Brother Copeland, I wrote down what the Lord said to me through you. You said to me by the Holy Spirit, “You’re not walking in the shadow of your father; you’re walking in the light of your father.” When you said that, the Holy Spirit said to me, “I’ll give you a scripture to back that up.” He said, “Richard, I did not say, ‘Let there be shadow.’” He said, “Let there be light.” (Applause) The scripture confirming the word. I receive that.
Turn in your Bibles quickly to Matthew 4:23. I’m not going to take very long because God’s healing power is already in action. Matthew 4:23, “Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues” … thank You, Lord Jesus, for healing that right ear drum right now … “preaching the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and disease and all kinds, all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people.”
Jesus went about all Galilee teaching. Everybody say, teaching. (Response) And Jesus went about preaching. Everybody say, preaching. (Response) And Jesus went about healing. Everybody say, healing. (Response) Say, teaching, preaching, healing. (Response) Turn to the person next to you and say, He went about teaching, preaching, and healing. (Response)
Jesus did three things, teaching, preaching, and healing. That’s what He did. And that’s all He did. And it was all wrapped up together. He would be teaching somewhere, pouring His heart out, when someone would come through the roof. And He’d stop His teaching to heal them. And He would be healing somebody, when someone would ask Him a question, and He would turn around and preach them a message. Or He would be preaching, and God would give Him a word to teach. Teaching, preaching, and healing.
Brother Copeland, that’s what happened to you tonight. You were right in the middle of your message when all of a sudden you had a stance, because the healing anointing came on you. Right in the middle of your teaching, you stopped to heal. That’s what Jesus did. Teaching, preaching, and healing.
He said, “I want you and your wife to come down to my office in the morning. We’re going to get you a new car.” He said, “I can’t stand the looks of that car out there.”
Well, this was beyond, beyond anything we could ask or believe for at that particular time. Now I can ask and believe for big things, but then I couldn’t.
And we went down next morning. He said, “Now I’m going to give you the highest price.” There was a level at that time on cars – you could only pay so much during the war – well, it wasn’t during the war, it was after the war. But you could only pay so much for a car. And so he said, “I’m going to pay you the top price that I can for your car, and I’m going to arrange it to get you a new Buick?
OR: At his cost.
ER: ??at my cost, and I’m going to take you to Flint, Michigan, to drive it back. We’re going to the factory, and we’re going to get it.”
And Oral said, “OK!”
Well, we drove to Michigan with this man – Mr. Gus. He said, “Call me Mr. Gus.” His name is Gustavus. And later they became wonderful, wonderful friends to us. And when he drove us to Flint, Michigan, and we got to the factory. He said, “You pick out the car you want.” It was a Buick place. And we picked out a long, green, sleek Buick? oh! Two door, because we had two children?
OR: I loved it next to Evelyn.
ER: And we got in that car, and we drove the car home. And I got to thinking: You know, this is more than just a car. This is more than just a car. It’s not just a car: it’s a symbol. It’s a symbol that God wants us to prosper, and He wants us to be able to tell our people they can prosper.
And I said, “Oral, stop the car.”
And he said, “Why do you want me to stop?”
I said, “Honey, stop the car.” e stopped the car, and he said, “What are we going to do?”
I said, “We’re going to get out.”
“What are you going to do?”
JS: No. In fact, I’ve got 6 of my graduates that represent different classes one from the charter year, one from last year and so forth and 6 of them are teaming up and next Wednesday they’re invading Ireland. They’re going over there for several weeks, and all 6 of them from different classes have teamed up.
One of them is coming from Australia. He came to our school from Australia, went back to Australia, but he’s teaming up with the other 5. And in the letter they gave me where they were announcing this, they said, “Dr. Savelle, we are an extension of your ministry. You imparted this in us, and now we are going to invade the nations.” I thought, my dream has come true.
RR: Well, that’s what’s happening with us here, Jerry, at ORU.You see, we as alumni, we are the extension of the life and ministry of Oral Roberts.
JS: That’s right.
RR: The Lord said to my father that, “Your ministry will never die as long as your graduates are going throughout the earth.” And it’s the same with you too.
JS: That’s right. And I’m an extension of your father’s ministry, you know. I heard the call through his ministry and watching him in 1957. And
LR: And everyone laughed at you, wasn’t that true?
JS: Oh, yeah.
LR: Your family laughed at you when you said it.
JS: Well, yeah. Some of my family didn’t think Oral Roberts was, you know, of God. I’ll put it that way.
LR: That was a nice way to say it.
JS: Yeah. I heard the call of God watching him. It was years later when I accepted the call, but now, you know, because of his ministry and what I’m doing around the world, he gets credit for all of it, praise God. That’s exciting.
RR: I see you have your Bible. I know you have a word from the Lord tonight.
JS: I have a word from the Lord that I want to share
RR: Why don’t you just open your heart?
JS: with you, your audience, and the viewers, and the people that love ORU. The thing that I kept hearing in my spirit and it’s something that the Lord shared with me while I was preaching with Brother Kenneth Copeland in Bournemouth, England, in November of 1992.
Well, I was thinking about how satan has been harassing God’s people, trying to get us to dance to his tune. And that it’s time that we pulled out our double-barrel Holy Ghost shot gun, and it’s time for the devil to dance to our music. Well, Evelyn and I are now 86, 87 – I married an older woman. We’re gray-headed now; we’re coming down to the final years of our life. We’re just grateful that we were able to make the trip from California here. We’re not traveling in the ministry any more. We have a nice little condominium in southern California. Instead of traveling, the pastors said, “Well, you can’t come to us – we’ll come to you.”
And they’ve been coming out in groups; and some from England, and some from the far East, and from the islands of the Gulf, and from all over America and Canada. And many of them bring their television cameras, and they say, “You can preach for us on camera; we’ll play it Sunday morning in our church.” And Billy Joe and Sharon Daugherty just came out and did two hours of our life. And I understand they’ve been playing it all over the country.
So Evelyn and I have been quite busy in our home without traveling like we had been doing from coast to coast. And Richard wanted us to come this morning. And Benny Hinn furnished his plane to fly us in here.
I asked Evelyn to share with me this morning because we’re not here to preach. We’re here to share with you something about our lives: what we’ve been through, what we’ve faced, how we started, what we started with. And we felt like if we didn’t know where we’d been, we might not know where we’re going. And we want to take you back, way back, 56 years, and let you know things about how we started that we do not share with a great many people.
It was the bottom part of our lives. I had been in the ministry for twelve years. I was now 29, and Evelyn had just turned 30. We had the first 2 of our 4 children, and I was pastoring small churches and going to cities where there was universities and trying to get on with my college work.
And because I had heard the devil say to me, “You’re going to have this the rest of your life, your ministry is over,? then my life was over. And I didn’t want to live. And death was closing in on me. I knew the Bible, that it’s appointed unto man once to die. I’m going to die. You’re going to die. Everybody’s going to die, except the people who will be alive when Christ comes the second time. And death will be involved in the translation of the saints who are alive because death is a change, and they’ll all be changed, in a moment of time. So everybody is going to die.
And for about six weeks I lived in a semi-death atmosphere, and I’m relating this to you because you will be attacked, not necessarily the way I was and am, but you will be attacked by the devil because he claims you as his property. You’re not his property, but he claims you and has claimed every human being that’s ever been born as his property from the Garden of Eden when man fell and forfeited his dominion over this earth and over his human life.
And I went through a period where I was a tremendous trial to Evelyn. She was very patient with me, and always has been. But it was almost too much for her. And this word from my brother’s book leaped off the pages into my heart.
And the Scripture in Matthew 8:29 is about two demon- possessed men that Jesus came to heal. And when He arrived, these demons said, “Jesus, thou Son of God, hast thou come to torment us before our time?” Sure, I knew that. I’d preached on that. But it didn’t dawn on me until that time that they had a legal right through the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to make a claim on the lives of those two men. And they would claim their lives until they died and would be in them, tormenting them, until they died.
And the only peace a demon can get is when he’s in a human being because when he’s in a human being he makes the person what he is, and the person becomes what the demon is in his personality.
And when Jesus arrived, they recognized Him as the Son of God. And they said, “Have you come to torment us before our time?” So there’s a time limit on the devil. There’s a time limit on demons. There’s a time limit on every problem that you have and I have. There’s a time limit on every sickness.
You may have already been whispered to by satan that you will have this particular sickness or affliction the rest of your life, or this problem that’s been tormenting you will be there until you die. I have a feeling that most people have experienced that or will experience it before they die because satan claims us as his property. “Have you come to torment us before our time?”