Derek Prince - When Derek Met Jesus In An Army Barrack Room
This is an excerpt from: How I Became Involved in Israel
"For by grace we have been saved through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them". I chose that Scripture because it brings out the fact that when we come to know the Lord Jesus and are born again, God has already prepared good works for us. We don't have to plan our own lives, we have to find out what God's plan is.
There's another Scripture along the same lines in 2 Timothy 1 verse 9 which says: "God has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began". That's a staggering thought. God had a plan for the life of each one of us who is a believer, in eternity. And again, the application is find God's plan and walk in it. Then I remember the words of Paul in Romans 15 where he said, in effect: "I don't want to speak about anything in my life that Christ has not done. I only want to talk about the things that He has done". That's my purpose tonight.
The title of my message is "How I Became Involved in Israel". It was totally the sovereignty of God. I was the typical non Jewish intellectual. At the time my story begins, I had a teaching position in philosophy at Cambridge University and I had majored in Latin and Greek and the Classics. I knew absolutely nothing about Israel, the Jewish people or the Middle East. I was highly educated in some areas and abysmally ignorant in others. Well, when the second world war broke out, if you can believe people were alive that long ago! I realized I was going to be called up into the British army and I had one major problem, what shall I take with me to read? Because my life's consisted in reading books and a few other things which I won't mention, which weren't at all connected with reading books.
So, I thought it over and I said to myself, here I am, I'm supposed to be a teacher of philosophy but there's one book of philosophy in the world which is more widely read, and more influential than any other book, and I know very little about what's in it. Do you know the book I had in mind? The Bible. That's an unchallengeable fact. Undoubtedly it is the most widely read and influential book in the history of the human race. So I felt it was my philosophic duty to study the Bible.
And so, when I went into the Army I bought myself a nice, new black Bible in the Old King James Version and took it with me. I started to study the Bible. I said to myself how do you study the Bible? I said just like any other book, it's a book like any other, start at the beginning, read it through to the end. My first night in the British army, the 12th of September, 1940, in a barrack room of 25 new recruits I sat down on my bed, opened my Bible and started reading at Genesis 1 verse 1. What I hadn't allowed for is that anybody seen reading the Bible in the army immediately becomes very conspicuous. I hadn't anticipated the reaction. The thing was I baffled everybody, including myself, because when I wasn't reading the Bible I didn't live the least bit like somebody who regularly reads the Bible.
I found it boring, baffling and unattractive. But I said to myself no book is going to beat me, I'll read it through from beginning to end. After nine months in the army I had got somewhere about the middle of the book of Job. I now compare myself with some professing Christians and I think I didn't do badly! Then something totally life transforming happened. I cannot give you the details but in the middle of the night in an army barrack room I had a personal encounter with somebody I had never met before. The thing I want to emphasize is that praying for the first time in my life about the middle of the night, not knowing whom to pray to or what to say, I found myself suddenly in the presence of an unknown person. I did not see this person physically but I was clearly aware that I was in contact with Him. I felt that my whole destiny was being settled by that contact.
In desperation I began to say to this person, "Unless you bless me I will not let you go". When I got to that I couldn't stop saying, "I will not let you go". And at that point I made contact with Him, the power of God came on me and I was under the power of God in that barrack room for well over one hour. The next morning I was a totally changed person. I had not made any resolutions or decisions, but something had happened in me that completely changed me. It took me months to discover all the changes that had taken place in that one encounter. I mention that encounter because I realized later that I was saying to that person exactly what Jacob said to the angel whom he met and who wrestled with him.
This was a critical moment in the life of Jacob because if you read the story, it's in Genesis 32, and I'll turn there in a moment. Jacob was on his way back to the land promised him as an inheritance after being away probably 14 years or more. He could not get back into the land until he had encountered this person. His destiny, like mine, was decided by that encounter. There was one other person that Jacob had to meet and that was his twin brother Esau. The last time they'd been together Esau was preparing to kill him. This is a sort of historical parable because the time has come for the Jewish people to return to their inheritance but they've got to deal with two persons before it's settled.
The first is that mysterious person whom Jacob met, and I'll give you his identity in a moment. The other is Esau, the brother. I didn't intend to go into this but it was a dramatic moment when Jacob encountered Esau. He did something that he would never have done if he hadn't encountered the other person first. He humbled himself and he bowed seven times to the ground before his offended brother. His brother was won back into a relationship. I personally believe that is something that has to happen to God's people Israel. They've got to meet that unknown stranger and settle with Him, and then they have to settle with their offended brother.
Let me just read a few words from the encounter of Jacob with the angel. It says a man met him, a man, and wrestled with him all night. The next morning Jacob called the place Mael, which means the face of God. For he said: "I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved". So this person was a man but He was also God. And at the end of his life when he was blessing the two sons of Joseph he referred to this encounter again and he said in Genesis 48 verse 15 "He blessed Joseph and said, 'God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has fed me [or shepherded me] all my life long to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads.'"
And so you have an amazing revelation that Jacob encountered a person who was both man and God and an angel, which is a messenger from God to men. And because I believe of God's purpose in my life, I came to know that same person nearly 4,000 years later. I have no doubt as to the identity of that person. There's only one person in the universe who answers to that description: a man, God and a messenger from God to men. He was manifested in human history as Jesus of Nazareth. I want to say to each of you, you can join a church, you can become religious, you can go through all sorts of religious rituals and stay very much the same. But when you meet Jesus you will be changed. No one can meet Jesus and stay the same.