set them free, You have the same power today, get me out of this prison!" In my life I'm attempting to prove that the power God had in the Bible is still available today! He's the same God! I was determined to pray my way out of the prison! But it was impossible! It's a long story, but briefly, within one year, God worked a miracle, answered my prayer and I flew home, to London, with the British Prime Minister! As a result, I was invited to speak in the Royal Albert Hall to 10,000 people, and for two years I traveled the world telling my story to two million people!
The Bible says, 'Jesus the same yesterday, today and forever.' - That's the only bit of the Bible I don't agree with! Listen carefully. In my life, the Jesus I know today is not the Jesus I knew when I was first a Christian! The Jesus I know today is a thousand times stronger and more powerful, more wonderful, than the Jesus I knew 70 years ago. The Bible says He's always the same, but to me, the Jesus I know becomes stronger every day, more powerful! Ten times more powerful this year than He was last year. A hundred times more powerful than He was a few years ago. A thousand times more powerful than when I was a young man!
So who is right and who is wrong? Is the Bible right or me? I've discovered the truth. God doesn't change, I change! The change is this, I know God better. Every year, every day I understand Him more and more! It's like a big picture. Curtains are drawn so that you can't see it. And somebody is slowly opening the curtains. And you begin to see a little, then more and more and more. That's what God is like! It's not God who changes, it's your knowledge of God, your understanding of God. Next year my God will be bigger than He is this year! Why? I will know Him better!
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My God is the greatest and most powerful God in all the world and He is about to work the greatest miracles of all time. Yes, we are about to write the sequel to the Acts of the Apostles - yes, we are about to see the fulfilment of the Book of Revelation. And let me shout this loud enough to wake even the dead and bring Elijah back - Jesus is coming soon! I want you to know that, as for me, I believe the Book - 'in the last days I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh says the Lord' - Joel 2:28. I personally am ready to go. I am fired up, filled up, powered up, on my feet, ticket and sword in my hand, ready to go now. No power on earth or from hell can stop me. I'm not too old, too poor, too tired, too weak or ready to quit! If God could use Moses, David, Elijah, He can use me. I have the same Holy Spirit power they had, I believe in the same God, and I am already filled with revival fire. No more waiting - the urgency of the crisis alone is call enough - I have already seen the power of God in action, received a ten-fold more powerful anointing, preached the Gospel, won the lost and dying, healed the sick...! We must get back to the authority of the Bible. When God answers, He does it by a miracle. The only real evidence of the reality of God that I find in my Bible is the miraculous.
In these last days God is saying to the church, NOW, "I am prepared to do something greater, bigger, more miraculous than anything that has ever been seen before in the earth, or in the church." God is about to do the greatest miracles the world has ever seen. He's going to raise up men like Elijah, men with an anointing to do the greater works than Jesus did! - John 14:12. Why? Because we are living in the days of the return of Christ, when we're going to see Revival Fire bursting on the church, until we are working and believing and moving into spiritual victory - all in the preparation for the glorious return of Jesus!
People will ask, "Has anybody ever seen or heard anything like this before?" God is moving today by the Holy Spirit, but we haven't yet seen the REAL Glory of God, what He CAN do, but it WILL come! Yes, before Christ comes, in my lifetime, God is going to reveal His Glory on earth! I'm determined to see it!
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'I have surely seen the affliction of my people, and have heard their cry; I know their sorrows; And I am come down to deliver' (Exodus 3:7-8). When I had lung cancer, who did I call, who could I go to for help, I went to the Lord. He was the only one who could deliver me from my sickness. I seen the power of God to deliver; yes, He has healed me twice of cancer and from a communist prison, but I have also seen Him deliver men from the power of sin. I once preached in a Siberian prison to all 1400 inmates, desperate men: 200 multiple murders, 400 serious sex offenders and 800 even worse criminals. The commandant said he was an atheist, that God could not change these men, that I was wasting my time. But, faced with the crisis of this challenge, the Holy Spirit came on me and God transformed the prison that day. All 1400 criminals repented and twenty of those convicts are now pastors and some of the best evangelists in Russia today were saved that day in that place!
Whatever your circumstance, wherever you are, whoever you are, God says, 'I have seen your affliction, I have seen your suffering, and I am come down.' God is not talking in the past tense or some distant date in the future, He is speaking in the present tense. 'I am come down…' This is the miracle of our God: every time we are in distress, every time we are in trouble, God always comes to rescue. Just as God delivered the Israelites from Egypt and led them into their Promised Land, so God, by His grace, delivers us out of our spiritual Egypt into our land of abundance.
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In 1964, only three and a half years after my first visit to Jerusalem, I lost my voice. Unable to preach in my church, I went to the hospital to be told I had throat cancer and needed an operation. I didn't have time for an operation and, believing God for a miracle because I had seen so many healings in my ministry, I prayed for 3 months. Then, because my faith was strong, I told the doctors that I was healed. They laughed at me, they said that there is no God and the cancer was now so big, I must have an operation within 3 days to remove my vocal chord! I went home in shock - I was an evangelist, a missionary in Israel - and, only 32 years old, my ministry was finished!
I fell on my knees and said, "O God, teach me how to pray!" - It's one thing to pray when they say you have cancer, it is totally different when you only have 3 days before they take away your voice! I remember crying out, "Oh God, I haven't yet seen Your power in my life! Oh God, my dream, my vision is not fulfilled! Oh God heal me! I've seen so many miracles! But now I need a miracle!" My church members said, "It is so easy for David to see God work miracles when somebody else has cancer. Now he's got it!" At the end of that day I was not healed.
The next day I changed my prayer to the most dangerous one of my life: "Oh God I believe you are telling me my ministry should be in Russia. If You want me to leave my home, my family, then I need a miracle! Take this cancer out now!" I went to the Word of God. The relationship I have with God is that I say, "Lord, if You want to talk with me, tell me direct and show me in writing, in Your Word!" Men lie, but God is not a man, He cannot lie! The Bible is the most powerful book in the world! All the power and authority that God has is revealed in His Word! - What He says He does! I turned to Romans 8, and read: "When we don't know how to pray, the Holy Spirit prays for us, according to the will of God." In that moment, I knew I had the answer. It was the will of God!
Next morning, I went to the hospital. There were three doctors, they put the instruments down my throat, pulled them out - three times - and they were angry and began to accuse me, "Who did it? Who operated? - Somebody has cut it out with a knife! The surgeon who operated has left a scar!" I said, "The God you don't believe in, He did it last night!" God had touched my throat, and touched my life! Now I had to tell my church that I would leave and go to Russia!
In 1961 I went to Jerusalem seeking a new anointing, a new fire, three and a half years later I received this fire when He healed my cancer. My experiences with God have never been in a church or a conference, but step by step, trusting God through every mountain and valley. 'Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff protect, guide and comfort me' (Ps 23:4 AMPC).
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All my life I have been desperate to meet with Jesus, to see His power and glory here on earth. Why did I first go to Russia, why do I have the ministry I have today? My first visit behind the Iron Curtain was over 50 years ago. I was an evangelist, a pastor in England, yet I had seen how the church had lost the anointing, lost the power. I was determined that I would have an experience with God that was incorruptible, that would last until the appearing of Christ! I had heard that the first World Pentecostal Conference in Jerusalem would be held on the Day of Pentecost, in May 1961. - I was determined to be there to receive a new baptism of fire! My Bible says that the church of God began in fire on the Day of Pentecost, and the church will end in fire when Christ returns!
I was married, with twin girls, how could I get there? I could not afford the air fare, but I was determined to go! I decided to go by road, which was impossible, no one had ever done it before! Prayerfully God gave me a plan to organise an expedition from England to Jerusalem. I was warned that I would have to go through the communist countries, be killed by bandits crossing Turkey, and going through Syria, arrested as a spy and put in prison. But God was with me.
When I got there I was so disappointed. I had gone for only one reason: to be in Jerusalem believing God would send another Pentecost. There were 3000 in the conference: 2999 tourists, and me! Nothing happened, nobody laid their hands on me, I didn't fall over, I didn't feel any power, nothing. I had done everything to be there, spent two years organising in order to meet with God, and nothing, absolutely nothing happened! It was exactly 40 years later, when I was again in Jerusalem, that I realised my entire life had changed because of that trip; God had answered my heart's cry in a very unique way.
When you meet with Jesus, when His fire comes into you, you become a changed person: from a powerless individual into a mighty man of God.
'The Spirit of the Lord will come powerfully upon you, and you will prophesy with them; and you will be changed into a different person' (1 Samuel 10:6).
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When we give God everything, He fills us with His Spirit; it becomes a tangible presence in our lives. But to receive this anointing we have to surrender everything first, so that God can fill us with all His power and glory. When I was a child God didn't call me as an evangelist, pastor or missionary, He asked for everything, a life fully surrendered to His purposes. - God asks the same of you; will you surrender everything to God so that He can give you the gift of His Spirit?
God so impressed Romans 12:1 on me when I was a teenager: 'I beseech you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.' God is talking about normal service, nothing exceptional - for every believer - the norm. Today the churches are talking about being normal, taking care of yourself, not working too hard... But the challenge is 'reasonable service' - giving your whole life as a 'living sacrifice'! Everything! God didn't call me to be an 'evangelist' or a 'preacher' - He said He wanted ALL of me!
If you want to receive the fire of God, the point at which the fire falls is at the altar of sacrifice! In Leviticus 6 the command of God is, that when the priest lights the fire on the altar, that fire must never go out! What did the fire consume? Not just the wood, but the sacrifice! The way you keep the fire burning on the altar is by putting on more and more sacrifice! If we want to see the increase of the fire and the power and the glory of God in our lives, we've got to put more sacrifice on the altar! Then the fire will come!
We need to spend more time in prayer and seeking the Face of God in order to build that altar, then when we put ourselves on it, the fire of God will come down and consume our lives!
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God wants to fill you with fire and power! I was so excited when I read in Leviticus 6.13 that when the priests lit the fire they were told it must never go out! I received the fire of God when I was 13 and it has never gone out! I've seen too many people who allow the fire to fade, but if the fire and power is from God, the command is that you must not let it go out! How did the priests keep the fire burning, by adding sacrifice; if you want the Fire of God to burn in you, then you have to add more sacrifice.
I have met with God. I know Him. I have seen the fire. More than that, the fire is in me, burning in my soul. There is a power that transforms me when I preach the Gospel so that I am not the ordinary David Hathaway. I have a power - yes a fire - from God. That is why, when I declare the Word of God, miracles happen. It's not me; it's God. He wants you to know, to see the evidence of His fire.
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