Derek Prince - How To Disciple New Believers
This is an excerpt from: Derek Prince - You Can Come Through Victorious
In the church that we attend in Fort Lauderdale, Good News Church, we basically have the principle that if you want to get saved you repent, you believe and you get baptized. They have a baptismal tank available every Sunday morning. And most of the people that get baptized in water, get baptized in the Holy Spirit. There was a time before the church was really going, when the people used to come to our house on Sunrise Key and they’d get baptized in our swimming pool. Well, that’s a good place to get baptized. We had one couple, they were just total pagans before they got saved. We said, You need to be baptized, come to our house. This dear, precious lady came in a knitted bikini! You know what I said? Thank God we’ve got somebody who isn’t religious. So we provided her with a cover-up and she got baptized. I was in a meeting many years later in Johannesburg, South Africa. I was invited to speak to the B’nai B’rith, do you know what they are? The Jewish anti-defamation organization. They began by giving my background, et cetera, et cetera. They wouldn’t have invited me to tell them about Jesus, but what they really wanted to know was why I believed in the prophecies of God for Israel.
So I was trying to tell them this and in the middle of it, two men sitting back lit up their cigarettes. I thought, wonderful! To be in a place where people are not so religious they don’t know that you can’t smoke in church! I’ll tell you what happened at the end. The leader of that meeting was a Sabra. That is, he was an Israeli or a Jew, born in Israel. But he’d gone out to Johannesburg to lead this organization. He had no religious language at all. But at the end he said, While Dr. Prince was talking there was something very interesting here. It was kind of warm, it was kind of comforting. What was he talking about? The Comforter! Oh, what a privilege to talk to people who don’t have all the language. I wish we did it much more often. My problem is I hardly ever meet unconverted people. I mean, I see it’s God’s plan for my life, but I can remember the good old days when I was in the British Army and all the people that were around me were unconverted!
I think God wants me to tell this story, some of you have heard it before. But I ended up in the Sudan, in a little place, it wasn’t a town, called Gibate on the Red Sea hills, overlooking the Red Sea. I was a corporal at that time and I never got any higher. My wife, who was in the Marines, became a sergeant so she outranks me. Anyhow, I was in charge of what they called the native labor; that is, the Sudanis. There was one man who was the head of all the labor force. My business was to relate to him. I was to see that he got the men doing the right things. He was the only one who spoke English and he spoke English he’d learned from British soldiers, which is not exactly King James. But he was very intelligent, very bright. For quite a while we just met one another and talked about the jobs. And then somehow or other I discovered that he believed in the devil. I said, Well, you know I believe in the devil too. That was our point of contact, we both believed in the devil. A little later he came into my store where I met him and he was late. He said, I’m sorry but I had to go to the clinic, I’m sick.
Well, I had never prayed for anybody in my life, but I knew it was in the Bible, so I said, Would you like me to pray for you? He said, Yes, which frightened me. I said, I’m going to pray in the name of Jesus. He said, That’s all right. He was a Muslim. So, treating him like a bomb that I was defusing, I laid my hands on him and prayed in the name of Jesus. A week later he came back and said, I’m perfectly well. Well, after that I had his attention. So I began to tell him, I believe in Jesus and I read the Bible. Then another thing happened. I was in my billet and I got stung by a Sudanese hornet. Well, I tell you, Sudanese hornets are in a class by themselves. It was the most agonizing thing I’ve ever felt. I jumped off my bed with terrible pain and I thought to myself, Jesus said you can tread upon serpents and scorpions and they won’t harm you. I said, Well, that should include even hornets.
So I walked up and down for about ten minutes, praising the Lord with this pain in my ankle, but it never swelled up. The next morning I met my friend Ali and I said, You know, I got stung by a hornet last night. He said, You were stung by a hornet? Where? So I pulled my stocking down and showed him. He took me to the door of the store and he showed me a man limping across the compound with one knee up. He said, Do you know what happened to that man? He was stung by a hornet in the knee. He said, Why didn’t it happen to you? I said, I prayed in the name of Jesus. Well, by then I had his attention. So, I began to read to him from the King James Version, translating it into soldier’s English. Which takes a certain amount of ingenuity!
Then he said, I want to teach you to ride a camel. We were really good friends by that time. So I said, Okay. Well, I discovered there’s a peculiarity about camels. There’s no part of a camel that’s always level. If one part is going up another is going down. But I learned, I mastered a camel. And I know some of you have probably been to Egypt and ridden those tame creatures they have at the Sphinx. That’s not even in the same league with a Sudanese camel. So then we decided we’d take a little picnic. And I had access to the store, so I could get a few things to eat. We set out on our camels, rode a certain distance and sat down at the base of a little hill. There was this brackish stream of water running down the hill. He said to me, We, Sudanis, drink this water, but you white people don’t. I said, I’m prepared to drink it. He said, How come? I said, There’s no other water. And the Bible says if I drink any deadly thing in the name of Jesus, it will not hurt me. I drank it and had no problems.
We had our meal together, got on our camels. And I read to him, while we were there, from John 3 the first verses, about being born again. This absolutely fastened on his mind. Born again, he kept saying, What does it mean to be born again? I said, It means God gives you a new heart. Well, he burst out laughing, that was ridiculous. How could God give anybody a new heart? But I saw he was very much in earnest, so I said, Now listen, would you like to be born again? He said, Yes. Well, I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I hadn’t been to Bible school or theological college. I said, Listen, you go to your own little hut. I’ll go to my billet and at 6:00 this evening when the sun goes down, you pray there and I’ll pray in my billet. And you and you ask to be born again. So I met him the next morning at 10:00 a.m., as usual. I looked at him and said, Did you pray? He said, Yes. I said, Did you get it? He said, No. I was glad, first of all, that he believed something was going to happen. If it didn’t happen, he didn’t get it.
The Holy Spirit whispered to me, He’s a Muslim. I said, Did you pray in the name of Jesus? He said, No. I said, You can’t be born again unless you pray in the name of Jesus. Are you willing to do that? He said, Yes. I said, At 6:00 this evening you pray in your hut, I’ll pray in my billet. I met him next morning, I looked at him, I said, You’ve got it! He said, I did. And the whole staff of the hospital knew within a week that Ali had been born again. My British soldier friends came to me and said, What happened to your friend Ali? I said, He’s been saved. They said, What’s that? I said, Let me tell you! I started a Bible class with three British soldiers. And before the end of the class, two of them got saved. Because they saw what happened to a Muslim. I didn’t intend to say any of that but, anyhow, I ended up by baptizing him in the swimming pool of the hospital. So I did the complete job as far as I understood it.
Listen, there are people all around us that really would like to know how to meet with God. Just make up your mind, you’re going to carry the good news of the kingdom wherever you go, all right? Don’t be embarrassed, don’t be shy. One thing about my wife is she’s not shy. When I’m standing there listening, she’s talking to people about Jesus. And, she has such a sweet smile on her face, they are always willing to listen. That was talking about taking the gospel to all nations. Let me just show you a passage I read once already here. Revelation 7:9-10. This is part of the vision that John the Revelator had in heaven. He said: After these things, I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, crying out with a loud voice, saying, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.
And I pointed out already, but it deserves emphasis, they were from every people nation, tribe and tongue. The age will not close until there’s at least one representative from every nation, people, tribe and tongue. Because, God the Father will honor His Son Jesus for the sacrifice that He made. He will make sure that there’s one representative at least, from every ethnic group every language group, that has received the sacrifice and is there to praise the Lamb. So, our job is not complete until we’ve reached every people nation, tribe and tongue. I’m not directly connected in any way with the Wycliffe translators, but I certainly support them. I think they’re taking God seriously when many people with more fancy titles are just playing religious games. They are committed to get the Scripture into the language of every language group on earth. Because of this verse. It has to be. What are you living for?