BT:  ………….. that verse where the scripture says I want  … God desires that we haven heaven on earth, as it is on earth as  it is in heaven.  And some  of  the  people,  they  are  enduring  as Christians, waiting to die to go to heaven and enjoy it.   But God has already made provisions that we can have it on earth as it is in heaven.

RR:  Heaven on earth?

BT:  Heaven on earth.  And we have literally tapped into that as we have … I think we ended yesterday’s program with having received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and how it literally turned our lives.  Before we received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we were born again, we were saved.  But we found out that being saved was not enough.  My husband was a minister’s son, raised in a  house with a godly mother and a godly father.  But when  we  got  married and both of us was saved, we found out that  being  saved  was  not enough.  And it was six years into our marriage  when  we  received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.  And we were young ministers in the Lord, pastoring a traditional Baptist church, but  it  just  seemed like we were not tapping in on the things of God.  And so  one  day we were at church and we loved church.  We would go to  church  and we would sing our songs and at 12 o’clock … you could just almost close your eyes and know what was going to  happen.   It’s such  a ritual, routine.  And so one day we went home and we just looked at each other and we said, “You know, God, if this is all there is to Christianity and   even pastoring a church,  we  want  out  because your Word says that … have  made  promises  and  that  signs  and wonders and miracles are to follow you.   And  if  we’re  following you, these things are going to be following.”  And so God talked in our spirit.  We had a desire to want to know more about God.   And when there is a desire, God always … the Word of God says he will fill those.

That’s  the  next college weekend seminar for high school  juniors  and  seniors  and those interested in  transferring  to  ORU.   Three days on this campus.  I will open it myself personally that night.   The ORU Singers and orchestra will be with me.  I’ll be ministering to the young people myself personally on Friday night, the 25th.  You can kind of see and taste and touch and smell and feel ORU and see  if this is where God is leading you to get  your  education  and  also learn how to hear his voice.  So if you’d  like  information,  call the prayer group and we’ll get back in touch   with you immediately with information  about  the  college  weekend  seminar.   Mac and Brenda, I just want you to take your freedom and whatever the Lord lays on your heart as you continue what you  started  on  the  last program.

MT:  Well, yesterday, Richard and Lindsay, we talked about the demand for excellence.  There is a demand coming from heaven and a demand coming from earth.   And  when  Jesus  was  talking  to  the disciples, teaching them to pray, he  said,  “Pray  that  the  will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  So we know that there is excellence in heaven.  But as we’re learning how to praise God, as we’re learning how to pray, how to tap into God and how to tap into heaven, then that excellence is going to come down.   And the prophet Isaiah says it’s time for us to rise.  It’s time for the Body of Christ to shine for the light has come. I believe that that light brings forth excellence in many areas.  Some just stop  at being born again, but there are many areas in our total makeup that we need to have excellence.  I believe it’s in our spiritual life, financial life, I believe it’s in our mental life.   I believe domestically so many homes are messed up and God has commissioned us.  We are on nationally every night following your program on one network to just ministering excellence in the family.  And we want to just talk about DUI today excellence in the family.

RR:  Good, good.

RR:  It’s time to praise God.  I want you to meet our very special guests today, pastors of Christian Faith Center in Creedmore, North Carolina, just outside of the Raleigh-Durham area there in North Carolina.  I want you to meet pastors Mac and Brenda Timberlake. Give them a welcome.  Brenda, thank you. Mac, God bless you.   I want Mac and Brenda to begin right where we left off on the last program.  But just let me say one word before you do about my brand new book, “How You Can Touch Heaven with Your Faith through the Word of God.”  If you feel like your   prayers have been hitting the ceiling and bouncing back and hitting you in the face?   Well, there have been times in my life when I have felt that way.   But God has given me special secrets from his Word.   He has unlocked those secrets to me to share with you on how you can break through that ceiling and get your prayers right up to the throne of God.

“How You Can Touch Heaven With Your Faith Through the Word of God.” Now this book is free. There’s no obligation.  I want you to  have it.  Pick up your phone.  Call 918-495-7777.   Say to the prayer partners, “Please ask Richard to send me his new book,” just on touching heaven with your faith.  I’ll do it.  Or you can write me, Richard Roberts, Tulsa, Oklahoma.  If you live in Canada, Richard Roberts,  Toronto,  Ontario.   Praise God.   We were   mentioning yesterday on the program that there are several students from the church there in Creedmore that are on campus here at ORU.   I want to remind you students who are interested in ORU or you parents who are interested about your young people coming, October 25, 26, and 27.  It won’t be long till it will be here.

Before men knew God, His divine purposes were shrouded with mystery.  But God has revealed Himself to man in the person of His Son, Jesus of Nazareth, as He lived the life of a man among men.

Jesus Christ’s ministry was a ministry of revelation, for He came to reveal God, who God was, what God was.  He acted like God.  He made decisions like God.  He spoke like God.  He was God.  He is God.

He was God when He healed the sick.  He was God when He raised the dead.  He was God when He walked on the waters of the stormy sea.  He was God when He spoke peace to troubled hearts.  But the greatest revelation that Christ ever gave to man about God was in the closing moments of His life.

Since the dawn of time, the most important question has been, Does life continue after death?  Is there another life?  Is there another realm that God has prepared where man will continue to exist when his journey is finished upon earth?

We did not know.  We could only conjecture and surmise.  But on that first Easter morning all questions were answered.  Jesus stepped out of the tomb and gave the most thrilling announcement that mortal man has ever heard.  “I am alive!” He shouted, “Now and forevermore!  And because I live, you shall live also.”  (See John 14:19).

At that moment, God’s plan became crystal clear.  The veil between God and man was ripped asunder, and the dread of the future was cancelled. The unknown tomorrow became the promise of a new life when Jesus Christ broke the bands of death and rose triumphantly from the grave!

Moses was on the backside of the desert when God appeared to him in a burning bush and challenged him with a seemingly impossible situation.  God told him to go down to Egypt and rescue His people.  (See Exodus 3.)  How did he do it?  Something happened inside of Moses.

Hebrews 11:27 says that Moses saw something invisible with his spiritual eyes, and what he saw he began to believe so deeply that he became irresistible.  He absorbed it into his spirit so completely that it was no longer a problem—he was ready to go back and take on the burden of two million people.

When God tells you to do something for Him, unless you see it invisibly first in your spirit, you can never see it visibly.  You never become irresistible in what you are attempting to do until you are completely absorbed by it on the inside.

When God first spoke to me and told me to build Him a university, I couldn’t take hold of it in my spirit, although it remained very strong in my mind.  Then after twelve years, when it became time, and I walked around the property alone praying in the spirit, I finally saw the invisible.

I ran into a lot of opposition in building Oral Roberts University, but it was too late.  I could already see it inside me with every fiber of my being.  Many times my ideas were almost defeated, but I was on fire, and it was no longer impossible.  I had finally seen it, and then no one could stop me.  It was so deeply ingrained in me that it was all I could think about, and what I saw eventually came to pass.  When, like Moses, you see the invisible and believe something inside of yourself completely, you become irresistible and unstoppable!  Oral Roberts

Have you been holding onto a dream, a vision that God has given you, but in the natural it appears there’s no way it will come to pass?  This isn’t the time to quit.  It’s the time to believe that the seeds you’ve sown and the vision God has given you are both going to come to pass.

I recently heard from a man who saw us on TV back in 1988.  He said, “I was living in a little efficiency apartment in Nashville, thinking my dream of being a songwriter was about to die.  I turned on the TV and your program was on.  You said, ‘There’s someone watching who’s about to give up on their dream.  Don’t do it!’

“That sparked something in me,” he told me.  “Over the next few days a song began to germinate in me, and a few weeks later I finished it.”  That song eventually became a No. 1 hit for country singer Randy Travis, and the songwriter has written fifty-five hits since then!

Now that man could have given up his dream of writing songs, but he heard the word of knowledge from God, believed it, and acted on it.  Some people hear a word from God and say, “That’s not for me.  That’s baloney!”  Those people make excuses for why their dream doesn’t come to pass.  But others hear God’s voice and say, “I stretch my faith, I release my faith, and I go into agreement.”  They put action to what they believe, and God honors their faith.

Do you have a dream or vision that needs to be restored?  Jesus said, Be not faithless, but believing (John 20:27).  So use your faith—believe God!

Not only can you overcome the devil’s shaking, not only can you overcome his rattling, but you can also refuse to let satan roll over you with his gigantic, demon-powered steamroller!

Have you ever watched the Roadrunner cartoons?  I love the Wile E. Coyote character because no matter how far he falls or what falls on him, in the next scene he’s standing up!  We ought to be like that.  No matter what happens to us, in the next scene we’re standing up!  Because sometimes situations in this life try to roll right over the top of us, leaving us feeling as flat as a pancake.

I know exactly what that’s like, because that’s how I felt when I became the President of Oral Roberts University and assumed a huge debt of several million dollars.  I had never owed anyone that much money, and it was no joyride!  I didn’t have a clue what to do, and everyone was depending on me.  The devil would tell me, “This university is going under, and it’s going to be your fault.  Your father built it, but you can’t run it.  This will mark you for the rest of your life.”  I developed an ulcer and I couldn’t sleep.  I was miserable.  It was as if one of those big steamrollers from the highway had rolled over me.  I was flattened on the road of life.

But then we began to sow our corporate financial seeds unto the Lord, and slowly but surely I watched the Lord slash ORU’s debt in half!  One day in the midst of it all, like a bolt out of the blue, a fresh baptism of joy exploded in my life.  I got a fresh understanding in my spirit that the joy of the Lord is my strength (see Nehemiah 8:10).  Praise God, I’m not being steamrolled anymore! We don’t have to put up with the devil rolling over us in any situation.  We can have joy!  And God’s joy is our strength!

The principles of God that are written in His Word are activated when we’re obedient to His Word.  One of the most dangerous things we can do is listen to the Gospel according to someone’s wrong opinion and then act on it, move on it, talk about it, and build on it as if it were true.

When you activate the Word of God according to what it says, God promises that He is obligated to watch over His Word to perform it (see Jeremiah 1:12).

God says in Malachi 3:10,11 to bring your tithes and offerings into His storehouse, and He will rebuke the devourer for your sake.  Whatever is being devoured¾maybe it’s your family, your marriage, your finances, your children¾as you sow unto God, He promises to rebuke the devourer and open the windows of heaven to pour you out a blessing where there will not be room enough to receive it!

Verse 12 continues, And all nations shall call you blessed.  People will recognize that the hand of God is on you.  They will say, “I don’t know what it is about them, but they’re blessed.”

When people see that you’re operating according to the Word of God and that God blesses you and multiplies the seed you sow, they will come to you and ask, “How did you do that?”  Your obedience to God’s Word is a great witnessing tool for the kingdom of God.

Sowing seed isn’t a matter of your making God do something.  You can’t make God do anything.  But when you operate according to His will and sow your seed, it activates the miracle of Malachi.  God works with His Word.  When we obey His Word, then He makes His Word come to pass in our lives.

And on the island they found an upright broken-down piano from the casino there.  And that was the only one that’s on the island. So they bring it out to this village and place it in this huge school room.  And here are 500 little Haitian kids surrounding me and I’m playing and they’re sitting there like awed, they’d never heard these sounds before.  And then when I was through they were reaching out to touch me and to hold on to me.  And my wife Cheryl was there and they were just reaching out just to and if that doesn’t do anything to you.  These are little children that are, that do not have food to be fed.  I mean, the poverty is incredible, and to be able to go down there and not just share my talent, but also be able to take a piece of bread and just hand it to them and say, “This is for you, representing the Christians of the United States of America.”

SPRR RICHARD ROBERTS Well, but you’re doing more than that, Dino. You’re getting involved in bringing medical help to the people through the hospital.  Now I understand your vision because, as you well know, that’s what our vision is, to take medical missions to the nations of the earth.  So I understand what you’re talking about.

SPKM DINO KARTSONAKIS You know, for years people have seen me play the piano and perform and wear all these wonderful outfits, etc., you know, and they say, that guy has got it made and he goes from one auditorium to the next, one church to the next, you know, and perform every night in spotlights and what have you. But there’s so much more to it.  You know, as Christians it’s not just an entertaining element.  We are to minister. We are called as missionaries and I am called.  I am called and I have a burden on my heart.  Glad Tidings Tabernacle, the little church I was born and raised at in New York City, that’s still there on Toidy-toid Street 33^rd , you know, in New York City.  We had a pastor that had a missions heart and I was raised with a missionary heart.

And again, not just till recently were we able to go down at the Haitian Community Hospital.  And I flew in midnight last night, took five flights to get here.  I must really love you, Richard.  And, anyway, I got here.  Cheryl and I arrived and we feel refreshed this morning with a victory in our hearts because we handed to them a check for $32,000 to complete the wing of that hospital, the radiation department.

And we praise God for that and for people who have given like this letter right here, it’s so inspiring.  God has blessed the United States of America because of people like this who have given from their hearts, that’s why God has blessed us.  And He will continue to bless us if we continue to give.

SPRR RICHARD ROBERTS And when you open up your heart and when you give, then the Bible says God responds to your giving.  Now He describes how He responds to your giving.  The Bible says when you give, He will open you the windows of heaven and He will pour you out a blessing where there shall not be room enough to receive it.  And He will rebuke the devourer, the devil, for your sake. (Malachi_03:10-11 ) I’ve got good news, God does not need the devourer rebuked.  You and I are the ones who need the devourer rebuked.  And whenever I face a situation, Don and Dino, where I need the devourer rebuked, the first thing I think of is that Scripture where God told me what to do.

He said, “When you give, I will open you those windows of heaven.”  Whenever I feel like my windows in heaven and I’ve got windows up there and so do you and so do you whenever I feel like my windows are shut, I realize that God didn’t shut them, I did.  And I realize if I want them open I’ve got to give.  And then when I need the devourer rebuked, I know that when I give, God’s going to do it because His Word is true.  God’s Word is true, He cannot lie.  The Bible says, “He is not a man that he should lie.” (Numbers 23:19 ) God has given us a formula and when we work with His formula, then He multiplies it back to us.  And like this person said, I want to double my giving. He said, “I want to double my giving every year.”  And I just got a letter from a man in Philadelphia who had just sown a very large seed for our medical missions project.  And he said to me, “I’ve got a problem.”  And I thought, you know, I’m ready to pray.  And he began to laugh.  And I said, “You’re laughing, but why are you laughing, you say you have a problem?”  He said, “I have a problem.  Every time I give money to you, I get money back.”  And I said, “Well, what’s the problem?”  He said, “I just gave you this large gift.”  I said, “Yes, I know.”  He said, “The Internal Revenue Service just contacted me and told me that I have a tax refund for almost three times what I gave you, unexpected.”  He said, “My problem is, when I give you money I get more money back than I know what to do with.”  I said, “Well, I can alleviate you of some of that problem.”  But you cannot outgive God.

SPKM DINO KARTSONAKIS You can’t.

Peter, you’ve been  SU02 involved in a tremendous ministry in the African nation of Mozambique. And I particularly want to talk to you about that because when I was in Africa this past year, you and I met for the first time.  You began to share with me your vision for Mozambique.  Now if you will recall, I shared this story with you and I want to share it with the people, that before the president of Mozambique was killed in a plane crash, I suppose a little more than a year ago, is that about right?  Before he was killed in a tragic air crash, the Oral Roberts Ministry and his government had negotiated an arrangement for medical teams to come in. And then somehow after he was killed the negotiations broke down.  And then I met you when I was in Africa and you began to share with me your vision for Mozambique.  Can you bring us up-to-date on what your ministry has done and is doing in Mozambique?

SPKM PETER PRETORIUS Yes, certainly.  You know, we got involved in Mozambique in 1983. We’d heard what was going on in the country.  The famine was then three years it had been going, and it really culminated at the end of 1983, the first three months of 1984.  300,000 people died in the space of about four months. And really it was just the most catastrophic tragic type of situation.  And we got into the country about three months before that time.  We started going to the different distribution camps and the first thing that we did was to bring in food.  I went back home.  I took what money we had.  I phoned other churches, and within two weeks we were back on the road with 60 tons of food.  And that’s how we began.  We just knew that Jesus wanted us to reach the immediate needs of these people.

But that just opened for us the most incredible doors for the gospel. I mean, you must realize this is a Marxist country.  You know, the actual law of the country is you are not permitted to preach the gospel publicly.

SPRR RICHARD ROBERTS Yeah, Mozambique was a nation that was formerly under the control of the Portuguese.  And then when it gained its independence years ago, it became a Marxist Communist nation and that’s where it stands right now.  Very difficult to get into Mozambique to begin with.

SPKM PETER PRETORIUS It is.  And, you know, they tolerate the church.  They allow some measure of freedom within the church but nothing outside of the church.  When we started to come in we said we would be prepared to try and help and feed the nation, but we want to feed them spiritually as well as physically.  And they gave us permission to preach and to hand out material whenever we did a food distribution.  That led to our first–

SPRR RICHARD ROBERTS In other words, the food was the ticket that allowed you (That’s right.) to preach.  You had to have a door opener.

SPKM PETER PRETORIUS That is correct, and that’s what I want to come to just now.  You know, I have something on my heart that I really want to say to you this morning.  And I want the people who are watching us today to understand the situation, how Africa is so ripe for the gospel and how certain things open the way today, whether a country is Marxist or whether it’s not Marxist. So we had our first citywide crusade in Mapuda(sp) at the end of 1984.  It was the most incredible crusade. We had asked them for the stadium.  They said, “You know, you never get people like that, only for a political meeting.”  So they wanted us to do it in a little church.  We finally persuaded them to give us an old big hangar building near the airport.