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WHAT DO YOU DESIRE MOST?

At one time I belonged to a class who believed that they had received the baptism in the Spirit without the speaking in tongues. There are many folks like that today, but if you can go with them to a prayer meeting you will find them asking the Lord again and again to baptize them in the Spirit. Why all this asking if they really have received the baptism? I have never heard anyone who has received the baptism in the Holy Ghost after the original pattern asking the Lord to give them the Holy Ghost. They know of a surety that He has come.


I was once traveling from Belgium to England. As I landed I received a request to stop at a place between Harwich and Colchester. The people were delighted that God had sent me, and told me of a special case they wanted me to pray for. They said, “We have a brother here who believes in the Lord, and he is paralyzed from his loins downward. He cannot stand on his legs and he has been 20 years in this condition.” They took me to this man and as I saw him there in his chair I put the question to him, ‘’what is the greatest desire in your heart?” He said, “Oh, if I could only receive the Holy Ghost!” I was somewhat surprised at this answer, and I laid my hands on his head and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” Instantly the power of God fell upon him and he began breathing very heavily. He rolled off the chair and there he lay like a bag of potatoes, utterly helpless. I like anything that God does. I like to watch God working. There he was with his great, fat body, and his head was working just as though it was on a swivel. Then to our joy he began speaking in tongues. I had my eyes on every bit of him and as I saw the condition of his legs I said, “Those legs can never carry that body.” Then I looked up and said, “Lord, tell me what to do.”

The Holy Ghost is the executive of Jesus Christ and the Father. If you want to know the mind of God you must have the Holy Ghost to bring God’s latest thought to you and to tell you what to do. The Lord said to me, “Command him in My name to walk.” But I missed it, of course. I said to the people there, “Let’s see if we can lift him up.” But we could not lift him, he was like a ton weight. I cried, “Oh Lord, forgive me.” I repented of doing the wrong thing, and then the Lord said to me again, “Command him to walk.” I said to him, “Arise in the name of Jesus.” His legs were immediately strengthened. Did he walk? He ran all round. A month after this he walked ten miles and back. He has a Pentecostal work now. When the power of the Holy Ghost is present, things will happen. There is more for us all yet, praise the Lord. This is only the beginning. So far we have only touched the fringe of things. There is so much more for us if we will but yield to God. (Smith Wigglesworth)

UNSPOTTED

I remember being in a meeting at one time, where there was a man seeking the baptism, and he looked like he was in trouble. He was very restless, and finally he said to me, “I will have to go.” I said, “What’s up?” He said, “God is unveiling things to me, and I feel so unworthy.” I said, “Repent of everything that is wrong.” He continued to tarry and the Lord continued to search his heart. These times of waiting on God for the fullness of the Spirit are times when He searches the heart and tries the reins.

Later the man said to me, “I have a hard thing to do, the hardest thing I have ever had to do.” I said to him, “Tell the Lord you will do it, and never mind the consequences.” He agreed, and the next morning he had to take a ride of 30 miles and go with a bag of gold to a certain party with whom he dealt. This man had 100 head of cattle and he bought all his feed at a certain place. He always paid his accounts on a certain day, but one day he missed. He was always so punctual in paying his accounts that when later the people of his firm went over their books, they thought they must have made a mistake in not crediting the man with the money and so they sent him a receipt. The man never intended not to pay the account, but if you defer to do a right thing the devil will see that you never do it. But when that man was seeking the Lord that night the Lord dealt with him on this point, and he had to go and straighten the thing the next morning. He paid the account and then the Lord baptized him in the Spirit. They that bear the vessels of the Lord must be clean, must be holy.

When the Holy Spirit comes He always brings a rich revelation of Christ. Christ becomes so real to you that, when, under the power of the Spirit, you begin to express your love and praise to Him, you find yourself speaking in another tongue. Oh, it is a wonderful thing! (Smith Wigglesworth)

CHANGED BY THE POWER OF GOD

I was holding a meeting, once, in London, and at the close a man came to me and said, “We are not allowed to hold meetings in this hall after 11 o’clock, and we would like you to come home with us, I am so
hungry for God.” The wife said she, too, was hungry, and so I agreed to go with them. At about 12:30 we arrived at their house. The man began stirring up the fire and said, “Now we will have a good supper.” I said to them, “I did not come here for your warm fire, your supper, or your bed.

I came here because I thought you were hungry to get more of God.” We got down to pray and at about 3:30 the Lord baptized the wife, and she
spoke in tongues as the Spirit gave utterance. At about 5 o’clock I spoke to the husband and asked how he was getting on. He replied, “God has broken my iron, stubborn will.” He had not received the baptism, but
God had wrought a mighty work within him.
The following day, at his business, everyone could tell that a great
change had come to him. Before he had been a walking terror. The men
who labored for him had looked upon him as a regular devil because of the
way he had acted; but coming into contact with the power of God that night completely changed him. Before this he had made a religious profession,
but he had never truly entered into the experience of the new birth
until that night, when the power of God surged so mightily through his
home. A short while afterward I went to this man’s home, and his two sons
ran to me and kissed me, saying, “We have a new father.” Previous to this, these boys had often said to their mother, “Mother, we cannot stand it in the home any longer. We will have to leave.” But the Lord changed the whole situation that night as we prayed together. On the second visit the Lord baptized this man in the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit will reveal false positions, pull the mask off any refuge of lies and clean up and
remove all false conditions. When the Holy Spirit came in, that man’s
house and business and he himself were entirely changed. (Smith Wigglesworth)

I LOVE PRAYER
"I love Prayer because when I pray, I see things. My spiritual eyes are opened. That's how I know what to do next" Pastor Chris PHd

"I've found Prayer and Fasting a great Blessing" Smith Wigglesworth

"Prayer requires more of the heart than the tongue."
Adam Clarke -- Ever feel like this?: Pray In Vain

"No one is a firmer believer in the power of prayer than the devil; not that he practices it, but he suffers from it."
Guy H. King -- Try practicing this concept: That Is Not Acceptable

"The greatest tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer, buy unoffered prayer."
F.B. Meyer -- Learn to just Ask

"Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work."
Oswald Chanbers

"Pray as if everything depended on God, and work as if everything depended upon man."
Francis J. Spellman

"The reason why we obtain no more in prayer is because we expect no more. God usually answers us according to our own hearts."
Richard Alleine -- Read this to increase your effectiveness: What Are YOU Expecting?

"Do not make prayer a monologue-make it a conversation."
Author unknown -- Read all about it in Prayer That Whispers In His Ear.

"Effective prayer is prayer that attains what it seeks. It is prayer that moves God, effecting its end."
Charles Finney -- Try I Declare to increase your prayer's effectiveness

"Seven days without prayer makes one weak."
Allen Vartlett -- Why don't you Get In The Habit?

"Every great movement of God can be traced to a kneeling figure."
D. L. Moody

"Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow."
Benjamin Franklin

"Our prayers must mean something to us if they are to mean anything to God."
Maltbie D. Babcock -- Here's a man they meant something to: Add Fifteen

"To pray in Jesus' name means to pray in his spirit, in his compassion, in his love, in his outrage, in his concern. In other words, it means to pray a prayer that Jesus himself might pray."
Kenneth L. Wilson

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
tags: god, heart, humanity, inspirational, prayer, religion, souls, weakness
2,107 people liked it
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“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
tags: agama, agnosticism, prayer, religion
1,082 people liked it
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“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Søren Kierkegaard
tags: faith, god, prayer
1,029 people liked it
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“I talk to God but the sky is empty.”
― Sylvia Plath
tags: doubt, faith, god, prayer
665 people liked it
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“Let us never forget to pray. God lives. He is near. He is real. He is not only aware of us but cares for us. He is our Father. He is accessible to all who will seek Him.”
― Gordon B. Hinckley, Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes
tags: god, prayer
559 people liked it
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“Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense.”
― Robert Frost
tags: prayer
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“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one”
― Bruce Lee
tags: advice-for-daily-living, prayer
477 people liked it
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“Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts.”
― Mother Teresa
tags: prayer
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“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.”
― Meister Eckhart
tags: gratitude, prayer
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“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
― St. Francis of Assisi
tags: aspirations, prayer, spirituality
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“A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.”
― Tennessee Williams

LEARN ABOUT YOUR AUTHORITY IN CHRIST AND USE IT

I was holding a meeting for a pastor and his wife almost 20 years ago, and they invited me to their home. Both of them were ministers of the Gospel. As we were sitting there talking, the wife said, "Brother Hagin, I don't know how to say this to you, but this house we're living in has manifestations of evil spirits."

I don't know why she didn't do something about it. She had the authority. She just didn't know it. The pastor (he was one of the top men in his Full Gospel denomination) would hear the evil spirits go through the house and knock things over. His wife said, "I've actually spoken to one and it's spoken back to me. I've told it to go and it didn't." I said, "I'll take care of that for you." "Will you?" they asked. "We've thought about moving.'' "No," I said. "I'll take care of it. You won't ever see or hear these manifestations again in the Name of Jesus." Just sitting there at the table, speaking in an ordinary conversational tone, I said, "In the Name of Jesus I command every evil spirit to leave, and all demonic activity in this home to cease." I told the couple, "Now it's gone; you'll never hear or see those demons again."

They told me last year — 19 years later — there was never another manifestation of that power. The pastor told me he almost had been embarrassed when his wife had brought the subject up. But I'm not embarrassed to know the devil and demons are real, are you? They were real in Bible times, and they're just as real now as then. I'm not afraid of them. And you ought not to be — not if you're a Christian, that is. (Kenneth Hagin)

MINISTERING WITH THE GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT

I started a revival the last Sunday night of December 1952 at a Full Gospel church in Tyler, Texas. I was putting some things in my motel room when a knock came on the door and the pastor came in to talk with me. He told me he trusted that his niece would receive her healing during this meeting. She had been diagnosed as having cancer of the left lung and had been unable to take care of her two small children.

In fact, by this time she was skin and bones and was bedfast. She had refused exploratory surgery, saying she was going to trust God, and if she died, she died. Doctors had said the cancer had now spread to both lungs, and she was beyond medical help. In those days, we had healing services on Tuesday and Friday nights. The pastor's niece was brought to the Tuesday night service. I laid hands on her and prayed, but got no results. Friday night they brought her again, and still there were no results. The second week they brought her again on Tuesday. Still there were no results. Friday night we had another healing service, and still there were no results.

At the last minute the pastor decided he wanted the meeting to continue another week, so I agreed. I have thought so many times, What if we had not gone on? Tuesday night of the third week, this girl was brought to the service again. When I reached out and laid my hand on her forehead, I was in the Spirit. It seemed like a white cloud came down over me, enveloping me. Every person and pew disappeared. The altar disappeared and it seemed as if the young woman and I were standing there in that white cloud. No one else could see what I saw nor hear what I heard, but they heard me talking.

I saw a demon hanging onto the outside of her body. It was like a little monkey hanging onto a tree limb. It looked like the pictures we've seen of little elves. It was oppressing her body, but was not in her spirit. I dealt with the evil spirit oppressing this girl. I told him he was going to have to leave her. He said he knew he would have to, but no one else heard him say that. I then told him to come out of her body in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. When I said that, he turned loose and fell down to the floor. He lay there and whimpered. He shook like a little dog who had been whipped. He whined and kept saying that he sure didn't want to leave. I commanded him to leave the premises in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he went down the aisle and out the front door.

The young woman lifted her hands and began to praise God. Almost instantly she was filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues. She returned to the last clinic where she had been treated and asked them to x-ray her lungs again. They did, and they said the cancer was gone. She testified in a service that the doctors asked her what had happened. They thought maybe she had been under the care of some other doctor. But she told them exactly what I had seen and done. The doctors said they would give her an affidavit that she'd had cancer and that now it was gone. They said they didn't know by what method it had left, but "more power to this fellow who has the answer." They knew they didn't have the answer.

I believe God has the answer, not I. If I had been operating the gift, I'd have done this the first night the girl came. But if the Spirit doesn't give it to me, I'm helpless. I teach, preach, and minister the best I can, but I do not operate or manifest gifts of the Holy Spirit at will. The Bible says, "But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will" (1 Cor. 12:11). (Kenneth E. Hagin)

GIVE NO PLACE TO THE DEVIL

You can give place to the devil by giving him more credit than God. In church, some people give more praise to the devil than to God. Born-again, Spirit-filled people praise the devil more than they do God. Some people say, "I'll tell you, the devil is here."

At a place where I preached one time, the pastor got up and said, "The devil is here. He's got us all bound up. I don't know how in the world Brother Hagin is going to preach in this kind of atmosphere. We're going to hurry up here — and turn him loose."

When I got up I said, "No, you're not going to turn me loose. I haven't been bound to begin with. I'm already loose! Now it's been said, 'The devil's here.' " (You see, the more they talked about the devil, the more frightened they got. They had been saying, "The devil's here, the devil's taken over, the devil's got it." The devil, the devil, the devil — that's all they talked about.)

I said, "The devil will come to church more regularly than most faithful saints. But what of it? Jesus is here, God is here, the Holy Spirit is here. Greater is He that's in me than he that's in the world!" The people started straightening up in their chairs when I started talking about God. I said, "I don't know if Jesus came with you, but He came with me. Even if you didn't bring Him, I did.

He's here. What do we care about the devil?" Before long, they were jumping and shouting all over the place. Many people talk about what the devil is doing and how he's keeping them sick and unsuccessful. They give the devil dominion over them. But if you'll talk about what God's Word says, the devil will run from you in terror. You have authority because of the Name of Jesus! (Kenneth Hagin)

HOW TO RELEASE YOUR OWN FAITH

When I still was a young Baptist boy preacher—before I was baptized in the Holy Spirit—I woke up one Monday morning and half of my face was paralyzed. It wouldn't move. I had been praying for myself because I didn't know anybody else to pray for me, but I found out that some people had built a church called the Full Gospel Tabernacle in our town, and these people believed in divine healing.

I said to myself, I'll go down there Wednesday night and get that pastor to anoint me with oil. The minute he anointed me and prayed, I lifted my hands and shouted, "Thank God, it is gone!"
I said it in faith. I knew what to say. I was Baptist— and I didn't know anything about the Holy Spirit—but I did know something about faith. That was my point of contact when hands were laid on me. That was the point where I started believing "I receive my healing." No, I did not feel healed. No, I did not look healed. But I was not going by looks or feeling. I was going by what I believed.

That's what a point of contact is: It's the point when you release your faith and start believing for your healing. You must start somewhere. A man in a race would never run the race if he didn't get started. There has to be a starting place. Your starting place can be when hands are laid on you. That can be the place where you start believing: "I receive my healing." People in the congregation began asking me, "Did the Lord really heal you, Kenneth?" I said, "He sure did." They said, "Well, you don't look healed. How do you feel?" "Not any different." "Well, if you don't look any different, and you don't feel healed, and we can see that you don't look healed, what makes you think you are healed?" I said, "I don't think it ; I know it." You see, faith is knowing.

I've had people tell me, "I've got better sense than that." And I tell them, "Well, you go ahead and do without healing. You notice my face is straight, don't you? I got it. I got my healing." I knew what Jesus said was true. I knew that if I would believe that I received it, I would have it. I knew that if I really believed it, I would say that I believed it. Not: I will receive it (future tense), but I receive it (present tense).

An associate pastor of a Full Gospel church in Tulsa was once sent to pray for a man in the church who was too sick to go to work. He told me, "I had been hearing you preach, so I anointed him with oil, laid hands on him, and started my prayer when suddenly, without thinking, I stopped praying and said, 'What are you going to be doing tomorrow?' "The sick man said, 'I'll be here in bed.'” "'Well, there's no use finishing the prayer. I might as well leave now. You don't believe a thing,' I told him.” "The man thought about it a minute and said, 'That's right, isn't it?'” "I asked him, 'When are you going to get healed?'” "'Why,' he said, 'when you anoint me with oil—when you lay hands on me and pray—that's when.'” "This man turned to his wife and said—even before I finished that prayer—'Call the boss and tell him I'll be on the job tomorrow.'” "Then I prayed for him," the pastor said, "and bless God, he was on the job the next day."

A woman once ran up to the pastor and me on the platform and said, "Brother Pastor, Brother Hagin, pray for me right now." The pastor said, "Well, we're having a healing service after a while. I'm going to preach a healing message and Brother Hagin is going to lay hands on all the sick at the close of the service. It won't be long." The singing had already started. "Yes, yes," she said, "but I want you and Brother Hagin to lay hands on me now, because I'm going home and go to bed!" What good would it have done to have laid hands on her and prayed? She had already confessed it won't work.

When you pray, the Bible says, believe that you Receive and you shall have. The laying on of hands is the point of contact to release your faith. That's when you start believing. I lay hands on people as their point of contact. (Kenneth Hagin)

THE NECESSITY OF FOLLOW UP

Once I held a meeting for a pastor in Texas—and I'm ashamed that anybody in Texas would be as stupid as that poor fellow was. I gave an invitation one Saturday night, and 39 people came and stood across the front. They included seven couples between 28 and 32 years of age. That's seven families. They had never been saved. They were noble prospects.

Afterwards, I asked the pastor, "Did you get those folks' names and addresses so you can follow up on them?" "Aw, bless God," he said, "I believe if people got anything, they'll be back." "I want to ask you a question," I said. "During this meeting, your daughter gave birth to a baby boy. Suppose you went to her house and said, 'I've come to see my boy. Where is he?' Would she say, 'Well, we thought if he were alive and well, he'd be in after a while?" And I said to that pastor, "My time is too valuable to hold a revival for an idiot. I'm closing tomorrow night." And I closed.

God is going to hold every church responsible for the babies born into the kingdom around its altars. When they backslide, we are ready to criticize them, yet we frequently are to blame for their backsliding. (Kenneth Hagin)

BE PATIENT WITH SPIRITUAL BABES IN-CHRIST (NEPIOS)

I was shaving one morning, the Spirit of God spoke to me and said, "I want you to go to E.'s house because he has missed it, and he thinks now that because he has sinned, God doesn't love him anymore. He is not going to come back to church anymore." I walked out to tell my wife—with lather still on my face—and I said, "Honey, before I go to the grocery store for you, I've got to go to E.'s. The Lord just said that he has missed it—he lost his temper and said a lot of things he shouldn't have—and the Lord told me to go out there and restore him."

I went back to finish shaving, and E.'s wife drove up. "Oh, Brother Hagin," she cried, "I want you to go see E. He lost his temper on the job yesterday and said a lot of things he shouldn't have. A back injury he had a long time ago has come back on him, and he's home in bed. He says he's not coming to church anymore. He believes God doesn't love him anymore because he sinned." She added, "Don't you tell him I came by here, because he won't like it."

"The Lord just spoke to me about it," I said. "You can ask my wife. I just got through telling her." I went to their home, knocked on the door, and recognized E.'s voice saying, "Come in." E. was so embarrassed that he pulled the covers up over his head. I could hear him crying. I got on my knees beside his bed, and I began to cry with him. I pulled at the covers—he was holding on for dear life—and out-pulled him. I simply took him in my arms. I said, "The Lord spoke to me and told me to come out here and restore you because you had missed it."

He began to cry again. He said, "Brother Hagin, something didn't go right on the job. I don't remember saying anything wrong, but some of them said I cursed. If I did, I don't know it. I told my wife, 'I'm not going to church anymore. The Lord doesn't love me.'" I said, "Yes, He does. He loves you, and we love you, and He sent me out here to help you—and that proves
He loves you. And we're not going to let the devil have you!"

He said, "My back is hurting me so bad!" I laid my hand on his back and said, "Dear God, You love him. I know You do. You sent me out here to help him, and I want You to heal him right now and prove to him that You love him." Suddenly he jumped like he had been shot, and he said, "It's all gone! It's all gone!" Then he began to cry in a different way. He said, "The Lord does love me, doesn't He?" I said, "Yes, He does."

And he came right on back to the Lord and right on back to church. Well, the Lord sent me out there one more time— but he was only about a month old, and what do you expect of a one-month-old child? I'm glad God has made provision for the babies. If you can't do it yourself, He has made provision for you where you can find help. (Kenneth Hagin)

[quote author=idnoble135]Great topic. I would to God that christians would stop the attack. Some folks even use the word against believers who they know are true believers but with questionable past or mistakes. They forget that God gave us the word(sword of the spirit, ephe 6) to assault and attack the devil and not other believers.
The devil may truly be mocking us because we are the ones now doing ourselves greater hurt than what satan could do.
I have told believers over and over again. Your criticsm wont change some folks; because alot of them have been battered by criticsm and harsh judgement and are already getting used to it. But i am yet to find a person that love did not finally get through. Jesu

Really enjoyed your comment. Satan is actually using careless Christians to do what he wants done - esp in the area of CRITICISM. There's so much segregation. We as Christians ought stop fighting ourselves on matters of doctrinal difference and walk in love and reach out to the lost. We can never win the lost by fighting/criticizing other believers.

PRAISING GOD BRINGS GOD’S MANIFESTED PRESENCE

A young Pentecostal evangelist did something striking when he was dying of tuberculosis back in the early 1930s. He told me his story firsthand. He had become bedfast and was hemorrhaging from both lungs. He had had to take his family to live on his father-in- law's farm. One day his father-in-law was out in the fields plowing and his wife and mother-in-law were behind the house doing the wash. This young evangelist begged God for enough strength to get out of bed and make it to a clump of trees and bushes a quarter of a mile down the road. He purposed in his heart, I'm going to pray until I pray through and God heals me, or until they find me dead.

He reached the thicket and fell down exhausted. He couldn't have cried for help if he had wanted to. No one knew where he was. "They'll never find you until the buzzards lead them to you," the devil assured him. "Well," he said, "that's all right, devil. That's what I came out here to do. Just as soon as I can regain a little strength, I'm going to pray until I'm healed or die on the spot." "Then, as I was lying there," he told me, "trying to muster enough strength to start praying, I got to thinking about it: Everywhere I had been, I had turned in prayer requests for my healing. Hundreds of people had prayed. Thousands of people had prayed. Every healing evangelist in America had laid hands on me.

Everybody had prayed ....” "My, my. If you put all of those prayers together, it would be hundreds of hours of prayer. All these great men of faith had laid hands on me—and God uses healing evangelists.” "I decided: My God, I've missed it! I'm not going to pray at all. There is no use in my praying. I see where I've missed it. I shouldn't even have turned in those prayer requests. I've been trying to get somebody else to pray. I've been trying to get God to give me what He says is already mine!”

"The Bible says I'm healed. Lord, I'm going to lie here flat on my back and praise You. I'm going to praise You until my healing is manifested." He told me, "I just started whispering, 'Praise the Lord. Glory to God. Hallelujah. Thank You, Jesus.' After about 10 minutes of whispering 'Thank You, Jesus,' I got enough strength to lift my arms up by propping my elbows on the ground, and I praised God another 10 minutes or so. Then I got enough strength to lift my hands, and my voice got louder.” "And at the end of two hours, I was on my feet hollering 'Praise God' so loud somebody heard me several miles away." You see—when he began to agree with what the Word of God said and acted on God's Word, he got results! (Kenneth Hagin)

PREACH THE GOSPEL

After numerous inquiries to the Lord as to why He was allowing me to experience the reality of His presence, I had a frightening vision. I saw someone standing in front of me, engulfed in flames and moving uncontrollably. His feet were not touching the ground.

His mouth was opening and closing, like the "gnashing of teeth" in the Bible. At that moment, the Lord spoke in an audible voice: "Preach the gospel."

I responded: "But, Lord, I can't talk." Two nights later, I had a dream. I saw an angel with a chain in his hand; it was attached to a door that seemed to fill heaven. He pulled it open, and there were people as far as the eye could see. They were all moving toward a large, deep valley, and that valley was an inferno. Thousands were falling into the fire.

Those on the front lines were trying to fight it, but the crush of humanity pushed them into the flames. Again the Lord spoke to me: "If you do not preach, I will hold you responsible." I knew instantly that everything in my life, including my unbelievable experiences in recent months, was for one purpose: to move me to preach the gospel. (Benny Hinn)

NEVER ALLOW PAST FAILURES TO HUNT YOU

Often, people have been robbed of healing that belonged to them because somebody told them, "You've done wrong. You're going to have to pay for it. God's going to hold that against you forever. You're going to have to go through life sick and suffering." A man in Houston told me, "The doctor said, 'If you stay on your job, you'll fall dead any minute of your heart condition, high blood pressure, kidney disease, and liver trouble.'"

This was back in the 1950s. Every healing evangelist in America had laid hands on this man, and no insinuation, because I had laid hands on him twice, and he hadn't gotten healed. He said, "In 36 years, I've missed it. Oh, I've missed it so many ways. I've failed. I could have been a better Christian."

I showed him this verse in James: "The Lord shall raise him up and if they have committed sins .... " (Did you notice it said sins, not sin?) "What awful sins have you committed in these 36 years?" I asked him. "How many people have you killed?" "Not any," he said. "How many banks have you robbed?" He said, "None."

"Well," I said, "what awful sins have you done?" He said, "Really, I haven't done much as far as sins of commission are concerned. It's sins of omission. I could have done so much more than I did. I could have given more to missions." I said, "Have you repented?" "Oh, yes." "Those sins are forgiven," I said. "Now let Him heal you." I laid hands on him. He didn't fall dead on the job. He worked until he was 75 years old, and he was still alive the last I heard of him. He had been letting the devil cheat him because he had missed it. No, I'm not encouraging people to do wrong or sin, but don't let the devil rob you of your healing just because you missed it. (Kennth Hagin)

DON’T BE QUICK IN PASSING JUDGMENT ON PEOPLE

Years ago, when people whom I thought surely Would not get healed did, and when good church members I was sure would get healed but didn't, I almost was ready to accuse God and say, "Lord, why did you heal that person?" I was holding a meeting in South Texas at the time our second granddaughter was born. My wife went home to be with our daughter, and I was struggling along. The meeting was just dead for the first week. It was one of the toughest places I had ever been.

About Tuesday night of the second week, the Spirit of God moved on a man. The Word of Knowledge was manifested through him. Some healings took place. Others were used by the Spirit in tongues and interpretation, but God's using this particular man just really set the meeting off. I said to myself as I sat on the platform, This is the turning point. From now on this will be like another meeting. And it was. There was as much difference in the last half and the first as there is between daylight and dark. God blessed immeasurably. Great things happened. I saw people get healed. I was staying in a little travel trailer. I watched the 10 o'clock news, turned the television off, and went to bed—but something kept bothering me. You see, I had driven down the main street of that town that very day, and I had seen this man who was so mightily used of God go into a dark dive. When something like that happens, your mind just runs. You think What is he doing in there? Then the devil fills in all the blanks for you!

I drove around the block, came back, and he was still in there. I don't know how long he stayed. So I was lying there trying to go to sleep, and that thought just kept pestering me: Why did God use that fellow? Several days before I had heard him say some things that were just not up to par. That kept coming back to me, too. I struggled for 30 minutes to get off to sleep. (My wife can tell you that I usually go to sleep by the time my head hits the pillow.) Finally I sat up in bed and said, "All right, Lord! All right! I'm going to ask You: Why did You use that fellow? Didn't You see him go into that dark dive like I did? Didn't You hear what he said, like I did? "I know that was You tonight. I know the Spirit of God. I know that You revealed things to him, that You worked through him, and that healings took place. I saw them: miracles, right in front of our eyes. "But, God, why couldn't You have used old Sister So-and-so, 80 years old. She's been in The Way for 50 years almost. She's filled with the Holy Spirit, sanctified, holy, separated ... Or if You didn't want to use her, why didn't You use (and I mentioned a few others)." I got it off my chest. I waited for Him to answer.

Down inside myself I heard it. It hit me so hard it was like somebody hit me in the stomach with their fist. I grabbed my stomach. He said, "Your trouble is, you don't believe your own preaching." I tried to defend myself. I said, "Lord, You've hit me a low blow. Why, I'm a stickler for the Word. I believe the Word." "No," He said, "you don't." He said, "You were teaching the other morning in the Bible class from Isaiah 43, where I said, “I, even I, am he that blotted out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and I will not remember thine iniquities'"(vv. 25,26).

He said, "You may have seen that fellow go in that place, but you don't know what happened. When he saw what he was getting into, he said, 'Dear God, what's the matter with me? I didn't intend to get into this. Lord, forgive me.' And I didn't remember that he had ever done anything wrong." (And He didn't remember, did He? You see, we remember a person's sins, but God doesn't. How does He keep from it, you ask. I don't know. Go ask Him, if you want to know. I don't want to know; I just believe it.)

He said to me, "You asked why I couldn't use Sister So-and-so. What you don't know about that dear old saint is that she has been in disobedience for 40 years. You can't see that on the outside. I talked to her 40 years ago about doing some things and she wouldn't. She comes to church, lives right, and on the outside looks good. But this man had done wrong and had repented of it. I did not remember that he had ever done anything wrong." I said, "Thank You, Lord. Just go ahead and use him if You want to. It's all right with me. I'll believe my preaching." I lay down and went to sleep.

You see, people sometimes say, "You know that couldn't have been God. That fellow used to be this, or that woman used to do that. That couldn't be God working through them." But if they have repented, God doesn't remember that they ever did anything wrong! Can you see that? (Kennth E. Hagin)

10-HOURS OF PRAYING IN OTHER TONGUES GOT THE JOB DONE

A young Texas minister was hit head-on by a drunk. When his father arrived at the hospital they told him that his son's neck was broken and that he was paralyzed from the waist down. Doctors gave him little hope of recovering. The father went back the next night, and found him unconscious. He told the doctor that he was going to stay all night and pray. The father prayed in tongues, and at midnight he was still praying in tongues. He prayed altogether about ten hours in tongues.

At six o'clock in the morning, he went over to his son's bed and saw him lying there with his eyes open. The son assured him that he was all right because God had healed him. He said he had feeling all over his body. The two began praising the Lord. The doctor came in, and the boy told him that God had healed him. He asked the doctor to remove the cast, but the doctor said no, because his neck and back were broken. After much persuasion, they x-rayed him and said that they could not even find where his bones had been broken. They kept him there for a day or two to check him, and finally told him that he could go home. He was miraculously healed and is still preaching the Gospel.

The father got the job done when he began to pray in the Spirit. He got the help of the Holy Spirit in praying. You can increase your power in prayer 100 percent by praying in the Spirit and in tongues. (Kenneth E. Hagin)

HAVE YOU ACCEPTED JESUS AS YOUR PHYSICIAN & HEALER?
(The Secret to long-LIFE & HEALTH)

One day a woman in our church and I got to talking about the promises of divine healing. This sister had a Methodist background. Her husband was a farmer. She told me some Pentecostal people had come into that little town about 1918, had rented an empty store building, and had started a revival.

The family heard about it and decided they would attend. They hooked up the wagon, loaded all their children, and went in town to the meeting. They attended a few times and enjoyed it. The preacher was preaching on divine healing and praying for the sick. People were praying around the altar, and all of them prayed out loud at once!

The one member of their household who could not attend was this woman's 93-year-old grandmother. They got home too late at night for her. One morning at the breakfast table, Grandma asked about the service. "Well, I know you're not going to like this ...."the granddaughter said, and began to tell her about the fellow preaching on healing, anointing people with oil, and laying hands on them for healing. But Grandma exclaimed, "WHOOPEE! Glory! Glory! I'm glad you found it!"

"What do you mean?" her granddaughter asked. "Why," she said, "40 years ago in our Methodist church a fellow came along preaching divine healing, and he invited us to come up and accept Christ as our Healer and Physician, just as we had accepted Him as our Savior. And I went forward with the others. You're old enough to remember most of those 40 years. Did you ever know of my being sick in the last 40 years?" "Why, no. We just always thought you had a strong constitution!"

"No," the grandmother said. "I accepted Jesus as my Physician. I haven't been sick in 40 years. I'm 93 now—and it might interest you to know that I am going home without sickness and disease. I'll never have a sick day in my life!" The sister said to me, "We thought poor old Grandma had become sort of senile, but she encouraged
us to go to the meetings." Grandma lived to be past 94. She got up with the rest of the family before daylight, because by daylight the men and boys would be out in the fields working. After breakfast she would always wash and dry the breakfast dishes, clean up the kitchen, and sweep it out while her granddaughter was making the beds and cleaning the rest of the house. By 9 o'clock they would meet in their sewing room.

While the granddaughter mended, Grandma would read the Bible to her. The sister recalled, "At the breakfast table one morning, Grandma said, 'I'm going home this morning at 10 o'clock.' We passed it by, but before my husband went out to the fields, he said, 'What is she talking about? Does she think she's going back home?' We didn't understand what she meant." Grandma went ahead and washed all the breakfast dishes and pots and pans that it took to feed eight children plus the three adults, swept out the kitchen, met her granddaughter at 9 o'clock in the sewing room, sat down, and began reading the Bible to her. Her granddaughter said, "Just about 10 minutes till 10, she turned to me and said, 'Let me read this to you ....'She read the 20th and 21st chapters of Revelation. She got through about 10 o'clock, said, 'There's Jesus—and I must go! Goodbye!' waved, and went home, sitting there in a chair." (And she was Methodist! Bless God, if it would work for a Methodist, it ought to work for anybody!) Oh, hallelujah, we have sold God short so many times.

"Yes, but maybe that's not God's will for me," you might say. Well, you just go right ahead and talk yourself out of it. Talk yourself into being sick. Talk yourself into dying early—and you will have what you say, because Jesus Himself plainly said: That whosoever shall say ... and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. —Mark 11:23 I'm going to state it again: It is NOT God our Heavenly Father's will that Christians should suffer with cancer and other dread diseases that bring pain and anguish. It IS God's will that we live our full length of time on earth. (Kenneth E. Hagin)

THE MIRACLE WORKING POWER OF THE WORD

Recalling an incident that happened during a meeting I held in Oklahoma. One of the seven cooperating churches was pastured by a couple I had known in Texas. They said, "We're going to bring a woman from our church for prayer one night, Brother Hagin. She is crippled. She has not walked a step in seven years. We have taken her to the best specialists in the state, and they have said she'll never walk again 'the longest day she lives.'"

Ordinarily I minister under the anointing. The night she came, I had so many to minister to that by the time I got to her I was exhausted. You see, the Lord is the same all the time, but I am not. Potentially, the anointing is there all the time, but in manifestation, it is not, because when you grow weary, it is difficult to yield to God. Because the anointing was gone by the time I got to this woman, I couldn't conscientiously minister to her as I normally would. They had brought her to the meeting from a distance, and what was I to do? Just send her away? No, no. There was a way to minister to her—because God's Word never fails! The anointing may wane, disappear and be gone, but the Word of God is anointed forever, hallelujah, and His Words are Spirit and Life.

All I did was sit down on the altar beside the woman, open my Bible to this verse of Scripture (1Peter 2:24), lay the Bible on her lap, and ask her to read it. Then I asked her, "Is the Word ‘were’ past tense, future tense, or present tense?" A look of recognition flashed across her face like a Neon light lighting up in the dark. "Why," she said, "it's past tense. And if we WERE healed, I WAS!" (That is believing in line with God's Word.) I said, "Sister, will you do what I tell you to do?" "Well," she said, "I will if it's easy."

I said, "It's the easiest thing you ever did in your life. Just lift up your hands and start praising God, because you are healed—not going to be—ARE!" I wish you could have seen that crippled woman. She had no evidence of healing—she had not yet walked a step—but she lifted her hands, looked up, and as a smile broke across her face, she said, "Oh, dear Father God—whooo! I'm so glad I'm healed! Oh, Lord, you know how tired I got sitting around these last few years. I'm so glad I'm not helpless and don't need to be waited on anymore." (You see, she was acting on the Word. That's what faith is.)

I stood and told the congregation, "Let's all lift our hands and praise God with her, because she is healed." (And yet, from all observation, she was still sitting on the altar, crippled.) After we stopped I turned to the woman and said, "Now, my sister, rise and walk in Jesus' Name!" God and hundreds of people are my eternal witnesses that instantly she leaped to her feet and jumped and ran and danced like the man who went into the Temple walking and leaping and praising God (Acts 3:.

We all shouted and cried with her. Then somebody went off and told a lie about me! He said, "That fellow Hagin healed a crippled woman over there last night." I didn't have anymore to do with it than you or anybody else could have. Jesus healed her nearly 2,000 years ago, and she just found out about it that night! (Kenneth E. Hagin)

FASTING AND PRAYER IS VERY HELPFUL

A certain church where I held a meeting was a very difficult place to preach. The people were good people. They loved the Lord. They loved my preaching. But it was tough to preach there. The very atmosphere was hard. Everything I said seemed to bounce off the wall back into my face.

Some months later I returned to the area to preach a revival at another church. I also went back to this first church and spent some time with the pastor and his family. I spoke at a New Year's Eve watch night service for them. The next day, the pastor's wife asked, "Brother Hagin, can you see any difference in our church?" I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "Is it any easier to preach here? What about the pulpit now?" I said, "There's as much difference as between daylight and dark. It doesn't seem like the same pulpit. It doesn't seem like the same church."

She said, "Get my husband to tell you about it." The pastor said, "I don't usually tell people about it because they might think I am crazy." The spiritual world ought to be as real to us as water is to a fish. Yet, many in the church think a person is a fanatic if he touches that world. "I won't tell everybody," the pastor said, "but I will tell you. I got so concerned. This was the hardest church I ever preached in. The pulpit seemed to hold me in bondage. I knew the people loved me. They supported me well. We had good fellowship with them in their homes. But that pulpit was like a prison. "I began to fast and pray about it. The seventh day of my fast, I was kneeling on the platform about three feet behind the pulpit when I happened to look directly overhead. The ceiling disappeared."

(Discerning of spirits had come into manifestation. God allowed this pastor to see into the spirit realm. He saw, sitting up in the rafters directly above the pulpit, a huge spirit. It looked like a big baboon. It was as large as a man.) The pastor said, "I found myself saying to him, 'You're going to have to come down.' The spirit said nothing, but seemed to draw up as if he didn't want to obey. I said, 'You come down in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ.' "He fell down onto the pulpit, then jumped to the floor.

I said to him, 'You get out of here!' He said nothing, but looked at me as if to say, 'I don't want to.' I said, 'Just march right out of here, in the Name of Jesus.' He marched down off the platform. I marched right behind him. He would go four or five steps, then stop and look at me, almost begging. I would say, 'No, go on.' But he wouldn't move until I said, 'In the Name of Jesus.' "We went down the aisle that way, stopping every four or five steps. I went ahead of him and held the vestibule doors open. (The spirit could have gone through the doors, of course, but this is what the pastor did.) That thing would not go through until I said, 'In the Name of Jesus.'

"Then I opened the front door. I stepped back and said, 'Move on out.' He stood there. He never said a word, but I could tell by the expression on his face, he was begging to stay. I said, 'In the Name of Jesus,' and he moved. "He went down the church steps and got halfway out into the yard. Then he stopped, turned around, and looked at me again. I said, 'No, you don't. You go on in the Name of Jesus.' "He went as far as the curb. I said, 'You'll have to go on. And don't ever come on these premises again.' He stood there until I said, 'In the Name of Jesus.' Then he ran across the street and down the other side about a quarter of a mile. I watched him run into a nightclub. The next night it burned down. "Ever since, it has been easy to preach here. The people have noticed. They have asked, 'What happened?' But I didn't tell them." (Kenneth Hagin)

WE HAVE AUTHORITY OVER DEVILS

The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ has more authority than we have realized yet. Demons will not act up as long as they are in my presence; they know I've got authority over them. Ernie Reb, a missionary to the Philippines, had an incident happen one time involving devils on his property. He had moved to an island that was supposed to be the very stronghold of Satan. He was building a home on the island and was planning to live there.

During the construction, one of the carpenters started hollering, and Brother Reb went to see what was wrong. The fellow was thrashing around like he was wrestling with something. He was yelling, "Get him off of me! Get him off of me!" Brother Reb said, "I saw something rip his pants leg.

Tooth marks appeared, and the man started bleeding from the hip down. All this time he was hollering, 'Get him off of me!' "I realized it had to be the devil. I said, 'I command you in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you leave him! This is my property. You've got no right on my property.' " He said the thing ran off. He never did see him, but the other man saw him.

After that the other carpenters became afraid to work there. The witch doctor came, and he wanted to sacrifice a pig and chicken. Their blood was supposed to appease the demons. Brother Reb said, "No! You won't come on my property! You won't sacrifice anything on my property! There are no evil spirits here. I told them not to come back. They won't come on my property. They won't set foot on my ground. Tell that carpenter to come back. That won't happen again."

You see, those demons knew Brother Reb. The devils know you. They will sit around and laugh at you if you don't exercise your authority. The witch doctor came back and said to Brother Reb, "If that man comes back to work and the devil jumps on him and kills him, you'll be responsible. He has a wife and several children, and you'll have to take care of them if he's killed." Brother Reb said, "Tell him to come back. Those devils won't attack him anymore. I have forbidden them to come on my property, just like I'm forbidding you. You're not offering any sacrifices on my property." The carpenter was off work quite a while, waiting for his leg to heal. He couldn't even walk on it. But eventually he came back and never was attacked anymore. When we boldly resist the devil, he has to flee.
(Kenneth E. Hagin)

MIX FAITH WITH THE WORD YOU HEAR

In 1956 I was preaching at a Full Gospel church in Denver. Although we had two services a day, we had no healing services. I never laid hands on anyone. But a woman from Pueblo who had cancer heard that I was going to be there. She intended to ask me to pray for her, but as soon as she heard me teach she decided to put what she heard into practice.

Two years later my wife and I went to Pueblo to the Full Gospel church this woman attended. Her pastor had contacted me in the meantime and had told me she was healed. Her doctor had told her that sometimes cancer goes into remission, but that if it didn't reoccur again within two years, she was free of it. The two years were up during this meeting, and she went in for her final checkup. Her doctor ran tests on her and said every test proved negative. She testified in the meeting about it.

She said that after the checkup she was waiting for the test results when the nurse came in and asked her if she belonged to one of those churches that believe in divine healing. She said she did, and the nurse began to cry. The nurse told her that she and the doctor already had figured that out. They said they knew God had healed her because it was a miracle. There was no discerning of spirits here. She wasn't prayed for. She just received healing through her own faith in the Word of God. (Kenneth Hagin)

OH, WHY DIDN'T I LISTEN!

I was holding a meeting in East Texas in the 1950s toward the close of the Korean War. One night I had something in my spirit. I knew God was speaking to a young man. I said, "Young man, I see right out in front of you — it's only a step out in front of you — a black wall." (I could see, in the Spirit, a black wall.) I told him, "And once you step into it, you're gone. I don't know what it is — but it's something right out in front of you. I do know this much. If you'll come to this altar and give your heart to Jesus, you'll be saved and never go into that darkness." That young man didn't come. The pastor even talked to him, but he wouldn't come.

The next week, while holding a meeting about 100 miles away, I got a letter from the pastor. He said, "Brother Hagin, I thought you'd be interested in knowing this. The young man whom you said was going into darkness went out and got drunk. He thought he was going home, but he went into the wrong house. He began slamming, hammering and knocking on the door. He tore the screen door off and kicked the door in. "The man of the house didn't know who was there. He unloaded both barrels of a shotgun right in the boy's face." This pastor said, "I went to the hospital and the boy was still alive. The doctors didn't understand how he had lived, and they knew he wouldn't live long.

"I talked to him and told him who I was. You couldn't look at him, it was so pitiful. But somewhere down in his throat, I heard these words come out of him: 'Oh, why didn't I listen! Why, oh why, didn't I listen? I couldn't see this darkness out in front of me, but I could feel it. If I had listened to God, I wouldn't have been drunk. If I had listened to God, I wouldn't have been out there And then he lapsed off and never did say anything else." The poor fellow went out into eternity. Was it God's fault? No! God tried to get him to stop. God did His best to arrest his attention. But he didn't listen. He had the power to listen. Why didn't God overrule him? Because God doesn't work that way. (Kenneth Hagin)

DON’T MESS AROUND WITH FORTUNE TELLERS, HOROSCOPE ETC

The spirit realm is real. I held a meeting once for a preacher friend of mine in Texas. He told me that when he was 36 his first wife died and left him with five children. This was in Depression days and preachers didn't take vacations then. But after his wife died, the church members told him to go on a vacation because he needed to get away.

The church board gave him several hundred dollars and he was going to take 30 days and just see America. He went to Denver and got a room in a hotel. On a Saturday night he was walking along a street when he saw an old theater building. A sign outside said they had services at 7:30 on Sunday nights. He didn't know where else to go, so on Sunday night he rushed down to this old theater. When he got inside he found the place full. On the platform was a baby grand piano, but there was no pulpit. He knew that Pentecostal people, back in those days, didn't have pianos like that.

Soon a woman in an evening gown came out. She sat down at the piano and began playing "Rock of Ages." She played for a while and then a man dressed in a tuxedo and a tall hat came out. He walked up to the piano, pulled his hat off, and started singing "Rock of Ages." My preacher friend said he couldn't figure it out. Then they turned all the lights out except a spotlight on this couple. She played, and he sang two verses of "Rock of Ages." When they got to the third verse, the woman disappeared into thin air, but the piano kept on playing, and the man sang the third verse through. The minister said he sat there with his eyes bulging.

When the man finished singing, he walked right up to this Full Gospel minister and said he had a message for him. He told him his wife had died recently. (How could the man know that? Because the devil does know some things.) He told him his wife's spirit was there. He said he had a message for him.

My friend confirmed the fact that his wife had died, but said she was in heaven; she wasn't there with them. He also said he didn't believe this man had a message from her. This is exactly what this preacher should have told him. How did this man know all this? My friend was a stranger to him, but the devil knows some things. The man asked him if he refused to accept the message, and my friend told him again that his wife was not there. He told him she had been a Christian who had died talking in tongues and praising the Lord. He told him she was in heaven.

If my friend had listened to him, there's no doubt in my mind that the man would have told him something that only my friend knew. It would have been supernatural. But the man walked back up the aisle and my friend got up and left. That happened whether you believe it or not. I believe God can stop whatever the devil does. We don't have to mess around with fortune tellers, soothsayers, astrologers, or anybody else. We have the Word of God and, as the Spirit wills, the gifts of the Spirit. (Kenneth Hagin)

WATCH WHAT YOU READ

I remember the second year we had school here, a man called from another state because he needed help. He had been head of a psychology department in a leading university, but was now retired. He had taught criminal psychology. In his studies on the subject, he had read classified books on deviant sexual behavior among criminals.

He wasn't a Christian at the time, and as he had studied about people who are motivated by the devil, the devil got in him. He had gone out and molested little children. (That's the reason you need to be careful what you read. The devil can get into you through a book.) He told me that when he first retired, he hadn't read those books. He and his wife had gotten saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit, and for two years he hadn't had any problems. But he still kept the books, and eventually he got back to reading them. So by not staying in the Word and by reading about the sexual criminal again, he yielded to the devil and molested more little children. His wife found out about it and filed for divorce.

The man said to me, "Brother Hagin, that thing just got hold of me. I didn't want to do that. I know how I'll wind up; I'll wind up killing a child." As he was talking, I discerned by the Spirit of God that three demons were involved. I said, "Now, I can cast those things out of you. There are three demons. I know that exactly. I'll tell you their names. But it won't do a bit of good unless you do something."

Somebody said something one time that really registered with me, and I have never forgotten it. He said, "It's not what you do that counts. It's what you do afterwards. " Just stop and think about that. In the long run that's true. I've seen people who did good things, but they did them with the wrong motive. Afterwards they bragged on themselves, the devil got hold of them, and they backslid.

I've seen people who did wrong and knew it, but afterwards they repented and were mightily used of God. You see, it's not what you do or have done that counts. It's what you do afterwards. It's not what you do in that room where you're being delivered of devils that's going to count in the long run; it's what you do afterwards. What are you going to do after they're gone? We need to cover this whole field and not get carried away with casting out devils. You really might do a person an injustice to cast the devil out of him. You might do him more harm than good. If he doesn't do the right thing afterwards, that one spirit will go out and get seven more, and the last state of that man will be worse than his beginning!

So I told this man, "I know what the spirits are. I'll cast them out of you. I know I can do it. And as long as you are here with me, I can keep them out of you. But when you get away from here, I can't control the situation." (I've experienced this again and again in my life, not only with demons, but with sickness. I can control the situation as long as the person is under my authority, in my domain.) I said, "There's no use of my casting the spirits out of you and getting you delivered unless you're going to do something. Number one, you're going to have to leave those books alone. I'd encourage you to empty your library and burn them. Don't read one of them. And get in the Bible. Study the Word of God. Get filled up. Don't let the devil come back and find your house empty, swept, and garnished."

You see, when he had gotten saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit, God was blessing him, and he left the books alone. But he didn't get the Bible in him. So the devil came back and found him empty, and that same devil started acting up and threw him again. A person can get saved, but if he's not going to walk with God, read the Bible, go to church, and fellowship with fellow Christians, he'll never amount to anything. He'll wind up backslidden. It's what you do afterwards that counts. I talked to this professor for about an hour and 45 minutes, cast those things out of him, and sent him on his way. About a year later, he and his wife came to our prayer seminar. They were back together, smiling. He said, "I haven't had a bit of trouble. Praise God, I did just what you said to do. I'm staying in the Word, and we're just fine." You see, he did something about it.

But if a person allows them, the demons will try to return to the place they came out of. Many times I have seen this happen. Jesus told me that they will then stay in that person until they're discerned and cast out again, or until that person dies. When the person dies, they'll leave that body and try to get into another body. Evidently, in the incident related in Mark 5, this is what happened to those spirits in the swine. The spirits left because the swine died. Jesus said this will go on and on and on; thus, we have the same spirits here today that were here when Jesus was here. There's no telling how many people they've indwelt. (Kenneth Hagin)

SEATING DAILY WITH THE WORD WILL DEFINITELY CHANGE YOUR LIFE

In 1953 I was preaching in Dallas, Texas, holding meetings for a pastor who was away on summer leave. I had been telling about insane people who had been delivered. I told how some received deliverance by wearing prayer cloths I had laid hands on. Three people, in fact, received their deliverance at 3 o'clock in the afternoon after wearing the cloths ten days. I don't know why it happened that way, but it did. I also told about a woman brought to our parsonage from an asylum. The Spirit of God told me to go stand in front of her and say, "Come out, thou unclean devil, in the Name of Jesus!"

After hearing me tell of these things, a woman came to me and said, Brother Hagin, my neighbor has lost her mind. She has been committed to an asylum and is waiting the required ten days before admission. She's not saved, and neither is her husband. "In the past I have tried to get them to come to church, but they've said, 'We're just not interested in things like that.' Yet when people get into trouble and are desperate, they'll do nearly anything. I'm going to see if the husband will let me bring his wife to the morning service." She talked to the neighbor, and he agreed his wife could come, so this woman brought her. The insane woman acted like a little child, moving around all the time. She'd constantly talk out loud and jump up. Right in the middle of my Bible lesson, she would pop up and say, "I want a drink of water." Her mind was gone. That first day she didn't pay any attention at all.

The second day, before the service was over, I noticed her eyes on me. She sat there and listened intently. The third day she came with a Bible in her hand, and she'd open it and follow me. The fourth day she was taking notes. Before the ten days were up, she was saved, baptized in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, and her mind was all right. She never had to go to the asylum. I went back five years later, and she and her husband were in church and on fire for God. I never prayed for her, never cast any devil out of her, or laid hands on her. The Word of God did it! (Kenneth Hagin)

HOW SAD IT IS TO BE WITHOUT JESUS IN THIS WORLD

I read in the newspaper that a young man 28 years of age drowned his own 4-year-old son in the bathtub. When the authorities questioned this young man, they found he was all right mentally. He had no record of wrong-doing, had a good job, and lived in a fine home. He had no financial worries, came from a good family from whom he had inherited part of his wealth, and had worked in the family business. They couldn't find one thing wrong with him.

He himself said there wasn't anything wrong with him mentally; he wasn't worried, had no problems, and the child was good. "But," he said, "while I was bathing him, I suddenly had an uncontrollable urge to harm him and a voice told me to do it. I yielded to it, and when I came to myself, I was holding the child under the water. I cried, 'O God, why did I ever do it?' " You see, he was dominated by evil spirits — rulers of the darkness of this world. They rule people who are in darkness. But we are the light! Jesus is our Lord! He is the One who dominates us. He is the Ruler over us; He is our Head.

Jesus said to me (in a vision), "Every person who is unsaved is more or less dominated and ruled by demons and evil spirits. He is in the kingdom of darkness. Many times even people who are saved yield to these spirits and let them dominate. If you let them, they will dominate, because they are real. That's the reason people do things and don't know why they do them."

Satan is the head of those who are unsaved. You know, if the unsaved really knew the truth, they would be knocking at our doors begging us to pray with them and help them. We wouldn't be begging them to get saved. (Kenneth E. hagin)

A LESSON ON CASTING OUT DEVILS

Jesus then told me he was going to show me how demons get hold of people, even believers, if they will let them. He showed me a man in a vision. I didn't recognize the man. I saw an evil spirit come and sit on his right shoulder.

(There's no significance to the right shoulder at all. If there had been, the Lord would have told me.) The evil spirit began to whisper in this man's ear, and the man began to entertain its thoughts. Then in the vision the man became as transparent as if he were made of glass. Something seemed to go into his head. It looked like a black dot and it was almost as large as a baseball. Jesus told me that this thing first came from the outside to attack the man, but because he had listened to it and had opened his mind to it, it had entered his thinking. He had become obsessed.

Then I saw this black dot go from the man's head down into his spirit. He told me that it now possessed him wholly. Then I saw a whole group of evil spirits come in. I saw the first spirit holding a door open, as it were, for all these other spirits who were swarming in. There were so many I couldn't count them all. They looked like big flies. The first one looked like a little monkey or elf.

Jesus talked to me about that. He reminded me of the Bible account in Matthew 12:24 which tells how Jesus was accused of casting out devils by Beelzebub, the lord of flies. He said these spirits were lower classes of spirits. The higher class demon got in there first and got control and then let the others in.

Remember the man whose house was swept clean but the evil spirit came back with seven others and they all entered into him (Matt. 12:44,45)? The one spirit knew how to get in, and he took the others with him. Jesus told me this man was possessed of the first spirit which went into him, and then he let the others in. All of them were in there, but only one fully possessed him. He then told me the madman of Gadara had a legion of demons. Jesus told me in the vision to walk up to the man I saw in the vision. I walked up to him, and the Lord told me that from that night on, when I was in the presence of one who was fully possessed, these spirits would recognize me. They would recognize that I had power over them.

He said when a person is fully demon possessed, the demon can use his voice and state that he knows who you are. The demons will know you as much as they knew who Jesus was. He said that through discerning of spirits, which is an inward revelation, I would know what kind of a spirit possesses a person. He told me that if the spirit did not come out when commanded to, I should ask what his name is and how many there are within. Some won't come out until you do this. Then Jesus showed me some things I hadn't understood before. He talked to me about the man who came out of the tombs at Gadara. (Mark 5). Jesus said if I had been there that day I would have heard, with my physical ears, this man talking. But it was really the demon who possessed the man doing the talking. (A person present wouldn't have heard all the demons speaking unless he had discerning of spirits.) This was what Jesus told me. He said because I had this gift, at times I would see and hear into the realm of spirits. That scares some people; I'd be lying if I said it weren't so.

Sometimes I've had spirits speak to me before I've ever said a word. I hear them. People can hear me telling them to leave, but no one else hears them talking. Sometimes they say to me very emphatically, "I don't intend to go." I say, "Yes you do, and out you go in the Name of Jesus." I've seen them go. People will be delivered. I've seen too much of it not to believe it, and I know it works. I don't just run and jump into something. I stop and think it over for a long time before I start using it. The Lord told me one time when He appeared to me in a vision that He would rather I be too slow than too fast. He said some people receive a little revelation, and they grab it and run. They usually end up with everything messed up. It's better to be careful.

I do not believe that God is going to take novices and new Christians who know little or nothing, equip them with these things, and send them out to turn the world upside down. That's out of line with His program. He plainly said, even concerning the office of a deacon, not to put in a novice. Someone who is new in the things of the Spirit might be lifted up in pride. I know ministers who have had gifts of the Spirit operating in their lives and today they are shipwrecked. They tried to build a ministry on spiritual gifts, but you cannot do that. You cannot put a spiritual gift above the Word of God.

Jesus did not tell the disciples to go into all the world and work spiritual gifts. He said for them to go preach the Gospel. We're supposed to preach first. I've been around Pentecostal people for years and I've learned many good things. I think they're the finest people in the world. They're my people. But we miss it sometimes. I've had people say they had a wonderful service and they didn't have any preaching. I like to see God move, but I like to see a little of the Word also. Preaching and teaching had first place in the ministry of Jesus. The Bible plainly says, "Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people" (Matt. 4:23).

Let's get it like it ought to be! Then we'll have the Word confirmed with signs following. We'll have it in right focus. So Jesus told me to walk up to this man. When I walked up to him, the man immediately spoke out loud and said, "I know you; I know who you are." Without thinking I told him to shut up in the Name of Jesus. He hushed. Then on the inside of me I knew what kind of spirit was talking to me. It was a deceiving spirit. I said, "You foul deceiving spirit, I command you to come out of the man in the Name of Jesus!" Nothing happened.

So then I asked the name and how many there were in there. (Deceiving isn't a name, it's just a kind.) He said there were 19 more in there besides him. That was all I needed to know. I then commanded him and all 19 to come out in the Name of Jesus. And they came out. I wanted to know where the spirits who were in this man went. You remember in Mark 5:13 the devils went into the swine and the swine went off the cliff. I asked Jesus where evil spirits go when they're cast out. (I'd heard preachers say they were going to cast them into the abyss or pit.) I asked Jesus if I should have done more than just cast these out — if I should have cast them into the pit, or into hell. He said that I couldn't. Jesus said with the lower class you could, but there wasn't too much accomplished by it.

He said you can't do that with the rulers of the darkness of this world. I asked Him for Scripture. He told me that if we could do this, He would have gotten rid of all of them when He was on earth. In the Scripture we find that evil spirits always would beg Jesus not to torment them: "And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time (Matt. 8:29).

Jesus said these spirits walk through dry places seeking rest (Matt. 12:43). In the vision I saw this main demon walking through a dry place. Jesus said they'll try to get back into the place they came out of if that person will let them. That's why it's so important, when dealing with demons in the lives of Christians, to take time to get the Word of God into people. If we don't, we'll do them a worse injustice than if we hadn't ministered to them at all. They might wind up eight times worse than what they were! I've seen that happen. (Kenneth Hagin)

NEVER GIVE UP ON PEOPLE

In one church my wife and I pastored in Texas, there was a woman about 82 years old. She had been in the hospital in my hometown of McKinney, suffering with cancer of the stomach, and was finally sent home to die.

I went to visit her at her daughter's home, and as I talked with her she said she was old enough to die and she wanted me to leave her alone so she could die. (You're not going to get people healed when they think they're going to die.) I told her that wasn't right. I told her to let God heal her before she died. She told me she had lost all confidence in divine healing — and she was an old-time Pentecostal saint. It was divine healing, in fact, that had brought her out of another church into the Pentecostal church back in 1917. She mentioned a certain pastor who hadn't gotten healed. I told her that didn't have a thing in the world to do with it. I told her we weren't reaching all 3,000 people in the city for salvation, but we thanked God for those we could reach. We didn't give up because we couldn't reach them all. I told her I didn't know why those people didn't get healed, but that I wasn't going to question God.

I told her healing still belonged to her. I read to her from the Bible on the subject of healing, laid my hands on her, and asked God to help her not cast away her confidence. She had wasted away to nothing and had suffered much. She could hardly eat anything and was right at death's door. We had divine healing services every Saturday night in our church. Her family would carry her in and seat her in a large chair with pillows around her. Sometimes she would have a spell and we would think she was dead. Then somehow she would start breathing again. Those were some experiences!

That went on for about six months. We can get faith into people by teaching them, but they also need to get into services where God is moving and manifesting Himself. Smith Wigglesworth said that if God doesn't manifest Himself, it is doubtful whether the Holy Spirit is really there.

One Saturday night this woman was at the service, and as we came to the close, I had a quick vision about her. I saw Grandma, as we all called her, jump out of her chair and start dancing. I looked at her and told her it was her time. I walked down off the platform, laid hands on her and prayed. At the moment nothing happened, but ten minutes later she let out a yell, jumped out of the chair and started dancing. She was healed.

Several years later, when Grandma was 91, my wife and I stopped to visit her. Her daughter said she was away visiting some people and that she was always out running around, so we didn't get to see her. She died when she was 93, without sickness and disease. She just fell asleep in Jesus. I'm so glad I didn't let her die of that cancer! I've done my best for some others but couldn't help them. Yet God's Word is still true, and the gifts of the Spirit are still real. (Kenneth E. Hagin)

EVERY CHRISTIAN CAN CAST OUT DEMONS – THAT INCLUDES YOU.

One Pentecostal pastor who got some of my tapes on
this subject said three men in his church had been causing
him trouble. All three were born again and filled with the
Holy Spirit, but anybody can yield to the devil. That
doesn't mean you're unsaved because you yield to him.
(If it did, there would be no one saved today!)
But sometimes, when something goes wrong in the
church, people begin to operate in the natural, thinking,
Well, I don't like that, or The pastor is exercising too much
authority. And then the devil will bring other thoughts
to their minds, and before long they're doing the devil's
work, trying to undermine the pastor.
This was the case with the three men in this pastor's
church. He had tried to deal with the problem by bringing it before the church board and talking to each of them
individually. That only made it worse. Each of them had
friends who were going to follow them, resulting in three
divisions in the church. The pastor had almost despaired,
thinking, I believe I’II leave. I'm tired of fighting it.
In the process of time, I had a chance to visit with this
pastor. He said, "You know what I did? I listened to your
tape, sitting there in my study. And I got up right in my
study and said, 'You foul devil. . . Now I command you,
spirit, that is operating through . . . .' and I called each
of the three men's names, 'creating confusion and division
in this church, I command you to stop, in the Name of
Jesus.' " He said, "I just sat back down and said, 'Bless
God, that settles it.' "
He said to me, "Brother Hagin, I want you to know
that in ten days' time, this situation straightened out.
In fact, those men became the greatest allies I had. The
one who had caused the most trouble said, 'I don't know
what in the world got into me. It seemed like some kind
of influence came on me. But, thank God, it's gone. I
want you to forgive me.' "
You see, some kind of influence had come upon him,
and he had begun to think certain ways, and before he
knew it, he had decided, "We need a new pastor; this one
doesn't suit me." (The pastor wasn't supposed to suit him
anyway. A pastor is supposed to suit the Lord!)
I'm well satisfied we have more authority than we have
used. I believe the Spirit of God is saying we're about to
come to a place where men will operate in the Spirit and
see in the realm of the Spirit more than they have in the
past. There will be great victories. (Kenneth E. Hagin)

DOCTRINES OF DEVILS AND SEDUCING SPIRITS

Jesus reminded me of an incident that shows how wrong thinking can mislead a person. I was ministering once and through the word of knowledge I knew someone in the healing line had an evil spirit. I knew he was actually possessed by it and not just oppressed.

I kept looking around to see who it was. Finally the Lord told me. I knew it was the third man back in the healing line. I intended to wait until he stood in front of me before telling the foul spirit to come out of him in the Name of Jesus. But the devil knew what I was about to do.

Before I ever said a word, he spoke up and said, "You can't cast me out." I told the foul spirit I could, but he answered that I couldn't. He said the man wanted him to stay, and that made it impossible for me to cast him out. I admitted he was right and passed on to another person.

I talked to that man a few days later when I met him on the street. I knew he had this spirit in him. Although he appeared very religious and quoted Scripture, he was all tangled up. He believed almost everything you could think of. He didn't actually believe what the Bible teaches.

As I talked to him, he started quoting Scriptures to me. I told him he wasn't scriptural, as he was taking verses out of context. I told him what he was saying wasn't what those Scriptures meant. I told him he was misled, and that it wasn't Bible; it was false doctrine?

The Bible plainly says that "in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils" (1 Tim. 4:1). This is what had happened to that fellow. He said he wanted to believe that way. I told him if he wanted to be free, I could help him.

But he said he didn't want to be free. He wanted to believe what he was believing. Thank God, though, if people want help they can have it. Yet as Jesus told me, you can't cast the devil out of people if they don't want help. (Kenneth Hagin)

IF YOU ONLY KNOW HOW WEAK YOUR ADVERSARY THE DEVIL IS

I tell the story of my son-in-law, Buddy Harrison, quite often as an illustration of seeing in the realm of spirits. Reverend Harrison is at this writing founding pastor of Faith Christian Fellowship in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is also president of Harrison House Publishers. But in 1963, he had problems.

He was unable to stay with anything. He would not keep a job; he'd just quit and walk off. He wouldn't stay in church. One time we'd see him in church leading the choir, and everything would be fine. The next time we'd see him, he would be out of church, and he would walk up to me and blow cigar smoke in my face. I never said anything. I just loved him. I knew the devil had hold of him. He was a roller-coaster, or a yo-yo Christian. Up and down. In and out.

In October 1963, the Spirit of God spoke to me about Buddy. I had come to Tulsa to speak on a Saturday night at a Full Gospel Business Men's banquet, and then to teach a Holy Spirit seminar the following Monday through Friday for the FGBMFI. We held the seminar in a local church. God began to move — and instead of five nights, the meeting lasted eight weeks.

I ministered in two services a day — morning and night — for those eight weeks. One afternoon, between services,
I was in one of the Sunday School rooms praying about
the night service. I had grown tired praying on my knees
and was lying flat on my back on the carpet, praying in
other tongues.
Suddenly, the Spirit of God spoke to me about Buddy.
He said, "There are three demons that follow Buddy
around."
I had a quick spiritual vision. I saw Buddy walking
down the sidewalk. I saw three spirits following him like
little dogs would follow a person, except they didn't look
like little dogs. They were monkeylike — about that size,
and wiry. One was on the right edge of the sidewalk, one
on the left edge, and one in the middle.
The Spirit of God said, "He will turn to the right and
yield to the demon on the right. Then he will turn and yield
to the demon on the left. Then he will yield to the demon
in the center. It seems at times that he is almost a different person."
Whatever the demon was that he yielded to, Buddy
would act that way. Relatives had even remarked, "I don't
understand Buddy. Is he schizophrenic?"
Buddy was a born-again, Spirit-filled Christian. But
just because you are filled with the Holy Spirit does not
mean you are incapable of yielding to the devil. You still
have a will of your own.
You can yield to the devil and let the devil dominate
you anytime you want. You can yield to the flesh and let
the flesh dominate you. You can yield to the world and
let the world dominate you.
The Bible teaches that you have to deal with the world,
the flesh, and the devil. But you do not have to yield to
any of these, thank God.
The Lord said to me, "You speak to those spirits. Command them in my Name — the Name of Jesus — to desist
in their maneuvers. Command them to stop."
I said, "I'm in Oklahoma. Buddy is in Texas." He
said, "In the spirit realm there is no distance." I said,
"Tell me again just how I do that." He said, "You
say, 'In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command
all three of you foul spirits following Buddy around to
desist in your maneuvers and stop in your operations.'
"
I rose to a seated position and said that. Then the
Word of the Lord came unto me saying, "Within ten
days he will have a job. He will stay with that job until he
does something else I have for him."
I wrote it down on a piece of paper, dated it, and put
it in my billfold. The next time I saw Buddy, he said, "Dad,
I got a job." I said, "I know it." I pulled that piece of paper
out and handed it to him. He said, "That's the very day
I got the job" as he counted ten days from the day it was
dated.
He stayed with that job and made a success of it. They
made him an assistant manager — and wanted to make
him manager of another business. But God called him to
Minneapolis to be a choir director in a church.
His boss told someone, "I don't understand that young
man. He went off to Minnesota to be a song leader for
$100 a week. I offered him $20,000 a year to manage
this business. I guaranteed him $30,000 within 18
months. There is no doubt that in five years he could be
making $50,000 or $60,000."
But Buddy wanted to obey God — and he's been going
with God ever since. And it was through the gift of discerning of spirits that his deliverance came. (Kenneth E. Hagin)

DONT FEAR THE DEVIL

I understand that the devil has power; he can do some things. That's not unscriptural. God led Israel out of Egypt, Aaron threw down his rod and the Pharaoh's magicians threw down their rods, and all of the rods became serpents (Exod. 7:11). Those magicians were of the occult. They matched miracle for miracle up to a point.

But here is something I like: Aaron's serpent swallowed up the rest of them! So don't be concerned with what the devil might do. We can swallow up his works in the Name of Jesus! Hallelujah!

Some years ago, I read about a Pentecostal woman missionary who was ministering in Africa during the '30s. She was left alone in the mission station for several days because of a shortage of workers. During that time, the witch doctor of the village challenged her. He wanted to get rid of her. He told her, "I'll do a bigger miracle than you, and if I do, you must leave town — close the mission down and leave us alone.

But if you do a bigger miracle than I do, we'll all follow your God." She didn't know what to do. Actually, she didn't want to do anything, she was so afraid. She wished that the other missionary were there; he would know what to do.

But the little flock who had been saved by their ministry encouraged her to accept the challenge, and she didn't want to let them down. She thought, Lord, what am I going to do? What kind of miracle can I do? They met at the Little mission church. The witch doctor placed himself flat on the floor, lying down, and entered into a state of meditation during the next 45 minutes.

Suddenly he began to rise off the floor. He hung suspended in the air, as high as the pulpit, stretched out like a two-by-four plank where everybody could see him. The woman missionary thought, Dear God, how am I going to top that? What in the world am I going to do? Suddenly the Spirit of God came upon her (when the anointing comes upon you, sometimes you'll act without thinking), and she ran up to the witch doctor, laid her hands on his head, and said, "Come out of him, devil, in the Name of Jesus!"

He hit the floor like a sack of salt, got up, ran down the aisle and out the door. You see, she swallowed up his miracle! The witch doctor came back a week later and said, "I've lost my power. I can't do anything anymore." He wound up getting saved and filled with the Holy Spirit!

Our thinking is too small. If we'll grow spiritually, we'll realize God can keep us. He wants people to grow spiritually so they can stand on their own two feet. He wants them to take their place in Christ, knowing the Name of Jesus belongs to them as much as it does to the preacher or evangelist. We need to realize that in our everyday combat — on the job, at home, wherever we are — we're facing these spirits. We have a right to use the Name of Jesus wherever we are. We can put the devil on the run! (Kenneth E. Hagin)