Derek Prince - The Importance of a Supernatural Experience
This is an excerpt from: The Cross At The Center - Part 1
One more reason, this is the third reason why we need the cross. It's through the cross that the supernatural confirmation of God is released for the message we preach. Let's go back to 1 Corinthians 2 for a moment. 1 Corinthians 2:4-5. We've read them already. My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom Somewhere else Paul quotes one of his critics and he had his critics and the critic says his bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible. So, Paul was not a great orator. Actually, if there was an orator among the apostles I think it was Peter. Peter really had a flow of language. You read his two epistles and the language is tremendous. But Paul, generally speaking, is believed to be rather short and he had bowed legs, and he was very unimpressive.
He didn't rely on his eloquence or his wisdom; he relied on one thing above all others: the supernatural confirmation of the Holy Spirit to the message that he brought. You see that? And again, brothers and sisters, it usually doesn't work till we've come to the end of all our efforts. When we've come to the end and we've got no more cards to play and we still maintain our confession, God begins to release the supernatural. I never finished the verse so let me go on. My speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power Notice that the Holy Spirit can be demonstrated. He Himself is invisible but He's demonstrated by what He does. You can't see Him but you can see the signs and the miracles that He performs.
And that's God's own attestation of the message preached. And then Paul says: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Again, because of my background I appreciate that verse. The philosophy that I studied which was very fashionable 50 years ago is right out of date today. If I had built my life on that I would have a crumbling foundation today. But when I met Jesus I had an experience of the supernatural power of God in my own life that has seen me through till now.
I'd like to read the words of Paul in Romans 15 verses 18-19. For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ has not accomplished through me, in word and deed to make the Gentiles obedient He said I'm only interested in what Christ has done through me. I'm not interested in what I've done on my own. to make the Gentiles obedient in might signs and wonders by the power of the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem round about to Illyricum I have preached fully the gospel of Christ. Without the signs and wonders we have not fully preached. We've preached but we have not fully preached. I'll just take a few moments to illustrate this.
In the late 1950s I was principal of a college for training teachers in Kenya, in East Africa. At that time the Africans were striving for education so, they were willing to go to a college and they were willing to obey all the rules, and do everything we said. If we said get baptized, they would be baptized. If we said sing hymns, they would sing hymns. Because their future lay in that. But after I'd been about a year or so I realized that most of it was external conformity for the sake of education. There was very little of real heart obedience.
So, one day I summoned the student body together, about 120, and I said, 'I want to thank you for the way you cooperate with us and the way you do what we tell you to do. I realize you do it because your education depends on it. I'm grateful. But,' I said, 'in the minds of most of you there's a big unanswered question. And the unanswered question is is the Bible really a message from God or is it a white man's book that doesn't apply to Africans?' And they sat up because that's exactly what they were thinking. Then I said something that shocked them. I said, what's more, I can't answer that question. There's only one way you can find out the answer for yourself. That is if you have an experience of the supernatural power of God in your life then you'll know it didn't come from America and it didn't come from Britain; it came from heaven.
I left them. I put the word of God before them in every way I could because I have the authority and I went away and prayed for about six months. Then God poured out His Spirit on those students and we couldn't get them to sleep at night in the dormitories, they were so busy praying. In the next six months we had all the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit in operation amongst those young Africans. And you see, the attitude of the missionaries at that time let me be careful what I say was you can't lift Africans very high, they'll just go so high and that's just as high as you can get them.
If you're dealing in the natural that's probably true. But in the supernatural, thank God, everybody has the same rights and qualifications. I would have to say that their lives were radically changed when they experienced God's supernatural power. During that period, we saw two persons raised from the dead, two of my students. One was a young man, the other was a young woman. I think I can briefly relate the story of the young woman. She became extremely sick and did what all Africans do when they're sick, went home to her village. Then her brother came on a bicycle one day and said Teresa is very, very sick, she's dying.
So, my first wife Lydia and I got in the car, put the bicycle on the roof of the car, took a long journey, had to wade a stream, arrived at the village and there she was in a little clinic, apparently dead. It was just like a scene in the New Testament, the family was all outside moaning and weeping. Lydia and I walked in, we didn't have any plans but we just knelt down on either side of the bed and prayed. After a moment she sat up more than a moment, quite a while. And she said, 'Has anyone got a Bible?' I said yes. She said read Psalm 41. I did. We didn't know why but when she died, her spirit left her body. It went to a place she said was full of beautiful bright lights and there was a man reading the Bible and he was reading Psalm 41. So, she wanted to know what was in Psalm 41! Believe me, that creates obedience from the heart.