“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.
“But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.” (Matthew 7:24-27, KJV)
We must get back to the Authority of the Word of God. If you build your life on any other foundation than the Authority of the Word of God, you’re building it on sinking sand. But we, as the Word says, are built on the Rock, which is Christ Jesus.
Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. (Acts 4:12, KJV)
Without Christ, I had no way into the Kingdom of God. I was born into a Christian family, and my brother and I – aged 8 – were at a Christian Convention where our father was preaching, as well as a young evangelist. It seems that something the evangelist said caused us boys to raise our hands, indicating that we wanted to receive Christ. So that night, back where we were staying, my father turned to my older twin first and asked him, do you want to accept Jesus? My bother said yes, so my father counselled him and prayed with him… But then my father looked at me and asked, “Do you want to accept Jesus like your brother?” I’ll shock you when I tell you, my blunt answer was, “NO!” I told him I was not ready, I didn’t even understand if and why I had apparently raised my hand. I had no recollection of actually doing it.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I was lying in bed, so convicted, I knew that if Christ were to return that night, my brother and my parents would go to be with the Lord, and I would be left behind, I would go to hell! As an 8-yr old I was so afraid of a Christ-less eternity, that I got out of my bed and made my peace with the Lord, saying, “O I want You to come into my life!” I got up the next morning, looked out of the window – the sky was a brighter blue, the flowers were a deeper hue, even the birds sang more sweetly, everything had changed! It was a long time before I realised, it wasn’t the world that had changed – I had changed!
People wonder why I am an evangelist today. It’s not simply that ‘God called me’… It is because my whole understanding of what happened to me that night when I was 8 years old, is that, without Christ, there is no Eternity. That’s always been with me. That’s why I preach the Gospel. That’s why I preach with such intensity! Because Jesus said, unless you are born again, you cannot enter the Kingdom!
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. (Romans 1:16, KJV)
One pastor wrote to me saying he appreciated my ministry of healing and asked for advice. So many people are saying today that the ministry of healing, even the Baptism of the Holy Spirit itself, ended two thousand years ago. That’s why Romans 1.16 is so important to me: ‘I’m not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, because in that Gospel is all the Power of God revealed’! We’ve got to get back to a Gospel that has Power to change men. You’ve got to get back to the infilling of the Holy Spirit and the continuing of the miracles. Jesus said to His disciples. “Go into the world, preach the Gospel, heal the sick, raise the dead…”
Jesus EXPECTED the miraculous to continue AFTER His death, beyond the ‘Biblical’ period. I often say there is one unfinished book in the Bible – yes, I know there are still a lot of unfulfilled prophecies – but the book that is not yet finished is the Acts of the Apostles. This book is simply the record of what the Apostles and His Followers did after Jesus had gone. It was the record of the early Church. We still live in that same time period! We live in the Church Dispensation which began on the 50th Day after the Resurrection and continues right up till now. We’re in the Church Dispensation, and, if we are, then what happened in the Acts of the Apostles should happen today! I always knew that, I never questioned it, I expected to see it. I was living in an age when the people around me also believed it, and so we saw the miracles!
People ask me, when did the miracles start in my life? Right from the beginning of my ministry! I still have the newspaper reports from November 1959 when I planted the church in Dewsbury (where I still live), which spoke of the hall being filled, the preacher (me) preaching and praying with the sick (loudly) – and they reported the miracles that happened! Blind eyes were opened, cripples walked!
More recently when I began to work with the Russian-speaking Holocaust survivors in Israel, I was crying out to God, “How can I talk to these people? Because of being Jewish and their faith in the God we worship, they went through the gas chambers, the furnaces and died. How can I tell them that this God is a God of love?” They told me, “We will listen to you David, you can preach from your Bible – on this condition: that if your Jesus is the Messiah, if He is the Son of God, and if He is alive, then we expect Him to heal us and to see the same miracles today.” The amazing thing is, those miracles happened – far more than they expected! One of the most precious things in my office is large picture of some of the photos of some of those who died in the Holocaust, and, superimposed on top of these photos, they had put photos of some of those miraculously healed in my meetings. That was the evidence. As we face an uncertain and unbelieving world today, we need the EVIDENCE!
You know my story of lung cancer, 2002/3. I said to the Lord, “I cannot go back into Russia and preach this Gospel from this Book if I have had chemotherapy or my lung removed, because I have to be the witness of Your Power!” That’s why God healed me! I was 70, coming up for 71, at the time. I said, “Lord, if I’m too old, if you don’t need me anymore, take me Home. But Lord, if you still want me down here, then You’ve got to work a miracle.” And God did. And I would suggest that the biggest miracles came after 2003.