The Present State of the Lord’s Testimony (Part 4)

What about Prem? I could fall on my knees in front of that man, just by using this name. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you, Mike. Brother Prem visited us in Santa Barbara. Y’all remember him? Absolutely. Then he visited the church in Atlanta and stayed at Mike Rooney’s home. I was absolutely mortified beyond all mortification when I found out that Prem had slept on the living room floor while he was our guest. Let me tell you something. That was Prem Pradhan’s bedroom. And I’m still angry with Prem because He died. He died of a massive something internally. He never wrote a book, and the only messages he ever wrote were recorded by us. I don’t know of any man who has ever lived, including the Apostle Paul, who has ever been persecuted as that man has been. His testimony is absolutely unbelievable. The work died with him. It doesn’t exist. It was taken over by an institutional church. They bought off his people, paying them $200 a year, because they had been making $75. I consider it one of the greatest works of God in the history of Christendom and one of the greatest men that ever breathed air.

I’ll tell you something else. I was going through some real crucibles, and I met with Prem somewhere in Canada right over the border, and a lot of brothers came over, about 10 or 12 brothers, to meet him while he was there. Prem made the same decision as I had: never to own anything in my own name. He owned nothing in his name, and he trusted his closest friend and Christian devotee, who owned one of the choicest pieces of property in all of Kathmandu. It was two blocks from the king’s palace. He had just received word a few weeks ago that this man had taken the property, sold it, put it in his pocket, and gone to a Hindu temple to renew his Hindu vows.

I was in a virtually identical situation, trusting someone else with God’s money. I’m not going to tell you that story. But we sat down, and he was crying, and I was crying, and I said, “Prem…” He was trying to figure out a way to raise $100,000 to buy it back. He had asked everybody just to put everything on hold, and I said, “Prem, you’ve got to give it up.” I didn’t know what that man was made out of, because I was going through exactly the same situation he was. I had yielded it; no fighting. The next morning, at about 6:00 am, we met. I think it was in my hotel room. Prem said, “I just called Nepal, and I told them, ‘Give property up, we’re not going to fight.” I could have fallen at that man’s feet and kissed them because I just met somebody who wouldn’t fight. We were both just shell-shocked, down, and it was the lowest point of my ministry. I said, “Are you going to quit?” He said, “I never quit.” I said, “Alright, I’m making a deal with you, Prem. I’ll quit the day after you do.” He said, “You never quit. I will never quit.”

Do you know that a few moments like that in your life can make the difference between nightmares and walks through hell for just a few bright lights, and now I hold him in higher esteem than any other man on this earth. But I’m sorry the work’s gone. We were scheduled, if I could ever get well, we were scheduled to go to Nepal, and I was supposed to teach his people, their workers, and we were going to live in the Riverbed, boil water, and eat rice in the riverbed. Well, that’s where he told us he held his conferences, he held conferences in the riverbed. I have no idea what that means. I think I was already praying it would be in a time of the drought…and he died on me.

We’ve got two really good people. One’s work is over. This testimony is over except that it lives in my heart. The other one is way over in India, and it doesn’t fit anything that you would ever want to be part of, honest. You get tired of hitting your knees 10-15 times a day, every time somebody says a prayer. They have some strange eccentricities. It is not a criticism, but I tell you that man had a way of raising money like no one else in the world. Every time he was at a church, he put an offering box right beside him. This is Bakht Singh. Everybody would start over here, and they’d come by in single file. He’d stand there and wait till everyone of them put money in that box all the way back, and circle back to where their chair was, and as far as I know, they still do that.

Now then, I have received a tentative engagement to be in northern India next October, to be at one of those things they call a convocation. They usually have about 50,000 people show up for that thing, and he has asked me to be the speaker. Do you think I don’t want to go there? I’d give my eye, teeth, and some other things, but I don’t see any way in this world I can ever get there. But I do want you to know that I respect those people and love them, and if there’s anything we can learn from them, we’ll learn it.

Let me very quickly switch over to the very injured man who came to be with us. He was a leader, and his people followed him. We looked up a few weeks after he arrived and began to get well. We had a hundred new people in the church, and they were all his followers. He saw my weakness, and by the way, it’s well-known. He’s not the first person to ever take advantage of it. It has become almost a standard issue among many people. They find out that I won’t fight, and they do all sorts of unbelievable things.

One day, they announced that they were taking over the church in Santa Barbara. I figured it out before they announced it. I knew it was going to be a bloodletting. I had dinner with Lance at the Tea House, and I said, “Lance, you don’t know this, but when I walk out this door, they’re going to split the church.” I’m leaving, and I’m going to find out if I built it with wood, hay, stubble, or gold, silver, and precious stone. Can you tell me, Alicia, approximately how old you were at that time? That would have been 1972.  Were you one of the younger ones, or were you older? Everybody was 24. So, we got 23 and 24-year-olds. Do you understand that I got up and left? Do you understand? I packed my bags in April, and those men were ruthless beyond anything you could imagine. This is the institutional church, and when they got there, they began going from house to house, telling everybody they had the right to this church because they had preached there at one time, and that they were taking over the church. Gene left because he was a coward—same way about that snake slithering down the aisle. Yeah, I guess I am a coward if you’ve seen that I refuse to get in my flesh or to defend my ministry.

They went door to door telling… Well, I’m going to tell you what they did. They went door-to-door, screaming at people. I spent the summer in Memphis, Tennessee, and I waited to see. I wanted to know. I’d only been there with those kids for two years, and I won’t know whether I had built stone and silver and diamonds. To my knowledge, and I believe I am correct, they stormed the church. I came back, and they told me I would never preach in Isla Vista again as long as I lived, and if I tried, they would come into the meeting and haul me out. These are true stories, folks. I don’t have this kind of imagination. Well, I don’t. Phil doesn’t remember this, and I’m so sorry. He came by my house, and he said, “Gene…” I had just arrived, and he said, “Gene, you’re never going to preach here again.” It was one of those beautiful Isla Vista sunsets going right down over the ocean. They’re so gorgeous. And he said, “If you try to preach here, they’re going to come and haul you out.” I looked at that sunset, and I said, “They may stop that sun from coming up tomorrow morning, but they will never stop me from preaching in Isla Vista.” Phil shook his head and said, “Gene, I think you have underestimated those men.” I said, “Yes, and you’ve underestimated my God.”

So, I announced the meeting, and it was the one thing they weren’t prepared for. I announced the meeting would take place in my living room, and we notified the police and told them to stand by. I preached one of the most important messages of my life. In fact, it was a watershed for my ministry. Everything I’ve ever preached on since then, you can start it with that message, right there, because it had to do with the unseen realms. And there was no room anywhere. We had four bedrooms full and the kitchen full. We had one of those California rooms in the back. The entire backyard was packed, and some people had taken the windows out of every place, heads sticking in, and people around. There were easily 200 people within a few feet of that place. I walked in there and preached like a man who had just fallen out of heaven. I did not in any way, shape, or form make any reference to anything.

That was something, folks. I could not move my feet. They were just right here, and there was, I couldn’t have gone 2 inches forward. Well, I would like to tell you they went home, we never saw them again, and that’s sort of true. But one of the people, and I heard this, I just got hold of a man in the church who had two wives. I went to see him, and I have to say, Ed, I don’t know if you’re still alive, but I owe you forever because Ed said, “Gene, I want to go with you.” I walked in with Ed, and Ed said to the girl, “I ask you as a father, don’t do this.” And the young man was not only living in polygamy, but he was also espousing it to them. I said, “I’m going to throw you out of church.” He said, “No, you’re not. The church is going to stand with me.” I said, “No, that church will not.” And he said, “Yes, it will.” So, I called a meeting…talk about the Alamo…

Now I have something to say to you: do not ever underestimate the institutional church. You have no idea what happened in that community after that. I’m going to spare you, Gene. It got so bad because it’s not on tape. I’m just talking to him. Okay, let me just go ahead and finish then. We had a meeting there where we met, and there were people there who were, in fact, I don’t know how I got out that door. They had said I was a coward for leaving for the summer. They were just picking anything. Saints, it doesn’t matter. When people get in the flesh, they do anything in the world they want to do.